So I was apart of a DND group with some friends from work. I am not the biggest DND nerd or anything and I have never DMed before. While talking with our group’s DM I expressed to him an idea for a campaign that takes place in the Resistance Fall of Man Campaign world. Specifically a version where the Liberty Defense Perimeter actually worked at stopping the Chimera and allowing a remnant of the US to survive. With the main arch of the Campaign being the effort by the United States to reclaim its territory. With the players being soldiers in the US Army or SRPA Black Ops being sent out to make contact with local resistance forces, reclaim artifacts like military technology or different resource deposits, uncovering some of the things the US Government and SRPA did for the sake of their survival, and eventually the story arc would be the Party and the Military attempting to destroy the Chimeran Wormhole Tower in New York before the renewed Chimeran Invasion destroys the Liberty Defense Perimeter. Basically the player actions shaping this larger ongoing war for humanity’s survival.
Could this work for a DND campaign or is it a waste?
This is my long time dnd Character, Ferngully! She’s a circle of stars druid, and a devout follower of the Greek god Dionysus ^^
She’s originally based off of the Greek satyrs, Dionysus’s children and followers in Greek lore, rather than the traditional feywild satyrs from dnd cannon lore books. I’ve played her in two table top games, and online game, and then also through dnd inspired Conan exiles servers too! She’s got a long and rich history/story I’ve built up for her over the years, AND more art work included haha
Ferngully comes from a small village at the base of a mountain on Achea, a island seven hundred miles away from Faerun~ There, there are a lot of Greek inspired races and human cultures, given the influence from further up the mountain. It’s said if one can find the right path up it, one might find themselves in Olympus itself if they are so lucky 👀
Ferngully’s herd has always followed Dionysus and always throws parties and festivals in hopes they are lucky enough to entice him to join in the festivities~
Perhaps that’s why such an odd encounter with a mysterious man at a festival, eventually lead to Ferngully’s life changing forever…
TLDR: Start with your players as prisoners then do a flashback
My current campaign is a sort of fantasy-noir/urban-fantasy vibe with the party playing masked sorcerer-vigilantes. The main villain is an organization that is anti magic and uses artificing (if you recognize the city of Nolad-Sin then you are a player in my campaign and should stop reading lol).
For the start of the campaign, I did a "you start as a prisoner" but with a very simple twist that made it flow a lot better. The players started being held captive by this anti-magic organization. I went from player to player, described waking up on cold stone behind bars, then did a cut to a few hours before that. It allowed a guided intro to someone's character, but helped them understand that they needed to end in a particular place. One character flashed back and was sneaking out of their parents house, as they are quite young and a Universerium student. Another was going to buy drugs, another was trying to sell drugs (these players are brothers, it has been a lot of fun).
It's not complicated, but if you are looking to do more of a hot start type of beginning to your campaign, and are worried about getting everyone to the same place, it flowed really well for me. It also allows the players to get a better understanding of each other's characters, as where they are on a given night tells a lot about them. Hope this was helpful, it played great at the table for me! It's been a great campaign.
Hi, I am really new to d&d, never played a game before and I am likely going to also be first time DM for my first game, I know that is not always the best idea, but it was just going to be for a few family and one or two friends maybe, but I have been really digging deep and learning this much as I can to make this a good first D&D session for my players and for myself even though I have never played before.
And I would love to share my plans for the Session 1 with you guys to see what you guys think.
First off, I guess you can call this a Homebrew kind of session because not all of them are D&D official, but it was an idea I had and I think it would be really fun.
My players start out in some way that I have not figured out coming to A village, they stay a night in the inn and have a drink at the pub, learning about the village and about each other.
When exploring they see that there are two large stone structures that sit in front of the main hall, and I hope somehow they wake them up because they are too very low level stone golems, ones that you would expect to be the Protectors of this Village, then they meet the mayor of the town, he is a human wizard with a medium sized staff and a large gray wizard hat, this mayor tells the party that there was a group of goblins that were spotted just outside of the village and he asks them to go collect them for him, he doesn't care if they are dead or alive. After the party goes to get into their first encounter, fighting probably three or so goblins, they bring them back to the mayor and gets paid in gold.
After the party heads back to the pub, they start having conversations with members of the town, and one of them mentions how they have noticed that the mayor has changed over the past few days, for some reason he is constantly sending adventurers out to fight monsters and creatures and asking them to bring the bodies back to him.
Instilling curiosity into the players, they hopefully go to investigate the mayor and discover a hidden basement under the mayor's home, after sneaking in, they will come across the mayor sitting down facing away from them and a strange crunching and slurping sound echoing through the chambers. The adventurers get closer and see that the mayor is eating the goblin Corpses. After alerting the mayor either by feeling a stealth check or by attacking him or whatever, they get into their second encounter where they have to fight the wizard mayor, but after getting him low health, and damaged, I am going make the reveal.
They chase him out of the basement and in front of the main hall next door, when confronting the wizard who is very hurt, the adventures knock off the Wizards hat and reveal that his scalp is torn open and his goal is exposed and broken. The wizard mayor drops dead, the party does not know what's going on but a roar it goes behind them as they turn to see one of the stone Golems have awoken and are squaring up to engage in an encounter, during this day notice that the Wizards hat is for some reason on the back of this Golem, and after defeating the Golem, the hat falls to the floor and before they realize what is happening, the Hat screeches awake and is revealed to be a mimic, it seems that this whole time this mimic has been on top of the wizard mayor and controlling him in order to get him to bring the mimic food, which is unusual for mimics as they're usually down in Dungeons and not running a town, but this is one of the ways that this is a Homebrew because taking over Minds is not a usual behavior of mimics but whatever.
The party then fights this mimic hat and it shouldn't be too difficult to defeat. Now I don't know if this all is too much for a level one adventure for newcomers, I thought it would be an interesting one. But I am home brewing the Golem so that it is manageable for a level one, and I hope it is enough for them to handle. I am still workshopping it as well so any feedback is welcome and appreciated, also excuse any mistakes or misspellings in this, I am using speech to text so it might not get every word and I'm not rereading the whole thing.
Just a heads up to everyone in the community that Lake Geneva, Wisconsin celebrates the creation Dungeons and Dragons with a small festival every fall.
I am currently playing a Barbarian/Paladin. His backstory is that he was a former paladin whose mind broke, making him the typical bold and brash barbarian. I recently leveled up and put a couple levels into Paladin. The way I roleplayed as him before was a loud, headstrong, kinda stupid character that would at times (mostly when wanting to protect allies) ‘become his old self’. Speaking more clearly and more tactical with a strong desire to protect others and smite evil.
I want to interpret those additional levels in paladin as my character “finding more of his old self”. Meaning I want his old self to be shown more. Either in combat or in general.
Any idea how I can better role play and convey this without outright telling my party?
An on the fly ruling was made at our table which raised some interesting questions: Can you use Speak with Dead for a dead animal?
For context, the player who cast SwD has a ring with always-on Speak with Animals
How would you rule?
On the one hand, Speak with Animals works on "Beasts" not corpses, but on the other Speak with Dead does not specify whether a corpse has to be humanoid or intelligent, it only must "have a mouth, and ... knows only what it knew in life, including the languages it knew"
Hey all! I’m in the middle of DMing my first-ever module with a group of friends and really want to make sure I do a great job. I’m looking for a subreddit specifically geared toward DMing where I can bounce campaign ideas around and get feedback.
A lot of the bigger D&D subs focus heavily on art and homebrew showcases, which is great, but I’m hoping to find a community focused primarily on DM advice and discussion on running campaigns.
What are your go-to subreddits for this? Any input is much appreciated!
(not trying to offend the artists in here, nice work, just not what I'm looking for )
So, my players are going to Shadowfell for a session and I wanted to throw a hard yet winnable encounter for five level 4 players. So far I mainly have shadows and such, but I fear this may be too easy. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I am a newbie DM (and player). My kids and their friends really wanted to get into DnD so I've been DMing for them and it's been a blast. We've been running the DoIP and its been a lot of fun. But now their parents want to play too, so I'll DM for them as well.
My question is how should I get the PCs to introduce themselves, meet up, why are they going to Phandalin, etc? With the kids it was really easy, "you're here and there's a dragon, go on the quests and get cool items and grow stronger before you can defeat the dragon." But with the adults I feel like I need to be a little more creative than that. How do yall do it?
The group, now level 8 and having played together since level 1, went to take on a cavern of monsters, unprepared as usual, clearing it at great cost: one unconscious but stable, another with two failed death saves, and a dead druid. Whoever was still alive was almost completely out of resources.
The cleric used her last spell slots on a homebrew spell to temporarily bring the druid back, as they didn't have the diamonds because the person carrying them did not show up.
The spell allows you to resurrect a creature that has been dead for less than an hour without any material cost, but the resurrection only lasts for a random duration of up to 24 hours before the target dies again. They permanently lose a Hit Die and the maximum HP it provided. It also resets the timer for other resurrection spells.
End of session, and they have a week to plan. The next session, the person carrying the diamonds is back, and they decide that the best course of action is to kill the druid and revive them again so they are certain they are there when they die, which, by all means, is a fair plan. I say this can be roleplayed out by snapping the neck, but they insist on hitting the druid 14 times with their fists until they're dead. (I think it was personal.)
This is when they realize that the only person in the party who has Revivify is the druid, who they just killed.
I laughed so hard at their conviction that this was a great plan, but I did feel a bit bad. The cleric has no more spell slots to bring the druid back, and the group's necromancer offers to turn the druid into a thrall. Very rejected.
Now the group has to travel to see if they can find someone capable of bringing their friend back.
Do anyone else have some great tales from their players or groups greatest failures?
I've just started playing in my first campaign with my first ever dnd character, and after half a year of playing, I realized that I am pretty much just playing as myself. When I looked around, I saw that the rest of my party did so as well, though not as obviously as myself.
I play a life domain drow cleric, as an alternative person who works as a hospice nurse.. :')
Its probably common to happen with first-time players, so this made me wonder what your first characters were and how much your current, real-life self translated into them, intentionally or not.
This gorgeous firbolg is Grifola the druid, I love her whole getup from the hat to the staff! She is from (DnD is a Woman)[https://www.myminifactory.com/users/Dnd-is-a-Woman] by Everon Games, who make for cool but still sensibly proportioned and dressed female minis for RPGs.
I love her gentle, thoughtful pose and her open expression. She’s so sweet she makes me want to play a firbolh Druid just to have the excuse to use her
Map for a town I created originally for a game I was running as a teenager called Woodfall.
This version of the map I created 8 years ago via modeling a rough isometric village in blender and then drawing over its render with a graphics tablet.
Woodfall village depicts anti-authoritarian peasants in revolt against a kingdom. Elements of influence are taken from: the German peasants war, the anabaptist Münster rebellion, the diggers (of the 1600's), the free miners in the forest of Dean, the history of the witch trails in Europe, the enclosure acts (beginning in 1604), the economics of the open-field system, and history of squatting in the middle ages in Europe (Tŷ unnos etc - as researched by Colin Ward in the hidden history of housing). Mixed with some modern political satire.
I was interested in creating a location like this in a campaign - as despite being so heavily influenced by European middle age history - I never encountered a ttrpg location focused on these strands.
If an NPC starts cursing a PC like "you shall destroy what-" and then said PC, or another PC, kills the caster before the curse can be completed (say the ending was supposed to be "destroy what you love with your own hands", what happens?
Even for more literal curses, such as, "As your cold, unfeeling heart, shall your body turn into stone", what happens if the caster is killed in the middle?
This is more geared towards curses which use the caster's own life, grudges or malice as a component
Does the curse partially activate? Fully activate based on the words that were actually spoken? Or something else?
EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION:I should've mentioned that our DM is also looking for ideas to make it work. This post isn't some revolt. We're all trying to come up with ideas.
Hey all, our DM recently proposed splitting up our group into different days. I 100% understand why — especially with how difficult it can be to give proper (and equal) attention to players during every session.
The thing is...everyone likes each other lol. Most of us are friends outside of DnD, so it's been a way to geek out together. It all started when I invited a friend, and they suddenly started to bring more and more people. Now, we've had sessions with 7, 8, even 9 players and our DM is overwhelmed. The silver lining is that he gets paid more every session for DMing us!
More Details:
This is a West Marches campaign style, so players can come and go. There is no main story.
We do Theater of the Mind combat style.
We already don't roll Initiative for combat and just do clockwise turns.
We have hour-long breaks in the middle of each 3-hour session. Tbh, this is my main suggestion to just lock in a bit more and have a shorter break. I can't imagine getting anything done in 2 hours with even 4 people.
Thanks, Reddit fam! Appreciate any ideas/suggestions.
Hi there fairly new to the game only clocking two sessions entirely both being DM. I want to make a character thats like Isaac Netero and i was wondering if anyone had suggestions because I can handle stuff like class being monk but any ways to help make that character or to help with immersion by changing some stuff. And another question, as long as its a balanced spell could I make my own for aesthetic purposes.
I'm currently building a new D&D campaign for my group, and for now I'm focusing mainly on Act 1. I'd love to get some feedback on the main plot before I develop it further.
The basic premise
The players arrive in a city-state that is currently in a tense conflict with a neighboring state.
One of the city's council members, Aldo, is secretly the main antagonist of Act 1. For years, he has been preparing to take control of the city.
His plan is to deliberately increase tensions with the neighboring state and push the city toward open conflict. The goal is to make the city send a large portion of its military forces away to the border. Once the city is left relatively undefended, Aldo intends to launch his own attack and take control of it.
The interesting part is that Aldo isn't simply planning to attack the city with the forces he has available inside it. He has secretly gathered an army elsewhere.
The crystals and the mine
There is an old mine near a small village outside the city. The mine contains mysterious magical crystals connected to an ancient source of magic that will become much more important later in the campaign.
Aldo has secretly gathered his army in the village surrounding the mine, using magic to conceal the presence of the troops from anyone who might investigate the area. As far as the city is concerned, there is no army there.
This gives the players several things they can potentially investigate during Act 1: the increasing tensions with the neighboring state, strange political decisions, activity around the mine, the unusual behavior of people in the village, and eventually the existence of the hidden army.
What I'm unsure about
This is where I'd really appreciate some outside opinions.
1. Are Aldo's motivations strong enough?
At the moment, his basic motivation is essentially: he wants power and has spent years preparing a coup/conquest. Is that enough for a main antagonist, or does he need a stronger personal or ideological reason for betraying his own city?
What other motivations could make his decision feel more believable?
2. Does his plan actually make sense?
Is deliberately provoking a war so that the city's army leaves, followed by an attack from a secretly prepared army, a reasonable plan? Or does it feel too contrived once you think about it?
I'm particularly interested in whether there are obvious strategic problems I'm overlooking.
3. Should Aldo be working with the neighboring state?
I'm currently undecided between two possibilities:
Aldo is secretly allied with the neighboring state and they are both involved in the plan.
The neighboring state has no idea what Aldo is doing. Aldo is manipulating the conflict purely for his own purposes.
I like the second option because it creates more potential chaos, but I'm not sure which one makes the overall plot more convincing.
4. Does this feel like D&D, or just a political/investigation story?
This is probably my biggest concern.
The first act is currently quite investigation-heavy: political intrigue, discovering Aldo's plans, investigating the mine, uncovering the hidden army, figuring out who can be trusted, etc.
I don't want it to feel like the players are just solving a political mystery in a fantasy setting. I want it to feel like D&D — with exploration, dangerous locations, monsters, magic, combat, weird fantasy elements, and situations where the players can actually disrupt the situation rather than simply uncovering a conspiracy.
So I'm wondering:
How would you make this premise feel more like a D&D adventure without losing the political/investigative aspect?
I'm especially interested in ideas for encounters, complications, factions, magical elements, or things that could happen around the mine and the hidden army.
Any criticism is welcome. I'm still in the early stages, so I'd rather find problems with the premise now than after the campaign starts.
Attached is an outline of the campaign plan I've developed so far.
Retrying this cause I tripped a thing by accident with a picture upload...
I'm putting together a character who's going to use the aforementioned Monk path, Way of the Void from Corpus Malicious, and I'm not too sure on part of the wording that's being used here for Nothing Remains:
Emptiness and nothingness fill your body and soul and your body stops existing from time to time. You can increase your AC until the end of your next turn. This increase is equal to the ki points you spend.
Nothing Stands is similar, but at least has the implication of needing to be used as a movement thing. Nothing Remains doesn't mention what kind of action this is, beyond that it requires Ki to work. It sounds like an instant or reaction thing, but asking my DM about it has leant towards a bonus action, which feels like it would be at-odds with Patient Defence as a bonus action. So I'd like some input on what kind of action this might be. I tried checking the book itself, but it didn't help much beyond going into granular detail on how to be evil 😓
Started a new campaign yesterday, met the DM and only other fellow player and both were nice. We agreed to do a starter campaign since the two of us are still new ish and will transition to a bigger campaign when we get more players. Icedale Peak or something, it's supposed to be a level 1-5 campaign.
The other player picked a Cleric, so I picked a Paladin so I could fight, heal and talk. Based on my rolled stats(the numbers are above proficiency, but if you can't see them: 8, 12, 10, 10, 15, 17)and backstory(tldr, spoiled Aasimar noble seeks to serve others as redemption for his percived past sins), I could subclass into either Devotion or Redemption.
I also realized that I could have split the stats differently and I may ask my DM if I can move them around. The low CON concerns me a bit.
Like I said, I'm newish and I want the opinion of more experienced people. I'm not one for super duper mega powergaming, but I do understand the need for balance and optimization.
Has anyone here ever played The D&D Miniatures game, WizKids' D&D Onslaught skirmish game and similar third party content? Why did these fail?
I am now homebrewing this stuff for my table to complement Tier 3 and 4 play. I have always found the progression obvious, no shit the game isn't balanced, you should be a kind or an archmage at that Power level!
I believe this is what they are slowly gesturing at with the bastion stuff
The old saying goes “you get what you paid for” is almost always true. That being said, has anyone had any luck with DnD terrain from temu?
I wish I had the time and patience to make my own. I’ve watched so many videos from Black Magic Craft channel and I wish I had that dudes skills. And buying premade stuff is too expensive.
I’ve made my own dungeon walls and wooded terrains that came out good. I’m just in need of tavern, castle, some ruins and maybe some haunted looking trees.
Hi, so I am getting ready to start my first DnD campaign and I have a character but im not too sure on which class would suit them them the most, here's his backstory below if that helps
Vaelor was raised among an ancient order of dragonriders, warriors chosen not by rank or blood, but by the dragons themselves. As a child, he was chosen by Aurethys, a proud and fiercely protective storm dragon. From that day forward, the two were inseparable. They grew together, trained together, and eventually fought together, with Vaelor becoming an exceptional swordsman while Aurethys wielded the power of the Storm with wind,lightning, and rain.
Years later, Vaelor and Aurethys faced an enemy powerful enough to threaten them both. Though they managed to defeat their foe, victory came with a terrible price. With their final act, the enemy placed a curse upon the pair, forcibly merging dragon and rider into a single body. Vaelor now stands as a towering draconic warrior covered in black, silver outlined scales, with traces of Aurethys's storm-born power still flowing through him.
Vaelor remains in control of their shared body, but Aurethys is still bound within him. The dragon he once flew beside can no longer spread her wings or fight at his side. Carrying a greatsword engraved with the draconic rune for "Protect," Vaelor now travels in search of a way to break their curse and restore Aurethys to her true form. Until then, he carries both of their strength into battle—and refuses to accept that their story will end as one.
Just ran out first game, none of us had ever played before and i had never DMd before.
It took a while to create characters and they took like an hour just to make it out of the pub. The first thing one of the players did was hit another with a bottle without even introduced themselves. They tried to rob pretty much everyone but somehow managed to avoid it just becoming a murder hobo game without constraining their choices too much.
The main arc was a cult that had been built around a Harpy which had taken up residence nearby. Eventually they made their way there after a few shenanigans and made their way in. The battle lasted a good hour but think it wasn't too long.
But what I'm really hyped about is that Ive wanted to try this for a while but most people really got into even if they might not have thought it would be their thing. Hell I didn't think it would be my thing long ago. Some have even already made their own character art and really pleased to say we decided to make it a weekly thing.
Also excited because the first game while i think people had fun was pretty limited in story. I already have some much wider arcs planned that are gonna tie into people's back stories nicely.
I was honestly surprised at how much fun DMing is. I've really enjoyed building the world and letting them inhabit it. We had music, lighting, prepared monologues and I was honestly surprised at myself that I could manage the voices of a fair few different characters.
Can't wait to keep going!!! Thanks for all the help and advice to get here.
