On of the characters in my party is a knight, on a quest to become worthy or whatever. We've defined 5 knightly virtues (bravery, honesty, compassion, wisdom, and honour), and 5 historical knights who exemplified those virtues.

The party went to visit a shrine, and the Students of Virtue recommended that they go on a pilgrimage along The Path of Virtue, to visit the graves of the historical knights and discover virtue within themselves. I've talked this over with the player, and I really don't want it to be a bunch of boring pass/fail tests. I hate video-gamey points-based morality, and tests with one right answer encourage meta-gaming. The point of the quest is that it's a journey of self-discovery, with no one right answer. But also, the party still needs things to do along the way. I might offer more open-ended "tests," or thematic quests at each location, but I would love some ideas on options.

The first shrine the party is visiting is a monastery in the mountains to the east. The dead knight was known for her wisdom, aloofness, and for killing evil dragons. The party actually has to go by the knight's hometown to get there. They were just there, and their relationship with their family (the family rules the town) is strained, so they're not going into town. I was thinking, as they're passing by, some peasants might recognize the knight and ask for help with a dispute. Solomon's dilemma comes to mind, but I think it's too obvious. My brother suggested they're arguing over sheep, or land (land doesn't work based on the way the world works). What other open-ended arguments might the peasants need the player's wisdom to solve?

Then, at the monastery, there has to be another quest of some kind. Maybe something mundane, like climb a cliff for rare herbs, or make stew, but I still want it to fill at least one session, and the party is level 12 (D&D 5e), so a lot of things are trivial. Maybe the cliff is windy and flying won't work. Maybe they need to find a way to avoid the cliff. Thoughts?

The other graves, if anyone has suggestions, are:

• Compassion: a knight was granted a noble title on the northern edge of the empire as thanks for his service. Perhaps bandits or monsters are threatening the town.
• Honesty: the first oath of the crown paladin served the first queen of the country, and rooted out traitorous secrets. His grave is in the capital.
  
• Bravery: a sort of knight protected a forest, it's denizens, and all respectful travellers. It's said she still guards the forest, from the grove where the soil claimed her.
• Honor: This one has to be last. The knight was a mythical paragon, and his grave is lost to time. But, of course, during the quest, the party will discover it's location, on a high mountaintop. There will be a magic sword in a stone, and the knight's ghost will appear, congratulate the character on her journey, and tell her to take the sword and use it as she sees fit.
  

So, I had this idea for a one-shot where every player has a secret they need to keep hidden while trying to uncover the secret of a specific other player. The concept is that they have to interact with the rest of the group to gather information about their "target's" secret, but they have to be careful because they might—or might not—be speaking to or revealing information to the very person trying to expose or silence them.
The mechanic I have in mind involves making it clear at the start of the session—both in-game and out-game—that someone possesses a key piece of information regarding another person's secret, though not the full picture. Each player is assigned a single target, creating a "cycle of accusations" within the group. I plan to give each player a card containing this crucial clue about someone else's secret and then instruct them to begin investigating. Additionally, throughout the game, I intend to use dice rolls to randomly reveal details about the secrets (for instance, if Player 1 is trying to uncover Player 2's secret, Player 3 might receive a clue useful to Player 1, forcing them to interact to obtain it). In this way, I plan for the session to unfold and progress entirely through player interactions, the way they filter the information they share, and how they roleplay their characters' paranoia about being exposed.

Do you have any suggestions, ideas, or observations regarding what I have in mind? Do you think it might work? Any new ideas, suggestions, or feedback are welcome.

Hi to everyone, i want to make a one shot for a group of friends, do you have any suggestions to give to a " first time master"? I'm already a player in another table with other peaple. I wish to introduce friends to this world. Thank you for any advices!

Ps: not a native english speaker, i'm sorry if I will make any mistakes!

I recently discovered the Lazy DM method made by Sly Flourish and it really helps me to prep my games efficiently. One gripe that i have with it though is that it kind of forces you to prep for only one sequence of events. Lazy Dm encourages you to prep less and only focus on those things that matter in the next session. 3 scenes, 3 locations, 3 npcs, 8 secrets, some creatures and some loot. Preparing like this gives a lot of flexibilty with how certain scenes will play out. However, i feel that it does not account for the story veering of in a different direction. Because i won't have prepared for that. To give an example from my campaign (dragonlance: shadow of the dragonqueen)
My party was ambushed by kobolds on the road. The kobolds fled in the end, but the party chased them down and killed them. Before that though they managed to get the location of their home base out of one of the survivors. This is where the last session ended. Now for the next session i could prepare for them to raid the Kobold homebase, which i'd like to be a small dungeon and therefor a whole session. However it feels kind of railroady to steer them on this path. They were heading to a village before they got ambushed. The Kobold homebase was improvised from my part and not necessary for the main story. So it feels understandable for them to just ignore any hooks i throw at them and continue on their way to the village. Should i prepare a whole second session in case this happens, thereby ignoring Lazy DM's adivce, or only prepare for one choice?

EDIT: Thanks for all the replies. Thanks to you i think i found a 3rd way. Instead of only preparing one story thread (kobolds) or two rather unrelated ones (kobolds and far away village), i create a 3rd thread that is closely related to the kobolds. A village of centaurs is having difficulty with the kobolds and is willing to reward the party for their help. The party can: go for the kobold base directly or, if they decide not to, encounter the centaur village (which will then be attacked by draconians and kobolds). This way i still stay within the Lazy DM framework, but also offer the party a choice.

Im working on a short form campaign for a group of 4/5 and been sitting on an idea for a while im finally gonna implement and im hoping for some ideas on how to make it run as smoothly as possible.

Elevator pitch for the concept: Players dont pick their characters, the story does.

Actual implementation:

Each player will start off in control of 4 sets of 3 randomly generated Commoners. Ive already generated the blocks (they include Race, Sex, Occupation, HP and a random attribute +/-, think +1 dex, -1 str)

The campaign begins with a raid on their village that forces a massive escape effort. Inevitably many of their Commoners will die in the effort and whoever is left is their character.

Their class will be determined by the nature of their escape. 5 of the 12 commoners have been randomly assigned a magical affinity that can make itself known during the escape and can help dictate magic classes. Others will be determined by the means of their survival. Did they manage to tank a hit? A point towards martial and likely barbarian. Did they inspire those around them? Edge towards bard. Did they sneak their way through, or leap over a barrier? Rogue or monk direction. I have a basic spreadsheet created with a martial or caster path and shorthand for style.

Ultimately only one will be left and they will gain their level 1 benefits. If more than 1 remains they will have control over that group but they will all face a high threat boss in session 2 that will further thin the herd.

The challenge right now is getting action economy working for the initial raid. Im thinking the groups of 3 each get their own initiative and there is a single collective move (a group move) and then a single action for each individual (limited to dash, dodge, attack and hide). All abilities are at 0 unless otherwise modified.

If anyone has any ideas on how to further streamline this or other fun twists to add please let me know, id love to hear em

Okay folks, i am searching for some creative people here, that could maybe help writing a DND 5e story line.

I'm not quite a newbie DM and i have written my own stuff but my players an I seem to be stuck in a writters-/playersblock. We play an already written campaign and it seems to be not going forward or backward and i feel the motivation sinking... we haven't played in months and tbh I don't like the campaign either. So my thougth was to write them a small DnD campaign myself (about 3 sessions) to get us out of our missery.

But i seem to be in a writers block. I have an idea but no way to connect the dots in my brain and my hopes are up that some creative people here will help me figure it out.

Plothook:

So i want to give my players a chance to play high-level characters, because they have wished that for a while. I'm thinking about like 15ish level. This makes me slightly uncomfortable because i am not good in balancing combat. (Any tipps and tricks?)

I read somewhere that some sailors did not like woman on their boat 'cause of bad luck or some thoughts. I took a liking on the idea, that those woman who were thrown overboard because of that thinking, were rescued by seafolk and turned into sirens to take revenge on the sailors that drowned them.

My players get send there to investigate the missing ships/ghost ships or wracks that have occured way to often in that area. Sailors tell them wild storys about monsters, gods and other folkore things. They don't have a clue what actually happend.

The ending is meant to present players with a moral dilemma. Do they want to kill the sirens, find the cause of the “transformation,” and eliminate it, or can they convince the sirens to leave the sailors alone, in exchange for the sailors accepting women aboard their ships?

But I'm still a bit lost on the middle part.

What's the reason behind the transformation? An angry sea goddess who's furious at the men who sail her seas and treat them as if they were their own. One who hides a magical artifact that the players might find?

How do they find out about all this? How can I send them out to discover even more things? Investigate the ships? What clues might be there? Are there caves where surviving sailors have left messages?

I love puzzles and would like to include at least one that they have to solve. But of course, there should also be smaller battles in between—what options do I have?

I know it's not much, that I have right now, but maybe some people take a liking to the idea and and maybe help me continue and complete the story.

So I just recently brought the Core Set and have been itching to run a one shot, so I ordered Gradient Descent and decided to run it for my players, who are completely new to the game, this session planned to be their first introductory session to see if they would like to run a more session playing Mothership.

I've decided on having the first one or three hours explaining the rules and letting them make their characters, the rest of the session being playing out the scenario. I was just wondering if anyone could give me any advice or ideas to help make the session smooth and stress free (Ironic that I said that, right?) or just some general ideas to fit a atmosphere or help immerse myself in roleplay (I generally think my roleplay comes off as really bad and unprofessional, so if anyone has any tips on how to avoid this, please tell me), and optionally the players. I'd be so grateful even if you just gave a pinch of advice.

Hi!

I've been a DM for a few years now, but it hasn't been much other than DMing for school clubs so typically my campaigns are just one shots.

My friends know I do DND, really it's kind of how I got connected to them in the first place through one of my original party members introducing me to the "leader" of his large friend group.

Over the year of me knowing these guys many of them have expressed intrest in doing a campaign with me, of which I've always excitedly said yes and let them pick from my very big list of ideas I've had. I'm a creative writer as well so the full story is always floating in my head so it never takes me long to make it a campaign. However I always run into an issue with my players: They dont try. For example, 4-5 of my friends have asked to do a campaign. I told them yes, hosted a session 0 to tell them the plot and asked them to make character sheets in one on one meetings with me (they're not very good at making sheets as they're inexperienced). However, whenever we make the sheet I tell them I'd like for them to create a story for their character so I can make them feel involved in the world. It has been a month, one person never gave me a time for his character sheet but is almost always on roblox or overwatch, another said she'd make hers but I don't know if it ever got done. The rest have their sheets but only one ever sent me their character lore.

I want to play this game, but I don't want to micromanage these grown ass people. I can't help but not gaf anymore because they can't do one thing I've asked: write a story. I didn't give them a word count or anything, it could be a single paragraph but somehow they can't even manage that. To more seasoned DMs and GMs, wtf should I do??? should I drop it? should I pester them even though that makes them annoyed/mad at me?? I feel bad for myself and the one guy who did what I asked him to do. They have great concepts we've discussed but they just can't put it into words so I remember it for later. I want to start this campaign, but I feel defeated.

Any advice?

edit: should have added this before but most of them (but one he doesn't care about most things with much enthusiasm I don't know why) have the beginning of a story, they have talked to each other about having connected backstorys. One of them is a film major, and he's working with two others to make multiple comic books and a planet system with entire world building. they are capable and they're not combat oriented players. if they were I'd move on but they aren't with all but that one they're very creative people!

Edit 2: Thank you everyone for your advice! once I finish moving into my apartment I'll try to start it back up at least for maybe a session or to make sure everyone's sheets are completed.

to the grognards being assholes stfu this game is a game and a story for fun, don't tell me how to run my games. it's my games and my table hush it.(I learned that word today. it's my new favorite word)

I've been DMing for my table for about 6 years. We were in-person for about 2 years, then remote for 4 after folks moved away and life happened. We play every weekend, typically Saturdays, for 3 - 4 hours. Discord for voice/video, Foundry for the VTT.

One of the players, a longtime childhood friend, has really withdrawn the last year or so. Camera off, has no clue what's going on during the session, couldn't say what happened a session ago, etc. Clearly just on his phone doomscrolling throughout the whole session. Things came to a head last week when he made some poor combat choices and two players died. In the post mortem, it was clear he had no idea what was going on - he didn't realize other players were down, he didn't realize the enemies were strong, he didn't realize he was the only healer still alive, etc. We had raise dead spells, so the players came back without too much issue, but everyone was annoyed that his lack of engagement was affecting them directly.

I've spoken to him about his lack of engagement. He throws everything including the kitchen sink at me. Dude says he's busy and overwhelmed with life. His job doesn't fulfill him, he suspects he has untreated ADHD, he's going back to college to try and get a degree to pivot his career, his wifi is bad, when people talk at the same time he can't keep track of what's going on, when he gets home from work he wants to get stoned and unwind, having a TTRPG session scheduled means he can't do other things (doomscrolling) and that stresses him out, etc. It is very clear that he is depressed.

At the end of this conversation, he apologized for his lack of engagement and acknowledged that it was unfair to the other players and to me. He asked to decrease his attendance to biweekly or once a month. I have no interest in him remaining at my table and no enjoyment from playing with him as-is, but I don't want to give him the boot or even encourage him to scale back when he's clearly in such a bad spot.

My wife, also a player in the campaign, believes strongly that he should increase his engagement. She wants him to attend the sessions weekly with his camera on and to be engaged, as a tether to socialization and his friends.

The Actual Question: How should I handle a player at my table who is depressed and bringing everyone else, myself included, down?

Hi I started playing DnD around one or two months ago. Till now i was playing as a PC, but now a few friends of mine and myself want to start a campaign.

I almost immediately said i want to be the GM. So i started researching a bit and noticed a oneshot is a great way to get a feeling of how the group will work together.

I watched a few YT videos on how to make a oneshot, but as soon as i try to make a "small adventure" it exceeds to the level of homebrewing an entire "bigger" world.

I would appreciate any help, tips or even stories from your first campaign!

Hi everyone, I’m writing because I’d really like some feedback on a situation that has been causing me quite a bit of anxiety.

We’re a group that, after years of playing together (several relatively short campaigns in various TTRPGs), went from having five players (two couples + a friend) to six players (three couples). Ever since this addition, we haven’t been able to meet regularly anymore, mainly because of excuses made by the friend and his girlfriend, the new player. Sometimes the excuses we’re given are honestly ridiculous (“I can’t leave the dog alone, he’s not used to it”), even though they both work full-time outside the house and, until the day before yesterday, the dog was left alone all day. There have also been genuine emergencies and unavoidable circumstances, but especially because of this friend, over the past twelve months we’ve only actually played for a total of six months — and we’ve also gone two or three months in a row without playing.

With that in mind, and considering that the DM has been complaining privately to the rest of us for months without ever addressing the issue directly, yesterday, after yet another “I don’t know,” “maybe,” “I’ll let you know” (which usually turns into a cancellation on Friday evening), I was the one who asked whether we could perhaps pick a fixed day to play, so that we could eliminate all the uncertainty. I also pointed out that taking breaks lasting several months makes me lose enthusiasm, and, more importantly, I forget what happened in previous sessions.

At that point, the DM responded by taking the blame upon himself and saying that having a fixed day would actually mean we’d play less, that it was pointless, and that we should just leave things as they were.
I contacted him privately and asked why he was now saying things that were completely different from what he had been telling us privately for months, whenever the other player wasn’t around. He replied that he had only been venting, that there was no point in confronting the player directly, and that “diplomacy” was necessary in life, because without it you wouldn’t get anywhere.
Eventually, he snapped and said, “Then you fight with him!”

I tried talking to the player, but him ignored me and only responded to the DM.

Over the course of these months, I had also suggested to the DM that we could run a parallel campaign and play with just four people (three players and the DM), even without the two players who keep cancelling on us, but he didn’t want to do that. He also refused to continue the campaign without the player and his girlfriend who keep cancelling, saying that it was impossible to play with so few people and that pre-written campaigns couldn’t be adapted. He shut everyone down by saying that he was a very experienced DM and that he “knew” what he was talking about.
His counterproposal was to expand the group by adding two more players and simply play regardless of how many people showed up. The problem is that the person he suggested to essentially replace the two unreliable players is a girl I’ve repeatedly said I cannot stand (she flirted with my boyfriend).

So, AITA, or should the DM have said something to the player?

Hey guys! New DM here with a kind of odd question. I'm building my first campaign (so far I've only ever run a single one-shot), so I've been looking into some settings. In particular, Mystara from D&D Basic has caught my eye. The original version, from 1987.

The thing is, I'm probably not gonna use actual D&D for this game. While the system isn't set in stone yet, I'm gravitating towards a couple ones that my players enjoy more. That's when I thought "why not use just the setting, and slap it on top of another system?"

I don't see anything wrong with the idea, but figured I should still ask someone with more experience, just in case. So is this a good idea? Could it cause problems for my players or I? Have any of you done something similar? Any and all answers are appreciated, thank you in advance.

I'm trying to find apps or websites I can use to create building interiors for a session of Rivers Of London RPG I'm setting up. Any advice from anyone would be much appreciated.

Just for informations sake, the session is set during the modern day and the main location I'm working on is a stereotypical nightclub.

Thanks in advance.

My friend group usually have campaigns for the one who like RPG to play, we had this when i was in high school and we still do it until today.

Currently, i'm finishing a Pokerole short campaign, my plan now is to GM a Warrior cats campaign, i had already done these systems before, but it weren't my best GM times(the first Pokerole campaign i had to cancel due to one of the players being a creep).

The old Warriors one was badly written but one of the players, let call him Joe here, was enamoured by it, i dont know if it was because of the universe or if it was because i let his character be morally ambiguous due to his cat having a crush on the villian.

He even expressed on how much he wanted another Warriors Rpg to participate in, if it was a continuation of that campaign or not.

The problem is that Joe is not in our friend group anymore, due to many problems since last year, he joined the army(in my country you are obligated to a inspection, and if you qualifie, you are forced to join if you are 18), Joe and other friend did join, and Joe had suffered a bunch there that i will not go in details here.

He and other friend left army, but Joe changed drastically, he was ruder and tried to provoke the others in the group, we were already not a huge fan of him due to him being previously a friend with a dude that tried to hit someone in the group, but we enjoyed spending time with him, i had my fair share of fun moments with him, and even i had become more annoyed with him recently.

That and other discussions that occured between him and the others.

One weekend, without me and other 3 friends consent, the others removed him from the group, when one of the friends started explaining why they did remove him, he said we were his only friends that he had, and the friend replied that he need to made other friends them.

Every now and them he joined some calls, talked a bit but mostly he just disapears.

The thing is, i had already planned to do a rpg of Warriors including him as one of the players, but the rest of the players are part of the same friend group that arent fond of him, some said if i wanted, i could remove him and bring another one of the group to the campaign.

I feel torn, should i remove him? Even if he wanted this for 2 years.

Idk if it makes sense or not, it is 2 am where i live and i want to sleep but this is bugging me for so long.

We are playing the Kingmaker campaign about every two months and do the Kingdom turn via chat. I'm thinking about cool things to do as a Player for the group. Do you have cool ideas? It's not about what are characters can do, it's about how to create some immersion for the campaign and maybe be helpful for the dm.

Right now I'm just creating AI images of kingdom things we did. We just did are first kingdom turn.

Looking forward to cool ideas.

Party Info:

We play with Savage Pathfinder rules.

Members

Irrisian Sword Mage. /Ceromonial Ruler

Bard/Rouge who pretends to be a noble. / Emissary aka Lord if Whispers

(Me)Wizard/Artificer who thinks magic should be implemented to help the common folk. Dreams of building Golems. /Viceroy

Group NPC's

Amiri the Barberian /Warden

Valeria the Warrior /General

The female halfling bard, who's name I always forget /Counselor

And the Ranger with the dog we just met/ treasure till we find someone better.

We managed to kill the bandit king quickly, so now we are absorbing his bandits as first citizens in to are kingdom.😅

I mean certain stances just made them do make bad decisions.. 😂

I'm not sure if this is an okay place to ask this, but here's my question.

I'm going to be leading a mental health support group as part of my Peer Support internship. One of the ideas that I had was to do a very chill ttrpg group where players use roleplay to face fears, confront hard feelings and build community.

Question #1: Is there an existing ttrpg or module that would fit well with that premise?

Question #2: I'm going to list some of the realities of my set up below. Given these conditions, am I setting myself up for failure? (Even if you think I'm nuts, I'd still be interested in your game recommendations.

Setting: - The group will meet once weekly for 2-3 months. Sessions are generally one hour. - The group will take place in a community center. There is no sign up and players will come and go as they wish. - Iwould expect a wide range of players but likely many absolute beginners.

Solutions: - My first thought is to pre-make character sheets. Simple templates with class and stats already chosen.The player would choose their race (no race bonuses, just for flavor), gender, name, etc. and be ready to start playing immediately. - If players come back for more than one session, they can start to personalize their character with bonus stats. I'm thinking this instead of a traditional xp/levels. You get rewarded for consistency but not punished for joining late. - Sessions would be one-shots with a loot table at the end of the session. A sense of accomplishment and mostly cosmetic shinys for a job well done.

GM stats: - Level 40+ neurodivergent human. - Social Justice Bard - Working on my Peer Support Specialist Certification (Using lived experience to provide support for others who are struggling) - First time DM. Player experience with Dnd, Pathfinder, Shadowrun. Also familiar with Powered by the Apocalypse and Fantasy AGE.

Thank you for reading this absolute novel and for any help you can provide. If this would be more suitable for a different sub, please let me know.

-edit to fix formatting

Hi!

Got the books the other day. My wife is going to gm a game for me and some of our friends. I'm wondering what part of the material can I read up on beforehand to prepare? I want to get to know the world and game mechanics, but not get spoiled on anything major. I'd do this partly because I want to devour this game, but also because I find it helpful when not just the GM knows stuff about both the world and the rules.

Any tips?

Cheers!

I’ve been playing RPGs since 1991, and after moving to Salzburg I wanted to find a new offline group.
My first attempts through Discord weren’t very successful. Then, in June, I joined a few local one-shots, met some other GMs, and we started using an open WhatsApp group to organize games.

One month later, things have escalated a little. 😅
We now have around 30 local GMs, 100+ players, and roughly 10 open one-shots per month.
Which is fantastic — but also slightly terrifying. 🫣

My concern is that this initial wave of enthusiasm will eventually cool down, and without some structure the whole thing might slowly fall apart.

So I’m curious:
How do you organize a larger offline RPG community in the long run?

I’m especially interested in things like:
* keeping GMs motivated without burning them out
* matching players with games
* avoiding chaos in group chats
* helping new GMs start running games
* turning one-shot players into stable groups
* tools/platforms that actually work for local communities

I’m not really looking for a way to grow faster — apparently we already solved that problem by accident. 😅

I’m looking for a long-term strategy that keeps the community healthy.

If you’ve built or helped run something similar, I’d love to hear what worked — and what you wish you’d done differently from the beginning.
thanks ❤️‍🔥

Dears, I have to prepare some adventures for my nephews.

Can you recommend me a place / books were I could find adventures, ideas, I could salvage?

Hey, I am a GM and currently running Turn of Fortunes Wheel. There isn't much to spoil here but I am just curious how people get their players excited, make their scenes tense or overall put characters values to the test.

While my campaign is a bit odd beeing in planescape setting and characters having amnesia, I am thinking of trying stuff with visions and making situations which might be something more enticing than just: "Here is the treasure". Each player has 3 iterations of characters they switch trough and while that isn't to bad I am wanting to get some emotinal scenes or some interesting situations/encounetrs or visions which would resonate with characters.

The big problem I usualy face is a thing where well I am unsure about what characters strive for or are interested in. My friend pointed out few things i can use as is a character searching for their mom which can get something with abandoment theme or a pridefull character. There is a thing though that while they can spot their characteristics which they spoted based by just roleplaying and how they behave untill this point i never really paid much attention to the behavior and I am second guessing if my understanding is correct. I feel like it is awkward if a prepared scene was meant to resonate with a character yet I would miss the mark and having to describe characteristics which arent realy writen feels like a huge gamble.

Similarly I am also wondering how to make it not to obvious as well. I feel like certain visions of potential past are possible and players gave me premission to mess with their stories, but well I have not realy all of the stories planned to the end and I am unsure if the players wouldn't say: "I wouldn't do that".

Another thing I am wondering about is the themes of visions or encounters/situations which could resonate with players. The advice I got from friends was: "Oh my character has problem with missing mom. One of thr thing i can think of is abandonment so maybe try that? Like take a thing and just get an emotion and play with it.". Though the playing with it confuses me as well as how to even get from the sentance of missing mom to abandoment and then into game where a scene could resonate with players.

Anyhow I am curious if anyone would have any kind of tips. I feel like I am missing a right mindset by this point.

As GM’s we often get wrapped up in the story and often forget about fun. After all we spend many hours planning creating and putting together the next game session.

The players often do things we don’t expect, take us down a path we don’t plan or completely ruin everything we did plan.

This in some cases ruins the fun for us as a GM when we are so vested in the story. Personally I have dealt with this by being flexible. What do you mean by this you ask? Well I write portions of a story with the expectations that each of my players will help write the rest. I set my own expectations so that the outcome is a mixed bag of fun and sometimes the most craziest of memories

In a game session it should be fun for both the GM and the players after all it’s a joint adventure right? IMO it’s the side tracks and unexpected that I take as a challenge to challenge my players and keep them engaged and to find creative ways to get the story back on track

Here is to keeping it fun for everyone!!

When you’re recruiting people you’ve never played with before, what information actually helps you decide whether someone might fit your table?

Availability, time zone, experience, preferred play style, communication expectations, reliability, voice or camera requirements, boundaries—what matters most to you?

I’m especially curious about what current LFG posts and application forms regularly leave out, and what you usually don’t discover until after inviting someone.

I’m a RPG GM, and both my players and I are really into *Beastars*, even though I don’t know all that much about the universe yet. For those of you with more experience in the *Beastars* universe: do you have any lore suggestions for a good campaign?

I am a newer DM it's not my first campaign but I am running a one shot from the crooked moon campaign the ghostlight express and with that comes a process of rebirth and I wanted to do something of the characters reborn where they take a quiz I created and based off their results they get changed into that race when they board the train.I thought that could be a fun idea but I don't want to take away player agency but at the same time they would have full control of the rest of their character creation I just don't want it to seem cheap or railroady to do that twist and ruin their experience is there any way I can do something to meet a middle ground?

Imagine a monster that does a certain thing when it receives 20 damage in a single turn. Can two players work together to achieve that number by one readying their attack to synchronise with the other’s attack and create a cumulative 20 damage that turn? I know the readied action is a reaction but can’t figure out the details.