#i miss dnd so much :(( and I wanted to learn dming for like a year and a half now

[alpinelogy]

Two friends said they would join me if I started a dnd campaign as a dm… time to finally force my dm friends to teach me how to dm and then it’s over for everyone

[absolutepokemontrash]

The Demon Bros Play DND!

Who’s ready for some Stupid Headcanons?

So, the Satanic Panic of the 1980s claimed that the tabletop RPG known as Dungeons and Dragons had the power to turn your children into satanists and devil worshippers. So of course, the brothers have totally played DND after hearing about all the human world nonsense.

Lucifer the Back-up Back-up DM

He’s too busy to play this game dammit, stop inviting him! What do you mean both Satan and Simeon can’t DM the one-shot? Ugh... fine.

Despite all his UUUUUUUUGGGGHHH, Lucifer is a damn good storyteller, prepare to be immersed as hell.

Also, sorry guys, he’s a rule whore. If something’s against the rules, YOU AREN’T DOING IT.

He’s also a complete sadist who will randomly get everyone to roll perception checks for NO REASON.

Lucifer has definitely stood up and slammed his hands on the table while giving a description for extra effect, Mammon screamed and nearly fell out of his seat which REALLY ruined the mood.

“Everyone, we’re rescheduling, I’m too busy.”

He’s been a player a few times, and he’s NOT good at it. All his characters end up being really generic and boring. He’s better at being the world and everything in it, not the dummy wandering around it.

Human/fighter lookin’ motherfucker

In conclusion, he’s a good DM, but he’s probably too busy to play.

Over-Powered Self Insert (Mammon)

This game is for nerds! He’s not playin’, Levi!

Fine, his character is great and amazin’ and is also him. MC! What do these numbers mean-

Mammon’s the type of player to make his character a self insert and not take it too seriously, then get really REALLY attached as the campaign progresses.

He’s the type not to make a backstory for his character either, so go wild DM MCs!

He also both purposefully and accidentally metagames a whole bunch. Like dude, YOU know this, YOUR CHARACTER DOES NOT.

Shit he forgot his dice, can he borrow some?

“Okay MC, that’s five points of piercing damage.” “I RUN OVER AND HEAL THEM! I’LL SAVE YA MC!”

Mammon goes out of his way to save MC’s character long before it would make sense in-character to do so.

“Well, as your first man it’s my duty to save your character! You’ll probably be a blubberin’ mess if I didn’t...”

He’s not the best role player, but he’s also not the worst at it either. He tends to break character when things get too serious and he doesn’t know what to do.

Notes who? He came in here with one sheet of printer paper and it’s for doodling only.

He and Asmodeus start the tavern brawls. No question about that.

Theft is very common, he’s stealing from everyone, including but not limited to: the party, the royal guards, the dead enemies, the giant fuck-you dragon that Satan dropped in there to deter Mammon from stealing...

“I’m gonna steal that crown from the dragon.” “Roll stealth.” “Nat 20 BITCHES.” “Fuck you.”

If his character dies, may the Demon King have mercy on his greedy little soul because he’s going to mope about it for a damn long time.

Over-Powered Self Insert Again (Leviathan)

His character totally isn’t a self insert, shut up! He just looks and acts like an idealized version of himself!

He’s the one with twenty pages of character info and backstory AND the amazing commissioned art.

Levi has about 40 sets of expensive blue dice that he claims gives him the best rolls but an average session with him usually leads to roughly 10 crit fails.

While his luck with dice isn’t that good, he’s the player who will get as much out of their turn as possible, AKA break out the calculators and notes we’re doing some math.

His turn goes on for at least ten minutes because of all the shit he’s doing. When you finally think it’s over he goes “I still have my movement!”

Takes notes like a madman, every bit of lore and character info is being written down, meaning it’s a headache for everyone involved if there’s a continuity error because Levi WILL point it out.

“So you all head to the east, the great Valley of-” “Hang on, valley? In the second session you said there was a mountainous area to the east.” “Levi, shut up.”

Levi is the self appointed “guys come on let’s get back on track!” player, and whoever’s DMing is grateful to have him.

Levi is kind of the opposite of Mammon in terms of character seriousness, at first he’s taking everything super seriously and then as the campaign goes on he slowly loosens up and has some fun.

Out of curiosity one day he searches up a magical girl DND class and he’s ALL OVER IT. PLEASE LET HIM BE A MAGICAL GIRL NEXT CAMPAIGN-

Damn good at roleplaying, he’s carrying the entire in-character discussion until everyone else gets into it.

The Done With Your Bullshit DM (Satan)

So, this is the game that’s supposedly summoning him all the time despite the fact that he hadn’t been up to the human world since the 50s... what the fuck is everyone on up there?

It was the 80s, probably a lot of drugs.

When Satan DMs, you can only break the rules if it enhances the story... or if it fucks with Lucifer’s really boring character.

He will fudge dice rolls every once and a while, he also gets very attached to the characters everyone has made so he doesn’t want to perma-kill any of them unless they roll a DND quadruple natural 1 sin or something.

As attached as he gets, he isn’t above completely raging, killing everyone’s characters, and ending the session if everyone’s being annoying.

Don’t worry, your characters will be safe and sound next session once everything calms down... just don’t mention how Satan burned your character sheet right in front of you. It’s your fault if you didn’t make a second copy of your character sheet!

He’s pretty decent when it comes to improv when a player stumbles into something he didn’t plan out, but that’s not going to stop him from getting a little annoyed.

Though, if you somehow manage to get to the big bad too soon... yeah sorry, he’s got a way more dramatic fight scene planned, your player’s getting conveniently blasted out of there.

As a player, Satan is pretty decent at the game overall, but he tends to be a little aggressive if there’s an overarching mystery to be solved.

He needs to understand what’s going on! He doesn’t care if it upends the plot or it’s too early to find out! He needs to know!

His character is actually distinct and different from himself, Satan thinks it’s more interesting that way. All the books he’s read have made him a pretty awesome role player!

Satan’s notebook both as a DM and a player is filled to the brim, no detail is too insignificant to be put on the page.

Satan doesn’t fear dungeon puzzles... dungeon puzzles fear Satan.

“Are you all stupid?! This puzzle is so easy a four year old could solve it!”

I ROLL TO SEDUCE- (Asmodeus)

At first he didn’t want to play, he doesn’t play these kinds of games, sweetie. He’s too pretty.

When he’s finally convinced he puts a decent amount of effort into his character, but leaves the backstory pretty open.

Asmo would probably be the bard... right? No. He’s the warlock with the magic sugar daddy patron, and the warlock patron is spoken to as such.

“Hey baby... how’ve you been? Have I been good~?” “...”

Huh! Who woulda thought that all the bedroom roleplaying would transfer so well to DND!

Simeon is the only DM that doesn’t immediately shut this down, so Asmo will be extra inclined to play if Mr. Nice Shoulders is DMing.

When he gets really into it he buys a bunch of sparkly and very pretty dice, they bring him good luck in every roll!

Asmo has a fictional harem, no question about it. It gets to the point where Satan, Lucifer, and Simeon stop describing NPCs as attractive.

He’s rolling to seduce either way, he’s turned many an antagonist into a lover. To be fair, Asmo’s horniness has gotten everyone out of a lot of jail cells... so they can’t complain.

His notes consist of really random comments about the plot and the other players. It’s also COATED with doodles.

‘Wow, this character is such an asshole, I hope Belphie kills them.’ ‘Shit.’ ‘MC looks so cute when they play their character!!!!!!!! :D’

Poor bab forgets the rules a lot... it’s just too much to remember, okay?! How was he supposed to know that he ran out of spell slots an hour ago?!

Please help him, MC...

*Dice Cronch* (Beel)

Homeboy has been given edible dice, no question. He has also eaten the non-edible dice...

Beel goes to Satan for help with making his character, and he ends up really loving the character! :D

Problem is, he’s not that good at roleplaying... D:

“Can my character eat that person?” “Beel, no- you know what? Let me check what you’d need to roll to do that.”

I’ll save you MC part 2 electric boogaloo, but when it comes to Beel, the entire party is getting protected, no matter how little it makes sense in-character.

While Beel does take notes, a lot of them don’t end up being very important for later events. For example, he’ll jot down stuff about the layout in one room, but it turns out he didn’t take notes for the room that was actually going to be used for a boss fight.

He’s always nice to the NPCs, shame Belphie doesn’t show them the same courtesy.

Murder Hobo (Belphie)

Chaotic evil.

“Belphie, your character’s alignment is neutral good, remember?” “Fuck that, this guy’s annoying me.”

If Belphie doesn’t like an NPC, it’s up to the rest of the party to stop him from derailing the campaign and killing them.

He has space themed dice because cow-man likes space and thought they were pretty.

Notes? NOTES? You think Belphegor, the Avatar of SLOTH, takes notes? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-

He’s drooling all over the notebook... ew. Someone wake him up and tell him it’s his turn.

He puts about 35% effort forth to make a halfway decent character, and approximately 4% effort to actually roleplay.

Belphie sleeps through important plot details so he’s almost always really confused. He’ll turn to MC and ask them to explain what he missed before not learning his lesson and going back to sleep.

Wake him up for the dungeon puzzles though, he and Satan love those.

“Okay, we can’t see what’s in the room because none of the conscious party members have dark vision?” “Nope, what do you do?” “...I shove Mammon inside and shut the door.” “WHAT?!”

Bonus! The Best DM (Simeon)

Our favourite angel has homebrewed this entire campaign and boy fricken howdy are these players going to enjoy it.

Simeon fudges the dice rolls to avoid anything too irreversibly bad happening, buuuuuuut he’s still a total asshole who does the random perception rolls to keep everyone on their toes.

Everyone gets a character arc god dammit, even if they don’t have a backstory, one will be provided!

He’s got a map, he’s got miniatures, he’s got dice and backup dice for the backup dice, he’s got DM notes for days!

Simeon could be a voice actor with the amount of character voices he can do, no one ever gets confused with who’s talking.

Did someone just uncover a massive bit of plot that was meant to be found out later? Good job! No harm done! Simeon’s DM improv is second to none, and the plot will adjust accordingly!

[itachi-uchiha-deserved-better]

I got to DM for a dnd oneshot tonight. It's the first time in several years that I've been able to DM and I was hoping to test put a campaign setting I'm working on and see if people enjoyed the concept of it.

My last few DMing experiences were.....not great. Between toxic players, feeling burnt out, life stress and just in general feeling surrounded by negativity all really made me question if I could be a good DM. It never seemed like anyone had the kind of fun i wanted them to have and I stopped enjoying the games myself and it just became more stress.

I was really anxious about tonight. I wasn't as prepared as I could have been. I was scared that all those negative things would come back, just reinforcing the idea that I'm a bad DM.

But it was wonderful. Everyone was laughing. There was good roleplay. Everyone got involved and really enjoyed their characters and the little mystery I was weaving for them. People were enjoying themselves and I was having just as much fun as they were. And they're all really excited for when we eventually can do the second half of the little mini story since it got late and we couldnt finish it completely. And what's more, they all are really intrigued by my campaign setting and they all seem really excited to learn more about the world and I could cry I'm so happy.

It's amazing how different tonight was compared to DMing with my old group. And I really think that cutting a few of the unhealthy friendships I had then out of my life and filling my life with people that I know really just want to enjoy their time spent playing together and who I know really care about me makes all the difference in the world.

This is what I've been missing. All that doubt is gone. And I cant wait to do it again.

[amethyst-dragons-tales]

Playing a Character

This DND group had started back into last year, and possibly even the year before. I cant remember honestly, time melds together like hot candle wax. 

It had first started in the new DND club that me and friends had started up once again, it having shut down because its old members had moved on/graduated. For a year (my Jr. Year) it was unofficial, and I wasnt actually DMing.

No, I was playing my Tiefling Wizard-Alchemist, Fiss. A Chaotic-Wholesome girl who was naive to many parts of the world. Savvy played Kiev and the two were practically inseparable, Kiev taking on the big brother™ stance to Fiss.

Now, with two tieflings together (Chaotic Good & Chaotic Neutral) you would think would be a recipe for chaos, but you’d be wrong. They were surprisingly the voice of reason for the group while the others took on the mob mentality and usually went on murder-hoboing while the two tieflings were off in a flower flied making flower crowns and putting them into eachothers hair. Im not kidding this actually happened.

The group didnt stay together for long but we did to 1-2 sessions where it was really just me and Savvy, playing Fiss and Kiev. The campaign was what I would consider a crack campaign at best, but it was also the DMs first time as far as I knew, so while it was weird and uncomfortable at times (for me) I didnt put up much of a fuss. It led to funny things like a dildo sword an us introducing ourselves like it was an AA meeting.

Somehow Fiss and Kiev got themselves mixed up and sent into the Nightmare before Christmas realm (not kidding) and they almost immediately got thrown into Jail for no reason (atleast I cant remember a reason). Through some ways of getting out, whether it was magic handing the key’s over or Kiev picking the lock, they got free of their cell fairly quickly, took care of the guard, and got their stuff back.

Fiss had noticed someone else in the other cell and upon inspection found this half naked vampire man. Being the sweet summer child she was she let him out and fed him and thanks for that they made a deal where he would serve her, which she wasnt too keen on but wanted to help him out anyway so she agreed. (which I think she just barely succeeded the save or she would have become his servant?)

Vampire Familiar Acquired! Jealous & Protective Big Brother™ Activated!

Ya Kiev did not like him. Like, at all. The moment they laid eyes one echother they created this rivalry that even they cannot explain all because of Fiss. Fiss doesnt like this and tries her hardest to get the two of them to be nice to one another.

Fiss clothes and names her new Vampire Boo who couldnt remember who he was or where he was from. She named him Athean, and Im pretty sure Athean did not like shirts. He acted almost like a knight to her, while she treated him as a friend and tried to figure out who he was and where he was from.

Things happened, at one point they killed Jack Skeleton and kept his head that talked on its own. They went back to their sort of home town and Fiss put on this bone crown she had gotten a few sessions before. The disembodied head of Jack starts calling her a queen and Goddess and Fiss just sits there letting it happen, as she doesnt know what to do.

We didnt have a session for a while after that, the campaign getting revamped a bit and we had one session again in a more steampunk like setting, though it was still the same world? Fiss and Kiev went to a ball to have some fun and they started to learn that the crown prince was missing. After seeing a picture and Fiss realizing that, Oh shit, this is the vampire man that I have kept as a practical familiar this whole time, she silently freaks out and confronts him in a bathroom. However he still couldnt remember anything so the Tieflings had to figure out how the fuck they were going to explain this without somehow getting arrested.

Fiss started to get on the good side of the eldest princess and on came the quest of figuring out how to get Athean’s memories back. Which also led to the funny encounter of this adorable tiefling girl going into a butcher shop and asking for all their blood. Just Gallons upon gallons of blood.

And that is sadly where the journey of the Tieflings ended, apart from some other encounters like the Evil Honey Sun and Fiss Blowing up a building, which I might eventually dive into if someone ever asks to hear it.

[moonguilt]

I got tagged by @otheliame to make piccrew dolls of my OCs (tysm btw!!!) and i gotta be honest i have like uhhh at least 2 dozen OCs and that’s only counting the ones that i have some level of emotional investment in. so i just picked the characters i play with the most. first two are from World of Warcraft, last one is from FFXIV

The character descriptions (and the link to the picrew dollmaker & the mutuals I tagged) are under the cut because uhhh a bitch got carried away ranting about her girls and I don’t wanna impose that upon all my followers’ dashboards

1. Erilihn Autumnsong (she/her) - my absolute favorite OC.  She’s my baby.  She’s a blood elf ranger and she’s grumpy and shrewd and a badass and a strong leader who gives off the illusion of being emotionless but rly has a heart of gold.  I love her so much because she started off as this sort of snarky hotshot who wore her heart on her sleeve and then as I RPed with friends and other community members over the years she completely changed, very slowly.  She started rising in the ranks of her guild, learning to lead; then she accidentally fell into a role as the leader of a political movement; then she became a commander in battles with hundreds of soldiers (side note: I miss running events like that, it was really fun, albeit hella stressful, to get so many people together fighting each other and following a story plot of your own creation... it’s like DnD DMing but instead of like 5 close friends you’ve got 200 people vying for dominance over various points of interest in a specific region).  She’s been hurt a lot in recent years but she has also accomplished so much, and all of that has taught her to adapt and harden her heart and put on a poker face and get the job done.  Anyway I just love seeing the extreme character development she has gone through.  I have spent way too much fucking money commissioning art of this character but I can’t help it she’s my fave and Eri art is the only thing I ever allow myself to financially indulge in so I guess it’s okay

2. Ashryl Cloudfarer (she/her) - my snooty blood elf noblewoman OC.  She’s really fun because she’s so vain and all she ever seems to do is sweet talk other nobles to further the status of her house, but she’s got this secret side life that high society can never know about.  She’s a mage with a specialization in transmutation, which she uses to turn herself into animals as she pleases (think McGonagall style).  Her most common form is a black cat.  She likes the anonymity it gives her, so she can go anywhere and do anything without feeling constantly pressured to represent her family.  She’s also super deep in the closet because her father wants her to marry a man and have children to further the bloodline, but she met another noblewoman at a ball a while ago and they’ve been lowkey seeing each other in private since.  They are still in angsty/pining/barely touching mode tho because it’s essentially like a Victorian romance.  It’s all about the Forbidden Hand Touches... sitting in a moonlit garden just barely close enough for your ballgowns to brush... springing apart when another couple walks by... “I forswear propriety so long as the stars are our masters, and I prevail upon you to do the same”... ahhh rereading that RP now. good gay shit. anyway

3. Hoshiko Chibana (she/her) - this is one of my newer OCs so she isn’t as well developed as the others, but she’s still lots of fun.  She’s a Final Fantasy Au Ra (I don’t really play FFXIV but my friends do so I try to join them when I can).  She’s very different from the above OCs because she’s kind of naive and a sweetheart.  She’s an astrologian and a witch of sorts; you should see her work room in her house--it’s all dried herbs and star charts and gemstones and towering bookshelves.  She sometimes gets a little to carried away with her work (she just loves learning new things all day every day), so she appreciates when her friends pull her out of her study/lab and socialize with her a bit.  Not for too long though, because she’s got a rolanberry plant she’s running an aether experiment on at home, and it’s a time-sensitive affair, so she simply must be going right away!

Here’s the link to the picrew dollmaker I used!  This one has been super popular, all of my friends are trying it out and it’s spreading like wildfire.  I highly recommend!!

Okay time for me to tag some mutuals to do this (idk if any of you will be interested but if u are then go for it so i can see ur beautiful OCs): @lancemcclain @palalances @sirensoda

[apricotings]

this is going to be a personal post but. not gonna lie i’ve been losing a lot of motivation for everything recently and my mental health has kind of gone down the drown in the last week (partially due to my personal life, partially because my heart aches for the black community and how i wish i could do more (i’m signing petitions and going to rallies and donating as much as i can but u kno)) and i’m just :/ not excited for anything. like i used to be so excited for college in the fall and then four years down the line, grad school because i care/d so much about what i want to do and idk if it’s corona (because i want to be an epidemiologist/virologist) or what but that’s just gone? like at the bare Minimum i want biology and i’m thinking about it and actually getting excited but. i used to go to school and sit down w one friend in particular and i would just infodump allll the stuff i had learned about all these diseases and like :/ i miss feeling that excitement. i haven’t been practicing my craft recently or reading even though i have a really good book sitting like two feet away from me. idk what it is but i just feel so drained. i don’t want to plan for dnd and i don’t even want to play it? dming can be a lot of work so i get not wanting to plan but i always want to play :( i have a med check tmrw and i really don’t want to change my meds bc that’s a pain in the ass, i’m just going to delete social media (bc a. it’s not good for my mental health rn and b. i just waste my whole day on there which does not help anything and makes the cycle worse), try and throw myself back into the things i love (slowly), work on myself and my personal relationships, and hope that i come out better. the fact that the world just seems to be getting shittier and shittier every single day also because it feels like there’s no end in sight :(

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Hey Star! Bit of a weird question, do you know where's a good place to find a simplified ruleset for dnd 5e, specifically for a wizard. My wizard is finding it quite hard to remember all the rules and before I condense them all myself I thought I'd ask around and see if anyone has any resources that would do the trick. (Also, a quick update on the campaign, I made our kobold rogue worried about some mountains and now I know why you love to make your players worry. I feel very accomplished.)

Off the top of my head, I don’t know of any good resources for simplified 5e rules--I started out playing 3.5, so 5e is already about 14x simpler than what I originally learned.

I really want to convey that, as a 3.5 Druid on a campus with dubious-at-best wifi, I had one binder full of spells and another binder full of wild shapes, and spent 85% of my combat time trying to grasp the 3.5 grapple rules.  As a rules-laywer little-shit player, I miss having four thousand skills that I could finesse to give me stupid-high advantages on things like “Search” (plus thirty, I had a plus thirty to Search in my last 3.5 campaign), but 5e is WAY more accessible.

HOWEVER.  Even 5e is still pretty rules-dense, so let me try and hit some suggestions.  Without knowing the specifics of what your players are struggling with, these are going to be pretty broad, but you’re totally welcome to send in a more specific request if you want.

No one knows all the rules to DnD.  If a player, especially a new player, needs to check with their DM for every skill check and every attack roll, that’s okay!  Every DM I know keeps the Player’s Handbook in arm’s reach to panic-check a rule or a spell, or else they fully Griffin McElroy it and put the “rules” through a blender.  Please reassure your wizard from me that it’s totally okay if they’re having trouble keeping things straight.  As long as they’re having a good time, they don’t need to be able to recite the damage for Fireball off the cuff.  That’s what references are for.

The internet is your friend.  Again, multiple binders full of spells and animal shapes to be a 3.5 Druid.  This was because the internet on Friday nights got bad fast because Dolly (boys dorm) liked to run LAN parties, so googling my spells wasn’t practical because it took so long.  HOWEVER, the internet doth give many gifts, and if you and your party have regular access to it, I wholeheartedly recommend abusing that to your heart’s content.  Don’t even bother trying to keep that shit in order in your head or on your character sheet.  I shelled out for a DnDBeyond account, which does work great for my party, but you don’t need one--googling spells, special attacks, whatever, will work like a dream.  To facilitate your party being able to do this during fast-paced combat, as the DM, I suggest keeping people apprised of who’s coming up next in combat!  I do this by saying “Okay, Azara, you’re up, Heinous, you’re on deck,” as a way to remind people that they’re coming up and that they should be planning their next move, including looking up anything they might need.

It’s always a d20.  Okay, you don’t literally exclusively need a d20, but I resolved a lot of my mom’s anxiety about using the wrong dice by saying very plainly “if you want to hit someone, do something, or interact with the world in any way, you are going to use a d20.”  Everything else is near-exclusively used for damage rolls.  Damage rolls using Other Dice are described explicitly in spells or weapon attacks--for example, Fireball does 8d6 damage (described when you google the spell) and a greataxe does 1d12 damage (you should have weapon damage noted down beside the weapon).  Basically, it’s a d20 until your DM says otherwise.

Proficiency bonus is your friend.  You get a proficiency bonus in 5e rather than level-by-level skill point allotment like in 3.5.  This helps balance the playing field and limit minmaxing to a more manageable level, and also reduces the amount of math you need to do in order to level up.  Here is how any roll in 5e works: the number on the d20 + the relevant stat + (if relevant) proficiency bonus.  Let’s say you’re a Level 3 barbarian, and you want to hit someone with an axe.  You roll a d20 and get a 13, then you add your strength for a melee attack--let’s say it’s +4--bringing you to a subtotal of 17.  But you’re proficient with your axe!  So now you add +2 for your proficiency bonus, bringing you to a 19 all told.  Good job, your target is definitely going to feel it.  If you only know three numbers in 5e, they should be your proficiency bonus, your primary stat (for our example barbarian it’s Strength, for a wizard it’s Intelligence), and your armor class.  If pressed, you could probably get through a whole session with just those three numbers.  As long as you know what you are and aren’t proficient in (mark it down on your sheet if you haven’t already), you’re good.

Spell slots: write them down.  If you’re using DnDBeyond, they have a helpful little line of boxes to tick off each time you use a spell of a certain level, or an expendable ability like Rage or Action Surge.  I would recommend this technique, it’s the one I used when I did paper character sheets.  Make tally marks, tick boxes, cross out numbers, whatever.  If you have your spell slots written down instead of trying to remember what you still have available, you have more brain power to free up for other, more interesting things.

Combat’s a bitch.  Combat rules are the finickiest part of DnD, and again, do not feel bad about not getting them right off.  In fact, don’t feel bad about not getting it for multiple years.  I probably only got a good handle on combat in the last six months and I’ve been DMing for three years.  That being said, you can do three things during your turn, and one thing the rest of the time, and I’m going to break them down as best I can.  During your turn you have:

MOVEMENT: Pretty much what it says on the tin.  You have a movement speed based on what kind of critter you are (and occasionally what class you are, e.g. monks), and you can move that far. 

ACTION: This is where you Do Stuff, including but not limited to attacking.  You will start at a low level with one attack per action--that may be an axe, a spell, a punch, whatever, but you get to deal damage or protect your friends or whatever.  As you level up, some classes can do more stuff with a single action, notably fighters, who can basically evolve into a murder whirlwind with four attacks per action.  On your action, you can also interact with something (like, say, a bomb you’re trying to defuse or a lock you’re trying to pick), keep moving (this is called “Dash” and lets you move in the same way as the above MOVEMENT), get paranoid (this is called “Dodge” and gives you advantage on getting out of range of an attack), use your special abilities (like a ranger’s Primeval Awareness, or a cleric’s Channel Divinity), hide, (this is called “Hide”), or any number of other things.  You may also get something called an Action Surge, depending on your class, which lets you take ACTION twice in a row.  (High level fighters can actually do like...twelve attacks on a turn with this.  Fighters are underappreciated.  Be a fighter, julienne your enemies.)

BONUS ACTION: Something short and sweet that may also save your life.  Barbarians can Rage as a bonus action.  Certain spells can be triggered as a bonus action, like Hunter’s Mark or Hex.  Other spells can be used as a bonus action, like Spiritual Weapon.  Some classes can do other stuff as a bonus action, like a monk using it to attack or a rogue using it to hide.  If you’re not sure if something is a bonus action, it’s probably not.  It’s a fairly limited but powerful list.

If you’re not the person who’s currently taking their turn, you have something called a REACTION, once per turn, where you do something triggered by someone else’s turn.  Most importantly, this allows you to do something called an attack of opportunity when someone leaves your personal space--you get to whack them with whatever melee weapon you’ve got.  For some classes (notably wizards and anyone who can access the wizard spell list) you will eventually be able to use your reaction to exercise the Biggest Dick Energy in all of Dungeons and Dragons, which is called Counterspell.  Actually any spell saying that its casting time is “1 reaction” can be cast like this, but mostly people just use it for Counterspell.  REACTION is also what lets you “hold” your action, which means saying “I can hear Nym running toward me with the goblins behind her--I’m holding Fireball until the second the horde is in range.”  When the ‘trigger’ you chose happens, you can do your thing.  This means you’re committed and cannot adjust your plan if things change (in the example, Nym might still be in range, but your Fireball is still going to go off), but it also gives you the ability to lay a trap.  

Again, combat is a bitch.  The DM’s job is to know this stuff and help the players when they need it.  There’s no shame in needing a cheat sheet with this stuff noted down or needing to google references for casting time or whatever.  As long as you’re keeping things rolling and having fun, combat works however the DM says it does.  If you realize you made a mistake, just move on.  The nerd gods don’t care.

Any rule too obnoxious to live with can be dismissed by the DM.  You think I played around with 3.5 grapple rules when I was DMing?  Absolutely not.  In my campaigns you rolled a strength check and you lived or died by it with good grace.  If there’s something nonessential that your players really struggle with or you personally think is dumb as hell, just.  Don’t use it.  Wizards of the Coast isn’t going to come to your home and shake you down for ignoring travel rules or whatever.  Homebrew, my babies.

[grayisholi]

@ the DND ask game: ALL OF THOSE QUESTIONS, I CAN'T CHOOSE!! XD (or if not that, the ones you rlly wanna do!!

BOY OH BOY OH BOYIve been answering these throughout the day and I’m too lazy to reread the full document so sorry if I’ve left gaps or whatever but here it is! All 35 questions about dnd! Matt you unstoppable Madman.

1. A favorite character you have played.

You can’t just make me pick between my children!!! I think I might have to say Atticus Sallow, my faeborn bloodhunter, partially because he’s like 100% homebrew content which I LIVE for, but also because he’s probably the most kinda self-insert character I’ve ever played? Almost became the kinda angsty, brooding asshole character before he was like “get your shit together” and learned that loving people isn’t so bad.

2. Your favorite character that someone else has played.

I almost, ALMOST had the pleasure of DMing for @no-more-good-omens and their character was gonna be SO RAD and I’m a little heartbroken he never came to be. A half-drow paladin of Vecna, pretending to be your typical good and wholesome paladin? Dude, I love that kinda two faced backstabbing in a player. It’s such a shame it never came to anything (although if yall still wanna play hmu ;))

3. Your favorite side quest.

Ooh, there’s been so many good ones. Probably when i was playing as Adrian Smirks and went off on a tangent to rescue his brother ? That was the first time I ever got to see Adrian’s more raw and emotional side beneath the suave mask he wears and it was fun to explore his character in that way ^.^

4. Your current campaign.

That I’m DMing? It started inspired by Guy Fawkes and was gonna be “your party blows up parliament” but I got bored of following historical accuracy so it ended up being “blow up the palace in a magical city that just happens to be called London”. I accidentally wrote myself into a hole with this campaign tho, so once they’ve finished this arc I’m handing over the DM hat to my sister @philosophical-wanton because she seems to love it and I kinda miss being a player lmao. I can’t wait for it.

5. Favorite NPC.That I’ve written? Probably Hai Shen, the youngest son of a group of circus performers who were killed and the party got blamed for their murder. He had such a great attitude and his dynamics with the party kicked ass. And the twist that he was actually dead the whole time and it was his soul that had stayed behind to help solve his family’s murder? ICONIC.

6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc).

NPC death would probably be Hai Shen, actually. After the party had brought the real killers (A cult to the demon Prince Orcus) to justice, Hai’s time on earth had come to an end. He had really beautiful moment with the party before being reunited with his family. Alternatively, the time I broke my entire party’s hearts? “Artagan’s staff comes cracking into Ellios’ chest, forcing him onto the ground. Artagan raises his sceptre in hand, pointing it menacingly at the young prince. And for the first time, you see him. Like, REALLY see him. He’s not the strong and powerful leader you’ve all come to know him as, he’s not Prince Ellios of the Four Realms. He’s just a boy. A boy who is much too young to be involved in such a grand scheme. And the fear in his eyes. You see the fear he’s managed to keep buried for so long, finally coming to the surface. And then? You don’t see anything, aside from his cold body hitting the ground.” I got punched three times for that moment, but GOD was it worth it.

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

Like in game? A healthy lil bit of vandalising the local law enforcement buildings is always a good time.

8. Your favorite fight/encounter.

Aw man, how can I pick ? I gotta say, that one time we, a level 6 party, managed to take down two earth elementals was pretty rad. The DM kind of expected it to be one of those encounters that we saw and immediately tried to run from, but what she didn’t take into account was that ALL of us had chaotic alignments so we just went crazy. The DM was rolling really badly (thank God) and we were getting really creative (“I use the produce flame centripetal to light my bottle of ale on fire and create a molotov cocktail” “you do WHAT”) and after like an HOUR we won and it was amazing. The rush I got from that victory was better than any drug my dood.

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

I know I say it a lot, but I legit can’t choose. There’s so many great things about ttrpgs that a lot of people don’t really think of. The creative fulfilment I get from a session is incomparable, the friendships you can build that you couldn’t form in any other way. And like, not to get too real for a sec here, but I grew up with undiagnosed autism and didn’t understand how a lot of social situations worked, and DnD was such a good mechanic for me to try communicating with people without many real world consequences, and I appreciate that experience so much. It’s just such a great thing my dood.

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

Can they be the same thing lmao? I mean, I’m obviously partial to Count Cassius, the vampire lord that Adrian slept with lmao. I also always appreciate a good beholder, until I get hit with three disintegration rays IN A ROW.

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

We’ve got kind of a monthly schedule with my main campaign, and I manage to get a couple online games in-between them, but honestly I’d kill to be the kind of group that got together every weekend.

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

Oh MAN. “I say we do this.” “Yeah, but that’s coming from the guy who decided to tie 3 50ft ropes together to escape the palace.” “iT wOrKeD dIdN’t iT ???” i.e that time I forgot I gave the gnome rogue flying boots so when I planned for them to get arrested at the palace, they managed to escape by tying their ropes together, sending the gnome with it to the top and climbing the wall. I had to improvise the rest of the session. Also “FLINTON BELINDA SKINTON” bc as a role-play exercise I got my party to come up with rumours about their characters and the gnome rogue called Flint AKA Flinton B Skinton decided that one of their rumours was that the B stood for Belinda, and it was GLORIOUS.

13. Introduce your current party.

My current group consists of Flinton B Skinton, gnome rogue. He’s a quick-fingered, silver-tongued gay disaster who can sell anything to anyone. He’s a charming flirt, and a veritable genius in his own right. Kava Daardendrian, dragonborn ranger who loves nothing in life more than her animal companion - her pig Snortin Norton. She’s fun and sassy and shameless, she’s great. There’s Sparks, the fire Genasi Monk, and full embodiment of a disaster lesbian. She drinks, fights, and gets laid, and doesn’t deal with her problems in healthy ways. An icon. And finally Milo, the halfling Bard who falls in love at the drop of a hat and just wants everyone to get along. I call them “The Shenanigang” and I love them.

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

A party I joined late? We had Sylvia Moondrop, the half elf sorcerer who was just trying to get along with everyone despite what the world seemed to want. Orland the half orc bard who was just trying to shake off the Barbarian stereotype his family left him with. Rose Morleen, air Genasi fighter who was literally born to kick ass and take names. I joined as Mason Terrai, the Earth Genasi Alchemist with a perchance for explosives. The very definition of chaotic neutral.

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

Of COURSE. What manic wouldn’t ?

16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?

I used to play online a LOT back before I had friends who were into dnd, but I VASTLY prefer playing in person. The chemistry that’s built not only amongst the players, but also the actual characters themselves is unparalleled. It’s just such a great experience.

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

Anyone can attempt anything, the only restriction is the dice. Don’t question the DM unless it’s out of session, then bully the dm on the groupchat until he’s so pissed off he gives you inspiration just to get you to shut up. And also canon lore and canon rules are bullshit when it’s convenient. That’s about it

18. Does your party keep any pets?

Our ranger, God bless her, has her pack pig Snortin Norton, sold to her by one Flinton B Skinton. And Flint really wants a monkey, he’s been trying to find one for ages.

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

Not really ? I’m the kind guy that if my dice rolls a 1 I will bench it for a bit, but tbh all my dice are cursed af and I’ve kinda just learned to roll with it by making my characters canonically terrible at everything lmao.

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

Aw man I can’t remember when or how, it’s been so long. I had a couple friends who were kinda into it, but all the games they tried to run were complete disasters. I only really started playing I’m the past year or so? Maybe a little more ? Adrian was my first character, and he was a very RP heavy character in a party of tanks and they all hated him but MAN was it fun.

21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done?

Oh all the time. One time my character was careless and didn’t check for traps on a legendary artefact and it lead to the death of a party member. One time my character got angry at his party and walked out. My characters don’t make good decisions, but that’s part of the fun.

22. What color was your first dragon?

White! I thought it was silver at first and went to go say hi, and it clawed me within half my HP straight away lmao.

23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns?

Oh dude, original all the way. I live for that shit.

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

Depends on the session, but usually a good few hours, couple of days if I’m DMing.

25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for?

“You wake up in a mysterious forest. The strained autumn sun shines through the trees. The only thing you can see it each other, the trees, and an old sign post leading to a path that says "Myrrill” on it. What do you do?“ "We walk in the opposite direction of the sign deeper into the forest.” “…of course you do.”

26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters.

I wrote a full carnival show one time for them to watch, and then it got derailed when a horrific monster attacked. But writing all the characters and their acts, and watching my players get entranced as I described it ? Magical, my dood.

27. Do you allow homebrew content?

I live and breathe homebrew content. I don’t know what my games would be without it. I LOVE homebrew.

28. How often do you use NPCs in a party?

I make some pretty sick characters if I do say so myself, so I throw them in a LOT.

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

Oh dude, role play all the way. Fighting and killing stuff is great, but role-play is just so good. We can go from laughing with a bartender to crying over a backstory reveal and it’s just beautiful.

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

Depends on the party, but i find the best players are a little bit of both XD

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

Official ? I’m a fan of the hexblade warlock? Bards are always a good call, and to be real playing monks make me feel like an absolute badass. Race wise, there are just so many. If we’re only talking players handbook stuff, half elf is always rad. Outside of that? I’ve been researching the Shadar-Kai lately and I’m LIVING. They’re so rad.

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

What would you call the disaster gay? I don’t really gear my characters towards usefulness in combat, so it’s just whatever the class happens to lend itself to.

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

I usually write my character, personality, backstory, alignment etc, before I even pick a class or even a race. I basically just make OCs and apply them to dnd rules, and it’s SO much fun. 10/10, would recommend.34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

FLAVOUR. My party usually hates me, but what I lack in combat utility I more than make up for in creative out of combat skill checks XD.

35. How much roleplay do you like to do?

Boi, I even RP my combat, and the great thing is it rubs off on my party too. I’ll have a really low initiative and everyone else will be like “I attack and do 10 points of damage” but then on my round I’m like “I use my staff to leap across the battlefield towards the opponent and launch out with a spinning kick to their jaw” and everyone else is like “oh, okay, that’s what we’re doing.” and the battle becomes so much more dynamic and cinematic, it’s amazing !

[themilokin]

14, 17, 29, 30, 31

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

Oh god. Oh no. The LONGEST LIST…

The Historical Preservation Society of Fandolin - My first ever dnd party playing Lost Mines of Phandelver! This was a bunch of years ago and I still have very very fond memories. We got our name by a scheme that managed to get us a 1v1 fight with a necromancer and then later an invitation to see some bugbears but that turned out less good. Comprised of Flint the Dwarven Cleric who 100% started a table-wide superstition of warhammers never hitting their targets, Taris the Half-Orc Paladin noble who originated the scheme, Tilwynn Syrr (Mr. Sir)- my wood elf rogue- who continued the scheme and butted heads with Taris repeatedly, and Eileer- a wood-elf beastmaster ranger who we called Grandma for her age and general personality. It was a wild few months.

Ghostbusters - A hard-scrabble group of idiots fight off supernatural threats and actual cannibal Shia LeBouff in the Magic The Gathering setting of Innestrad. The first campaign my girlfriend and I got to play together, and her first campaign! Comprised of her Ness (a Hunter Ranger with RIDICULOUS damage output), my Vermillion Kade (assassin and group dad), a Fighter that died to a Shambling Mound and came back as a Bagpiping Bard whose names elude me, Nessnemo (Nemo for clarity- a barbarian whose outfit consisted of primarily straps and little else), and Anders (A druid who caused the tablewide joke of ‘Bear in a Banquethall’ whenever players do something Very Ill-Advised because they missed a detail of description). We also saw a character named Chrodechild in this game while I took over for a Birthday Two-shot DMing stint.

OG Sendra - The first attempt at a full-length campaign. Comprised of Chrodechild the enchantress that eventually face-heel-turned into a villain, Lorelai Elffei the thief from a town of children who died and came back, Nemo (once more, but tiefling this time), Eseka the Halfling Monk/Bard performer in a circus (I THINK to melil, actually) who died and was restored, and Feverfew- the Drow Warlock of the Archfey.It had a pretty high character-swap-and-death rate. Feverfew the warlock died and became Patrin the Dragonborn Paladin who was then ALSO killed, and Kanseif the Human Barbarian Warrior Princess came about to replace him. Chrodechild turned evil and was replaced with Rhadha the crippled tiefling warlock who had made a deal with hags and had a long contract full of stipulations. Brill had to depart after character moments occurred and came back as Sylvienne Ghost- an Aasimar druid and Therapy Dog. There were further character swaps later on, but by the time they occurred the campaign had begun to grind to a halt.

Shards of the Past - A campaign run by a friend. The party was gathering the broken fragments of a rod of Manticores to fight back against the northern Empire. We were contracted by the queen to do so and BOY we sucked at it but we sure did win the war! A human paladin (whose name escapes me) with a lion-steed named Balthazar, Kestral the human Ranger-assassin (who had bird-themed names for her whole family it was rad), and my gnome Wizard Sullivan Orren du Ghislain-Ameritte III, who slowly descended towards lawful evil as the game progressed. It was a WILD romp. 

ThreaTTT - My second stab at DMing! The players awoke in prison after a night of wildly out-of-hand carousing and had to pay off their debt to society in service to Drann’s public. Mostly monster hunting and character-driven, the first introduction of The Timeless and Sliver of Moon! Party consisted of Tor (half-elf half-dwarf bard who was locked in an endless one-sided rivalry with Fortesque D’artigan- another half-elven bard), Risc Taxis (an assassin from the Talons, the southern Thieves and Assassin’s guild in Sendra, and an addict to Celadon- a opiate that stains fingers blue), and Atonement/Toni- an Aasimar Archfey warlock who was fleeing an engagement and was beholden to the whims of her 12 year old patron. They more or less made a thrash metal band by level 5, and Cera- a merfolk enchantress prostitute- joined up with them after a trip to the Stormlashed Sea. Her name didn’t fit the scheme, but she was loads of fun.

Pile of Idiots/Fortune’s Favor/Dumb Luck - You know this one, Muffin. ;P Comprised of a Fireball-Happy Endlessly-Curious sorcerer, an Extra As Shit 4 Elements Monk, the Queen of the Sea herself, The Worlds Best Bard, Smol Druid with Smol Doggo frond, and Beefest Lizard Tank, these idiots try and save the world- or at least get by.

Trees Beneath the Seas - A campaign that got very away from us, and where Moon received most of his character development. It was a huge party, which I think detracted a bit from the potential RP fun, but I got to be RECKLESS. We had Damon Pyre the Half-Elf-Half-Dragon Sorcerer, Durieal Durnam the OP monk that was killed by the weapon he carried, Saneva Amailo the hexblade warlock of Garagos and certified Edgelord Supreme, Quv the gnome-turned-elf rogue that left and whose player came back with Rue the Pumpkin Queen the human druid, Amaya Arissius the wood-elf Horizon Walker Ranger (who died and was reincarnated as a human), Verath the Dragonborn bard, Persephone O’Dougal the Canim forge cleric, Braugen Rowcron the dwarf barbarian who came back later as Satsuss the yuan-ti artificer, Arlow Rathers the paladin of Illmater and best baker the world has ever seen, Waruk Flamesong the half-orc wizard/cleric who sank the world, and finally Sliver of Moon who robbed, lied, and smooth-talked his way into and out of worlds of trouble as a swashbuckling rogue-fighter-paladin-sorcerer (we got to lvl 30 shit got WEIRD).

Harder Than We Thought - Thrush’s game! We played on the continent of Sivaan- slowly coming under siege by a power called The Parody that wanted to make the whole world just a liiiiiiiittle more interesting. Evelynn Mercado (Parsippany Olapieros) the half-elf blade-bard with ten tons of swagger in a ten ounce body who was looking for her father and making her own name in the world, Thrush Marigold the endlessly sunny sun-soul monk who was learning about his tiefling heritage while looking for his mother, Sir Tim the Halfling Hero For Hire Paladin who was making his tiefling lover and his son proud, Dune the bloodhunter with a Big Problem with hags, ‘The’ Wothe the more traditional halfling bard who was potentially about to be Thrush’s uncle by marriage, Perryn the Air Genasi Beastmaster Ranger and prankmaster general, and a dragonborn sorcerer I cannot recall the name of with terrible eyesight.

Punk! - A portal-fantasy run by our Innestrad DM, with a fantastic set up where he said he had to take a call during our session 0 and walked out. We then all got messages at the table saying he’d been replaced and to not trust him, and when he came back his whole body language was changed and then ‘sucked us into a portal’ via his tome of handbooks he got rebound into one HUGE book. We all played ourselves but better, and it was wild.

Umber Wilds/Aspiring Cryptids - One I’m currently running on mondays! A group of adventurers Doing Their Best. Audhilde Stoneforger is the Eldritch Knight and Battle Goddess who can leap up to 170 feet because I’ve broken my own will. Larken Delmare is the human shadow sorcerer who used to be an elf and came back wrong, she’s got ties to the first lands of Thielle and is dealing with Coming Back Wrong as best she can. Yseult Brighton is a water-genasi grave cleric with both Selune and Shar claiming portions of her soul, she’s been dubbed the World’s Okayest Cleric and is basically a fishbowl made of friendship. Lastly there’s Ekaterina Sheralova, a drow Gloomstaker Ranger with the most flamboyant fashion and cat-like personality whose family is probably going to wind up killing her or trying to.

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

BIG CRITS! You max your primary damage die and then roll the second, so you’re always hitting big when you get that nat 20! I have to beef so much health because of this.

Flanking - Instituted around the In-Person table: when you flank you get a +2 to hit, not advantage. It’s less OP that way.

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

Usually RP heavy sessions are my favorite thing, but sometimes you just want to hit something. XD I’ve found I really like a healthy dose of both, but I love it when the combat functions to fuel RP, so RP is probs my more favorite kind.

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

They’ve trended more diplomatic! I’m grateful for it, and it’s neat seeing what pushes characters into ‘murder’ when they start out with diplomacy.

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

Oh golly, probably Rogue or Paladin for favorite class, but Bard is up there too. I love versatility, and Rogue and Bard are skill monkey classes that are super fun. Paladin’s whole ‘strength from your belief in an ideal’ is also hella fun tho, I like it when paladins draw power from belief not in a god, but in a principle that guides them. Favorite race is harder, I don’t really have a favorite- but I know I dislike playing as Dragonborn, Aarakokra, and Lizardfolk personally. They’re just not for me, I think.

[transfemininomenon]

hey alice I've seen you mention then before and they seem really interesting and I was wondering if you could tell us more about your dnd characters! (Whichever your favorite is or who you feel like talking about) or even a tag you have where I could read up more!

:O i would LOVE to talk about some of my dnd characters

my three main ones are my half-elf raven queen warlock gwyndolin (aka gwyn), my human swashbuckler rogue gertrude, and my life cleric alicia 

gwyn was the character i played when @speechjam was DMing who is a half-moon elf with Parental Baggage (because what’s a half-elf who doesnt have an iffy relationship with their parents) who is very gay and very trans and canonically Really Hot because she has a literally goddess gifted body. her parents raised her in an elf city where she experienced a lifetime of racism for being a half-elf, and that combined with not having a great relationship with her parents as well as dealing with dysphoria eventually led to her attempting suicide. however when this happened, she suddenly found herself before the raven queen, who told her it was not yet her time, and offered her a deal - a new body and some of her power in exchange for making a pact with her. she readily agreed, and was reborn as gwyndolin

since then she’s spent a few years acting as a servant of the raven queen, acting as a sort of soul bounty hunter tracking down people who had unnaturally escaped death and dealing with necromancers/undead infestations. eventually she happened to take a job that led to her meeting the party, including happening to bump into her elf druid cousin solira played by @lyssatbqh

she’s also a total Disaster Lesbian and cant talk to women to save her life which is a problem when Lots of women want to talk to her on account of being Really Hot. she has a thing for knives and has like 8 of them on her. she also has a spirit familiar in the form of a raven named crawford who she always makes keep watch for her at night instead of doing it herself

THEN gertrude is the character i play in @lyssatbqh‘s campaign, which is a homebrew campaign set in the dark souls world. gertrude’s whole life was spent believing that humanity didnt matter and only existed to serve the gods - lessons instilled in her from birth by her parents. often being left alone while her parents were off doing whatever religious things they were off doing, she grew used to wondering the city of anor londo by herself, exploring every alley and climbing every roof top, having just a dagger given to her by her parents as a form of protection 

as she grew older her parents tried getting her more involved in the way of white (the religious organization they were a part of), and gertrude never really quite got the whole “sit and study and pray” part of it, but she found ways to use her natural charisma and dexterity to instead serve the gods by acting as a spy against people who might speak out against the gods. this is how she met the party initially, being sent by one of the gods to spy on a book club founded by @speechjam‘s character brillin. long story short the party ended up encountering some of the witches of izalith, went to izalith right as the witch of izalith was trying to recreate the first flame, and they all fucking DIED 

some long period of time later the party all mysteriously came back to life, and have since came back to life any time they have died, always returning to whatever fire they’d rested at. the whole experience of dying and coming back forced gertrude to, for the first time in her life, have to think about being a human and what humanity meant and what her place in the world was, and she proceeded to go into a several week long existential crisis. during this time the party investigated some mysterious happenings around the city of new londo involving other people coming back to life, fought some demons, and eventually made their way back to anor londo

the whole time gertrude was hoping returning to anor londo would get her some answers from the god she had been working for by the name of flame god flann. however, upon returning he offered no real help, and seemingly didnt even remember that she had worked for him. this furthered her growing crisis and fear and doubt, and eventually the party confronted her about her sneakiness and dodging questions, and she confessed the nature by which she’d originally joined the group, and asked for their forgiveness and explained that she’d suddenly had a Lot to think about and that a lot of things she thought she’d known had been thrown out the window. the party was initially hurt, especially brillin, and gertrude suddenly found herself for the first time Caring about other people and how her actions had effected them, but they eventually forgave her and they continued to all work together to maybe figure out a little more on what was happening

encountering two strange people known as skin man and skeleton man, the party worked with them and eventually learned that skin man also was coming back from the dead, but also seemed to be fading away more and more each time he came back - becoming less of himself and more just a blank husk. eventually skin man went missing, and the party found him by a mysterious machine that could answer questions for them - in exchange for memories

gertrude used it to ask two questions, choosing first between the memories of her time working for flann, her time with the way of white, and her memories of brillin, who she had grown increasingly close with throughout their travels (because gertrude is a Fool and JUST kept jokingly flirting until she fooled around and caught real feelings), eventually choosing the way of white. she then had the option of flann, brillin, or her forgetting the memories and associations that her daggers had with her, eventually choosing daggers

her questions were if the gods cared about her, about people, and then the second was if she, too, was gonna steadily fade away the more she died. she received a simple answer for both - no, and yes 

initially going into another crisis, she soon shock that feeling off and decided on a new course of action, a flame suddenly lighting in her as she realized that she couldn’t rely on the gods anymore, and that it was people, and her new found friends, that she had to rely on. the gods were seemingly uncaring about their current plight, and she would find answers on her own. no longer being shackled by the gods, she would suddenly live as she was meant to - as a person, as a human 

the party eventually fought a couple more demons and, with the help of skeleton man, defeated them. in the aftermath, gertrude and brillin FINALLY smooched and it was RAD, and they later had a roof top discussion about everything and about Them. they came to the conclusion that neither of them really knew what was happening, or what their place in the universe was, and the weight of the inevitably of them both hollowing was ever present, but they wouldn’t focus on that - they would focus on the now, on living as best they could in the moment, and deciding that they would eventually figure things out, and they would do that Together 

dang i didn’t mean to do just a plot summary of that whole campaign so far but i got TOO into talking about gertrude i just……………….. love her so much guys she has learned and grown so much she literally started off as half a joke character i literally threw her concept together 10 minutes before the first session started and she became so!!!!! much more than i could’ve ever expected

anyway my other character is alicia aka the Divine Lady who i cant talk about TOO much because i just started playing her and friends in that campaign follow me and there’s #spoilers but she’s a life cleric who was once a shy awkward little boy named joey who has grown in to a slightly less awkward but no less shy but STRONG woman. she’s a life cleric and JUST wants to help people she’s really caring and is always worried about someone and i love her she’s such a change of pace from my usual edgy characters she is TOO good for this world and has two beautiful lesbian blacksmith moms and a million adopted “cousins” who she all loves dearly 

she’s surprisingly Buff, enjoys blacksmithing (she made all of her armor and weapons), is a big fan of beauty in all forms, is an avid reader, and is constantly writing letters home to her family and keeping a diary of her adventures. she worships lethandar (aka god of birth & renewal) as well as sune (aka goddess of beauty), with the symbol of sune crafted into her shield and her mace designed to have a sun motive for lethandar, and she has big dorky glasses because she’s blind as a bat

some other side characters include primrose my college of swords bard who is JUST primrose from octopath traveler, ailce my water genasi druid that i usually play in one shots who in the most recent one shot i played her in adopted a wonderful child who has bat ears and was NOT appreciated by their parents and she loves them with all her heart, and ari “the banshee” who is a city cleric in a modern space based campaign who is an anarchist and part of a punk rock band 

oh! also i have a tag for gwyn (which is just #gwyn tag) and TWO for gertrude (#former gertrude tag and #gertrude tag, former being for dagger related things since she lost her love of them) and im sure i’ll get an alicia one going! its all just like aesthetic stuff or things i relate to them but you can get a good sense of those characters through those 

[savrenim]

I'm so jealous of your gay elf murder bachelorette campaign that I now desperately want my own. Any recommendations on how to find people to play D&D with? I have several friends who are interested, but none of us have any questions experience (between my secondhand experience of reading about your adventures) so we don't know how to get started

oh gods so apparently I have A Lot Of Opinions and it got really long, so under the cut, also thank you for reminding me that I should probably properly type up the finale of Gay Murder Elf Bachelorette Campaign Book 1 because it was freaking epic and this is the one campaign that I can properly rant about on tumblr without worrying about spoilers

(I’m in three campaigns right now) (by complete accident) (on the one hand it’s a bad life decision in that I have zero free time anyways with grad school, but on the other hand it has become my sole social interaction with anyone ever and also coping mechanism for the stress and one good thing I do for me and, like, they’re not all weekly campaigns, so hours-per-week I’m devoting isn’t ridiculous) (and I miss my friends and it’s re-connected me with them and also has introduced me to upperclassmen in the department) (but sometimes there are character secrets and people who potentially follow me on tumblr so I can’t post the super long dramatic things about a character that I really want to)

OKAY SO HOW TO GET INTO PLAYING

I will be real, the three campaigns that I am in right now are the first time I’ve played DnD for anything that lasted longer than a week and a half at a summer camp type deal, like, arguably, this is my real first time playing DnD….ever. That being said, I’ve worked at gay theater camp for….six years now? And they do super intense super in-character LARPing that is far more roleplaying-heavy than mechanics heavy and has trained me to both have very good story instincts of, like, “this is how you make decisions that both fit with your character and support the narrative instead of oppose it, and either do not tear the party apart, or tear the party apart but for a very good and fitting narrative reason (i.e. if there’s going to be strife, make it mean something)” and in my opinion it is when you bring those sorts of instincts to a DnD game that you get the most satisfying story out of it. Character creation, team cohesion, and story and world development are all things that I do feel super comfortable speaking about because that is my literal jam outside of my math jam which is paying for me to be alive and stuff. So here we go.

There are a couple of questions that you need to immediately answer, the first being, “do you want to play Dungeons and Dragons, or do you want to start with a mechanically less complicated system?” Because there are a lot of pretty good systems out there that are high fantasy even (i.e. Dungeon World) that are a lot more streamlined in terms of “you don’t need to be as familiar with a set of rules in order to play.” That being said, Dungeons and Dragons is classic and is fantastic and I freaking adore it. (I will be completely honest, the only other two systems I know right now are Dungeon World, which is fantasy, and Mech Noir, which holy shit you are playing noir style detectives except in a SCI FI SETTING WHERE YOU PILOT MECHAS and the entire game system is around applying “adjectives” to people like, if you successfully roll against an enemy, you get to pick any adjective you can think of ever from “grappled” to “trusting” to “confused” to “located” and it just makes for such interesting storytelling)

which vaguely brings me to my first piece of real advice: you learn how to play best by witnessing playing happening. if you are a podcast person, I highly recommend either The Adventure Zone or Friends At The Table (or, honestly, if you have the time, both). The Adventure Zone plays DnD, 5th Edition, and it is a super quality family who are goofing off and having fun together and then the plot that arises is like “oh shit I am crying about a wizard named Taako, pronounced taco, how did this happen to me” and it’s great. The Adventure Zone is 100% the reason why I reached out to friends and was like “yoooo is anyone starting a campaign because TAZ has made me want to play again.” Friends at the Table starts with Dungeon World and it is some of the best storytelling and worldbuilding I’ve ever heard? And you will learn so much about how to set things up and go with the flow and the DM talks a lot about his process as offhand comments and you will learn so much. I’ve heard good things about Critical Role, but haven’t listened myself. But get out there, listen, and then don’t be afraid of copying things that you admire. Best way to learn.

If you’re going with Dungeons and Dragons, start with 5th Edition. 0th, 1st, and 2nd are all ridiculously unbalanced, 3 is “actually everyone uses 3.5,” or a combo 3.5/Pathfinder. While 3.5/Pathfinder is a great system and is what we’re playing both in gay murder elf bachelorette campaign and in the math grad departmental campaign, and was the game that I learned on, 5e is a lot more streamlined and they’re aren’t super picky exact rules for every tiny thing you could think of doing, which means you don’t need to be familiar with a vast system full of loopholes and counters and counter-counters to know how to effectively play the game. we don’t talk about 4th edition

Decide who is going to be the DM. There are sometimes comic stores that’ll run weekly or biweekly or monthly games of DnD, but those are almost definitely going to be less story-based and usually are one-shots? And if you’ve got a good group of friends, I recommend just playing with them and not trying to find an external group that you don’t know. I’m vaguely assuming that you’re volunteering to be DM because you’re asking? But if there’s someone in your group of friends who likes writing things or likes managing things or is interested, or if people want to take turns trying stuff out, go for that. The department group rotates DMs (and rotates games) just based on who has something written that they’re excited to try out.

You also might want to ask around to see if there are any people that you vaguely know, or that are friends of friends, who play. You’d be surprised how many people do. I’ve also seen blogs on tumblr sometimes going “hey, I’m running a Skype campaign and I need two or three more players, if people are interested fill out this survey and then depending mostly on times people are free but also what you say about what you’re looking for from a game I’ll pick the players?” or if y’all are in college there is almost always a DnD club somewhere, hidden semi-secret on campus, on the register to get club funding but under the radar because nerds. But you and your friends who are semi-interested will work just fine, as long as semi-interested means they’re actually willing to commit for a bit. So how do you get started?

Get the Player’s Handbook, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and read them cover to cover. If you’re playing and not DMing, eh, skip this step, and have the DM do it instead, but the Dungeon Master’s Guide especially will walk you through how to set up things mechanically very well and if you’re going in blind it will be good to have gone through and read it all once. I’ve read the 3.5 DMG cover to cover several times, haven’t read 5e yet, I know that I didn’t like their storytelling tips, but read through it once to get an idea of what mechanics might look like, it gives very good starting mechanical advice.

1. Speed and smoothness of playing are important, which means that sometimes, if you don’t know a rule, you want to make something up on the fly and deliver it with a completely straight face. Everybody does homebrew. Rules are great because they keep things from devolving into chaos and they can settle disputes, but also, sometimes you’ve just got to make a call, and if you make it while looking like you know what you’re doing, everyone will believe you. Similarly, don’t make the same rolls, or the same number of rolls, for NPC characters as you would for PCs. For example, in gay murder elf bachelorette campaign, when Iria was both directing a full assault on a hobgoblin fortress as well as had put herself on the special strike team that was going to sneak in and open the portcullis, the DM made ~one or two rolls~ to see how successful the Caedic units were at each of the points of Iria’s plan, instead of rolling a full battle between ~40 hobgoblins and ~80 elves. screentime is important; if you’re spending too much time on not-the-players, it gets boring for the players, so roll enough dice to decide what’s going on with a tad bit of luck and so it seems like other characters have rules that they have to follow, but you don’t have to let the rules dictate every single thing that happens in-world. you dictate that.

2. Character creation is how you set yourself up for success. Do not underestimate the importance of party dynamics. You don’t all have to be playing best friends or even people who get along–in Spelljammer, Marian and Djin had the character backstory of “ten years ago we were captain and co-captain of a vessel and for Reasons got into a huge fight over nothing and split and Marian took half the ship with her and she thought she’d never see him again but now oops they’ve both ended up jobless on the same station and Marian was already pooling as many resources as she could to try to put together a new ship and Djin arrived a couple months into this and needed the work so joined this ragtag democratic crew, but there’s a shit ton of tension.” This worked because we were snippy to each other in dialogue, when push came to shove, Marian is professional enough such that her whole deal is putting personal feelings aside always no matter what, and Djin takes the passive in passive-aggressive super seriously, so it never meant that the party was sitting around arguing for hours or refusing to cooperate. Meanwhile, I’ve seen and heard of campaigns falling apart because “there are two thieves and one really wants to get to do all the sneaking so they argue all the time over who gets to do cool stuff” or “the evil fighter literally just wants to murder everyone which means everyone else can’t get stuff done.” You can have intra-party strife and have it be interesting, but only if players are doing it cooperatively instead of being at each other’s throats irl. Rule of thumb: if the party dynamics are frustrating the other players, you are doing something wrong.

2.5 That being said, if a party starts to develop into bad dynamics, it is fixable without betraying character! For example, in the department campaign, I’ve been playing a super sheltered youngest child elf wizard from a super established Elvin wizard family (of, like, oh the arcanic postlines that let mail be sent around the continent? Grandpa came up with that theory. Schools of magic identified and classified originally? That was the Maewels) so Seraph is a tad bit privileged and a tad bit sheltered and is uppity sometimes. There was a fighter in the party who liked his alcohol, once missed a huge battle that the rest of us had to cover for him because he’d seduced two women at the inn we were hanging out at before the town was attacked, and typically did things like walk around in the morning with no pants on. And he proceeded to interpret Seraph’s increasing shock and disdain for him (or rather specifically, how upset she was the first time she saw him pantless) as “yeah all women go for me.” The party was vaguely splitting into “Seraph’s side and Silas’s side” so I decided to aggressively interpret one of the battles we went through together as a bonding experience and lo and behold Seraph’s feelings started to change over the next couple of weeks to “you might be an inconsiderate asshole but you’re OUR inconsiderate asshole so only we are allowed to rag on you” and she became one of his biggest supporters esp when they got to his hometown. All you really need is one super solid, proactive player in a party to make sure that things are resolved in a solid manner, so if you’re not the one DMing? Be that player.

2.75 Okay but if you’re DMing, have the conversation with your players as they’re designing their characters about point (2) because good party dynamics are easiest when you get it from the start.

3. Design encounters around the party. You don’t need a traditional setup of “a tank, a mage, a healer, and a thief” to have an effective and fun party. Maybe everyone wants to play a thief, great, design the scenario to be “you have all been contracted by the thieves’ guild to sneak into this party and assassinate this noble, you have three days to prepare and these resources, make a plan” instead of “this is a traditional dungeon crawl where you are fighting big scary monsters despite the fact that none of you are melee fighters.” Similarly, figure out what sort of stories and settings and aesthetics your players are interested in, and then play that game.

4. Make it personal. Ask people about their backstory and then incorporate stuff in. Notice what they become invested in and adjust your plans to include more of that. Give characters individual arcs that fit vaguely into the overall story, but also that they are the semi-protagonist of. Right now in Spelljammer, we’re all dealing with “so there are weird tears in the universe that Password, this Extinct AI we found and befriended, says are reminiscent of literally the entire universe ripping apart at the seams and are possibly why the Extinct went extinct, oh and some random lady gave us this artifact called the Eye and told us to hide it from the Blind King? And now his servants are hunting us? We are literally scav elves this is so above our pay grade.” Except going on as subplots, Algol is being hunted down by this evil overseer of whatever place in Echoside he originally escaped from, Leif got a stone that gives her prophetic dreams, Kimi has been super close to Password and Leif dreamed about them stitching the universe together, and Marian is dealing with an "oh shit I’ve accidentally adopted these three kids even though I don’t do personal” along with “oh god have I literally become the captain of this ship because I AM THE ONLY ADULT LEFT” along with some old friends from her past trying to reconnect just after we got a prophecy about how the last thing the Blind King would send to steal the Eye was someone we loved turned against us. So yeah, sure, there are big Adventure Plotlines going down that involve the entire party, but we’re not doing things just to do them, everyone is personally invested in this for their own reasons. So when you plan a big adventure, both plan places where individual party members get to start both for who they are and what they can do, as well as along the way keep an eye out for things that you can tie in for them.

5. Consequences matter. And not just stuff like “Iria got stabbed really bad first session and nearly died, now every time she goes into rage at the end needs to roll a fortitude save to not fall unconscious, and whenever she rolls a one same deal.” But also consequences like “you were really rude to this person and now they don’t like you and they are friends with the owner of the apothecary, who now also doesn’t like you and marks up prices behind your back” or "you let one of the patrol escape and now the whole army knows that you’re coming” or “you saved this kid’s life even though you were in enemy territory and now five years later he recognizes you even though you’ve been captured and is making sure that the party is taken prisoner instead of killed.” Make NPCs (non-player characters, ie characters the DM controls) recurring characters instead of people that you meet once, and have the way that the NPCs feel and then interact with the players change based on how prior interactions go. Have them care about things and have them remember. It makes the world feel a lot more real.

6. Preparing for a session goes petty much "how much do you like improv”. If you’re chill improvising, you want written down the stats of the monsters/enemies your players are potentially going to encounter, and probably a vague idea of goals, and then just play it by ear. Jeremy (the person running gay murder elf bachelorette and spelljammer) has I think at this point 13 “Books” written for gay murder elf bachelorette campaign, will write long descriptions of characters, settings, has maps drawn, has customized his own random encounter tables, has made his own homebrew system for how spaceship mechanics works specifically so that we could better piece together our spaceship with fantasy duct tape during the Death Races, and overplans every last detail all the way down to “has different musical themes that he’ll swap out and play at different times.” like, Iria has a Trauma theme that is played every time her wound starts acting up. He has collected music for books in advance. He has multiple different theme songs for each of the players in spelljammer. He writes notes about what NPCs are thinking so that he can reference it later. But that’s because he knows that he prefers the things he comes up with when he has time to plan things out, instead of when he’s surprised. He knows his own storytelling style. “eh, an outline and some monster stats” would not work for him the same way that I’ve seen it work for other people. You don’t have to put a ridiculous amount of prep work and writing time into being a DM, you need to figure out how much prepared material you need to run something comfortably, and then prepare that much.

6.5 Understand no matter what you plan, bits and pieces will probably be derailed, and be okay with that. Nothing is more upsetting than when a DM does not respect player autonomy and invalidates the clever things they think of, because it goes against their own plans. I think being a DM/running a story is sort of halfway “you’re writing a novel” and halfway “oh shit except this time the characters ACTUALLY have minds of their own” and striking a balance instead of dominating the narrative makes it fun. Also, it means you can throw in problems that you have no solutions for. During the Death Races in spelljammer, our battery started running out of plasma, which meant that the pressurization was getting all wonky, Leif immediately goes over and says “I have a spell called Reduce Object, can I cast it on the internal casing to try to up the pressure of what little plasma we have left” and Jeremy goes “uummmm sure if Kimi is over there to help you rewire the rest of the battery on the fly because you are SHRINKING HALF OF ITS PARTS” and then that held for three minutes until oh shit it was still low on plasma and Marian ran over and went “wait a second guys I have a Flaming Sphere spell except Jeremy, Jeeeeremy, I’m technically a plasma variety of Light Cleric, my ~god~ that ~gives me my divine magic~ is the collective of star dryads which live in balls of plasma, we’ve established prior in this setting that some of my fire spells are actually plasma spells, not fire, Jeeeeeremly can shove my hand into the empty battery casing and cast a flaming, 10-foot in diameter ball of plasma to try to give us a fuel boost” and Jeremy went “okay fuck it, stick your hand in the battery and cast a flaming sphere of plasma to give the ship a fuel boost, Leif, make another concentration check to hold the pressure.” and it did and we won the race the end we’re the coolest space elves ever. moral of the story: your players will come up with clever things. Sometimes clever things that mess up your plans. Let it happen, it’s more fun that way.

(Iris has come up with a truly heinous but potentially really effective military tactic that gay murder elf bachelorette campaign is actually a bit more delicate because it’s set in a larger world that Jeremy is running multiple other campaigns in and I’m still not sure if Iria is legit going to be a villain that I face off as a good PC one day, or if she’s a historical figure, or even whether or not this campaign is set in the past, but either way the history of this world matters? and the idea that I came up with has the potential to re-shape history? and I told it to Jeremy and he was quiet for a very long time and then thanked me for telling him and so Iria told Talvus in-character and we’re going to see whether or not in a couple of books this ends up changing the entire history of the world that he runs multiple campaigns in or something drastic like that, but hey, player wants to do something you haven’t thought of, “I didn’t think of that” is not a good enough reason to not let them do it.)

7. Decide if you want to write your own adventure, buy/find online a pre-written one, or vaguely do something in the middle. If you’re going for something pre-written, edits bits and pieces as you go to personalize it to your characters. I have a friend who just wrote and published something for DnD 2nd Edition? And it looks great? http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/229248/War-Wizards-of-the-Wasteland Even if you don’t play a pre-written adventure, reading a bunch of them will give you an idea of what preparing for sessions is like and what sort of information you should have on hand.

8. Don’t be afraid to make up home-brew mechanics, either for the whole party or for an individual player. Jeremy ran a vignette session called “Flight of the Kalla Tukal” in which we were playing a trio of orcs that had fallen through a tear in space and had just managed to get back and were searching for our tribe, which left without us. Except in his setting, orcs are a super psionic almost hivemind race? You meet orcs outside of radiation space sometimes, but they’re usually Not Coping Very Well with the fact that they’ve been cut off from their community. But the Kalla Tukal were still all linked together so we weren’t all going mad. then the other part of being psychic orcs meant that we could at any point attempt to do telekinesis or mind-control something, and the way that it was determined whether or not that worked is roll a d20, except we’re not trying to get 20, we’re trying to roll as close to each other in number as possible. There was one dramatic moment when two of us rolled 4’s or something and it was a critical success. but it was so cool to have that weird drift-comparability mechanic, and, like, the more people in our group that wanted to contribute, the more likely two people were to roll the same number. it was just?????? so cool??????? so if you want your party to all be psychically connected and be able to throw stuff with their minds I totally recommend that.

on a more personal/one-player level, in the department campaign, it has developed that Seraph really wants to be a research wizard like her family before her, and so the DM and I had a long conversation about the topics that she would want to research and a particular narrative impetus for her to start researching, and he came up with five or six new spells that Seraph will be able to invent over the course of the campaign, except because it’s experimental magic it’s going to start out with a 40% partial-to-total failure rate that will go down the more she tries to cast the spells, because hey, she’s working out the kinks. to me, it’s more than “oh this is a cool new mechanic,” it’s the DM cared enough to take the time to work with me and put what I thought was interesting into the campaign. and you have a lot of room to do that by adding your own rules and conventions and what-not. don’t be afraid to experiment, see what works, and then keep those mechanics around.

9. Start small. Don’t try to start with a whole huge epic campaign, you want to start by running a bunch of mini-arcs in different settings so that you get a feel for how to play and how to run things. This also gives you a chance to figure out how your group of friends plays, who is going to be the person that gives you the most scheduling problems, some of them might like the fighting parts more than the “come up with clever plans” or “interact with NPCs” parts, and this will give you an idea of who you actually want in a long-term campaign. Because long-term campaigns go on for years. Like, gay murder elf bachelorette is probably going to be a year and a half if Jeremy and I keep going at this pace? and that’s vaguely on the short side for something that Jeremy runs. A proper full epic campaign can be a huge time commitment, so start out with mini-arcs just to have fun and get used to stuff and because that is something that people will actually be able to commit time to.

I interrupt this long list of advice for another list of advice of potential ideas for miniature campaigns you could run for your friends. or one of your friends could run, if they’re interested in DMing:

COOL IDEAS FOR ONE-TO-FOUR SESSION MINI-CAMPAIGNS THAT I CAME UP WITH RIGHT NOW OR STOLE FROM FRIENDS WHO CAME UP WITH SUPER COOL THINGS

  —as mentioned in a previous bullet point, “you’re a group of thieves planning an assassination. this is how much money you have. each of your characters has one character connection in the city who can help you get items or forge a document etc etc. this is what the castle looks like. this is what you’ve figured out about guard shifts and security for the party. you have a week to plan. go” and then, like. somebody wants to try to pretend to be a noble to get in? fantastic. someone wants to try to seduce a guard? fantastic. sneaking in the traditional way? fantastic. all three at the same time. faaaantastic. it’s fun, it’s short, the way that you would prepare this is you would think about guards, defenses, patrols, maybe some of the nobles at the party are trained in magic or have weird special teams of guards and maybe have agendas of their own, and then what the actual ball itself would look like and maybe make a castle map, but the fun part of this scenario is the players get to be as creative as possible and I guarantee they will think of the coolest things and then you get to figure out how to react to those things in interesting ways to figure out whether or not they work.

  —okay this is a one-shot I have only heard legends about but everyone was playing a rock band of monsters who were about to give a super huge concert in monster city and I think someone had stolen a drum set or a guitar or something and they were trying to dodge paparazzi and get their instruments back but it was also ridiculous sex drugs rock & roll culture and a comedy one-shot that apparently was the coolest thing in the world, but you can’t go wrong if you start with “crazy monster rock band superstars”. during the sequel they went on tour to the human lands and I think wrecked a couple of cities.

  —this one is stolen from TAZ but fantasy WWE, the intro plot setup that is exposition in the first 10 minutes was “a friend of yours who is a famous wrestler just had her partner assassinated before the biggest match of the year, one of you has been asked to fill in for the match, another as the manager, and then the rest of you are trying to solve this murder mystery super quick because your friend is worried she’s the next target”

   —honestly any sort of “huge gladiator/fighting tournament but there’s drama and foul play going down behind the scenes” makes for a really good short arc. there’s a game that actually Jeremy invented that is played irl at gay theater camp called “bloodrush” which is such a ridiculous game, it’s….vaguely fantasy football except everyone also has daggers and swords and stuff and you are allowed to stab members of the other team but only when they’re holding the ball, although cheating is basically a requirement when the refs’ backs are turned, oh, by the way, the refs are vampires. there have been cases at camp where teams waiting in the bleachers for the next match enemy teams have crept up behind them and slit all their throats with foam daggers while the refs were watching the game, or poisonings, or just. anything you can think of, it’s gone down. my little brother once jumped on the biggest baddest counselor’s back, stabbed him in the shoulder, snatched the ball from him, did a front roll, and ran off, and scored a goal and that is one of his proudest moments of his life to this day, basically what I’m saying is you can’t go wrong with “bloodrush tournament” or whatever your own crazy fantasy sportsball game you want to make up and play.

   —“we are a bunch of archeologists who have a little bit of combat or magic training but not too much because mostly we’re archeologists and someone poked a button in a pyramid and oh god we’ve accidentally summoned an ancient race on monsters that feed on human souls, which also apparently there’s a secret military conspiracy that has been watching this site to try to stop these monsters and have come here to contain them but oops also are ready to murder ALL OF US because WE have human souls, now we’re trying to run and hide from both groups and figure out if we can find anything to banish the monsters again” (this is 100% stolen from a LARP written by a friend of mine) (I’m pretty sure same one who wrote the monster band one-shot, actually) (they’re a really good writer, okay)

   —PRISON ESCAPE. Think Guardians of the Galaxy 1. You can’t go wrong with a prison break game. character design will be so fun. I swear I thought of stuff like this separate from Jeremy. Jeremy’s writing a prison break game and has promised that I get to play Captain Jennijack, a genderfluid space pirate who totally woke up in this prison a week or so ago and doesn’t for the life of them know why they are here, there are, like, eight or ten possible things they could think of but they’re not sure which one they’ve technically been convicted of, and I am holding him to that.

   —Honestly, you have a book that you like? A movie? A TV show? One that you haven’t convinced your friends to watch yet? (or one that you have and they will recognize halfway through.) STEAL THAT, write and run a fanfiction game, it’ll be fun.

ADVICE PART 2: PREPARING FOR A LONGER CAMPAIGN ONCE YOU’RE COMFORTABLE DMING AND HAVE FIGURED OUT THE GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE GOOD CHEMISTRY AND DYNAMICS AND WANT TO STICK AROUND. I’m assuming you want advice for getting something vaguely like gay murder elf bachelorette to run, so I’m going to talk about broad story-based things that I think are important for setting up good stories?

10. Scheduling is key and what is most likely to mess you up. Pick your players carefully, pick people who are invested and who will turn up. If there are people who didn’t get along during your mini arcs, or who just had very different expectations of what the game should be like re fighting/mechanics and roleplaying balance, don’t put them in the same party. Picking a party isn’t about picking your friends, it’s about picking people who work well together as players, and whose playing style matches your storytelling style. You’re better off with less people but who are super quality players and share a vision with you and get along, than letting someone into the game that’s going to mess stuff up for everyone because of outside-of-game social politics. It’s just not worth it. Not when this might go on for years.

11. There’s something really powerful about a story that isn’t about the Chosen Ones, but instead you’re just a group of people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and now oh shit it’s on you to save the world. Epic campaigns generally become epic, like, you invest that much time and energy into something and by the finale you usually are saving the universe, but be willing to start out not special. Let specialness develop.

11.5 There is also something really powerful about there sometimes being problems that magic can’t fix. Or that just aren’t fixable. If you haven’t read the Young Wizards series go read it and cry.

12. Write in arcs. This goes along very well with starting small, but have there be different parts of the campaign that are semi self-contained as you slowly build up to something bigger, this is also where you start dropping in personal arcs. Arcs also allow you to change up the feel of the game and keep things interesting and keep people on their toes. The Adventure Zone does maybe the best example of how to have self-contained plot-driven arcs that build to something eventually cohesive, all arcs with their own unique setup and flavor. (The Adventure Zone: Balance is a really great game and I really do advise you listen to it, it’s ~70 episodes but it will get you used to the mechanics of 5e, and holy fuck is it a story.)

13. Don’t be afraid to steal plot points from your favorite things. Hell, don’t be afraid to steal the entire plots of your favorite things. Especially if you’re worried about your own writing skills or creativity or whatever? Fanfiction is freaking great, and it’s fun; some of the best games I’ve ever played have been fanfiction of super obscure things that the writer has afterwards told me what it was fanfiction of and it was so freaking fun to go read/watch the original after I’d already played an even cooler version???? It’s also pretty easy to start out fanfiction and then through developing personal arcs and following party interest, ending up with a story by the end that is entirely original and you. So write fanfiction if you don’t have any ideas, or honestly, if your fanfiction ideas excite you more than when you sit down and try to write with a blank slate.

14. You’re not limited to a high fantasy setting. Honestly, standard high fantasy/dungeon crawl stuff has gotten pretty boring for me? (although the department campaign is pretty cool, but that’s only because it’s high fantasy but we slip in jokes like “Seraph marches downstairs in her pajamas and channels her mother to start yelling at the innkeeper about the utterly terrible customer service of getting poisoned, non-consensually, and that she would like to speak to the manager of the local thieves’ guild to lodge a complaint” because even though it’s high fantasy, it’s funny. TAZ does really good high fantasy too because of how they weave a whole bunch of other stuff in.) but, like, YOU CAN DO DND IN SPACE. you can do modern urban fantasy. you can go post-apocalypse. you can go post-high-fantasy-apocalypse. you can play a supernatural style game. it’s your world, make it whatever you want.

14.5 It is possible to play things that are mechanically the class in the book, but have a different interpretation in the setting. Or just to works differently in the setting. in spelljammer, elves don’t have gods, and I vaguely developed over the course of a couple of months an old belief system that was pretty old even when Marian was a kid that she just pseudo-learned and didn’t quite believe but is now revisiting, and the difference between divine casters and arcane casters is actually just “magic is vaguely a part of physics and most arcane casters are tinkerers who are doing it via weird cool gadgets or are pseudo-scientists/engineers in their training and approach to magic, while for divine casters it’s more of an internal, feelings-based thing.” I’m also very very excited because I have developed a super intense and specific lore that is canonically what elves used to believe and what Marian believes, but might not actually be how the world and death specifically works at all, so I’m bouncing up and down on my feet waiting to discover what’s going down behind the scenes with gods in that campaign, instead of it just being “oh yeah choose your gods from the gods in the book.” in the department campaign, Seraph is from a family of wizards and thinks that she is a wizard even though she is actually an arcanist, because the world doesn’t have words different types of casters esp niche types of casters yet. the DM and I are planning for it to be a huuuuge surprise now that she’s leveled up enough to have access to “arcanic exploits” which are at-will abilities that wizards don’t have, and it is going to be an in-character process of her discovering that she can do something that according to the known laws of magic she shouldn’t be able to do, and now oh shit she has to research it. even though mechanically, we’re going pretty much entirely by the book, the book doesn’t exist in the world! characters don’t know what players know! make it interesting to discover things that you as a player might otherwise take for granted!

14.75 make magic and fighting sound cool, and design how you describe it to be specific to the setting or the culture. in gay murder elf bachelorette campaign, the way that Caedic casting works is you first have to draw a rune in the air that then hovers there all glowy, and then you “thread the needle” which is projecting power through it in a very specific manner, I’m pretty sure that Surrians cast differently, magic works different in different parts of the world. having a melee fight scene? describe how people exchange blows back and forth or let them choose how their killing blows will look or just make them feel like badasses whenever they try to do a cool thing because it’s cool. I am used to playing magic/caster characters just because I generally am more familiar with magical mechanics than fighting mechanics and magic has always been more interesting to me but holy crud I have never had a fight scene so fun as the one when Iria had led a researcher from the Black Lotus Labs to a fae font that she’d found scouting in the woods and this seaweed creature eventually attacked them and she did a badass holding it off with her scimitar an then Vennikus, the researcher, tried to throw a cold iron knife at it but missed, and so Iria, who had been training in two-weapon fighting, saw the knife, did a front roll underneath the monster’s next swing, picked up the knife, exchanged a flurry of blows with the thing now two-handed fighting which eventually ended with her doing this super badass throwing both weapons in the air and catching them to switch hands, leaping on the things back, slashing so deep with her scimitar that it finally got through all of the seaweed and cleared it before it could get back to a weird, pulsating green heart, which then she drove the cold iron blade into all the way up to its hilt. which was so much cooler than “oh shit I rolled a crit on my scimitar hand and confirmed it and I guess that deals enough damage for this thing to die,” nah, I drove a cold iron knife into that thing’s pulsating heart and so that’ll be a scene that I never forget. Even when I miss Jeremy makes me sound cool because then when the enemies miss he talks about how good my footwork is or how well I’ve drilled to block these exact kinds of blows so the Surrian had no chance because my training kicked in type deal. it makes fight scenes more than just rolling dice, and thus easier to get engaged in.

14.8725 I swear I didn’t start out this essay as an “I’m going to sing the praises of Jeremy for several thousand words”

15. It’s always interesting when you have mechanical reasons for players leveling up. Or for what their classes are. That’s always a tricky one to balance, and it’s one that I’ve been doing aggressively as a player? And to be fair, if your players start out with young and fairly inexperienced characters, “I am gaining experience at doing a thing” is a perfectly good narrative reason to level up. You want to play an older character? One of my friends is playing a 150-year-old orc who was a Great Adventurer back in the day and retired to take care of great-great grandkids and is back in an adventuring party now but wheeee is starting at level 1 because they’re out of practice oh, and they have bad knees. There’s also always the option of “I hurt myself real bad and I’ve been recovering,” leveling up isn’t ~gaining new experience~, it’s slowly getting better through whatever your injury is. or just you can write this off as an unavoidable mechanical aspect of the game, eh, not that important, I just love it when tiny details match up. This isn’t actually an important point, I’ve kind of moved on to the “picky details that I care about” second of this advice rant.

16. Make the unexpected important. JEREMY GAVE ME THE MOST ADORABLE PET SPACE OCTOPUS AS A FAMILIAR AND I HAVE BEEN ASSUMING THAT VELO IS JUST VELO AND THEN JEREMY MADE SOME SORT OF A SIDE COMMENT ABOUT “YEAH VELO IS NOTHING LIKE YOU’D EVER HEARD OF BEFORE” AND YEAH DUH BECAUSE THE LIL’ BUDDY WAS SUMMONED THROUGH A MYSTERY SPELL IN A MYSTERY PIECE OF EXTINCT TECH BUT NOW I’M FREAKING PARANOID OUT OF CHARACTER THAT VELO IS SECRETLY AN EMISSARY OF RAT JESUS OR SOMETHING. but also just, like, nothing is cooler than “oh that tiny thing that happened when you were level 1 that you didn’t really think much of and it’s just been vaguely a thing you’ve carried with you for the adventure? turns out it was the most important thing in the world!!!!!” just. good foreshadowing. unexpected foreshadowing. it’s great.

17. Your players will invent stuff, either as a part of their backstory or as something that they’re interested in. Let them, especially if you don’t have a previously established canon opinion on the thing. This is 100% a self-serving thing of what I wants DMs to do when I’m a player of, like. I really love getting to write stuff into the setting, but also it’s because good improv means go with the flow. Someone says something? Work it in, oops, it’s canon now. This can be both on-purpose or accident; in the department campaign, I wanted to write in-character letters to an NPC in my backstory from the beginning, except goddamnit I didn’t want to have to deal with “and it’ll take a couple of months for the mail to travel across the country to get to them,” so I made an offhand reference in the email that I was sending the DM the letters of “can we say I just threw them in the arcanic postlines,” which then, like. After doing this about five times I sat down and wrote out the exact magical theory about how arcanic postlines should work considering how we’d said that they function in-game and the DM went “okay, sounds great, that’s consistent with how we’ve been dealing with these letters for the last two months” and that is why the fantasy world of the departmental campaign has a highly functional postage system. On the improv end of things, there is a beautiful moment in The Adventure Zone where the wizard just, in-character, teases another wizard about “ooooh, don’t want to burn your spell slots,” and the DM just went with it and suddenly it became canon that instead of spell slots being a behind-the-scenes mechanical thing that doesn’t exist in-world, it was a legitimate way that wizards referred to how much magic they could cast a day. Which I love so much, that’s so interesting for a high fantasy setting. Letting players add to the setting will bring in cool new things that you didn’t think of, and you should be open to it.

18. First priority is everyone should be having fun, and communication is key for that to work. Debrief sometimes after sessions. Ask people what their favorite parts are. listen to them chat about their theories. follow up on actively developing framework for the things that people think are fun. ultimately DnD is as much about friends getting together and having a good time as it is about telling a huge, epic, intricate, interconnected story, and the huge epic stories are a lot more fun if you’ve been having fun the whole way along.

All that all being said.

Don’t expect your campaign to look like gay elf murder bachelorette campaign, the way that I am playing in gay murder elf campaign is…..a bad way to play in a party? Being a conscientious player means being aware that the overall story arc isn’t just about you, it’s weaving together about everyone and there is always a part of me that is thinking about “is everyone getting equal screentime” and going “I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS NPC JEREMY SHE’S SO GOOD AT FIGHTING OH MY GODS THAT MURDEROUS LOOK SHE GETS WHEN SHE’S FACING OFF AGAINST SURRIANS AND SHE DOESN’T THINK ANYONE IS WATCHING JEREMY I AM IN LOVE” and, like, actively going over to try to talk with her any time I had the chance to ever and insisting on sparring with her any time we had free time and insisting on having a bunch of scenes with Talvus of “oh my god Talvus help she said three whole words to me what does it mean” which made all this the gay mess that it was would have been something that I wouldn’t have done if there were other people in the party with other agendas; gay elf murder bachelorette campaign gets to be gay elf murder bachelorette campaign specifically because Jeremy and I realized “….wait, there are only the two of us, we can get as ridiculous with this as we want” and have decided to commit. Fully. But that’s not the sort of shit you want to pull if there’s a whole other group of people who just kind of have to sit and watch every time you want to go over and flirt with your murder-rival-who-will-maybe-one-day-be-your-murder-girlfriend before they can do the stuff they want to do.

(As a secondary warning note if you’re doing any sort of roleplaying and are playing a fictional character in love with another fictional character being played by a friend of yours, you better be on the same page as your friend as, like, one of you not having a secret crush on the other in real life because shit gets messy and then real life and character stuff starts to blend and it’s just. I have been there and done that when I was a 17-year-old Gay Mess and I feel like it is my responsibility as a 22-year-old Slightly More Responsible Gay Mess to warn you against that. Jeremy and I know each other very well and have for years and know each other’s boundaries and talked about triggers and boundaries before starting this campaign, which to be fair was more because as a villain campaign dark stuff is probs going to happen but we have talked about fictional romance too , but I would not play this intimately with someone I didn’t trust intimately. So keep that in mind when designing things?)

ALSO THAT BEING SAID

if you want a gay elf murder bachelorette campaign, there is a game called Monsterhearts that I have never played but heard about friends playing and they all freaking love it and there are a lot of undertones about dealing with mental illness and being queer and in the closet and the entire setup of the game is y’all are monsters in high school having love life drama and everything I have heard about this game is how remarkable it is combined with stories about the most ridiculous teenage drama, sooooo possibly after I have ranted for 8000 words about how to set up a functional Dungeons and Dragons campaign which the party and DMing advice still I think applies to any game Monsterhearts might be the game that you want to start with.

BONUS: ADVICE FROM JEREMY.

[zmbkl]

Nano 8

Hello Everyone,

So I ended up telling my boss about Randy not measuring samples. I told the HR lady and accounting woman before I did. HR said she would have my back if Randy tried to make my life difficult. Hopefully Nakamura doesn’t even mention me and just acts on his own. But we will see.

BeforeI told Nakamura, I knew I had to have as much proof as I could get before I showed him. I found out the Color Refractometer saves up to 400 data points with time stamps. I download all I could, and downloaded all of the pH reading I could. When I told Nakamura, he said he knew about this issue and he has been investigating it. He said Randy probably knows that he is looking into the salt meter because it prints out a receipt for every sample measured, but the other two just stores it in a memory. It isn’t obvious to Randy that Nakamura is monitoring the Refract and pH meter and he said to send him all the data I had. He will continue to look into it. He told me not to tell Randy and he will continue to monitor Randy in secret until he is ready to confront him.

I told the HR lady what happened. She didn’t really have an opinion yet. She said people are probably brushing Nakamura off because he is making up data for raw materials and it only becomes a legal issue when he makes up data we give to the government. The data he made up so far is just for our records. She wants to see something happened too, but she thinks it’ll take a big event to trigger something. They should probably act before it gets there. I told her that I doubt that’ll get him fired. I don’t know how it is in Japan, but usually if you have six years at the company and you’re a manager, In America it requires malicious intent (stealing or damage) or obvious insubordination. Meaning they need to catch him REALLY messing things up. Like $10,000 in damages due to negligence, or they need to tell him to stop several times and he needs to obviously refuse to change. I’m confident he won’t get fire for anything like this, but they could make his job terrible until he quits. Either way, I’ll just need to wait it out and keep my head above water.

Other than that, I went to Japanese class today. I’m hating that class more and more every day and I don’t want go anymore. The class has like three or four kids that are absolutely unbearable. The worst is this guy who sits in the back and makes everything into a joke. At this point, I can predict them. He tries to be subversive and it makes me cringe like I’m at a convention Q and A. Examples, the teacher will say, “You never want to be too informal with your boss at a Japanese company” him, “Well what if you hate your boss” The teacher then just looks dumbfounded at him. Teacher, “if you’re talking to your friends, then refer to them like this” Him, “What if you don’t have any friends.” Again the teacher looks at him like he is dumb because that is missing the point. He always ends his comments with, “I’m kidding” He doesn’t stop. There are like two or three more kids that do the exact same thing and they all drive me up a wall. I’ve spent so long in science based difficult class and everyone was too close to make dumb jokes. The teacher has gotten real frustrated and I’ve stopped giving opinions and examples in class because the teacher has started to respond harshly to all non-topic comments. I’ve made cultural mistakes at my job and wanted to share them with the class but now I just keep quite.

I’ve lost a lot of interest in the class and I am going to fail. The college isn’t offering the next level next semester anyway, so I could just retake the class, but I really just want my Tuesdays and Thursdays back. I told myself I’d take classes like this to keep myself challenged and busy. 2015 went by so quickly for me and I got concerned that time would pass too quickly for me. I thought if I started to learn a language, especially one that I can use at work, that even if time passed realty fast at least I’d know a new language. I’m trying to not just become a couch potato and turn thirty and wonder where the time went. I might be getting ahead of myself. I’m just twenty-six. I have plenty of youth left in me.

I am under the assumption that I am only as old as I feel, and if I keep myself healthy and challenged that getting older won’t suck as bad. I should be fine.

I still have a lot of goals. I have a lot of plans to reach them. I want to own a home before I’m thirty, I want to reach my target weight of 175 lbs (I’m 189 lbs now), I want to run a marathon, I want to know how to fix my car, perform basic maintenance on a home, learn at least one additional language, travel, attend more events, and start more creative projects. I have time, I should be ok.

I’m also still doing my Monday DnD sessions. I’m really digging this campaign. It started out with me wanting to do a Mad Maxx inspired desert survival campaign. I ended up adding two ghost like npc’s that were meant to encourage the group to do good or bad things. It was supposed to be a angel and devil on their shoulders meant to encourage them to make decisions. Unfortunately they just got through the first boss and I failed to really do that. I also failed to make the first city have its own distinct flavor. I made the mini boss a arch priest and spirit naga, but I don’t think they felt unique enough. I also should have made the wind Gin feel more like her element. I will try to learn from my mistakes in the next city. That being said, I gave each ghost like character their own backstory. I made them the sun and moon god. I gave the sun god a champion that isn’t acting, and the moon god a champion that acted too much and got her killed. I’m really digging the lore, but I need to make sure I get the feelings communicated to the players. I should write down my shortcomings tomorrow and try to improve. I’ve been DMing DnD for like three years, but if I don’t record my short comings I won’t be able to improve. I have a lot planned but I don’t want to ruin it for my players.

[theory-of-a-fandom]

I dunno I just wanted to talk about this to something... something not involved, something that won’t take a side or yell.

I lost my best friend (E) nearly 6 months ago. I still have them on social media, and I still like their posts and I still miss them. But we don’t talk. They were...almost the person who saved me? The first person who I trusted with all of me. Being their friend led to so many of my firsts: my first sleepover, my first kiss, my first relationship, the first friendship group where I felt wanted, actually wanted rather than just pitied.

We met when we...what 15? We got talking, we both love anime, and that led to them coming round my house for 3 days straight. We watched horror lets plays and ate 3-day old pizza. It was the best few days of my life back then. I’d never had that before, never really felt like anyone wanted me. I was the nerdy fat kid ya know?

But after that, well we were joined at the hip. We joined the same clubs, we did the same things, we went to parties together. Two of their friends joined us (C and D), as did my other two friends (which was a relief as my friends were dating, and I had become the very awkward third wheel to them ‘star-gazing’ on the stairs). And that made school bearable. It made me actually look forward to social times.

My best friend would spend every Wednesday at mine, they couldn’t get home till late that day so of course, just come to mine. We’d read Homestuck, do homework and just laugh. It was fantastic. I miss that.

They got a boyfriend (C), one of the friends that moved with them. I was so happy for them, and everything was great. I became super close to him. I was learning to open up, I was talking about my feelings for the first time...ever? I hated myself, yes, and we were both self-harming and exams were coming and it was so stressful but I remember that year in a golden haze. For the first time, I wasn’t completely miserable.

They then broke up. It was awkward and uncomfy. They refused to speak to each other until I sat them down and got them to talk. They fixed it and got back together. It was essentially us three against the world. 

We miss each other’s 16th parties - I’m ill for theirs, they cancel for mine.

Then we got to leave school. E and D went off to do a course at the local college and C and I stayed on for further study. I got very close to C, people thought we were dating. We talked about everything: mental health; their relationship; my sexuality, all of that. Then I met J. Our group soon became me, E, C, D and J.

We would all hang out at the weekends, it was great. Until E started cancelling plans last minute. The bus was late (I see them as I leave school, meeting C), they just wanna see C. It hurts - I am still a very insecure person, but these things happen, I get it.

J became my first boyfriend after months of friendship. Everything was fine before this. Now E hates him. So much. We dated for 2 months until I learnt that he didn’t know No meant No. We all recover.

E has made so many new friends at college, they don’t have a lot of spare time - and fair enough, I have exams to study for, I understand. We see each other when we can. I develop an eating disorder.

Wednesdays stop happening. There is silence for a while, but then everything is good.

C and I finish school, E restarts more academic work. I turn 18 - E cancels being the only friend I invited over to celebrate. I go to the local uni. Both E and C come to my dorms, we celebrate. C and I grow more distant. Tuesdays become a thing. E sees me on Tuesdays, C on Saturdays and Thursdays. That works. This is the Schedule that must be kept. 

Their pets get sick, their crying. C can’t be bothered to go with them to the vets, so I walk an hour, miss my lecture, and go and sit with them and get us food. I calm them down. They help me over the phone with panic attacks. Then this gets less. They’re with C all the time, C needs them. My eating disorder and self-harming get bad.

Summer comes around and it’s okay again. We all crash in my giant bed. E keeps telling C to kiss me. He does. That...happens. It’s... comfy, I trust him. There’s a guy(A) who is interested in me, who comes into my work, and I do not realise at allllll that he likes me. I have no clue. A and E are friends. He walks up the stairs to their 18th party, sees me, and walks down again, takes a few minutes and comes back up. I end up crying on him for a while but he’s nice. E tells me all the ways he’s a bad guy.

A and I hang out with groups, I still don’t believe he’s interested in me. I have a family emergency, but E and I are still told to take our holiday. It’s great. We share a bed, we spoon, we’re close. They keep saying we’re closer than just friends, but idk, their my best friend, isn’t this how it’s supposed to be?

A situation with A leads me to having a panic attack in a taxi on the way home from a club. E is so angry with him, and so am I. But he apologises, so much. I figure we can be friends. We start talking. We end up talking a lot. E is a bit funny about him. They say they have a crush on him (E and C are in a poly relationship), and then they have a crush on me. I don’t know what to say. 

E and C stay over. We get drunk. E gives C a bj in my bed, I cover my eyes, uncomfy but C uncovers and makes me watch. I don’t know what to do. We don’t talk about it. We’re all just friends - at least in my mind.

A asks me out a few days later. We’d been skirting around it for a few weeks. I say yes, and I am so happy. He takes me out for dinner and walks me home. It’s my first date. It’s magical. I tell E. They cry and the next day we get coffee and they start talking about our poly relationship. (??)

It turns out E has asked to sleep with A, knowing we’re dating. A and I are both uncomfy. But we move past it. Just E and A start fighting. E and I are going to a convention, and are going to a party the night before. We both, dumbly, get very drunk. E gets very high. I’m just happy to be there, I don’t get to go out a lot, and it’s my first party with a boyfriend. E wants to leave, I want to stay. I say let's stay another hour. E storms off into the night, leaving me at the party, smashed and in near tears. A cheers me up, and A and D walk me back to Es. A walks me in, E starts yelling, telling me to just get out, I start having a panic attack. A is trying to calm E down, I’m just crying. Eventually, things calm down.

We go to the con, E isn’t talking to me. The day just kinda sucks. I see A in the evening and things get better.

During the next week E isn’t talking to me. I take them out to lunch to apologise - this is something I really struggle with. I really struggle with not being perfect but I do it. I don’t expect complete and instant forgiveness, but I do expect some form of acceptance? Yes, I shouldn’t have let you leave the party alone but you shouldn’t have just stormed out. What I get is them yelling at me that ‘actions have consequences’ and how I’ve become a bad person. I’m in near tears but I accept it.

Things are awkward. 

Tuesdays are moved to Thursdays. I ask every day is Thursday still on? Yes. Thursday comes around - either a cancel the hour before or just a no show.

We’ve been playing DND for a while now, A dming. Its gotten to the point that if E goes partying the night before they just won’t show up. So we get used to this, it just sucks that we won’t be told until 5 minutes before we start. And E and I aren’t really talking. E is so rude to me during DND, won’t talk to me out of character and insults me in character, trying to start to a fight. I’m not proud of it but I rise up to it but try to defuse it but they won’t have it. And then, E goes out partying the Saturday night. 10 minutes before we start, I’m walking there after work - we get a message saying E and their sister are no longer playing the campaign. E had messaged A that they weren’t coming - fair enough, though other people went out with you and it’s 5pm the next day you’ve spent the entire day in bed how are you still hungover??? - and A had planned for this. E takes this as not being wanted. A goes and buys a bottle of rum and walks across town to talk with E. E won’t open the door. A comes back to mine and we realise we can’t play this campaign anymore - we don’t  have enough people.

So E and I are awkward. A and E aren’t talking. Eventually - after many more cancelled last minute plans and no contact - I message E saying I know you’ve got a lot going on right now, but I’m hurt that you’re not talking to me, and keep cancelling out plans. (It was a while ago). I get a message back. “You’re right - I do have a lot going on right now and it’s none of your business.”

I am so hurt. A is pissed at E for talking to me like that. I don’t know what to do. It’s the first time I’ve ever aired a grievance with E - I was so scared of saying something and losing them.

A few weeks pass - I get another message. “And what have I supposedly cancelled?” I tell them, and “the schedule isn’t serious”. .... If it was on a day they were meant to be with C I could have not eaten in days, been having a panic attack and wanting to die but nope, it’s C’s day. The Schedule you know. But for me? No. No time.

I eventually say if they even have time to still be friends. They message me a bunch of rude stuff, delete it, and then say I’ve changed since getting a boyfriend. I’ve grown a backbone - says everyone else in my life. I get a message that I’ve hurt them and they need space.

A proposes to me. It’s a sign of commitment - we have to start doing a ldr, and I am so happy. We keep it quiet. He leaves. E and I still aren’t talking. A comes back to visit and we go to a party. We both get drunk, and A tells everyone we’re engaged. Everyone is surprised - we haven’t been dating long and we’re both 19. But they’re happy for us - our close friend literally said he’s never seen anyone look at someone how A looks at me before. E is at this party.

After A leaves again, I get a message - you really engaged? yes. Fucks sake. What does your mum think? it’s quiet, she doesn’t know. Hah. Well good luck with that shitshow.

I am so hurt.

We haven’t really spoken since. And it hurts, it really does. They were so important to me. I let them walk all over me - and I know shouldn’t have but I was so scared of losing them. So scared that if I said anything they would leave. But they kept saying, for years, no, you can tell me anything. And I did. And they left.

I still miss them. So much. I have new friends, but I miss E. And it sucks.

[totallyweepingtheorist]

I Need an Outlet for My Teaching Side - DnD tips for new DM’s

Hey all,

I felt like taking 30 minutes to post once before Christmas and I need to distract myself from failing to get this job (Postdoc job hunts yay) so I want to talk about DnD. Yes I have jumped on the band wagon and despite being a huge nerd I didn’t play it when I was younger due to my lack of friends. But a few years ago while drunk we started playing and cut to two years later when I suggest I DM a new campaign for friends in the city we live (The first game was a distance game with old friends). That was a year ago and we are now barrelling towards the final fight with Tiamat and the end of a 1-20 lvl year long campaign. I am now writing the setting for the second campaign which will start soon after the first ends and I feel I now have some knowledge to pass on to DM’s. First though I should say, Watch the DM series from Matt Colville which at this point is quite a lot longer than when I watched it. As a basis there is no better resource (Sorry webDM) and I wholly recommend it. Obviously form there check out season 2 of critical role for an idea of the perfect DnD setup both DM and players. Now forget critical role because it will not be like that, at least at first, and if any player suggests its your fault it isn’t like that tell them to shut it. No group is that well suited or that talented (they are all voice actors at the end of the day) from the start. After a year my group (who are in the top 1% of groups for compatibility, trust me I’m lucky) are only just getting to be 10% of critical role. That’s not to say it isn’t fun, we laugh so much every week and look forward to it, but it will be different because you are not and your players are not professional voice actors.

Anyway, once you are introduced and you know what you know from Colville you are left with guidance and a hastily constructed world with holes in it everywhere. I am presuming you got this far and I have some tips for the next stage, the intermediate lessons you learn DMing your first full campaign. So here are the 5 most important things you need to know, and yes its 5 because the internet comes in 5’s for some reason.

1/ Have a session 0! If you don’t lay out what to expect the group is going to struggle. You may want to do an open world game, a railroad game, half way between. There may be suicide and other themes of the sort, or there may be no mention of real life difficulties. Ensuring the players know what to expect is so important to them not being disappointed and you not being caught off guard.

2/ Do not sweat the details! You cannot prep everything and if you try you will destroy your love of your own world and find out you missed something anyway. The players will never guess when you make up details as they go but they will notice you improvising a quest or a bad name. Prep names to use for random people they interact with and prep quests and locations. Do not try and prep everything, improv is a necessary part of DnD so let it happen and see how it goes.

3/ Do not fret being wrong! In the last part you might be panicking but it really doesn’t matter if you mess up. Your players want to play and you are the only way to do it. Trust me DM’s do not come around very often especially not DM’s that care. So if you are nice to them, care for their enjoyment and then fuck something up. They will let it go and help you continue the story, do not be scared to make a mistake.

4/ Admit your wrong! You are not a god and there will be times you mess up a detail of the rules or the world itself. Somewhat tied into the above point but if you do make a mistake your players will not rip you to shreds. They might If you bullshit and say you are right and they are remembering it wrong when they pull up their note books. Admit your wrong, move on and keep going, don’t let it bog you down.

5/ Have fun and the players will! Do not think your enjoyment is not an integral part of the experience. If you are bored, your players will be bored because the portal through which they are viewing the world is bored. You cannot write a huge story and lecture them, but you also need to be involved and engaged to have excitement. If you find yourself bored or sad about the session talk to your players because they will not enjoy it till you do.

6/ Caught you off guard! The players as I just did will play with expectations and so when writing a story NEVER write presuming a specific thing will happen. You can write quests and presume they will complete them, but you don’t know how they will do it and what the ramifications will be. Plan the quest and the people and decide how they react to the situation once you know what the situation actually is.

Anyway that’s not extensive and its not meant to be a guide but there some lessons I learnt during play to supplement the info for new DM’s out there. Thanks guys, see you next time.

Cheers