#he should have been dming d&d games not out there chasing dragons

[grandmaestershibe]

quentyn's first chapter begining with "adventure stank" really says something

[garrettauthor]

New D&D Campaign

Today we played the first Game Zero of the new D&D Campaign I’m starting with a group of adult friends. This is the first campaign I’m DMing since my family campaign petered out last year.

Other than my wife, no one in the group has played D&D before, except for maybe a few half-games when they were teenagers. We’re all adults, we all have kids, except for one couple. At present there’s seven players total.

To introduce the players to the game in a less chaotic environment, I’m grabbing them by twos and threes, and playing a Game Zero with each of them. 

(You might recognize this as what Matt Mercer did with the cast of Critical Role before Campaign 2—that’s where I got the idea).

It lets new players learn the rules without dealing with a table of seven people, and with as few distractions as possible.

These are called “Game Zeroes,” i.e. the game you play before the REAL game starts. And today, we did our first Game Zero.

At the table was my wife, @underrealmgal​, playing her Half-Orc bard, Shielda.

A quick aside about Shielda:

My wife has played in two campaigns and a one-shot so far. She enjoys the game a lot. And so far, she’s played rather “typical” race/class combinations. First, a human fighter. Second, an elf cleric. In the one-shot, a goliath fighter.

When I started putting this campaign together, she said, immediately, “I want to play a half-orc bard.” She wanted to do something completely off the wall. 

Shielda is an absolute shit-mixer. She literally plays punk rock on her lute. She’s been touring local towns since she was a teenager.

I love her.

And, OF COURSE, we're designing a custom mini on Hero Forge. Here's the work in progress: 

Shielda heard a legend of a guitar out there in the world, made of diamond and strung with silk. The elf who told her of the guitar said it was gone from the world, “Never to be seen again until the platinum dragon returns.” Then he vanished.

Shielda set out from her sleepy little town to search for whatever “the platinum dragon” is, in hopes of finding the guitar of legend.

The other player in this Game Zero was a new friend named Cameron, playing a drow rogue named Zelren.

Cameron has been a dream player during the setup process. Came up with his own backstory, dove into character creation, super excited. I’m so happy to DM for him.

Zelren was raised by loving parents. His father was a member of an elite fighting unit called the King’s Fist, who were in the employ of a duregar king named Gargrond.

But jealous members of Gargrond’s court convinced him the drow were plotting to overthrow him. Gargrond had them all killed. Zelren’s mother barely got him out of the kingdom, but she herself was killed in the escape.

Zelren was caught by a slaver and sold to a smith who had criminal contacts. Zelren picked up a few tricks from them, and after some decades, he was able to escape. Now he’s set out for revenge on Gargrond.

Cameron was super stoked to find out about Hero Forge, and he’s designing Zelren now. He should have him by our first real session. Here’s the work in progress:

Okay, this post is getting a little long, so I’m sticking the rest under the cut.

As Game Zero opened up, Shielda was being dragged into a jail cell by the city guard of Tirisfell. She’d met a man who said he’d heard of the platinum dragon, but couldn’t remember any details. But he had the address of a dragonborn named Marlasar Klexxad who would know more. 

The stranger bet the address in a game of cards against Shielda, who’d been wiping the floor with him all night. But with such important information on the line, Shielda didn’t want to leave things to chance. She cheated, and the stranger caught her at it.

Unfortunately for her, the guard captain Corbrik Strongarm happened to be in the room. He’d had a few run-ins with Shielda, and he didn’t like her much, so he scooped her up and took her in.

As the cell settled to silence, Shielda went to look out the window of her cell. (This was a local drunk tank, not supermax). And who should happen to be passing by the jail, but a drow dressed in black with his cowl pulled up.

Shielda got his attention, and the drow introduced himself as Zelren. He’d had his own run-ins with Captain Strongarm, and was easily persuaded to help break Shielda out of the jail cell.

Zelren’s thieves’ tools made short work of the jail window, and he lowered it to the ground. But then a whispered argument broke out. 

Shielda wanted Zelren to come into the jail to help her retrieve the rest of her stuff. Zelren wasn’t much of a fan of jail cells, and he wanted her to come out. They could circle back around and figure out another way to reclaim her possessions.

In the end, the decision was made for them. Shielda raised her voice just a bit too loud, and a guard down the hall heard her. He started coming towards the cell, and Shielda told Zelren to put the window back in place.

Zelren tried...and dropped the window on his foot instead (Natural 1).

He screamed a very undignified "FUCK!" just as the guard stepped into view and saw him.

The jig was up, so Shielda dove through the window—but with her own Natural 1, she tripped, faceplanting on the street outside (and taking 1 point of bludgeoning damage).

The chase was on. Two guards pelted out of the jail after them. But early on, Zelren and Shielda managed to dodge around a crowd of drunken revelers that the guards slammed into headfirst. Soon after, the adventurers lost themselves in the crowds packing a large town square with a massive statue of a drow knight at its center.

With her flawless knowledge of the city streets (and a Natural 20 on an Intelligence check) Shielda led them back to the jail. They surveyed the front door from 40 feet away, discussing what to do.

Zelren decided to sneak up to the window and see what was going on inside. But before he did, Shielda hummed him a little tune he’d never heard before. (Someone from our world might have recognized it as the Rocky theme song.)

Suitably inspired, Zelren crept up to the window, silent as a mouse, and peeked inside. Two guards sat inside—one by the jail’s front door, and one by the door leading to the cells.

But far more importantly, there was Captain Strongarm. He was sitting at his desk, studying a slip of paper by the light of a lamp. He had a deep frown on his face, like he’d received some disturbing news.

Zelren returned to Shielda and told her what he’d seen.

And Shielda had an idea.

Together they returned to the jail. Zelren took up position by the front door, waiting for a signal. Shielda promised he’d know it when he heard it. Meanwhile, Shielda poised herself just beside the window Zelren had peeked through.

When all was ready, Shielda leaped into view in the window and sang a song her mother had sung to her every night before bed—albeit with a bit more of a punk twist. 

Tendrils of magic wove into the room, and both of Corbrik’s guards passed into a magical slumber. Corbrik blinked hard, gripping the edge of his table ...

... and then the spell passed, and he stood, seeing Shielda framed in the window. His face twisted into a mask of fury.

He went to rouse his men, but Zelren was faster. The drow darted into the room and slashed with sword and dagger. Corbrik reeled back under the blows. But such a burly man couldn’t be brought low so easily.

Corbrik struck back, his blade biting into Zelren’s side. Shielda saw her new friend injured, and she unleashed a string of vitriolic insults from her place at the window. 

Zelren hadn’t thought so much profanity could fit into a sentence in any sort of grammatically sound way.

Unfortunately, her insults fell flat, and Corbrik was unaffected. Shielda decided to do things the punk rock way and climbed through the window, ready to slam Corbrik’s head into the wall instead.

She never got the chance. Zelren struck again, and the pommels of both his weapons crashed into Corbrik’s temples. The guard captain fell senseless to the floor.

Zelren heard footsteps coming from the door leading to the cells. They didn’t have much time. He barked an order to Shielda to hold the door while he opened the confiscation locker to get her things.

Shielda threw the lock on the door, locking the rest of the guards inside the building, and throwing her shoulder against it for good measure. Zelren turned to the locker—but as he did, he spotted the key to it poking out of Corbrik’s pocket.

And when he went to retrieve it, he also found the slip of paper Corbrik had been studying earlier. It contained the address Shielda had “won” in her card game. The address of Marlasar Klexxad.

Zelren froze.

Dim through the years since his childhood, he remembered the name. Marlasar was a dragonborn sorceress, and she had been one of his father’s close friends. Zelren hadn’t thought of her in years, and hadn’t seen her in decades.

But there was no time to wonder at it now. He went to the locker, which opened easily with the key he’d lifted from the captain. Inside, he found Shielda’s rapier, her lute, and the coins she’d won from her games that night—100 gold in all. 

He also found a pair of supple grey leather boots, and a small grey leather bag of the same material, as well as a small glass bottle holding a red liquid.

“Zelren!” said Shielda, as the pounding on the other side of the door grew more insistent. “We’ve got to go!” Zelren scooped up everything in the locker, and they beat a hasty retreat.

Possibly against their better judgment, they returned to the tavern where Shielda had been arrested that evening, hoping Captain Strongarm was in no condition to pursue them that evening. The barkeep, Marlan, a red-haired dwarf with Einstein hair, greeted Shielda with a laugh. “I knew they wouldn’t hold you for long, girl.” (Though he did demand an extra gold piece to pay for the disturbance she’d caused earlier).

Shielda gave Zelren 50gp of what she’d earned earlier that night as thanks for his help. Then they sorted out the treasure. Marlan recognized the potion as a healing potion. Shielda tried on the boots, which magically expanded to fit her massive feet. When she stood up, they realized her footsteps no longer made any sound. She handed the boots over to Zelren, figuring they were quite a handy thing for a sneaky drow like him to have.

The real surprise came when they opened the grey bag. Inside, they found three small furry balls. Shielda took one out and dropped it on the tavern’s table.

A full-grown panther sprang into existence before their astonished eyes.

Marlan nearly choked in astonishment. “Get that damn thing off my table!” he roared. “Where did it even come from?”

After taking a moment to reassure herself that the panther wasn’t going to eat her, Shielda motioned to it. “Hey, get down from there.” The panther instantly obeyed, sitting docilely by her side. Shielda scratched it under the chin, and soon its rumbling purrs were shaking the floor.

“You want to try?” said Shielda, proferring the bag.

“Are ... is this what we’re doing?” said Zelren, utterly bewildered.

Shielda only responded by shaking the bag.

Sighing, Zelren took out a second fuzzy ball and dropped it on the table. The poor, abused table groaned anew as a massive direwolf appeared on top of it.

“SHIELDA!” bellowed Marlan.

Zelren hastily ordered the dire wolf to sit beside him. It did, looking across at the panther with what seemed to be a cool haughtiness.

With the treasure sorted, it only remained to figure out what they were doing next. 

Now that she had the address, Shielda was determined to seek out this Marlasar and see what she knew about the platinum dragon.

Zelren, too, was interested in finding the sorceress. He confessed to Shielda that Marlasar had been a friend of his parents when he was younger. Neither of them were quite sure why the two of them, from such different lives, would happen to be drawn together by something so strange as a name on a slip of paper.

But for Zelren, it was a matter of pragmatism as much as anything else. He only wanted one thing: to kill King Gargrond. But he wasn’t even vaguely ready for such a feat. To accomplish it, he’d need a lot more training, and powerful allies. And what better ally than a sorceress? 

And if the plucky, hulking half-orc before him happened to be traveling in the same direction, why not travel together, even if only for a while? 

So, almost against his better judgment, Zelren found himself with a new friend. And Shielda found herself with a traveling companion who was somewhat more stealthy and skilled at fighting than she was. A win-win situation.

Shielda paid for their rooms, and they settled in for a night’s rest. When they woke in the morning, they were somewhat disappointed to learn that their animal companions had vanished during the night—but there were two new furry balls in the grey bag, so that was something.

* * *

And that was the first Game Zero!

I’d like to keep a log of this campaign here and on Tumblr. So every once in a while I'm going to dump what happened in the last game. It won’t be polished, of course. But I love these characters so far, and I love the idea of following them as they grow.

It feels good to be playing D&D again.

[vorpal-chandelier]

How to DM for Tabletops

Now If anyone is actually reading this, you’re probably already into Dungeons and Dragons or another type of tabletop game, or at least into fantasy shenanigans since that’s all my blog posts have been so far. Maybe you already run a game and maybe you’re already good at it and that’s just fine. Maybe you also do things differently, and that’s alright too, but it’s always good to share new ideas and even old ideas for those that aren’t quite sure how to make it happen, so I’d like to share what I know.

So the first thing that you need to know is that it’s ok to make mistakes and fuck up as you go along, especially as you’re learning. Sometimes players can get pretty critical about things and we can definitely be more critical on ourselves, but don’t let that stop you if you really have fun doing it. Ultimately, the game is about having fun and as long as you guys are having fun there’s really no reason to stop over silly screw ups. Some amazing examples of stupid dungeon mastering, you can check past posts I have about character’s I’ve played and their adventures. The Vinyr Alkafyn character I wrote about is actually my very first character and my first experience playing D&D, as well as my friends’ first experiences DMing, and there’s a ton of great examples in their story.

That being said, the best way to go about learning in my opinion is to join a group as a player. When you’re a first time player with a group that has already played the game, you can watch and experience the rules first hand which allows you to pick up on a lot of the mechanics of the game and learn a lot about the role playing aspects. Then I would recommend reading the books themselves. If you don’t really know anyone who plays the game and aren’t comfortable, or have trouble finding groups online to play with, then instead I’d say start with the books and go from there. The games are typically very easy to play anyway, most of the “learning curve” as a DM comes from learning what your players enjoy doing, and what kind of challenges are appropriate for your group. Luckily, I haven’t seen a tabletop game that doesn’t have the “challenge rating” of most encounters or monster included in the books, so it’s easy to pick up on what is supposed to be balanced.

Well what if my party is larger or smaller than the party size in the books? Alternatively, what if our party is made up of classes and races that weigh mostly on one end of the balance? Well the answer is simple. You kind of just make your best guess at what the challenge should be, and learn from the mistakes you will undoubtedly make. When I started hosting my own group regularly, I had this problem because I had a group of about 7 or 8 players, which is about twice the number recommended for the challenge ratings in the book. In addition to that, I allowed them to play whatever they wanted since most of us were pretty familiar with the game already as a player. There’s many times where I tried to use an enemy of a higher CR or too many enemies of a lower CR to try to balance the situation, and in the beginning it was almost always strongly weighted on one team or the other and the encounter didn’t really have a “challenge” to it. It was either too hard or much too easy. Eventually I got a feel for the encounters and for the most part my players are pretty satisfied with how they go.

That being said, try to remember that encounters aren’t all there is to the game. In fact, if you aren’t using an adventure path, the best way to go about becoming a dungeon master is to start building a world or setting for your adventures to take place in. Now if you don’t like to build your own material, there are usually plenty of pre-made adventure paths and setting books that you can buy to get your game going, and those are great recourses, but if you’re like me I find that one of the more fun aspects of being a dungeon master is creating your own world setting and story for your friends to adventure in.

I like to start by getting the old imagination going. Think to yourself “what does my world look like? Why does it look like that? What are the important races and kingdoms of the world? Do they get along or don’t they? Basically just try to think about how the real world works politically as well as how your favorite books and movies do things and choose what you like about them. Don’t focus too much on being “realistic” as most of us don’t know everything there is to know about this or that. For instance, I’m terrible at understanding how geography works in terms of world forming and landmasses. Every time I make a map, such as the one I’m working on now, I show it to my friends to review and one or two of my pals will always have a question about why things are where they are, because they don’t make sense in a real world.

I recall one time when my group had a mission that required they sail a warship down this grand canyon-like river to get it to the ocean, and one of the players got hung up on the current and the rocks and how the ship in real life probably wouldn’t have been able to even sail down that river. Don’t let stuff like this discourage you, it’s perfectly ok to simply say “magic shenanigans” or “this is how this works in my world”. Sometimes player’s aren’t satisfied with those kinds of answers if they are the type of person to get hung up on what’s realistic and what isn’t, but that’s perfectly ok as long as everyone still has fun in the end. If you don’t know how something works, you simply can’t incorporate it realistically without doing research and if you don’t find that sort of research or learning fun, it’s ok to use magic as an excuse. After all, this is a fictional fantasy setting the majority of the time and if real rules worked dragons and liches would not be a thing.

That being said, you do want to make sure that regardless of your rulings, that you are as consistent as you can be. Many dungeon masters, myself included, either do or in the past have had a habit of being far too story oriented. What I mean by this is that it’s good to have a story, but your game should be about the players and making them heroes, or villains, or whatever they’re setting out to be. I used to get upset because I’d put so much effort into planning out what I thought was this great and deep story line, only for the players to say “fuck it, I want to spend the entire session making trouble in town and dealing with the consequences!” I used to handle it poorly and kind of just chase them into the story or have them wait to react until the villain is done with his speech instead of allowing them to try to throw a knife at him id sentence. Or even say “too bad you can’t do that” or “just because” when trying to justify my reasons for not allowing them to attack an enemy who was supposed to be appearing briefly for theatrics.

Now that sort of railroading, or even true railroading where your characters get specific missions and go specific places is fine as long as that is what you’re group enjoys, but the biggest thing as a DM is making sure you are open to giving the players what they enjoy as well. That’s not to say you have to sacrifice that super awesome story and dialogue you thought up, it’s just so say to be considerate and compromise. What I started doing is taking the dungeons and the story parts and finding more appropriate organic ways to work them in instead of writing them only to work in specific locations or not allowing players to avoid going where they don’t want to go or doing what they don’t want to do.

That all being said, DMing isn’t really very hard to learn at all. Hopefully my experiences and advice, as well as my way of doing this was helpful for any of you looking to learn the game. To review, learning to be a DM is really as simple as; learning the rules, creating a world or using pre-made adventures, learning to balance the game for your players, and learning the player’s styles as well as their preferences.

  A little more advice

             Should I let my players be evil?

Well, as long as they play with each other nicely there’s no problem with evil characters. The main concern people have about evil PCs is that people tend to stab each other in the back or decide to kill another player over an argument rather than settle it peacefully. If your group doesn’t have that problem then great, but if you aren’t sure or if you do have players that don’t handle being evil very well, just lay down a few ground rules or expectations. Maybe if someone wants to be evil everyone else has to be evil and make their goals line up so they are less likely to back stab each other, or maybe just let the player know that the setting is designed with neutral and good NPC’s in majority, and that if his evil character doesn’t behave himself he might end up with some serious in game consequences. These are two good examples, but really you can implement anything that works.

           What if one of my players’ character dies?

Ultimately as a DM your challenges and enemies and even sometimes the NPC’s should behave somewhat realistically, or at least realistically to the setting, and players will always be at risk of death. As long as you aren’t out to get the player, if a death happens it happens. Players should have this expectation, and they should have an idea of what kind of actions might lead to lethal results. For instance, if a rogue character gets into an argument with a shop keep, or gets caught stealing and resists arrest, the guards would likely try to apprehend him. If a fight breaks out, you as a DM can make it less dangerous by giving the guards a nonlethal weapon to fight with, but if the rogue starts stabbing them then it might be more realistic for them to draw their long-swords. If the other players don’t back this character up and it’s four guards to one player, and the player refuses to submit, then yeah that player might die if lady luck isn’t on her side. Alternatively, if you have a level one party walk into a room filled with like 10 or 15 bugbears, and the cave caves in behind them, if they die it’s probably your fault. The idea is to be as fair as you can be and make sure that you are consistent with the expectation of what is and isn’t potentially dangerous. In addition to that, some things just can’t be helped. If the group is a fairly high level and they fight an enemy with a death effect, and the player just happens to fail their saving throw then yeah it would kill them. There is a reason resurrection spells exist in the games, and more often than not the higher level players will be able to heal up a dead party member. Sometimes stuff just happens, and your players probably know it isn’t your fault as long as it really isn’t your fault.

             You may be able to see a re-occurring theme in my advice. Essentially no matter what the problem is, if you are trying to be fair, consistent, and setting the proper expectations, then you shouldn’t really run into many problems in your games. I hope this was helpful!

[dnd-inspiration]

Okay if you’ve sent me an ask in the past week, its here!

I'm currently working on a campaign for a group i'm currently playing with. At one point i'm going to be splitting the party. One player has to go alone while the others have to stay in a room watching the other through some kind of magic eye thing. The thing is I'm not sure what to do with the half of the group thats just stuck watching. Any suggestions? (also the villain of the arc is a crazed cult leader)

They both fight a pair of monsters. They’re life linked, when one has damage taken the other takes it too. If a player manages to move the monster, the other monster moves in the same direction.  2. The group is in a large room with puzzles and levers, and has to help the lone player by opening doors and such? 3. The players can find hidden lore to read that can help the lone player.

@propertyofthereaper said to dnd-inspiration:

So I'm thinking of pranking my party tomorrow, nothing permeant. What do you think would be a good way to do this?

Probably too late to answer, sorry. It sometimes takes me a few days to get to these so if you have anything time sensitive, send them more in advanced. If you still want an idea: You’re gearing up to fight a dragon. Its just a really big kobold.

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

hey ! any ideas for writing a really detailed campaign with a mystery for the players to solve? im trying but everything i write is just too obvious

Try reading some mystery books, or modules, or even look up murder mystery party games. Look at how they set up the murder, the suspects, etc. and twist it to your own liking. If you can’t come up with your own detailed story, this is probably the best thing for you.

@tobmind said to dnd-inspiration:

I have a plan for the person my PC's are chasing to teleport them away. Im just not sure where to or what they might have to do to get back.

Teleport to under the water in a lake. Nearby is a village, along with a magic man who can teleport them back if they do him a favor.

A different plane that seems exactly the same with the players in the same spot. There are subtle differences, like words being backwards and doors opening by just falling over. They can get back by saying their plane’s name backwards?

Theres way too many possibilities that might or might not fit with the character/campaign. I’d be more help if you had more detail.

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

Do you happen to know if there is a god/godess of Spite?

“- Cas (NE) (Heroes of Horror page 19): Also known as the Lord of Spite, the Red Grudge, and He who Balances the Scales. He is the demigod of vengeance and spite without end. He is the moose-headed god who nurses rage and fosters frustration. The scattered priesthood of Cas maintains that beneath the veneer of civilized folk lies the accumulated fire of all the injustices he or she has ever suffered, just waiting to be releases; that all secretly worship Cas, even if only in their deepest, truest subconscious.”  you can google these pretty easily, and you can make up your own or just change the name/gender/etc to make it fit better.

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

So my gang wants to join a thieves' guild and I thought it would be fun for them to do challenges based on dexterity, stealth, and deception. Problem is I can't think of a decent challenge to test their deception.... Any suggestions?

Convince a villager of a strange, untrue fact.

Convince a guard you’re here to replace him for his shift.

Convince a villager to let you stay with them for the night, then rob them blind.

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

A pair of magic scissors called The Fated Shears. What should they do?

If they come apart, one always goes back to the other one at 20 speed.

If you cut your hair, the ends weave a story of someone near you who is going to die. Death can be prevented.

If you cut at the air in front of you, a small portal opens. Just big enough for an arm to reach in.

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

So my players are headed to a town that is considered a ghetto and the entire population is non-human. They're going to retrieve a package, but I don't want it to be so cut and dry and have them get the package immediately. What should I put in their way while they're in town, side quest wise???

Highway robbery. Guards trying to get bribes, harassing players, etc. Someone trying to steal the package, bribing characters for it, etc. Rioting and looting due to new laws, beggars, thieves trying to get sme coin.

@postseptimus said to dnd-inspiration:

I'm running a campaign where magic is pretty strictly prohibited and I'm having some trouble figuring out how to get cool items to my team of two. Can't think of what to give them or how to give it to them. For now, I'm thinking random dungeon loot, but I figure you've got to have to wicked ideas as well.

Non magic or magic items?

Non-magic: thanks from people they’ve done quests for.

Some bloke broke into a facility, stole items, and is selling them at a nice discounted price.

Magic: Someone ditched the items before being caught.

Black market was raided and shut down. In the commotion, no one noticed a bag hidden. Comes with sick items, but also a man looking for his things back.

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

I'm trying to come up with some magic items (good and bad) that my players happen soon during a dream walk, but I am coming up short on ideas. Think you can help and maybe recommend something?

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/5e_Magic_Items_by_Rarity

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

Ok so I'm DMing a game for a few first time players. I'm gonna be the only one who has any firsthand experience with D&D but this will be my first time as DM and I'm not really sure how to balance the challenges for them. Like, I don't want to make it so easy that they lose interest but I'm a bit worried that if I throw anything too hard at them, they're not gonna know what they're doing and they'll be killed. early on. Any advice?

If they’re dying, fudge your rolls. Make your guys miss. If it's too easy, make your guys hit harder or have more come in.

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

The dnd I'm running had my group returning a lot to a home base, which is a fairly large town. I have a lot of trouble thinking of npc events though, do you have any ideas?

Thieving street kids, a granny who gives you sedative laced cookies, a man who wants to buy your base for… shady reasons, a pair of halflings that want to worm their way into the house and steal/murder, a very VERY large dragonborn who says this was his old home and that he’d like to mourn his grandmother's passing by their old oak tree, a new set of guards who are strict and aggressive [they demand all weapons are kept at home, stop looking so shady, get out of here before we arrest you, etc.], a new vendor who pushes his products on everyone [everyone loves it a little too much… curious].

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

Hi! My players are going to be rescuing their friend from a mob soon, and I intended them to disguise themselves as members to do so, but I don't want to railroad too hard. Any ideas on how to subtly convince them to kill as little as possible? Not sure if this'll help, but they have a NPC who grew up in the city alongside this mob.

NPC begs them not to, as a favor. Keep as many alive as you can in exchange for your friends life. Keep alive for information. Keep alive for bounties. Keep alive for less backlash from the mob boss [who will be very, very upset. And is very powerful.]

Anonymous said to dnd-inspiration:

I'm making a campaign where the heros eventually fight aliens (I made custom monsters already). How should I introduce the aliens without being obvious?

Describe them as any other creature you would. Don’t make them little green men with big black eyes. Or, if you do, describe them as “Strange with a short stature. Their skin has a twinge of green, and are humanoid. Their limbs are gangly, their bellies slightly round and their eyes seem to show intelligence.”

@onlyslightlytwisted said to dnd-inspiration:

I'm dm-ing a campaign where my players have been employed to essentially assasinate a king, who rules over a land where magic has been outlawed. And little do they know, they've actually been employed by the kings soon. It's a big mission, but they're up to the task. I wanted something to go wrong that's a little more creative than " they get caught" but I'm at a loss. I'd love a few ideas, thank you in advance!

The son betrays them, reveals your plan to everyone in the middle of the act and uses magic to save the king. He wanted to help magic users.

The son is a heavy magic user. He’s addicted. He doesn’t want to stop. The king is dead, but magic is still outlawed and he can’t change it. Instead, he’s decided to murder anyone who tries to stop him. Also you, so you won’t tell anyone about his plans.

[writera]

Becoming a Dungeon Master

I feel like a fairly new DM. And most of my RPG experience is as a DM. However at this point I have years of experience, so I'm not sure how long I get to hang on to that moniker.

Getting started as a DM is pretty intimidating, foremost because there is just so much you don't know about — if your players know more about the setting or the canonical character/spell/narrative tropes than you, its easy to let them push you to make calls you wouldn't otherwise make. Trying to adjudicate for very smart, rules lawyering [fill-in-the-game] buffs sounds like an uphill battle.

Briefly, I got my start with 3.5e in college, subsequently played 40k, World of Darkness, a homebrew system, and DM'd two 5e D&D games. I've been a part of four different groups. I had some trouble running good 5e games, and this has directly resulted in a lot of research. 

In my 40k game, the primary GM was tired of GMing, but whenever his apprentice GM ran a game, he was "corrected" on a number of things that the apprentice had pretty clearly thought out in advance. Having less experience in the setting, the corrections made no sense — "wow that's a cool idea! It doesn't even matter to the campaign, why is the regular GM nixing this?".

I toyed with the idea of running a few sessions, and studied the one rulebook I was planning on drawing from. 40k has shitty encounter-balancing tools, and I never managed to put something together before that game dissolved.

In the meantime, I was playing board games with a volatile and cliqueish meetup group. After D&D 5e came out, I thought I'd see if anyone in the meetup was interested in trying out 5e. I got a game together to play Hoard of the Dragon Queen. My first time DM-ing!

I had never played with a grid, and didn't want to. I'd forgotten most everything about 3.5, so I wasn't bothered by some of the major changes between 3.5 and 5e. Anyway 5e said all the things I wanted to hear — grid? Don't trouble yourself. Rules dispute? Make a decision, figure it out later. I tried to commit as much of the mechanics and guidelines to heart as possible — even waded most of the way through the spell list, trying to figure out each one — although I seem to have failed to pay attention to class progressions beyond a cursory glance (carefully read the class progressions your players choose, after they choose them! build the game to their abilities!).

I didn't realize that half my group were hardcore min-maxers. That half was there for the full RPG experience and the other half for a glorified tactical combat game. I was so focused on trying to memorize all the narrative and mechanical details that I didn't work on tactical scenarios. Not that I knew how to make combat interesting — for all my RTS computer games, I knew how to build tactics to the terrain, not terrain to tactics. Anyway, the group itself had some interpersonal problems that ultimately was its undoing, but we played for a while before that happened.

I was enthusiastically reading advice on hooking your players and running a good game. I put together an introductory email with some setting material, key terms and character concept ideas, and a map of Faerun (with a note that it was just for context, a character wouldn't know what Faerun looks like). One thing I stressed was creating bonds and flaws that you wanted to see happening in game.

So first session, after my little speech about bonds and flaws, including a half-thought one-liner about "not picking something really far away or irrelevant", one player — hereafter known as Bob — asks me — "can my bond be the grandfather tree?" — and talks a little about the grandfather tree. I thought — great! I was worried they might not go along with this. So I make a point of praising the idea. Meanwhile the players are ignoring me and laughing at me, passing around my map of Faerun pointing at a little dot labeled "Grandfather Tree", as far away from our starting point as the map allows. So I say — That map is just for context! I can put the forest where-ever I want! It can be next door.

Half the table stares at me incredulously ... "are you sure you don't want to look at the map?"

For Bob and his friend Byron, the game was completely about optimal positioning. Eventually it became pretty clear that the power gamers were unhappy, and I agreed to use a whiteboard to draw battlemaps. This time, HotDQ prescribed an ambush. As usual, the game ground to a halt during combat while Bob ran around sniping enemies — with no idea that eight covered leveled bad guys might be above their power-level. I tried to drop helpful hints, and the rest of the party eventually got it together and regrouped, but Bob's character continued kiting to the long drawn-out end, and finally! by fair tactical combat got chased down, knocked unconscious, and dragged off "to the rape dungeon!" as Bob energetically interjected.

It wasn't all bad, but it was a constant fight. Worse, while the B-men were most excited about gaming the system, they had no interest in making believable choices. HotDQ has a lot of leading questions (it's a railroad as written) — and I was ready to try to round-about recyle the chapters under different conditions to make the game flow, and I even said so when Byron commented something along the lines of "gee, I wonder where we're supposed to go next?". I wish they had tried at least *somewhat* to assert their will in the storyline. But those two didn't really care. And the other two bought the story hooks.

Those other two players (Bianca and Eadward) probably didn't get the game they deserved, either; in part because I was focused on dealing with the first two. Bob took the floor, but also completely ignored the will of the other players. During a hostage crisis, for example, he got all the hostages killed when the rest of the party could taste victory. But I had recently moved to a small town and didn't know anyone else who might play.

Anyway, to me, that first campaign (which we didn't finish) felt flat and the combats tedious. I doubled down on my efforts to figure out why. Some time passed, my two favorite players moved away, and I found another group of players: a DM, a soon-to-be-DM, a Pathfinder guy, and a newbie nerd who wanted to play a powerful necromancer.

I hear a lot of advice repeated over and over again. The internet is kind of an echo-chamber — maybe nobody knows what they're doing. So here's my thoughts on the systems, and process of becoming a DM —

The process of becoming a DM sucks. Maybe you've got a supportive group of players, or maybe you are working with what you have, trying to accommodate them. I had ideas and creativity, but I didn't know how to efficiently turn them into encounters, social situations, and adventures. For my second campaign, I homebrewed the world, a metropolis, the society, an underlying plot, the traditional world-building minutiae, and monsters, dungeons, ... almost everything. I put in so much work — almost every day, and a lot of my weekends I went down to the coffee shop, researched, wrote backstory, adjusted power levels or made up new challenges. And I still feel like it was easier than trying to learn all the details of an established setting I've never played, like Faerun.

Because Faerun doesn't make sense to me. I make up part of it, only to find when I look for a detail somewhere else, it's tightly coupled to the part I replaced! Without a model of how Faerun works in my head, I'm not sure how to move my chess pieces. I need someone to break it down at every stage into the simplest pieces possible — treating a nation as an NPC, identifying important NPCs and their relationships, NPC roles, propensities/motives, and power. And then breaking down organizations into some kind of organization-space, treating them as NPCs, building a web, and mapping organization-space onto a geographical map. And then breaking down cities into NPCs and organizations, and then districts, and then guilds, and then society. Because, otherwise, it's too vast for me to understand out of context, and it's too easy to break immersion, to give too much political power to the PCs (so that there's no point to strive for anything anymore).

So of course, I was excited when the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide came out. I figured — this is the ticket for me to understand the broad strokes of Faerun! But it most definitely isn't. I'm not going to hate on the book, if you have time and money, and it seems interesting, by all means why not peruse it? I appreciate WotC's intent — but the book is more like an encyclopedia and less like a novel. A novel?

When I started out my second campaign, I handed out a detailed questionnaire. I listed scifi & fantasy books, and asked players to order them by favorite theme. I had questions testing interest in various settings, playstyles, character goals, greyscale morality vs black-and-white, miscellaneous ideas I had, and possible responsibilities players might want to take on (food, side-quest DMing, writing, etc). After the first campaign, I wanted to gauge player interests. I had been doodling setting ideas for a while, and wanted to know if the players would care. I decided my setting was an important demiplane or whatever man, and that there were secret portals typically accessible by ship (a plot point) which I could use to plug it into another setting whenever I wanted (I planned to plug it into Faerun). Interestingly, I had more than enough material in my own world, and my players never got to Faerun.

What did those questionnaires get me? Absolutely nothing. One player nixed "Game of Thrones style" on his questionnaire, for all the good it did him (it just made me fret about my grand plans, I should never have asked — how is he supposed to know my world-building secrets anyway? Also, what is Game of Thrones style?). The rest of it was just idiosyncratic preferences, although it was interesting to look at. So while it's good to feel your group out, I don't think you need to go overboard here. "Will you bring the drinks?" "Do you have to get up early the next morning?" and "Do you like hack and slash?" "Do you like political power?" "Do you like experience points?" "Do you like dungeons and treasure?" or something similar will suffice.

A novel? The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (SCAG) isn't a novel? When I started out my second campaign, one player asked if the Elemental Evil supplement was allowed. I ended up with an elf, a half-elf, a drow (who I guided away from "drow, moon elf drow, because the elves can be subdivided up into sun and moon elves" — too bad I didn't think of half-drow half-moon-elf at the time), and a svirfneblin. Now, I had read the SCAG and PHB treatises on Drow. I was blissfully unaware of how crazily subjugated my Drow were, and how fanatically wrathful they must be feeling. Oh well, my world. But the EE supplement requester let something slip about the Legend of Drizzt books.

Obviously, I read the first 17 books in short order.

While these books helped fill out some understanding of Faerun, I only really feel like I understand the motivations of Icewind Dale. Possibly because it's a small setting, with easily identifiable factions, and a battle or two. It's also remote, and Drizzt didn't go adventuring to far off made-up dungeons while he was there every other day. And the underdark, which I now think is amazing! I'm going to keep reading these books, I am looking forward to learning about Neverwinter (the glosses I've read are so vague).

But I'm not sure reading those books are the right way to begin to understand Faerun.

One thing I've discovered recently is 1e and 2e settings books. The right settings books. Not even necessarily the Faerun settings books. Back when I was planning my homebrew campaign, I was researching mechanics for worlds which get very cold (and also seafaring). I did some research and bought some 2e and 3e pdfs from the DMsGuild which looked relevant. They were filled with irrelevant system-specific mechanics, outdated math, and segmented, wandering descriptions. It put me off reading anything published before 5e as labor-reducing material for my 5e campaign. And the adventures — I was building my own, I had no interest in those outdated railroads (HotDQ was the only published adventure I had tried to absorb).

But after continued research, I acquired 0e, 1e, Dark Sun, Planescape, and Spelljammer. These are amazing books, and I'm currently searching out the other best early books. It doesn't help that they're not compiled into a complete, chronological, and categorized list anywhere, and that it would cost a fortune to [legally] acquire the collected works (on pdf, no less). I'm going to come back to the fact that I bought 0e and 1e, but if I have to pick one of these books to recommend, it's the Planescape boxed set.

Planescape is the kind of thing I can pick up and read, and not fall asleep. It also is far superior to all of the DMG/PHB/wikipedia descriptions of the outer planes. I just had to remember to skip sections that didn't catch my interest. Basically, it's one man's account of the planes. He has a lot of colorful advice, much more narrative, to the point, and subjective than SCAG, which half-heartedly not-really adopted a subjective narrator. It's humorous, non-definitive!, and all-inclusive. It's also the source material which created the planes — everything else written is a revision. It's like a creative writing prompt.

Continuance

One source of DMing wisdom that has had a major impact on my thought patterns is The Angry GM. He might repeat himself and slowly elaborate on the same ideas he's been stewing on for years, but I only realized this after reading the majority of everything he has on his site. I could put together specific article recommendations if anyone cared. Also, support him on Patreon!

I like articles like Angry’s because he lays out his thought patterns while constructing the models you want to use. These are self-contained predictive (crassly, "generative") modules. How do you build a chase scene?

You deconstruct the idea of chase into its components parts, examine the theory of roleplaying, identify the important parts of roleplaying for various players, apply literature theory (I read a number of books on authoring fiction, I guess you could do that too), add tension, modularize, and reconstruct.

When you're done, you have either an encounter to play out with triggers and mechanics, or an encounter and encounter-mechanics building set of meta mechanics, or perhaps even meta-meta encounter-mechanics mechanics building mechanics, if you're applying yourself.

I really appreciate being able to read and understand an adventure or optional rule. By applying structure to some pile of text you hand me, I can start to compile your input into a useful program of sorts, that I can use to reason, and generate predictions for behaviors of various chess pieces.

After I read a lot of The Angry GM’s articles, I bought all the published 5e adventures, and set to analyzing them. There's a great variety. I wouldn't advise you to do this: maybe only one at a time.

I also watched youtube playthroughs of most of them (and some extras, on top of that).

In my opinion, Princes of the Apocalypse has the most interesting story structure, followed by Storm King's Thunder. Out of the Abyss turned into an amazing playthrough. And if I understood the Ravenloft better, Curse of Strahd might be my favorite of them all. But I don't understand it hardly at all yet. So I'd be more likely to run the other ones I mentioned.

The Angry GM mentions in passing a number of divides in the RPG gamer community, none of which should come as a shock to anyone who has used the internet to read about D&D or any other RPG ... storytellers vs tacticians, "improvisers vs railroaders" (a meaningless dichotomy, he explains), the choice of maintaining thematic integrity (think Dark Sun) vs allowing players any choice or capability they can articulate with their mouth-things (think Acquisitions Incorporated). I knew all the echo-chamber soundbytes about these divides before, but now they mean a lot more to me.

Most importantly. I watched a youtube video which talked about the evolution of D&D — and I was very surprised how 0e and 1e read. I had heard about the ebb and flow of mechanics vs DM intuition. But when I actually looked at the early D&D texts, they read like creative writing prompts, not rulesets or algebras. Eg, here is a system I made up. I wanted to do a thing, and so I hope you like it. Oh, and another thing might help you mitigate some problem — to the point.

I'm a scifi buff, and I thought it might be easier to run a science fiction RPG than a fantasy game like D&D. I tried to research the best scifi RPG, and the first time I searched, the jury cried out "Traveller"! I'm currently watching Babylon 5 for the second time (and honestly, I'm getting impatient writing this, I want to watch B5, but if I stop writing I likely won't continue later).

If you like Babylon5, you probably agree that Traveller has a pretty great premise. I unfortunately made a rookie mistake and bought Traveller5, which was supposed to be the ultimate be-all-and-end-all of Traveller RPGs. It's not, because it's an algebra book.

I can't stay awake reading Traveller5, no joke. It requires intense mental exertion to see and make sense of the unexplained patterns and arcane rules. It's very complete — with systems for social interaction (which I feel divided about), crafting, and detailed world-building. It doesn't provide a setting beyond a few pages (out of 700!), but instead tools to build a cohesive setting. It really is the distilled machinations of years of game design, but it's inaccessible to the layperson. And from some of the reviews I've read, that's not an uncommon opinion.

But the thing that really is the kicker — some people like Traveller5 style rules, and some people like 5e/1e style rules. And there's nothing you can do about it to change their minds. Some people like rules lawyering — this occurred to me while listening to Happy Jacks RPG — they like to sit down for their session, use their encylopediac knowledge of the rules to optimize and evolve their character and actions, sticking to every last convention — sitting down and debating the best course of action. Not quickly resolving actions and moving on with the action or story, not the excitement of battle, nor promise of immersion. Some people like tactically planning every move before execution, and won't hesitate to spend every moment of their time evaluating, debating. Because that is the fun part for them.

I've read flamewars on forums between these two camps — and anyone with a bone to pick will claim the buzzwords for themselves. My way is "immersive"! One bozo claimed that 5e was terrible because DMs weren't required to build NPCs using the same process PCs are built, so certain pregen NPC stat block abilities weren't accessible to his PC — because this inconsistency in *rules* breaks *immersion*. To me, this sounds like a bit of stretch — I think thematic (which heavily involves adjudication) inconsistencies break immersion, not rules inconsistencies. Or maybe he is immersed in something, and it's just not the story.

Anyway, this guy liked 3.5e better than 5e — not only, but he thought 5e was trash.

Is it? My final closing remarks here are going to be on 3.5e versus 5e, which is I think the question you have been waiting for — or maybe not, I don't know.

Most recently, I have been cross-referencing 3.5 with 5e. Some of it's coming back to me now, and some of the surprised questions my second group asked about rules are making more sense to me.

3.5e is better in some respects. It has more structure. It makes more sense, in a limited capacity. The rulebooks are much more poorly written. They are extremely repetitive. I appreciate the crafting system, because it unifies spells, magic items, and provides the ability to create new spells. In 5e, there's not really a difference between rods, wands, and staffs.

In my 5e games, I've been surprised at how useless the low level wizards have been. That statement is flamebait, and I've seen it in action

In 5e, magic users, and wizards in particular, have been nerfed hard. No matter how you phrase it (and I've seen people try), wizards are much much less powerful in 5e.  Yes ... they got ritual spells, disposed of Vancian magic, and got some silly cantrip pseudo archery attacks, sure;  but they have fewer slots, less spell selection, no ability to create magical items or bank spells, all the spells have been made less powerful, and no ability to create new spells.

As a DM, you can add all that back, but it will break 5e's balance. I've heard it said that in 5e, all classes are magic users. Well, I have to say, in 5e, all classes are fighters. Chew on that?

Full disclosure. I like 3.5e wizards.  I feel that unfair level of power is appropriate  —  when you read Order of the Stick or other D&D fantasy literature, the wizards are 3.5e style powerful. It feels wrong and disappointing to me for wizards not to hold Earth-shattering power. (But, my first character was a melee tank, who once dealt ~150 damage in one turn.)   Restricting a wizard to a supporting "role" instead of encouraging a supporting role seems like a loss to me. Who would want to play a wizard then? If you don't get earth shattering powers? Non-earth-shattering powers is mundane, and I'm playing a fantasy game.

Detractors will argue for the poor oppressed mundanes. As a DM, you have the power to make everybody cool. You can keep balance in check, allow wizards to be powerful in and of themselves, and keep fighters and the like out of their shadow. If a wizard is overshadowing a fighter, talk to the wizard, tell them to get off his toes.

And/or maybe beef up the fighter. In 3.5e you could add a prestige class. I'm sure you can figure something out in 5e.

Anyway, if you love balance and hate wizards and 3.5e, you're in good company with 5e. But if you love rules to the bone, you might like 3.5e better. Or if you somehow want to be involved in what I consider the DM's work, you might like 3.5e.

Regardless, 5e has easier to remember rules, is better balanced, easier to introduce new people to, is on the other side of the scales from the abstruse algebraic systems with idiosyncratic notations, and you can always modify it to make it imba. So I approve of 5e, but I have to say —

I had to do a lot of research to understand it. I feel like a 500 page, non-wandering, topical, focused essay on the art of DMing and RPG gaming would do wonders for a D&D 5e companion book. Because those missing rules — they are missing — it is good that they are not hard and fast, but it is bad that there are few well motivated optional functionality modules which you can pop into your game to improve it.

Long story short — make it up when you feel like something is missing, and find what inspires you — really inspires, not what you think inspires you or you think will improve your knowledge. Be fair, attentive, and pro-active.

PS On the topic of good combats — Angry wrote an article titled something "Running Combats like a M#@&*^## Dolphin". Having an efficient style, having a style at all, to running a combat, as he describes, speeds combats up and makes them seem more interesting. I mean, it only speeds it up a little bit, but come on.

Just as useful — building good combats — if they're dragging on, get them over with as soon as possible. If you're employing good tactics for your baddies, and/or providing useful tactical features, you might be prolonging the battle. You don't have to stop doing that, but do be aware of it. So, you can just throw falling lava into the battle, and KAPOW, both sides take damage faster! Fight end sooner! And adding interesting features is standard advice, but *active* features — if the PCs don't use them, let the NPCs use them. That way even "passive" features are active — and I prefer to deal side-neutral damage than provide cover or healthy unrelenting reinforcements. There's some other advice out there, read Angry's long diatribes.

Also, standard DMG advice — use objectives. So what you say? How will that speed combat? Make sure to change the situation enough to cause a re-evaluation of how best to achieve the objective, and BAM, a properly applied change might reduce battle time.

And, what? You are doing nothing now but just attacking over and over again? Just call it. Unless your players rebel. "They don't stand a chance." "You guys are heading for TPK ... "

I guess I have had trouble running combats in the past.