#i mean i liked dming but i also want to just be a player

[dont-open-dead-inside-25]

assigned pronouns by DM

[nerdyqueerr]

even tho im technically a 5e perma-dm i havent been doing it for long enough to get truly fed up, especially since i still want to run the one big 5e fantasy game i never had the chance to do. Plus I have some engaged 5e players who help me keep the ones who dont even understand game rules on track. Having a second play group where i dont gm (hi owen!) also helps. My 5e players were down to try new systems and although they don't seem to share my excitment for finding new games, they're clearly down to follow me when I do - which raises the issue that I'd like some of them to gm stuff sometimes, mostly bc ive never been on the other side of the table with this specific group and I'd like to try.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am i the asshole for denying a dnd character request?

Info:

I'm a dm but im pretty new to the dming side of things. Up until recently i had been a player exclusively. One of my friends (who I'll call K) mentioned wanting to get into dnd and I said I could dm. A few other of our friends also joined the campaign and I set to work helping everyone develop characters and began writing the story

Im a pretty chill person when it comes to dnd rules, I'm not exactly free for all, but not book rigid either. Im fine with homebrew or critical role content if it can be adapted to be playable and not unfair. I don't want the other players to be left behind and I don't want monsters and the other PCs to look like chumps.

K came up to me and said they wanted their character to be an angel. I was like "sick, I'll help you write up an aasimar". But she showed me the picture she wanted, and it was one of those biblical angels that's just a ring of eyes with wings everywhere. And that was going to be a solid no.

I had a few reasons. One was backstory wise, why would an angel like that be traveling with a bunch of mortals, one of which, another PC, was a tiefling? Another was practicality, how would a creature with no arms and who flies around be able to reasonably adapt to the rules around carrying weight, one vs two handed weapons, and movement? And the third was the biggie, and it was that the big baddie at the end of the of the campaign was a beholder, for folks who don't know dnd, a beholder is a giant flying eyeball monster with a giant mouth and tentacles. And that was going to be an issue because I thought that K's angel drawing looked too similar to a beholder. And since that thing is the big baddie of the whole fuggin story, it would mean both NPCs and monsters would be like "oh fuck, a beholder," and it would mess up the intermediate battles and quests I had already written.

I told K no and she replied, paraphrased, "if you wrote and made up this whole story why can't you make up a reason why my character is here?"

I just told her I couldn't because her character would look too much like a beholder and it would scare off low level monsters and npcs and she got very huffy with me.

Another of the friends who was also playing said that maybe we should let the rules slide and just let K play as her drawing. I still said no, and that I was fine with her playing an aasimar, but if she wanted to play one, she'd have to be more reasonable to the game.

K said she was fine with it but still seems pissed off at me.

Am i the asshole for denying her request to play as her angel drawing?

[thechekhov]

Hello! Just wanted to say I love all your content but I wanted to ask if you had any advice/tips for running curse of strahd? I'm working on getting ready to run it with some friends/my partner and while I've run a fair amount of homebrew stuff this is my real first attempt at a legit module so I was curious if you could share anything since I believe you also are running/had run that module as well?

Thanks for asking! This is a very fun question!

I have indeed run Curse of Strahd. It was my first foray into long-term DMing and my team and I finished that campaign a little under a year ago. It was awesome, and I'm always excited to talk about it. Curse of Strahd had be a great game if everyone is on the same page!

First of all, I'm gonna say

Having Experience with Homebrew will be a huge boon

When I ran CoS, I followed the actual module about... 60% of the time. It was good... as a baseline/blueprint. But the reality is that I changed up a lot of the details. Either because I didn't like the vibes of the story, or because the plot points were antithetical to my team's goals. I changed up an entire floor of Ravenloft. I threw away a whole storyline for a major NPC because I felt it was too boring.

I think most people who run Curse of Strahd do this, actually. I've heard countless tales of how others Homebrewed their own meat onto the skeleton, and still came out of the campaign with an awesome, Strahd flavored experience. So don't worry about that part.

Here's my advice:

1. Everyone should vibe with what Strahd IS as a game.

Strahd can be a lot of things - you can Homebrew your own motivations into him, or make him a her, or change the history of his castle if need be. But if there's one thing Curse of Strahd is... it is DARK.

The Venn Diagram of Parties Who Understand That Suffering Can Be Fun To Roleplay and Parties Who Had A Good Time Doing CoS is probably a circle. You cannot do this adventure with a group of people who just want to hit monsters a whole bunch. It's an inherently 'oh my god this SUCKS' adventure. That's the main theme. Your players need to be able to enjoy that sort of game, otherwise they will just be miserable.

One of my players, upon arriving in Barovia, immediately said 'I hate it here' and then continued to say it for the rest of the campaign. That is kind of the catchphrase of CoS. Your players need to be comfortable with that sort of bleak horror and overall misery. It makes the end and the potential to finally end Strahd worth it.

That being said, Strahd can also just be... a lot. It has death and torture and psychological horror in there. KIDS DIE. Please discuss this stuff with your table, and remove elements if they guarantee a bad experience for everyone!

(Yes, you can trim down some of the viscera if you need to, that's fine. But keep in mind it will still be tragic. It SHOULD still be tragic. I set some boundaries for myself, but I also killed a whole town in an avalanche. It happened to be the only town my players had grown to like. It was a dick move. It was exactly what you would expect to happen.)

2. Read ahead - A LOT AHEAD.

For a self-contained world, Barovia isn't actually that big. It's a very small map, compared to some that span continents. That means you have the ability to flesh it out, as it were.

To add to that... some areas are... severely underdeveloped plot-wise. Sometimes there are places your players will go where it FEELS like it should link up to another point in the game but it just... doesn't. There is room to expand there. Use your Homebrew skills to connect the dots that the module doesn't!

I greatly recommend taking the time to either read through the whole adventure OR listen through some video-essays. There IS some cool stuff that comes in in the later game that you can grab and put down breadcrumbs for from day one. Or add to your own story twists.

My recommended resource for this is the Curse of Strahd DM's Guide video series.

...and to that end...

3. Start living in Ravenloft Castle WAY before your players get there.

Listen..........listen. look.

Look at this, and suffer as all GMs have suffered.

Castle Ravenloft is unarguably the biggest, stupidest, most architecturally ludicrous hurdle when it comes to GMing CoS. And I am here to tell you - IT IS DOABLE.

You can understand the castle, you can grow comfortable with it. But you need to start early. Hell, I think I began to set up Ravenloft maps before my players even knew it existed. Then I stopped, because I was scared.. but then I went back, and I.... roleplayed SOLO on my off-days! I set up little scenes between Strahd and others and imagined him setting traps, and doing other things. It helped me understand which staircase led to where, and what floors were accessible from which angles.

A part of me actually thinks that there should be a mini GMs-only class where a more experienced Strahd GM takes some time with other GMs to guide them through a map of the castle. A CoS Learning Oneshot, if you will.

There's also a LOT of talented mapmakers that create beautiful, digital CoS maps! Here's one:

Even if you are playing analogue, at a physical table, I greatly encourage you to check it out for reference. The official CoS maps are bleak and a little bit more... rustic? Than they are gothic.

Anyway, in order to avoid talking your ear off, I will end it here.

My last bit of advice is... to have fun!

Yes I know I just said that Strahd is an inherently bad-vibes game. But it's actually GOOD to let your players goof off now and then. Don't be afraid to let them do shenanigans. It builds character, and allows them to regain the energy they need to role-play properly heavy elements later.

My group did a whole bunch of funny stuff. They felt so bad about losing Ireena that when they saw Ismark, instead of explaining themselves to him they cast Darkness and tried to scramble away. There was a running joke that the cleric was too good to know about sex, so they used the euphemism 'play cards' around her, much to everyone's amusement. They got kicked by a walking house once and never forgot nor forgave. And finally, they defeated some Flame Skulls by putting them into a bag of holding.

Anyway, the point is... have fun! I wish you and your party the best of luck. :)

[captainofthetidesbreath]

What classes do you think the mighty nein would play, were they to play dnd? Bonus round would they be good at dnd.

I had a post about this like back in 2020 or something that I cannot find, so I don't know if my opinions have changed since then. I don't have anyone down as DMing because I assume that even their forever DM has a preferred class.

Fjord - Cleric I don't think Fjord would like tanking that much because getting attacked makes him nervous, but he doesn't want to be a glass cannon either. I think that he would initially go for cleric because he simply wants to be useful and helpful, but he didn't necessarily realize how big of a job being the cleric is. He starts out as a just Cure Wounds dispenser, but quickly flourishes into a Holy Terror Wrath Of The Righteous Divine cleric. He loves doing that. His mechanics are solid and efficient and he's tactically astute, but he's a timid roleplayer who struggles to initiate scenes. He's solid if drawn into scenes and forgets to be self-conscious because he's got a better character sense than he thinks. Literally do not ask him what the overall plot of the campaign is because he cannot remember no matter how hard he tries; he remembers individual PC arcs though. I think he'd also like paladins, bards, and druids, and I do think he'd be willing to play some of the more involved fighters like the Knights subclasses and the cooler rangers.

Beau - Wizard She wants to be the person in the game who gets all the information, and that's usually a wizard. She wants to put her little hands all over all the lore, and also she loves having a spell list that's a billion miles long. She does not want you to know that she feels so smugly satisfied playing a character who can do the research and have the connections and know the information. She absolutely hates that this means she's made of tissue paper, so she tends toward Con wizard. Her mechanics and exploration work are really good, and she is stellar at engaging in the world in a way that's highly informed by her character class. She struggles with the roleplaying part of things a lot. She has a decent grasp of character, it's the actual RPing part that she has trouble with. If you can convince her to play a charisma caster, which she is afraid of doing, she'd also enjoy bard a lot. Also monks and artificers.

Caleb - Wizard This is self-explanatory. Caleb is a guy who plays a wizard or the full damage caster in every single game. This is who he is. He is great mechanically until you gotta discuss non-spell stuff. He did, in fact, read that portion of the rules, but it was never relevant to him, so he deleted it from his head. His spell choices and use are phenomenal though. He min-maxes but specifically for the weirdest, most niche element that is useful one time, but it is extremely clutch that one time it's relevant. He is also great at the storytelling portion, though his roleplaying can be a little dense or dry. If you can make him play something that's not a wizard, druid or bard. He will not play a healer druid or bard though.

Veth - Warlock She wants to make bad decisions in her games, and she loves that a warlock comes prepackaged with bad decisions. She has a solid grasp of her spellcasting mechanics, but also finds full casting intimidating. She loves the concept of being a wizard in theory but actually playing one stresses her out. She is a very loud and excitable player, which can be a lot of fun if, uh, loud. She fucking supports you and is into whatever it is you're doing, especially if it's so dumb to do. She is inventing the weirdest and most ambiguously intense patron relationship of all time. She also would enjoy paladins, rangers, artificers, and the fancier fighters (again, the Knights subclasses). She could be eased into cleric if a niche in the party is clear and her mechanical role is structured. She can totally handle full casting, including wizards, she just psyches / stresses herself out.

Jester - Bard I feel like people are going to be like "what about barbarian," but I think that Jester tried it once and the comparative lack of options made her really frustrated. She loves the idea of hitting things, but she hates it when 80% of her options is just hitting it. She is attracted to the charisma casters though, because she really likes the charisma skillset, and she really wants to cast a lot of spells. Out of the charisma caster options, she likes bards best because she loves being a little good at everything. She tends to be a little over-competitive about it and gets sulky when she doesn't feel useful enough. She is actually iffy on mechanical nitty-gritty, but her basics and groundwork is solid so it's fine, but she's a really great if melodramatic roleplayer and her social encounter work is great. She is deeply engaged in the narrative and is intensely invested in every NPC. Buys so fucking hard into the suspension of disbelief. She would like the fancier fighters and paladins better than a barbarian.

Molly - Bard He is playing the stereotype bard of everyone's nightmares. I will not further elaborate.

Caduceus - Ranger He does like to ask the plants and animals question in-game as well, and rangers let him do that and have a bit of magic too without being overwhelming as a class. He isn't super interested in doing complex characters; this is not being bad at D&D, to be clear, it's just a preference. He's your friend who is here to play a simple character because he just wants to hang out with you, which I think is always very sweet. That said, he is not very good mechanically. It's a lot of stuff to keep track of even with 5e being a little simpler. I think he would also like playing paladins or the straightforward fighters, or a cleric if he can decide what his niche is and stick to that specifically. He doesn't vibe with barbarians.

Yasha - Druid She is initially drawn to the class for the vibes (always a valid reason to be drawn to a class), but I think she enjoys having spellcasting options and options that aren't "hit it". She is a timid and awkward roleplayer who has a lot of trouble there, even though she has a lot of fun making up backstory and engaging with the lore and story. Her spellcasting is creative and experimental because she loves weird. She is one of the button pushers of the table and is giggling when she does it. (She and Veth are menaces, lmao, it's great.) I think she'd also enjoy bards, maybe clerics and warlocks, and the fancier fighters and rangers.

[xaeydnquartz]

Part of me kinda wants to stop DMing my first and current campaign? IDK just need to vent

So, brief expo. like many, got into CR during the pandemic (mainly due to "The Legend of Vox Machina" which lead to me actually bingeing the all 3 campaigns) During which time a friend (who was in my immediate friend group but like the rest of my friend group, i didnt really feel close to) told me that he was really into CR as well. As a fresh new critter, i was stoked. Was able to share my blossoming love of CR with someone (FINALLY!) during which we both mentioned how D&D looked so much fun and that it would be really great to be able to play and ooo what if we got our friends together and played.

After which we discussed, if we did, who would be DM? Seeing as how none of our friends really played D&D our talk lead to either my friend or me and after asking the question "Which do you think you would prefer more?" It was clear i would try my hand at DMing (i like lore in games, and i like storytelling, and im a tad bit of a control freak at times, lol)

Anyway, we eventually got in touch with our close knit of friends, and though i intended to be a standard 6 we suddenly had an 8 party party (and that was with me having to tell even less close friends there wasnt room).

Feeling it would still be manageable (as there was precedent that i could pull inspo from, CR) i began planning a rough idea of a campaign and working with my friends to create their characters and running a session 0 so we were all on the same page. You know standard stuff.

-Fast Forward to current date and time-

It has its stressful moments, but i still am able to enjoy the time with my friends for the most part (though theres a lot of times were ive never felt lonelier) Which brings me to the whole point of the post, my need to vent to the void about this loneliness. Nobody really gets in touch or interacts with me at all. Not to talk about the campaign or even collab on their characters. The most i get are occasional critiques about how i could have done something better couple sessions prior and request to add another person to the 8 person party. When we have sessions, people show up late quite often, leave early quite often, have to cancel as they have other things they are doing (even though we planned and scheduled weeks prior) and even when people are there they somtimes feel like they arent always present. i already feel extremely distant from all of them as they all live closer to each other while i live on the totally opposite side of the state and theyve known each other way longer than i have, but the minimal interactions they have with me, the DM/GM of all people, just continues to add to all of it I know we all are busy with our lives, and that compared to those things D&D is really not that big of a deal or important. And i get that, it is just a game afterall, but it still manages to hit pretty hard

I've communicated my feelings through our time of this campaign, if im being honest, maybe not this indepth. I mean, its partially because i barely see or talk to them (again life gets in the way) but also because i feel extremely guilty for putting this kind of tension to something we are all supposed to be enjoying and relaxing to. Its especially painful as most recently 2 players, who said they would get in touch with me about changes possibly being being made to their characters, never got in touch in anyway shape or form, and its been about a month now? And session is in a week...i didnt even get much as a reply back. Idk, its been almost about a year now and i felt i just needed to get this out somewhere other than debating myself.

Thanks for listening tumblr.

[comicaurora]

Hey I'm getting into DnD, do you have any podcast or series of a DnD campaign to recommend? I know there is critical role, but wich one of those should i start with? Is there a better beginning than critical role? I am lost here, please help

This is gonna very much depend on your personal preferences and attention span! I recommend sampling a range of DnD podcasts to find your personal tolerances and what parts appeal to you. I'm not the most widely-read person in this space because frankly most DnD podcasts are on too slow a boil for my attention span, but I've got a few you could check out-

Critical Role is the biggest and most well-known one for sure, but pacing wise I personally can't get through it. I love it in concept, but it's slow enough and huge enough that my brain zones out in the downtime and I lose track of important details when things speed up again. I think my first successful exposure to it was a brisk two-hour video that's just a Best Moments Of Grog compilation. That's also why I've been really liking The Legend Of Vox Machina, which keeps all the biggest and best moments but paces them like an actual story instead of a game. It's not representative of the experience of playing a TTRPG, but it is a lot of fun.

I personally enjoy limited-run miniseries a lot more, because they work better for my limited attention span, and on the critical role front that means I recommend EXU Calamity, a Doomed Heroes far-distant prequel to the modern setting of CR. Only four four-hour episodes and it's on a bit of a slow boil for the first three, but because everybody involved knows how the story's going to end, there's an endless drip of dramatic tension along the way. The DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, is going to show up a lot more on this list.

On the subject of short miniseries DM'd by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Escape From The Bloodkeep is my personal favorite and the one I revisit the most. Six two-hour episodes, deeply unhinged and intrinsically comedic as it's a full-series parody of Lord of the Rings. I recommend it for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that Matt Mercer, who is an excellent DM, gets to play, and his playstyle is a great example of how to roll with the punches and the dice, since his extremely menacing nazghul captain is afflicted by a string of hilarious failures and he kind of just owns it, to the point where his character arc becomes accepting his worth as an individual with the power of friendship. It's a great example of not taking yourself or your character too seriously, which is a vital skill for players to learn in order to handle the whims of the dice sometimes (or often) not cooperating with your narrative wishes. If CR isn't working for you but you're interested in what you can pick up from this extremely talented DM, this is a good way to get that!

Dimension 20 (Collegehumor's DnD branch) has several series I really like, most of them DM'd by Brennan Lee Mulligan again. His DMing style really works for me, and he takes an approach to pacing that I quite like, so they're generally a safe bet for me. One I categorically recommend is The Unsleeping City, an urban fantasy DnD game set in New York City. This one is 19 two-hour episodes, so longer than the other miniseries but still much shorter than CR, and it can give you a bit of a sampler for (a) the genrebending you can do with DnD and (b) a longer-form story with a less rigidly determined finale than the previous examples. Brennan's DM style is very cool, and he puts an unusual amount of focus on characters getting solo vignettes, which is sometimes considered a bit gauche in DM circles because it means the other players don't have a whole lot to do during those solo conversations, but it works for him and his players and the effect is very cinematic!

But if you want to see a different DM's style in the same space, A Court Of Fey And Flowers is run by Aabria Iyengar, one of the EXU Calamity players, and she has a very different but also cinematic DMing style! The game is also a hybridization of DnD and a different system for facilitating Jane Austen romances, which is dope. Only the first episode is up on Youtube, but that should probably be enough to let you determine if you want to check out more.

I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention the two DnD Actual-Plays I'm in, Rolling With Difficulty and Heart of Elynthi. Rolling with Difficulty is subdivided into three seasons of 8-10 four-hour episodes each, with each season having one overarching plot or threat but mostly being composed of episodic adventures - it's a Planescape series, meaning most episodes take us to a completely new plane of existence to deal with its unique geometry, fun denizens and wacky threats. It's also a lot more edited than some actual-play podcasts, with an effort to avoid the slow parts and the dice-rolling, mental math, "what am I gonna do this round," etc. Heart of Elynthi is an ongoing series that's only about five or six episodes in, with an overarching mystery in the background and a "collect the things to save the world" plotline in the foreground. It also streams new episodes on Twitch on (some) Wednesday afternoons, so if you'd benefit from a live chat to hang out and talk with during games, that might be worth checking out to see if you like it! Elynthi also has had some pretty cool behind-the-curtain stuff about how the players can handle in-character disagreements without them turning into IRL fights, which is something I don't think I've ever seen another DnD actual-play explicitly unpack but is also extremely important for players to consider, so that's fun.

[centaurianthropology]

Okay, that was a GOOD episode.  The first episode definitely had some pilot difficulties, but it seriously feels like they’re hitting their stride with this one.  I am totally in love with what Laura’s doing with Arlo, and Ashley is a delight as Auggie.  Anjali’s performance as Charlotte gets more and more nuanced and tragic, and I can’t wait to see where she’s going with it.  They were all so compelling this time around, and taking some major hits and poor roles meant that they all got shaken up a lot worse this time around.

Matt’s DMing also felt a lot more tuned into the horror side of things this episode, with the monster being intensely Soulsborne-y (the mass of bodies glommed together is such a Dark Souls thing, but I love it!), and had a lot stronger of an eldritch horror vibe, with some Hunger Beyond Time coming after everyone because of an artifact.  I really, REALLY hope they get sent to Oldfaire next episode, as it’s their last for this Circle, and I really want to see that part of the city, given how much it’s been hyped up, and how likely it is to intersect at least with Arlo’s backstory, and possibly also Charlotte’s (and maybe Howard’s too??).

But there was one stand-out tonight, in an episode in which everyone was on top of their game, and that was Robbie Daymond.  Holy shit, no one heard “you are in a horror game” and took it to heart quite like he did.  He’s going full Reanimator, and I love his choices.  His self-trepanning scar was horrific in the best possible way, and then there’s whatever happened at the end with him.  Who is Dean?  Was that his reason to get into Candela?  And what the hell does it mean that the phantasmal force just dove straight into his head??  He is getting more and more unhinged as we get into this story, and I am so here for it.  I get the feeling he’s the most likely character to die in the next episode, with Charlotte very close behind (”You have to give everything” has a very ominous ring to it), and I think Arlo and Auggie might make it out to make later reappearances, but who knows?  They rolled like ass tonight, so hopefully they saved a lot of sixes for next time.  I’m honestly only sad that we only get one more episode with this Circle, but then again it makes sense.  Horror campaigns generally have to run short, because they lose the scares the longer they go on.  And I can really hope that next episode is downright terrifying.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the level up for the next game.  The more I see this system play, the more I really want to pick it up once the Core Book drops.  The flavor of Newfaire is great, and I think it would be great for short campaigns with friends who really want to dig into some gnarly horror material.  

Man, that was a fun episode.  I am seriously going to miss these characters, as they’re all so delightful and vivid.  The players are great, and they’re a fantastic intro to a system I now really want to buy once it comes out.

[jegulily-stuff]

Girls DnD night headcanons:

Peter DMs for them, he has a campaign planned already from when the boys were going to play before they (Sirius and James) realised they didn't have the patience for it. DMing's kinda like chess if you think about it.

Dorcas - Paladin. Oath of Devotion and she takes the guidelines very seriously. Has to put 'doing the right thing' before strategy because of her commitment to the roleplay. Dies a lot because of that. Picks goliath, and when that character dies replaces them with a gnome also artificer with the same name. 'Oh yeah im their cousin.' <- cheating character death to avoid being sad.

Marlene - Fighter. They made her run it with high charisma so someone could get them through persuasion checks but she wouldnt main bard cuz she wanted a cool sword. Sometimes forgets her character cant just do magic cuz its her default irl. "What do you mean the door's locked and I don't have Knock?" Superstitious about dice. Would be so sad if her character died (plays recklessly anyway).

Lily - Wizard (or maybe druid?), she loves all that nerdy stuff, and always knows her spells. Dice love her. Animates their figurines so its like wizards chess. Uses her character abilities so well Pete has to constantly adjust his plans to keep the campaign from being too easy. Befriends npcs the most, never lets Pete's narration convince her their suspicious behaviour makes them evil without real evidence.

Mary - Ranger, you wouldnt get it, this is the best choice, you'll all be crying when there's difficult terrain. Paranoid player, always doing random perception checks. Never gets caught in a trap. Only one to not get attached to an npc because she doesnt trust any of them. She was supposed to pick Cleric because the party needed a healer but decided not to. (Pete plays an npc Cleric to fill the gap). She's got proficiency in survival checks ;)

[pleaseburger]

Are you like, fr about recommending trrpg systems? Cause BOY I'm in the market for one. I've only tried Dnd (too rules, too expensive, too genre locked) and Fate which I'm still feeling out but I'm getting the feeling it's too freeform for the players I'm DMing for. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it, I guess.

Anyway, if none of that made a system spring to mind, just tell me about your favorite/go-to system and why it's that one!

of course I was!! this is my purpose as a micro influencer!!!

you have basically asked me the equivalent of "I have tried pizza, which is popular but I did not like, and tofu, which is too open to all the possibilities in the world (fate is good and cool, like tofu). what should I try eating next". so hopefully you see why this is hard to answer

I have been playing Starforged as my main game for the last year or so. it's the sci-fi fork of Ironsworn (which is free btw :3). ironsworn is lovely cause you can play it as a GM with a table full of players, or co-op with other players and NO GM, or even just by yourself!! the rules are split up into mini rules packages called "moves", which trigger whenever you do something in the game and then have their own varying outcomes that can suddenly change the game in ways no one expected.

characters in ironsworn are defined by Assets instead of a class or a big list of skills; each asset is like a superjuiced D&D feat, empowering you to do really cool stuff or even *giving you completely new moves that are unique to your character*. whenever you're feeling stuck, the Oracle tables are there to jump-start your imagination. my playgroup loves asking the Oracle for her opinion on stuff all the time. you can run a game of Ironsworn/Starforged as a GM with absolutely zero prepwork and be okay because the moves and oracles are there to support play.

my absolute favourite RPG is HEART: The City Beneath. it's gorgeous, haunting, evocative, and tragic. the core of the game's engine, the Resistance system, is a tension builder and drama generating engine, because as the players Do Stuff, they build up stress to their resistances, and then after building up too much stress, the dam breaks and it all comes crumbling down in a juicy dramatic consequence, which the book has like a hundred options for you to choose from if you cant think of anything interesting right away.

your character's background comes with a bucket list of things you could do (like eating something you really shouldnt, or getting a landmark named after you), called Beats, and then you pick 2 of those Beats every session. if you do either of them, you get a new ability from your class! it's very cool because it inherently tells the players what kind of cool stuff they can do, encourages them to do it by rewarding them for taking action, and it makes prepwork *very* easy for the GM because the players have to tell you exactly what they want to do the next session.

the classes in HEART are also some of my favourite archetypes out of any game I've read. the deep apiarist, who has hollowed out their body to be a host for a hive of psychic bees, can do things like get through tiny gaps by letting their hive chew up their body and rebuild them on the other side. the vermissian knights are basically an order of cursed paladins that are obsessed with creating a failed train network that was planned hundreds of years ago but never came to be. there's a gun wizard class. and all of them have a dozen abilities that are all enticing; no features that boil down to being a +2 bonus to attack rolls, you want to collect as many of these things as you can.

but the best part of game is the setting itself, the Heart. it's a red wet heaven under the surface of the earth, a rip in reality where a strange otherspace has crawled in. whenever someone enters it, it tries to build itself in the image of their desires, but it does this slowly and badly. everyone has a different theory on what it is. what this means for your game is that even though the heart has a very strong identity and hits a specific feel, it shapes to the style of GM you are and the desires of your players as the game unfolds. every table's Heart is just a little bit different.

[theladyragnell]

☕ DnD!

I love D&D! I love playing pretend with my friends but having to fill out forms and involve randomization to add some structure and legitimacy! That sounds sarcastic, but I do mean it genuinely. It has been a mainstay and a joy in my life to have a weekly game for the last ... 8 years? Something like that?

It's also for sure not as universal a system as it wants to sell itself as being, from 5e onwards. D&D is a specific kind of game, where the mechanics reward combat over social encounters or puzzles (and which thus doesn't necessarily encourage players to think over the ethics of a combat), and where the assumed setting and genre is a sort of generic 80s Tolkien-style-while-not-being-Tolkien that has sure left some Cultural Artifacts in the game, starting with use of the word "race" to describe elves vs. dragonborn vs. humans etc. (I think that is being changed in the newest edition? But I can't remember for sure.)

Now that I'm DMing, I'm hacking in lots of bits of other things and changing the rules where they suit me, and pulling in a ton of homebrew. I ran a whole adventure on a modified Blades in the Dark/5e hybrid because D&D simply isn't built to do heists, it would just be investigation checks or persuasion/deception checks until that got boring, which wouldn't take too long. We've gone whole levels without engaging in combat.

I think D&D is a very fun game, and one thing it does do well is support the telling of long-term stories, I think a lot of TTRPGs don't quite have the meat on them to tell a story that could unfold across years, but I also think that taking the rules more as guidelines is a smart idea that would make more people's games much happier! Homebrewing is hard to balance with the mechanics as designed, and I have made my players' characters absolutely broken monsters as a result and have had to way beef up their opponents, but you know what? We're all having fun, and that's better for me than sticking to the rules.

[six-improbable-things]

the fact that I might hit level 10 (or at least be very, very, very close to it) before I even make it to act 3 is wild. They really could have made the level cap on this game higher. I hate that every single boss fight in act 3 is set for the same level, meaning you basically stall and there's no more progression (aside from new items) for most of act 3.

I mean, imagine if in a dnd game, you spent 1/6th or more of the whole campaign at the same level. Even if that level was 20, it would feel stale after a while, and bg3 doesn't even get close to 20.

They could easily have gotten us to level 14 or 15 with the amount of content in the game. I know some people argue that "oh, well, balancing high-level encounters is hard" or "they didn't want to implement 7th level spells", and like, I kind of get it. But at the same time, they had years to work on this game. Plus, it's a game. I feel like balancing for a video game, where there's only set coded possibilities of what the players can do (minus glitches and exploits, ofc) is easier than DMing a real game and trying to predict every possible outcome under the sun.

Maybe I'm wrong about that, but even if I am, it's not like Larian's never done it before. Characters in D:OS and D:OS2 get up to level 20. And while those aren't ttrpg recreations, the issue of balancing high-level encounters remains the same. And ofc, not Larian's doing, but there's P:WotR which managed to not only balance for 20 character levels, but also the 10 mythic levels and the insanely busted shit that can come out of that. (Plus, Pathfinder in general is a more "the characters are over-powered" kind of game in general, at least compared to 5e. Not a bad thing, just a difference in game design.)

[leidensygdom]

There is no wrong way to enjoy TTRPGs, as long as everyone at the table is having fun

I just saw a couple of people tagging some of my latest posts with concerns on how they are scared to DM TTRPGs because they can’t do battlemaps, so let me put a quick post together about this:

There is no wrong way to enjoy TTRPGs, as long as everyone at the table is having fun. Fun is the keyword here. Is everyone enjoying the game? Then you’re doing it right. Doesn’t matter how little or how much you want to have at your table. Doesn’t matter which system are you playing. As long as people are enjoying themselves, you’re doing it right.

This means a lot of things. Maybe your group loves playing by-the-book and never homebrews. That’s absolutely right. Or maybe your group has almost developed an entire system of their own after years of homebrewing. That’s also good- If everyone at the table like it and it is fair for everyone, you’re playing the game right!

Some people love super crunchy games filled with numbers and strategy and no RP. If everyone at the table enjoys that, then you’re doing it right. Maybe you like very deadly games and meatgrinders- If people at the table like that, it’s absolutely valid. Or maybe you just want to do RP and develop characters with none of the numbers. If that’s what your group wants, congrats! That’s also valid.

Some people love to painstakingly prepare every little detail and has 10 pages of notes for a session. It takes time, but it makes DMing easier for some. If it works for you, do it! Or maybe you like to go completely improv- If it suits your style and it works for the table, that’s also fantastic

Format-wise, you can play TTRPGs in many ways. Maybe you just want to go full theatre of mind- Absolutely valid. Maybe you don’t want to think about battlemaps but still need a way to make it work- I’ve seen people use emojis on discord to build a semblance of a battlemap. I’ve seen people use excel. People use google sheets. People use drawing software. If it works for your group, it’s good enough. Or maybe you play irl and want to go all in with painted minis and terrain, or the VTT equivalent of having fully animated maps full of spell effects and stuff. That’s also absolutely valid! Why wouldn’t it be?

There has been a lot of talking about the right TTRPGs to enjoy, and how to enjoy them, which has probably risen because of the OGL and people suddenly moving systems or finding new groups, or even people finding out animated spells are a thing. And of course, there’s some people willing to police how others have fun at their tables. Which- Let’s be entirely honest, if you see someone whine about “theatre of the mind sucks you’re just lazy” (or “you don’t need a fancy animated battlemap”, on the contrary) it’s better to just ignore the fuck out of them and move on. If it works for your table, go and enjoy exactly that. That’s what matters.

A lot of times people choose to play TTRPG one way or another to accommodate to their groups needs and their own, and trying to say what is “wrong” can easily fall into a weirdly ableist discourse. For example, I have a speech impediment: It’s gotten better over the years, but lengthy improv descriptions are a struggle. And so, I’d rather either prepare extensive descriptions in my notes, or draw a battlemap that puts my players into what I envision without a 5-minute narration that will burn my mental RAM. Someone with ADHD may need extensive notes to not go off the rails- Or maybe a dyslexic person can’t use notes too well and prefers to rely on improv. Aphantasia is a thing and some people can’t just imagine out of a text description, and they may prefer to see an animation instead of hearing someone describe it. The beauty of TTRPGs is that they’re wildly variable, and people have found endless ways to enjoy them- and adapt them to their needs.

So, for whoever needs to hear this, for whoever found some idiot on the internet telling you how to play your own home game: If your group is having fun the way you play the game, you’re doing it right. Don’t be scared to try out methods that work for you and your group, and adapt it to individual preferences, needs, and use whatever accommodations you need to make your life easier. Having fun is the objective, the way you get there is up to you.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I the asshole for ignoring my friend's hobby?

So context. My (20 NB) best friend I'll call him Moth, (cis male 20) is my BEST friend. I platonically love him so so so much. We've been friends since high school when he was a freshman and I was a sophomore (he's actually older than me he was 15 and I was 14 when we met)

Well over time our interests changed. We're still good friends and we indulge in both our hobbies together (such as we both love board games, I play games with him, he listens to my Language ramblings). Its not like we don't have any shared interests and we do play games and everything together.

But Moth's main hobby is table top games. He has wanted to do an in person table top campaign for years. And as one of his only IRL friends I am the one he goes first to talk about this plan.

I have indulged this hobby (or addiction according to a mutual friend) since it started. I have tried getting into table top games, I really have. We made a Harry Potter campaign about an alternate universe were Harry is replaced by a Gyaru (a japanese fashion/attitude subculture I am a fan of) did an hour of it and I stopped caring, He's shown me a sailor moon table top, he tries REALLY REALLY hard to get me into it.

But Moth specifically wants to be the one to play. He has been DMing a campaign for 4-5 years now. He wants to play irl, which means I have to be the one to DM. I don't even want to play to begin with let alone DM

and I tried to get into TTRPGS! I just can't like role playing. But I suck at confrontation. I feel bad if I just said "I can't get into this please stop asking me". He's an IRL friend and also one of my only friends. I love hearing about his campaigns! But I don't want to be a part of them.

So lately whenever he starts talking about TTRPGS and asking me to join I say half answers like "well I don't know..." and "I'm just not feeling it". Mostly I'm just dodging and changing the subject. I feel like a bad friend because this is his MAIN hobby. And I do like TTRPGs as an observer, not as a player. But its the only thing he talks about and I just can't get into it.

Am I the asshole for dodging my friend whenever he brings up table top role playing games?

What are these acronyms?

[queencaramilflinda]

Can I ask why you're a shriek week hater? Genuinely curious! I never watched it

Ok so I am putting this below a cut in case anyone doesn't want to look at discourse which is completely understandable. Also this got kinda long oops

Shriek week... where do I begin? Since you haven't seen the season, let me step back and explain the premise. Shriek Week was a season set at a university for monsters, DM'd by Gabe Hicks. It used a system made by Gabe called the Mythic System. Each PC (Ally Beardsley, Lily Du, Ify Nwadiwe and Dani Fernandez) plays a student at the school for monsters.

I should also preface by saying I havent seen the season since it came out years ago so this is all based on my best memory and posts about the situation

The plot. It is said in the adventuring party that the original premise for this season was for it to be a straight up and down dating sim style game, but that Gabe decided to go another direction between episodes 1&2, which means that the plot was clearly scraped together extremely last minute and is generally nonsensical. It involves clones and an evil plant and a bunch of other stuff, it's just kind of bad. The fact that the plot was shoe-horned in last minute also really effects the pacing of the season, because it was only 4 episodes long and only ever originally supposed to be a fun and quirky dating sim game.

The rail-roading. This problem is deeply connected to the previous point. I havent seen Gabe in literally anything else so in no way am I making any statement about his abilities as a DM, and I am not the type to throw the phrase rail-roading around willy-nilly. The thing is, that because the clones and evil plant monster plot got thrown in so last minute with so little time to be resolved, it a little bit took away player agency, with players consistently attempting/asking to do things only to be told no, and instead led down a very particular path. Usually I am very forgiving of this sort of behavior as DMing is very hard and it can be easy for players to get distracted from the plot at hand... however the players were brought into this game under the pretense that it would be rom-com in genre, not plot heavy. So it kind of makes sense for them to be confused and not on board with the plot that they didn't know to expect.

Terry Talbo. Ok this maybe a me thing, because I do not particularly like Ify Nwadiwe in general, but the way he plays his character Terry Talbo has always made me uncomfortable. To quote a post I made several months ago " Ify plays his character as being kind of pushy towards women, not taking no as an answer when asking them out, and generally being toxically masculine in a way that was not criticized by the narrative or even really the players at all." A scene that distinctly sticks out in my head as both bad manners and bad gameplay is when Terry attempts to ask out a woman at the gym, and rolls low on his check. As a result, the woman says no. Instead of backing off like a normal person Terry doubles down and insists on rolling at least one or two more times to try again, and eventually the lady relents and agrees to go on a date with him. It all just felt icky, and it was not just a one time occurrence.

The cast. (This may also just be a me thing). Each member of that cast individually are deeply funny and talented individuals. However the majority of them did not know each other and the chemistry of the group was way off and did not pass the vibe check to me. One of my favorite things about actual play shows is the secondhand feeling you get of being in a friend group and playing dnd. Shriek Week did not have this, which reduced my enjoyment.

The University Setting. I am putting this last because it's such a small complaint comparatively speaking, but the seasons that came immediately before Shriek Week were The Seven and Misfits and Magic. It was the third season in a row to take place in a school as one of its primary locations, and I think im not the only one who was feeling burned out of this premise by this point.

This is what I have off the top of my head without fact checking anything, so I apologize if I am missing something major or am incorrect about any of the details! I love d20, and while Shriek Week was not for me, it has in not in anyway impacted my devotion for the show.

[theworldbrewery]

trying something new

so last weekend my fiance's dad was staying with us and he brought Bedlam in Neverwinter, a D&D-themed "escape room" game. I am thrilled to report that if you enjoy Exit games* and Gloomhaven*, this D&D-flavored mashup is a pretty good time. We played in three separate sessions, one for each "act" of the game.

but what was really interesting to me is that it provided a unique insight into the scaffolding. the assumptions that underlie the principles of DMing have always been tough for me to grasp; I don't run many traditional dungeons, so I struggle to figure out how to run an adventure in spite of that little snag. This game finally made this click.

because structurally, it's a game of D&D. you are playing your character, you have certain skills and weapons and so on. But the game was structured around three Acts of the adventure, and within each Act were multiple "boards," which served as the maps of each space. Each board had several numbered points of interest, and players took turns checking out each point of interest which revealed new cards with loot, puzzles, traps, encounters, and clues.

Sometimes you pulled a card that made you make a Dex save to avoid getting caught in a bear trap, so you might take non-combat damage.

Other times you produced a puzzle card that introduced a "mini-mystery" to solve with other cards, which incentivized exploring the dungeon for more clues.

There was an overarching mystery for each act, which further incentivized looking for clues, but the puzzles usually unlocked something like the next board or an important clue, sometimes with loot thrown in.

Other points of interest might turn up a roll that could determine the number of enemies in a combat (like animal handling to prevent a creature from becoming hostile -- you couldn't completely subvert an encounter, but you could influence it).

That structure above? Just helped me grasp overall dungeon design. You have clues to an overall question or objective for the dungeon sprinkled throughout, but most of them are only discoverable by interacting with other features of the area. I quickly "got" what I think used to be obvious in older editions, which is that if I want items I have to interact with my surroundings, and if I want clues that help me move forward I also have to interact with my surroundings.

As players, we were rewarded at every turn for curiosity and for facing enemies, since they often not only dropped loot, but needed puzzle and mystery clues! And most importantly, the interactions were generally not locked behind a successful roll; if I failed to pick a lock on a prison cell, it didn't mean I just would never get the relevant clue; by merely interacting with the lock, the game would reward me with a new card. I would get more on a success, sure, but it wasn't success the game cared about, for the most part, it was engagement.

And it seems so obvious in retrospect that as a DM you should reward your players for engaging, not for succeeding -- that's what people mean when they say "fail forward," after all, but it was never clear to me what that was supposed to mean or how to execute that. This silly little escape room wasn't just a few afternoons' good fun, it felt genuinely enlightening as a dungeon master.

It also helped me figure out what a "puzzle" is really for in a D&D sense. Puzzles aren't very helpful as gateways, since PCs can get stuck behind the gate instead of solving the puzzle; instead, I'm realizing I need to think of a puzzle as a lock, and the clues become the keys the PCs need to find. Once they find the keys, opening the lock should be relatively easy -- instead of giving them all the relevant clues up front, like a riddle, the game of the puzzle is in the search -- the in-game discovery of the right hints to get you to the answer.

I won't get into the boss battle either (because of spoilers, lol) but I also feel like I learned something about how WotC expects you to run major combat encounters.

*this game was not as challenging as either an Exit game or Gloomhaven, but it was a fun time and played more like a d&d session than either of those games, but with similar game mechanics to provide the structure.