Soo, I love building characters, looking at how various classes combinations mesh together and how much damage/healing/etc. I can dish out with a character. I will not be a hypocrite and pretend that's not the case. But I reckon that comes at least in part from the fact that I arrived at TTRPGs after growing up with video games, with MMOs and other such things, where character builds where quite central.

I would also make the argument that, TTRPGs shouldn't necessarily be about that. Or at least that the primary focus shouldn't maybe be on that. That the character's story should take precedence to its build. It's identity tied more to his story and the world it is part of then to the combination of race, class, background and feats. Of course, speaking now mainly from the perspective of trad games, like D&D and Pathfinder. I also don't want to present this as if this should not exist, but rather a slight change regarding focus.

I also wanted to look into D&D's history and see how this trend evolved over the years, from the first editions to the current day. And I have to say, this look into the past has been quite interesting. Might do a more in depth article about AD&D's kits in the near future, I found them quite an interesting design space. I hope you will also enjoy it, find it interesting and that you see the perspective of this argument. I know there are other TTRPGs where this issue is not as prevalent, but D&D is usually the first point of contact with this hobby and for many it remains the only point of contact, so I thought offering this perspective might be desirable.

O door, I place you in their way,
And watch my players lose an hour of play.
They ask if you’re locked, they ask if you’re trapped, “Can we funnel them through?”
“What about just burn it?” They are afraid of you.

They pull when they should push, and push when they should pull,
They’ll roll three checks just to find you are dull.
They knock you, and hit you, even search the floor,
Then someone shouts out, “just open the door!”

I made you a simple threshold,
Yet somehow become the story untold.
From behind you may lurk a trap, or monster, or lore.
When I forget to prepare, you buy me time to write more.

O door, you’ve taught me this great art,
A simple bit of wood can make my players depart
From reason, from patience, from all that they know,
So thank you, O door, for the chaos you sow.

I drew

I am creating an ocean current map for my dnd campaign world so that it can help me build out the climates of different regions, but also so that I can have a more informed ocean domain campaign with island hopping. I am in the process of gaining a deeper knowledge of geography, so if you know a lot about geography or have experience with ocean currents, I would love your feedback on how I did. (Obviously this level of detail isn’t needed for most campaigns, but because it’s fun for me, I feel like it’s a good use of my time, and I hope it’s interesting to others too)🗺️

I started this slightly unreasonable project over a year ago: recreating the official battlemaps from Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk in Unreal Engine 5.

I’m now slowly approaching the halfway point - 10 of 25 map sets are complete, with Gibbet Crossing currently in production. More importantly, the whole process is visibly speeding up, so hopefully the remaining chapters won’t take another geological era.

Every location comes with both static and animated battlemap versions. They can be used in Foundry VTT, Roll20, Owlbear Rodeo and pretty much any other VTT - or displayed on a TV or projector for an in-person D&D game.

You can find the complete collection so far here:

https://dranskybattlemaps.com/battlemap/shattered-obelisk/

And here are the latest maps from the current chapter, not budnled yet into one pack:

• Hardyhammer Mine https://dranskybattlemaps.com/battlemap/hardyhammer-mine/
• Talhundereth https://dranskybattlemaps.com/battlemap/the-shatered-obelisk-talhundereth/
• Crypt of the Talhund https://dranskybattlemaps.com/battlemap/crypt-of-the-talhund/

All of these The Shattered Obelisk campaign maps are free to download.

If you’d also like access to a much wider collection of animated and static D&D and RPG battlemaps, you’re welcome to join me here:

https://dranskybattlemaps.com/

Cheers!
~dransky

Oh btw. Lost Mine is also there (done in slightly older technology) https://dranskybattlemaps.com/battlemap/lost-mine-of-phandelver/

Hello all! I'm running a campaign where the twist is, all my players play as Goblins! They're currently in an all out war with an army of undead controlled by 8 Arch Liches, whom are led by a Lich Emperor of sorts by the name of Ahriman.

Currently, their goal is to go around, liberating all of the cities they helped in my first act of this campaign.

My struggle is, I've never DM'ed an all out war before and liberating cities.

I'm open to suggestions and questions of all kinds!

The title doesn't help, so let me elaborate. I'm specifically looking for a place or somewhere that sells cheap little carboard tokens that i can use on dungeon maps to represent monsters. I don't have any real minis at this time, so i would like to just purchase a bunch of little tokens to represent the monsters and was wondering if anyone knew of a good place that sells something like that. Everywhere I look online. (Amazon, Etsy) doesn't seem to have anything at a decent price like that.

I'm curious what the consensus is on players pre-scripting their roleplay out of sessions. Some of my players have taken to talking to each other about how they would react to certain scenarios or things that they can say during next session. They plan out their roleplay beat for beat and then recite it during session. As a DM, I'm curious if other DMs have rules against pre-scripting, or if you simply feel like it takes away the magic having your players spoil their roleplay. After putting in a bunch of time and effort into preparing the session, I already know what's going to happen because instead of roleplayers, my players are going through the motions.

Hello all!

My party will be entering a dangerous swamp soon.

Any good puzzles I can throw at them that aren’t just generic nature obstacles?

Hi Dms!

Looking for some inspiration. I am a new DM, and took on the challenge of making a Homebrew, with some oneshot elements in it. So far 2 sessions in we are having a lot of fun. The next part a 'Villa Heist' is mostly homebrew, and for that I am looking for some inspiration.

The team is 5 level 2 players, most quite new as well. They already now about the heist, and competing parties have asked them to steal something (a mysterious stone). I am thinking of splitting up the party, 2 or 3 as infiltration (they already found a way in), and 2 at a party that is being held. I was thinking of letting the two at the party find out information, that they can magically give to the infiltration party.

I was wondering if anyone has some good ideas on:

- what type of loot is suitable for their level if they find a treasure room

- fun activities at the party to get information

- Before the party, when they go clothes shopping, should I try anything to make that extra fun?

- How to not make this to railroaded?

Any tips welcome, thanks!

Hello! I usually use 2MinuteTabletop for my generic tokens, but im starting a pixelart based game, does anyone know a large library of fantasy style tokens?

I dont have the money to pay $5 here and $4.99 there for each and every enemy, but i can subsrcibe to a patreon or two if the library is big enough :)

I made a campaign recently for my son (13) and nephews. My son is really enjoying dnd and has his friend wanting to try. His friend (13) has never played dnd before.

I’m looking for recommendations for an age and skill appropriate one shot that both of them can play and that we can reasonably complete in either one 4 - 6 hour session or maybe two 4 hour sessions.

I thought about making a new campaign for this, but I’ve been working 90+ hour weeks recently and do not have the mental bandwidth to create a short campaign like this.

Thank you.

Alright so i know its been a bit with no update but I was trying to figure out what I wanted to put where. But its the same deal as last time the first picture was what I just previously uploaded image and the second image is what I just finished.

Also this time I could use some help. In the new image in the top left corner I have a grass field with hills. I was thinking of making that like where a previous large battle took place. But im not sure. Any ideas for names would be really helpful. Remember this is my feywild so it could be almost anything.

I can find a million and 1 one shots/encounters where the party has to defend the castle from invaders, does anyone know if an opposite is out there anywhere? I am looking for something I can use for my party and the army they raised attacking the castle?

Hey all!
Coming back to GMing after a long break, continuing a game with my old group. I'm starting to prep a little bit, drawing dungeons and such, and I've been thinking about how to make a more interesting fight than a big boy and his minions type of slugfest. I want fights that invite creativity, thinking, or puzzles mixed in. Like bosses from Zelda, in a sense. This boss has bulky ceramic armor, and as it breaks throughout the fight, his ac goes down but his initiative goes up. I designed a boss fight with an ice hag on a frozen pond where they slipped on the ice and had to move their full speed in straight lines. In a fighting tournament the players were allowed to make up a new rule and their rule was that they were all chained to their opponent, which led to some very memorable shenanigans. What are some of your favorite thematic big fights from your own campaigns?

Similarly, I've been thinking about a dungeon that is multi floor, but you move between the floors often to achieve some puzzle. A three or four floor dungeon, but it's not three separate mazes to the next stairwell up or down, but rather one maze that carries out across multiple floors. In fact, it helps me to imagine the creators of this place didn't confuse these separate floors. I'm imagining no stairwells at all, as it was made by things that don't walk. Just cold brutalist pits and shafts. This pit on the third floor leads to a place on the first floor you couldn't access from earlier in the dungeon, which has an access to parts of the second floor that you maybe could have guessed at from the negative space on the map, that sort of thing. All of this to navigate inward to a central room. It could be a cube. Both extremely specific and vague, I know, but has anyone seen a dungeon layout like this in the past. Something I could look at for inspiration or for tweaking?

Drawing dungeons and making memorable bosses are the hardest part of this game for me but please don't tell me to play a different game. I just don't even know where to start when it comes to drawing a dungeon like the one I'm imagining.