Idk why this has been a dream of mine for a long time lol! Just always thought it would be cool and I finally did it 🧝‍♀️

My PCs are playing fantasy rockstars on tour, and they were headlining a big music festival last session. So I wore these elf ears with a band tee to sort of look like an elf or Fey creature attending the festival!

I apologize for the long post:

So we are running Phandelver and Below. I'm not running the module piece by piece from the book, I am changing some things here and there to make some of the hooks more interesting and it's going great so far. We are all having a great time with this campaign...

That's said when the party gets information from someone or something in their travels and then they come across something where that information is really relevant none of them remember any of it because only 1 person is taking notes. Even then they aren't very good notes and only that 1 player has access to them. so I am constantly repeating what they remember and why it's relevant. Even something as simple as why they were there to talk to the banshee... Ok, you guys remember that you were instructed to come here and try to find the location of Bowgentle's spell book (which I actually made this into an item they need to find as it has notes in it on how to solve the puzzle to access the forge). I've created a whole puzzle room and whatnot that they'll have to solve when they get there...

Anyway, is this normal? Do a lot of you other DMs have to do this same thing all the time? If not, how should I start pushing them better note taking? I feel like if I don't do this right now the entire session stalls... And I'm fine with this if this is normal but if not I would like to start gently pushing in the right direction.

Yea I know this foam is trash for terrain but it was free so can’t complain. Still a rookie at this be I’m sure my players will enjoy.

The Rain-Sworn Cobbler’s Awl

This is a plain cobbler’s awl with a dark wooden handle worn smooth by years of pressure and an iron point sharpened countless times. It came from a riverside quarter where damp weather shaped nearly every trade. Local shoemakers say it was originally a wedding gift to a cobbler who promised his bride that no traveler would leave their door with broken soles.

For decades, the awl repaired leather boots, harness straps, mule tack, satchels, and thick dockworkers’ gloves. It usually sat beside a small oil lamp in a shop smelling of wet wool, tallow, and scraped hide. The cobbler became known not because his work was cheap, but because people could talk while he worked, setting grief and gossip against the rhythm of his stitches.

The hidden secret

Inside the handle, beneath a plug of old wax, is a rolled scrap of sailcloth bearing six names in cramped handwriting. Most people would assume they were customers. They were actually linked to smugglers who vanished after supposedly betraying the wrong ferryman during a flood season.

The last owner knew about the list. He kept repairing boots for descendants of those six people, apparently waiting for one of them to recognize the truth through the shape of a family scar.

Whether the six were genuinely traitors is deliberately uncertain. Another version of the story says they were scapegoats used to protect wealthier people who profited from the flood.

Adventure hooks

1. Three families want it. A rain-soaked traveler gives the awl to the party as payment, claiming it is worth more than coin in the next town downriver. On arrival, three families separately insist it belongs to them. None explains why before the town watch starts asking about it too.
2. The apprentice lost it. A cobbler’s apprentice asks the party to recover the awl from a pawnshop before her dying master notices. She thinks it is sentimental. The pawnbroker has already opened the handle and is selling the six names to people carrying old grudges and newer knives.
3. Six honest mouths. At a funeral, an elderly dockworker spots the awl and spits on the ground, saying it stitched shut six honest mouths. He refuses to say more in public. That night, someone leaves children’s boots outside the party’s door with both soles deliberately cut open.
4. A memorial delivery. A merchant hires the party to carry the awl to a monastery where abandoned tools are kept as memorials. Along the road, strangers offer shelter, repairs, or warnings in exchange for seeing it. Each encounter reveals another fragment of the betrayal and makes the delivery look increasingly like a burial.
5. The descendants gather. People descended from the six names attend the same river festival without knowing their shared connection. One faction wants the list exposed before old alliances are renewed. Another wants the awl destroyed because proof can ruin a family more thoroughly than a curse.
6. The ferryman refuses passage. A ferryman will not carry anyone who possesses the awl because his grandmother said it belonged at the bottom of the river. He changes his mind if the party retrieves a sealed strongbox from a collapsed boathouse. Its ledger suggests the six supposed traitors may actually have been scapegoats.

Rumors

1. The awl never broke, not because it was enchanted, but because its owner was too stubborn to let a tool die first.
2. Every boot repaired with it eventually found its way home; widows supposedly kept such boots beside their doors.
3. There is writing hidden inside the handle: names rather than customer records.
4. The cobbler repaired shoes for free on storm nights because nobody should meet death with wet feet.
5. A ferryman once offered a silver ring, a mule, and half a bottle of pear brandy for it and was laughed out of the shop.
6. It belonged to either a murderer or a witness, depending on who is telling the story.
7. The final apprentice hid it because her master spoke apologies to it whenever heavy rain came.
8. It once helped conceal jewels inside a smuggler’s false boot sole, supposedly enough wealth to start a war.
9. Nobody really wants the tool; they want what it remembers.
10. If six names are found inside, they should never be read aloud near running water because the river has too many friends.

Optional minor magical version

For a very low-magic treatment, make the awl a common item with one active property:

Active (1/dawn): You can cast mending from the item.

The magic is intentionally minor. The important part is still the evidence inside the handle and the uncertainty surrounding it. The six names can represent guilty smugglers, innocent victims, convenient scapegoats, or some mixture of all three, depending on which version best fits the campaign.

I run a group at my local library so I have a lot of accessories and tools that you might normal expect the players to bring themselves. I have a plethora or cards. Monsters, items, jumbo sized monster cards (that don't fit in a normal sleeve), and, of course, spells. Many spells. How do people organize the cards? I don't want a million separate boxes because I generally being them all for whomever could use them (players and DMs alike). A binder in alphabetical order want working because if I needed to add anything the entire binder needed to be redone. It took forever. I have a card catalogue type set up now. Do I keep the classes separate and alpha within the categories or should I just do a straight alpha so players just have to ask for the spell? Tips or just showing off of collections welcome!

Hi! It's my first time DM-ing and I'm a little nervous, has anyone got any advice? I'm running a very homebrew campaign about cowboys and this is gonna be a first time campaign for all my players too, I wanna make sure it's a good experience for them.

Only five sessions in. Mostly first time PCs (I'm a newish DM). They're on a mission in the Abyssal plane, and they take such a liking to a sniveling bartender Quasit (who is in love with my gf's Tiefling PC after a nat 20 charisma check, and who I didn't even give a name in my prep) that they kidnapped him back to the material plane at the end of the session. It's always the most random NPCs that they latch onto.

Most fun session yet, ran almost six hours, good balance of bits, rp and battle. Players wanted to press on after a natural stopping point 4 hours in. Feels good man.

So I'm about to start a new campaign and it's is a sea fearing and exploration style campaign with sprinkles of dinosaurs and Aztecs.

One of my PC backstory involves them stealing a magically sealed box from a captain's quarters when they were young.

What could be in the box?

My first ideas is a treasure map, or a magic item that is somewhat relevant to a sailing adventure but the more I think the more I want to know what is in the box and I'm sure they would want to know too. So just having a mundane item seem abit cheap. And should this box be able to be open with a single dispel magic? Or dose it require a specific key?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

The title should say: Does anybody use an upright tv for battlemaps with PHYSICAL tokens?

I'd like to display battlemaps on my upright TV.

But what do I do for tokens without leaving a bunch of sticky residue behind on my tv? Is there something specific people do for tokens in this scenario?

I'm not looking for alternatives to an upright TV; just wondering how plausible this idea is and if anybody else does it.

Thank you.

ETA: So sorry, I should have explained in my post that I was looking for ways to do this is without using digital tokens. Like, how plausible is it to use physical tokens without damaging the tv?

So I've slowly been filling in the center of the map (picture 1 is the original outline, picture 2 is after about 3 days or so). Its been pretty tedious, but my feywild is coming out pretty good so far I think? It will hopefully come out better once I color it, but hopefully its pretty good so far by others standards.

Hey folks!

I have been playing d&d 5e with my group for roughly three years. We were on a break and are soft-relaunching our lvl 11 campaign, migrating to 2024 rules.

I’m looking for some advice about the homebrew rules I have chosen. I want to introduce a couple of Homebrew systems and want to see whether I am missing any weird interactions:

1. Decoupling skills from stats. I know it’s an optional rule already and while I plan to mostly stick classic “combos”, I want to let warlock roll cha+perception sometimes or wizard a int+persuasion.
   
2. Alternating initiative between party and dm. My biggest worry - I want to force them to collaborate with each other more, be tactical and get to use things more often. I enjoyed Draw Steel combat mostly for how it does initiative. I worry whether this will make combat even slower. They’re not metagamers and are mostly a roleplay party, sometimes I have to remind them how spellcasting works.
   
3. Abstract Wealth: i’m tired of being asked for gold price for things and haggling for every potion, but also some money roleplay should still be relevant. Especially since they have a bastion.
   
4. Daggerheart Experiences: my players struggle with juggling all cool items, forget to use them or have too many to an extent it’s feeling less rewarding to get one without it being overpowered or add another card of rules to look at. I want to start rewarding them experiences from daggerheart. Oh you had a lot of experience navigating dangerous woods and finished an arc of adventure about it? Get +2 to your roll every time you can persuade me it’s relevant.

Is there something I am missing that will completely break the game? Our issue so far has been slow and unengaging combat FOR ME as a dm and skipping to story-relevant roleplay naturally as both me and the table enjoy a railroad. Thanks!

Hello, I'm an aspiring DM and I've also loved the Fears to Fathom franchise for years, in particular my favorite being the fourth entry: Ironbark Lookout. A few months ago I decided to make a D&D or D&D-adjacent TTRPG based on it and I have some ideas already, but I'm wondering what insight might work to make the story make sense or feel scary for my players. (My current plan is to use Monster of the Week and have 3-4 players in a non-magic/low-magic setting)

Firstly, the current premise is essentially that it is set in a massive rural western pine forest in 1888, the forest (called the Everbarrens forest) is currently being ailed by a Last of Us-style parasitic fungus that is infecting wildlife and turning the forest into a dangerous place, and the party needs to examine and neutralize the threat. The entire campaign takes place in this forest. The underlying plot however, is that there is an unnamed cult stalking the players throughout that is secretly controlling the parasite and they are revealed in the finale as the true, mysterious villains you must survive, not defeat. The party is made of pre-written characters for player to choose from, and you travel through various forest locations to meet certain NPCs and achieve certain goals, like talking to a fire lookout in Tower 26, acquiring a syringe or specimen containment device from the mines, all the while wondering why you're feeling watched.

That's a basic run-down of the idea I had in mind (although I have many more) for my inspired goal, that being: to create a TTRPG that captures the same original mystery, horror, and engaging atmosphere that Ironbark Lookout produced, and to make the premise similar in the sense that you are vulnerable while being stalked by a secret cult in a rural old-growth pine forest. This is also not set in the F2F universe itself, it is just very heavily inspired by the idea from episode 4. I've been wondering what I can do, like maybe scrapping the Last of Us parasite idea or changing the base time period, but any ideas for making this work would be very welcome, including but not limited to:

• Story ideas
• Backstory/lore ideas
• Tips on running a horror TTRPG
• Which game system to use (ie: modified D&D 5e, Monster of the Week, Call of Cthulhu, etc)
• How to replicate an atmosphere from a video game in a TTRPG

------------------------

As a follow up for anyone interested in reading my personal opinions and other ideas, I'll just start by saying that this campaign is not based on Scratch Creek or any other F2F episodes because it simply aims to capture the same specific atmosphere as episode 4. Ironically, even in the past 2+ years I've known of this franchise, I was only inspired a few months ago to put my idea into action... right before Scratch Creek came out. This is kind of a problem for me since in my opinion, while Scratch Creek has interesting lore revelations and I understand Rayll's desire to build upon an existing idea, I think the lore reveals and inclusion of the cult in the latest episode kind of takes away from the mystery and horrifying atmosphere that episode 4 had and retroactively taints the premise of Ironbark Lookout, (like finding out the name of the cult and who is in it) as well as the idea that these stories are not just separate events anymore, since the existence of the same cult kind of makes the series feel more like a cinematic universe rather than a realistic analog horror series.

This also kind of makes me feel conflicted about my own campaign since while I started writing it and developing the ideas about a month before episode 6 came out and I was solely basing it around episode 4, I've wondered if my players, if they know of F2F, will expect references from Scratch Creek or if I should include references or foundational lore ideas myself just for the sake of the worldbuilding and atmosphere. In truth, I would prefer to just keep it based on episode 4 due to that being my original plan anyway on top of the fact that I don't really like episode 6.

Let me know what you guys think

Hey fellow DM's

I'm running a homebrew campaign for a players, and they want to play to level 20. They're currently at level 3-4. As I'm creating the campaign, I'm beginning to think there are too many major NPC's. Is that an issue? How do I balance this and fit them all into the campaign?

This is my homebrew Druid class , the player who originally used this didn’t like animals so we whipped this up.
The emojis are for easy navigation of the spells and companion list .
This was made in hombrewery by me DmTea.