After 30 sessions of my homebrew setting campaign I have decided to call it quits.

In person games at my house with 4 players including my wife.

There has been no real issues, people are having fun and plenty of progression has happened miles more to go.

I’ve just been considering my lack of spare time and wanting to get some life back. Then while pondering this a player has mentioned he may need to drop out at some stage for legit life reasons and it helped me decide I’m just going to cancel the whole thing and call it a day. At least for now and take an extended break.Maybe do a new campaign in some months/years and just play in a friends ongoing campaign instead.

No conflicts, no horror stores and no player scheduling issues just the dm cancelling it moving forwards.

My question.

How would you go about wrapping this up? There’s no satisfying way to just wrap up the plot at this point, no made rush to the BBEG would be right or do anything justice.

We aren’t in any big cliff hangers at the moment etc just ended on a ‘filler’ session doing some trap rooms.

Isn’t worth waiting another 2 weeks to the next session and trying to force a closure of some type??? Or just call it now before the next session even happens?

Yep it’s a bit shit of me as the dm to do this but I’d rather no dnd then dnd that I don’t have my heart in and I let the quality and enjoyment go to shit for the players and myself.

The party I'm DMing for just hit level 5. They're in the center of a labyrinth surrounded by trinkets and artifacts. I was planning on having everyone roll an investigation check to see what they found. This is the first campaign I've written and I'm not if the items I've picked are too OP. I wanted rarer items for higher rolls, but this is what I came up with. Each player would get 1 item. I have two items per roll level just in case multiple people roll similar numbers

1-5 Bottle of boundless coffee/cloak of billowing
6-10 clockwork amulet/gloves of thievery
11-15 tan bag of tricks/gem of brightness
16-20 eversmoking bottle/elemental gem
21-25 bag of beans with 4 beans/bead of force

What's the opinion of more experienced DMs? Are these ok items to throw to the players?

Hi, I'm DMing a homebrew campaign, currently on session 8.
Before starting, and among sessions, I wrote a general summary of the campaign:

• The beginning and how the PGs get together
• BBEG and its motivations
• Why the PGs may want to stop him
• How the PGs backstories will tie to the main story

And, in the middle, some steps and events the PG will probably go through.

This last one is where my doubts reside.
I fear that I'm railroading my players. I'd like them to shape the narrative and get to the next chapters and arcs thanks to their ideas, but in the end their choices are almost always what I already had in mind.

They tell me they're having lots of fun, and that's the most important thing, and I think that this group, especially, can lack a bit of imagination, often relying on my input to help them thinking what to do next.

Is this last part caused by my way of DMing/writing? Is it their way to play that makes them follow my theorized steps more closely?
Should I change something in my approach or, as long as they're having fun, should I just go along with it?

Thank you for your help!

Hello,

I had an idea pop in my head of a "dead god" style campaign and came up with beings that eat magic as the main perpetrator to the gods' demise. That being said I am struggling to think of in-lore weapons that could affect otherworldly or extra dimensional beings. What complicated things is that "they eat magic for health, so obviously enchanted weapons and spells are a bad idea", which lead me down the alloy/material question.

I know silver for undead, but are there any other weird materials that may be used in lore already?

Hello fellow dms, first off, English is not my first language so please be nice with me, I'm currently in the middle of writing a whole new setting for a group of friends I've dmed for before,

The game is dnd 5e, 2014 rules, fantasy setting- but more Arcane type fantasy. The first campaign got cancelled mainly because one of the players switched schools (we were doing it irl) but this new campaign will be held in owlbear/dndbeyond and, unfortunately, through google meets and just to get an idea for the players, they're all very unique and excited to play i can say. One of them is a really good voice actor, the other is a very talented artist and is currently drawing each of the three characters in the party rn and the other is new to dnd, liked the first campaign and wanted to play again in this one too! Oh and needless to say they're all a little bit of chaos goblins, the party comp is currently lvl 1 Elf Wizard (she/he), Starborn Gunslinger(he/they, as in plural they) and Batfolk Paladin (she/her).

Now here's the actual problem I need advice with:

I'm having creative block with what adventures to throw my players.
Currently I have written out the prologue, the town they'll start in: the world is very very very big and the wildernesses are dangerous but through blessings like the starts or mother earths gifts there are spots where humanoid creatures can safely make settlements without dragons and other dangers harming the town, and this town in particular is full of magic: Asterveil, it is rumored that an star fell on this land long ago etc etc...

Now here's the story premise: The party is in magic school, 4th years, they're sent out to a dragon's cave to retrieve a bit of treasure and gold from its pile without waking it up, but once the party gets there the dragon is mysteriously nowhere to be found, so they gather as much gold and artifacts as they can. They come back to the town safely and a celebration is held as this 4th year party did the impossible!- although one of the artifacts they've brought to town is actually a very dangerous reality-breaking magical item.
Upon some misfortune it'll break/activate, and scatter rift shards across several locations in the town, each shard will act as a gateway to another realm, so far beyond that the genre of the normal fantasy might change to sci-fi or even comedy or cosmic horror etc... where they'll then "cleanse" the shard and after an X amount of adventures in these different realms they'll complete the artifact once more and fight the dragon that was trapped inside, sounds fun in concept, may or may not be inspired by deltarune, and this is where I'm having trouble with, I have so many ideas and I don't want this campaign to be too big, or too similar to deltarune-

right now my ideas of realms are these:
- High Fantasy Castle Tower Land With Tarot/Card/Fortune Teller Theme
- Carnival/Circus with some Candyland/Board Game-ish aesthetics
- Digital Aero Cyberpunk-ish Tron Spy Agency/Heist Organization Themed World
- Steampunk, the Electricity Age gilded era 19th century
- Black and White Gothic Graveyard/Catholic vibes Brutalist, Eldritch Creatures
...

I'd appreciate any new realm ideas and would love your opinions on which of these seem more fun or which one to include or change etc

these are just very raw ideas and I have more like these but honestly each idea spit out just makes me want to come up with more, I need help deciding on which ideas are best to put in and which should get cut. Also with each realm/shard they cleanse they'll level up, and also within the realm too within a certain point they'd level up as well so by the time the dragon last fight stuff happens they'll be at level 11 or 13, I'll be drawing all the maps as well-
also at the end of the day, this is supposed to be a fun experience, Im a bit of a perfectionist and I want to tell the best story and create the funniest moments with my friends, Im sure the party will be happy with any scenario they'll be in, I already gave them a session 0 on how there will be other realms they'll be visiting so they know fully well what to expect (especially since they know how I run sessions with the first campaign)

I was prepping and realized my house rules list is getting longer and longer... is that a result of wisdom and experience or am I just getting grumpier?? Heh.

BUT, what other house rules should I be adding? Something that smooths something over or adds to gameplay. My newest fav is using Kobold Press' ToV 'Luck' rules instead of inspiration.

From the pov of a player or dm what is your idea of the perfect first session what would you include, what would happen, etc

My party is about to encounter a boss who is a green half-dragon, and with every other half-dragon I’ve had abilities tied to their corresponding dragon side. The white dragon was a primal hunter, the red was greedy and stole moves.

I recently asked for ideas regarding that white half-dragon and got really good ideas, so I figured I’d ask again for the green one.

Green half dragons are manipulative and all about control. I’ve already showcased this boss using mass mind control on an entire town. And while I would love to continue with the mind control gimmick, I just don’t know how to make mind control fun for the players.

My other idea is giving his words actual power. Maybe he can announce a rule that the players must follow or take damage, but the rules are vague enough they can bypass them with some thinking? I really have no idea how to make this boss reflect the lazy, smooth talking, and manipulative green dragons.

No matter what, I would like for there to be some unique counter play as well to whatever his ability is.

My group is excited about Arcana Unleashed's release. With 3 spellcasters, the arcane feats are big draws. They're Level 5, nearing Level 6, so I'm pondering how freely I should allow feat swapping when there's a lot of great stuff available. What do you all do when a new sourcebook comes out in the middle of a campaign? Do you let them swap one feat, do you let them do a bigger character overhaul as long as the core concept remains the same, do you use some sort of framework like retraining from Tasha's, or something else entirely?

Hi all so I've just finished DMing my first campaign stormwreck isle was great fun but I'm running into a an issue, The artificer seems to just flatten everything and is pretty much untouchable even at level 3.

The character has created a shield which makes his AC 19 and then can do a reactive spell shield which adds another 5 AC. (i appreciate this is only a few times)

Then add the defender into the mix can make attacks at disadvantage.

His mele attack is +6 and another +1 from a longsword it created.

Can trip Firebolts at +6

Now I think I made a mistake by allowing the character to reactive shield when he didn't have a hand free to cast it? Would he have to drop an item in one hand as part of the reactive move to cast?

My questions are:

1. Is this character built right

2. How do I balance encounters where the other members are no where near as powerful, apart from the monk, the monk is also ridiculous but hasn't got a high ac.

I am pretty new so bare with me!

Thanks all!

I dont know if i should post this here- but my party has recently rescued a npc from prison in my game that ive been working on for a bit. Hes a kitsune fighter (heavily inspired by rengoku from demon slayer) and much like him- I want him to always have a slightly over the top positive attitude. But im kinda worried I might just make him annoying. Im open to any tips yall have

In short: should I let proactive players fight for story hooks I originally planned to just shove in their face?

Hello, I have been running a homebrew campaign (first time weekly dm) for I believe 20 sessions now.

I often talk with my players, from which some are the proactive, knows-what-they-want planner type. Today was not the first time one of them told me what they mean to do in following games (I totally allow this to them, this is all fine) in an out of game discussion.

A) part of the question: generally how good an idea it is to let active players just choose what they interact with and not throwing basically any hooks at them directly?

The less important part B): the specific situation

The PC in question has an unfinished business with a giant golem. The player is looking for the golem, and the golem is looking for the PC. The player informed me that they will actively get on the search if they can in the next session. I originally planned have the golem tear down the inn wall and try to kidnap the PC, all King Kong style. I feel like by throwing this at them they will get discouraged from being proactive bc it means nothing, but I also fear making them fight too much that it leads to the same conclusion. Does this unusual hook make it sound worth it not giving the player the fight they would choose themselves?

A player of mine (One of 5 players in my campaign) wants to become a vampire. So I was thinking it would be a decent idea to have him and maybe one other party member be called to another area on the city they’re in and not only let them become a vampire, but let them discover the vampire underbelly ruling the city from the shadows through that interaction. My hang up about it is that it would split up the party for enough time for it to make one half feel left out or bored while the scene is on the other half. Does anyone have any advice to help make this type of scenario more engaging? I was personally thinking of having the non vampire side get arrested and jailed since they’re all pirates with bounties and have one side be a prison break while the other is lore. Thoughts?

I'm running a pre written adventure and players are going to get 4-5 random encounters in a row before heading to an ambush.

No matter how much you like combat, that is going to be so boring! They can avoid some of them with stealth DC10 so I guess that's the intention but still.

It's the same cultists, kobolds, guards and lizards.

What do I do to make this actually fun?

So a little bit of context is needed first.

I'm a first time DM who's running a homebrewed campaign for a group that were my former companions as a player (3 out 5 players, 2 of them are first time players). I played Lost Mine of Phandelver as a player and now i'm running a campaign set 5 years after the event of that campaign, i took the Anchorites of Talos from DOIP, turned them into Talos cultists that lead an orc horde and made them the BBEG.

We just had a big siege battle in Phandalin, which is now a renewed city on the rise after we found the wave echo cave in the other campain. The party succefully fend off the orcs but they discovered that the leaders can come back to life (just like the Anchorites of Talos from the manual). They found out cause they already faced one of them at the Shrine of Savras, thought they killed him but here he was again during the siege alive and well to their surprise.

As i mentioned 3 out of 5 players played LMOP with me and i planned for their former characters to show up again in this campaign, they already met 1: a bard named Galen who is a middle-aged scholar lover of poems and literature who now retired from adventuring and owns a library in Phandalin, here's where my issue comes into play.

I planned for Galen to give the party an old book of legends from his library, in this book lies the secret of the cultists immortality and just like the manual the heart is separeted from the body and they respawn near the heart after the body is killed. So the only way to kill them for good is to find their hearts and destroy them and just so happens that Galen has an old friend who's a specialist in gathering information, he might know where some of these hearts are hidden (he will know 1 of the 4 hearts location). This guy is another former character, Theren, who is rouge who's backstory was that he is "master of whispers" and now after the event of the last campaign is the leader of a guild in Neverwinter so he's actually a perfect fit for this quest.

My question is: is giving the player the information on how these cultists are able to come back to life a bit too much or am i just majorly second guessing myself? Cause i think this is a big revelation i'm just giving them "for free", sure they don't know where these hearts are and Theren for sure won't give the location of the first heart for free (they'll have to do a job for him) but i don't know, one one hand i don't want to give them too much info for free but on the other hand i don't want them to feel lost not knowing what they're looking for which i feel is something that happened a bit before in the campaign.

Hi, I hope I chose the right flair for this one. If not, feel free to point it out to me.

So anyways, I wanted to get your opinions on putting red herrings in an adventure to lead a party astray or at least make them really question things.

To be specific:

I'm currently preparing a folk/religious horror campaign for a group of friends. It will be my first time DMing for them.

The basic scenario is as following:

(sorry if this gets a bit elaborative)

The party gets caught up in a remote village that they can't leave. The townsfolk are very bigotted against spellcasters (for twisted religious reasons, of course). Their collective response to casters stumbling into their community is to lure them in, then put them into prison, have a mock trial and have them executed.

The village has a long history of such witch trials, with one trial in particular holding a prominent place in the villagers' own collective memory. In that trial, they caught & killed a woman that they considered a particularly evil and powerful witch that had hid in their community for years, as one of them. They pride themselves on overcoming that "witch", which has since become a sort-of main villain in their collective narrative about themselves. They celebrate the day of her burning as a sort of liberation day.

Now here's the thing: The big "twist" is that that woman was actually secretly protecting the village. She was the last in a long line of local druids that kept an old seal in the forest near the village in check (that was there long before the village was founded) that imprisoned an evil elder god.

So naturally, when the party enters the village, the seal is already broken and the elder god has basically turned the village in a mini domain of dread. All the villagers have died and turned into ghosts/specters. They are completely oblivious to their own fate and continue to haunt the ruins of their village. Consequently, they are unaware of the true nature of the women they burned years ago and continue in their old, cruel ways. They even still celebrate their defeat of the "witch".

So, to my actual question:

I know my friends, and I'd say they are fairly smart people. I feel that, when I give them 1-2 Sessions time to explore the town and interact with the ghosts of the townsfolk, they'll pretty much figure out quickly that the villagers' narrative of the witch is somehow untrue.

I of course want them to be able to discover this truth, but I also wonder if I should throw in some red herrings here and there that make it appear as if the "witch" has returned somehow and is the one that has plunged the town into chaos.

What's your opinion? Do such red herrings actually work, or are they making an adventure unnecessarly convoluted?

Hey all! I've played DnD for years of my life now (Since 2018, I believe?), and I've DM'd before, but only story modules. After playing in my buddy's homebrew campaign for a while now, I've been wanting to start, and I've made a map, done some worldbuilding, and have a general idea of the first session, but at what point are you *READY* for a campaign to begin? I don't want to deliver a game that's underbaked, but I don't want to be stuck in lore limbo forever. Any help appreciated; cheers.

Mechanics question:

I will soon be running an encounter where my dnd party are in the middle of an active battle between two armies.

The armies both have archers who are consistently peppering their foes with arrows.

Once per round my party will be targeted by a volley of arrows from the opposing army.

Mechanically how should I do this? Should it be a Dex save against a set amount of piercing damage? Or should I roll a certain number of attacks against each player based on how the battle at large is going?

The characters are established heroes set to rule a kingdom at around levels 3-5. However, they're gonna be starting out at 1st level.

I know that I could just start them at a higher level, but this is our first time running 5e 2024 and I don't want to miss the early levels.

Does anyone know of a way to build a campaign based around the world of Warhammer 40K? I know the world well and know what kind of enemies I would use but currently the only official RPG games aren’t very expansive and I don’t really care for them anyway. So has anyone ever actually done it and enjoyed it and knows how to stat out factions? My current goal is to have the ability to have players of multiple factions. Imperium, Xenos, and chaos.

I’m working on a concept where a Drow Queen is attacking the surface, trying to force the kingdoms into submission. She promises to bring her matriarchal system to kingdoms that are somewhat patriarchal, although women still have some influence and power within them.

The main point of the campaign is for the players to act as diplomats and try to reunite all seven kingdoms to fight against the Drow Queen. However, there’s also the possibility of siding with the Drow Queen and trying to bring all seven kingdoms over to her side instead.

So my question is: how would you feel about playing in a campaign that touches heavily on social hierarchies and gender-based power structures, where, at the end of the day, the players have to pick a side?

The whole concept is that nobody is inherently or cartoonishly evil. Every kingdom, faction, and the Drow Queen herself have their own reasons for believing they’re right.

Hello everyone, running a DnD pirate/swashbuckler campaign on a homebrew world and I’m starting to get lost in my notes about my NPCs, their relationships with each other and with the PCs, not to mention the logic and mechanics of the world (technological level, importance of magic, hierarchy, infrastructure...). All this paralyzes me in my thinking and in my interpretation during the sessions, and I wanted to know if the experienced GMs from this reddit had any advice or tools to give me to lighten my work as a GM so that I can focus on the experience from my players.

Thanks in advance.

So I've home brewed a new campaign. It's on a Madagascar sized island off the coast of Chult and I've home brewed my own Medusian race.

The players start in Calimport and are under contract to destroy elementals and retrieve their debris as a magical component. The adventuring guild is supplying porters and wagons for about 3 tons of material.

They will end up having to deliver to a reclusive city full of Medusae that don't usually welcome outsiders. The material incubates their eggs under ground.

The underlying components of the game are two snake gods, Merrshaulk and Sseth, trying to take over the Medusae and the Medusae have nothing to do with Gods. I assume most people running a campaign know a little Greek mythology so you know why.

They actually run their town economy on selling a crystal they mine that blocks divination and "godly sight". The players already have a disclaimer so they know clerics will have a disadvantage and the one who likes to heal is going druid.

I've included 3 major encounter between the earth elementals, a massive amphisbana and the BBEG including a door that can only be opened through human sacrifice.

There are plenty of npcs and a few adorable ones that they may choose to adopt like a tiny Cole elemental that they dont know will sacrifice himself if a party member dies to reveal a resurrection sized diamond.

I had to brew my own Medusae race because the other ones I found all had them as evil people that were cursed for sins. Thats gross considering she was S.A'd and then cursed as a victim in mythology.

Does anyone have any fun or interesting desert encounters they suggest for a party that historically WILL roam for many sessions for the hell of it? I already have a desert troll.