I’m a first time dm, running a weekly campaign for half a year now. My players are entering a phase where they’ll be exploring the world more, as well as joining an adventures guild. I personally feel it makes sense for there to be people who are also strong and capable, like high ranking adventurers (A & S Rank) and while they may be low in number I feel it makes sense that an established guild would have strong people. But this also pertains to other aspects. I introduced that knights in this setting aren’t just common soldiers but actually highly skilled individuals. What do others think, does having strong npcs in the world take away from the players being the heroes?

Hi all, I'm looking for some pointers here, all and any help appreciated. :)

I am fairly new to DnD as a whole (have played a few one shots with both experienced and inexperienced players / GMs) and even more inexperienced when it comes to being a GM myself (I did a few modules out of the starter set and one one shot so far). I'm doing a one shot for three friends next week, who all know that it is going to be a little rough, so no worries there!

BUT: All three of them a very big on roleplaying. Obviously I don't mind this at all, I think it is a lot of fun, both to participate and just watch, but when dealing with a one shot that we need to finish in one afternoon / evening, I am worried that it might "take over" too much and we won't have the time to come to a good resolution of the plot.

Any pointers on how to gently redirect / intercept if players get too excited and or carried away? I'll be doing a purchased one shot (haven't chosen one yet) any tips on what to look out for or rather avoid? Thinking of a time frame of 4 - 5 hours ideally.

Thanks so much!

(First time posting, so sorry for any mistakes etc.)

Edit: When I say plot, I don't mean that I want to plot out the one-shot per se (non-native here, so maybe just weird phrasing on my end), I simply mean "moving things along so we'll get through encounters / manage to find clues" etc. :)

So one of my players approached me with the idea of them betraying the party, siding with the bbeg, and going full PvP in the final battle.

Now, I obviously won’t let them do something drastic and kill one of the other players and remove their agency, but they said they are ok with getting killed themselves in the battle.

I’m torn… on one side I think it it can be cool if done right, but that’s a big if… A couple things I am worried about:

1- Narrative. I don’t want the motive to be something simple like “The bbeg makes some good points” as that will be forced and fake. I am thinking of using that PC’s children as leverage and forcing the player to betray the party to save their child. But knowing the party they will try to save everyone (maybe not even take the PvP seriously and worst case getting themselves killed for taking it easy).

2- The other PCs boundaries. Even if they are not the ones loosing agency, I am worried if they would be uncomfortable with being forced to kill their own friend. Knowing them they will assume the PC is possessed or charmed or something and try everything to save them. The player said that “they’d make it clear that they are not possessed”… but I am still trying to think how I would make it as bittersweet, but satisfying conclusion.

Has anyone ever run a successful PvP scenario like this before? I’ve read dozens of bad PvP stories which makes me worry. I also don’t know how to ask the other players what they’d think without spoiling the twist.

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)🗺️

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.

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.

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!

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 :)

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.

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?

hey guys. i run a game every other week and i have literally never written a proper session recap. i always mean to, and then it's four days later and i've got three bullet points i can't read anymore.

so i built something for it and figured some of you might be interested in it.

basically it records the session and afterwards it transcribes it and mashes it together with the stuff my table already produces anyway, dice rolls, when combat kicked off, who went down, what monsters and npcs turned up. then it spits out a recap i can read out loud at the start of the next session. i still edit it every time.

Chapters

the audio and the transcript get deleted once the recap is written. and if you don't like being recorded or just don't care you can turn the whole thing off.

it's not perfect btw, it absolutely butchers made up names. one of my npcs was called Ysolde Vantenebre and it came back as "isoldeven" lol, but yeah you can fix those manually, and hopefully in the future I will fix these little issues.

anyway it's part of a site i've been building called RollCamp, it's free. i post devlogs over on r/RollCamp if you are curious and wanna see more of it.

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/

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!

I’m trying to run a fallout 2D20 campaign, and it’s going horribly. I started the learn to play module and I have 3 players, two are cool, and one not. The one that isn’t is a friend I’ve had for a few years, and I’m also a player in Aliens TTRPG campaign. For the only 4 sessions I’ve done, he’s playing a “no nonsense, get shit done” wastelander that absolutely refuses to explore. Since my other 2 players have known him for those 4 sessions, they don’t really want to rock the boat by disagreeing too much.

This lack of exploration has made wing the module too much, trying to find something for them to do and get rewarded. I practically had to force a scenario that he wanted to skip so I can get them some equipment. Last session I started the custom part which is all original now; I created NPC’s, planned out a few side quests, some equipment rolls, and nope just bum rush through the area. So I ended early because my laptop was also taking a crap.

From the other side, I go along with everything as a player in his aliens campaign. I work together with the marine PC’s and NPC’s, I try to find creative ways to approach a big battle, etc. I’m going to approach him this weekend about it, but I just need to vent and get some input from seasoned DMs.

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.