#nico.dnd

[yharnamsnewslug]

A lot of people I've seen play D&D have very good, very practical advice for running a D&D campaign effectively, and you should probably listen to them if you wanna change the way you DM and stuff, but if you're interested in my advice, here it is:

Pick a theme, run it through. That's it.

You can have multiple themes, which - it's a campaign. You'll be playing for a year or more, if you're lucky! (I've been playing this one for 1 year and eight months!) So don't worry if you've a lot of other themes, but a main one can really help you set up story arcs and villains.

For example, the one centered around my current campaign is Sins of the Father, or well, the breaking of systems and cycles established by people before you. So we have villains that:

- Are lashing out due to horrible things happening to them, things that all my players agree make them a detestable but understandable character. They disagree with the system and disagree with the pain being cause by this person, so they want to dismantle the system so it never happens again.

- A man whose zealot parents cause him to be alienated from his culture, so he assimilated into the main culture so hard that he's now a threat to his own people. My players want to make sure that the system that makes it possible for that culture to be eradicated is severed from power.

- A cleric who was brainwashed by a cult into believing that the worst thing he can do is his purpose, because if that draconic blood is running through his veins, then that means HE is the chosen one. This has happened for centuries and no one has done anything to help him. My players want to make sure people with this draconic blood do not feel as isolated as he did so this never happens again.

And so on and so forth. Stories of abandonment, of freedom, of abuse and corruption and power exchange. All of my players have parents, maternal and paternal figures, people they love and people they hate from their past. They're complex and work within the laws set in this world. HELP THEM interact with these themes.

Make sure your players have a character involved in this theme close. Make sure the main villain has this theme that you're passionate about. There's so many! Go hogwild! Here are a few;

- Sins of the Father

- The pressures of expectation in heroes/leaders

- Mother's pressure to comply vs the Self Discovery and Freedom of a Woman

- Duty vs Freedom

- The responsibility of knowing - and the right to know

Add more if you've any you love!!

[yharnamsnewslug]

Making evil little bad guys in D&D is so much fun. Fooling your players into a false sense of security is SO much fun, especially when it's revealed that they've been TOO comfortable with someone.

Last game they went to visit a friend NPC who apparently sold his memory to one of the Pirate Princes of Keoland, and he couldn't remember them. He is now a very good illusion wizard and he can walk (was previously dying of a very bad autoimmune disease that would leave him dead in 2 years) and go about the world just fine. So my players were like, "Well, I mean - I guess that's good?"

But Noa? Ooh, Noa knew. She was like, "But he had a happy family and life as well. Being in a wheelchair didn't mean the end for him - especially since his family has money. I don't care if he can walk or not, did he CONSENT to this? That's my problem."

And there - RIGHT there, she took off the bracelet that NPC had given her and told him "it's me. Noa. Please, are you okay?"

And I did a charisma saving throw for the kid and he PASSED. So he vomited something up and began to plead for help to the two PCs - right before going back to the new NPC. And Noa and Alicia, my players, were STUNNED. He vomited something bloody, a little sack with demonic runes, and suddenly being in the circus wasn't safe anymore.

Alicia grabbed Noa's arm tightly and the two tried to leave, unable to see the masks of the circus folk as something innocent and fun anymore. Who had truly consented to being a new person? Did all of them forget their previous lives?

Were they agonizing, behind the smiling masks?

I fucking LOVE DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS!!!

[yharnamsnewslug]

Man, I'm just so excited for this week's game of D&D. I've devised this amazing dungeon and I can't wait for them to see it. Plus the final boss fight is insane!!!

[yharnamsnewslug]

BEST FUCKING D&D GAME JUST NOW? YES.

FUCKING EIGHT HOURS OF IT. HOLY SHIT, I'M DEAD TIRED.

[yharnamsnewslug]

Can you tell us what you've planned for your game? Now I'm super duper curious

Well, first off, it's a pirate campaign but it does have the rest of the world factor into the story. The dungeon they're doing is a side quest from local Saltmarsh archmage Caledan Grieve (a firbolg necromancer who's in the most important archmage organization through Keoland, the country).

But! These are my best friend sim playing with, so this little dungeon is actually a set up for the next campaign hehehehe. They're all level 5 and will reach level 6 with this one, I'm pretty sure, unless they avoid most of the combat.

It's placed on an island that appears only at the end of Autumn, and it's the tomb of an ancient hero of the Second Era (Era of Arcanum), where all six nations came together to unify the material plane, since the threat was to shut down rogue interplanar portals breaking shit.

They did it together, but of course, they had made great weapons to defeat this evil. And the heroes, all of them realizing just how much their governments had fooled them (in a sort of Ender's Game ending situation), they all decided to build their own tombs and close themselves in it, each guarding a great weapon, so no one would ever get to them.

The tomb they're going is Eridan's tomb, and he's guarding The Shield of Eridan - which isn't actually a shield, but a magic staff that could block powerful magic spells and, if enough strength was put into it, return these blows. This will be a very useful item later in the campaign.

I want the fight against Eridan to be like, huge. So I did a bunch of lair actions, I based him off an oni (regeneration, can cast invisibility) and also, PHASES because I'm a Soulsborne slut.

So there's the first phase, which is just him being normal. Then there's bloodied, where the lair starts to flood. And then there's desperate, where the water freezes and he starts to slide through it to attack, adding 1d5 force damage to his hits. It's pretty cool.

[yharnamsnewslug]

So my boy William is now gonna become an evil necromancer fue to the trauma of not just his grandmother (the only person in his family who ever cared about him) dying, but also his newfound father figure dying because he couldn't land a single eldritch blast on an undead creature. Sooooo............ yeah.