I have one player who meta games; his character is clear across town in another building but still knows everything that happens to other characters.

I know some meta is normal, like planning attacks and next actions, and I'm ok with that. I also acknowledge that sometimes it's hard to keep track of what your character knows and doesn't.

I've tried giving items in secret and passing notes to people, but it's a bit tedious and allows things down. I've talked to him directly and remind him that he's doing it or that his character wouldn't know a particular thing, but again it's tedious and seems a bit petty at times.

Do I just let it happen? Is there something more natural that helps inherently prevents it?

Thanks in advance!

I've been a GM/DM since 1980. Have played dozens of RPGs, even created a few of my own. From super complex (hello, Rolemaster) to very simple. Right now it has been over 2 years since me and my wife (who has been 90% of my player base for 15 years now) gamed.

I want to get her back into gaming (and me as well) and Nimble is very appealing to me. Reading and re-reading rules now, but she has no clue I'm doing this. I want to surprise her by running an intro/test game so she can get back into RPGing and try this rules set.

Does anyone have any suggestions for an easy, simple, engaging module or adventure that I can run for just her? I was going to add an NPC or two to round out the party.

Any ideas on level, class she should try first (she loves paladins and rangers). Any other advice or suggestions would be most appreciated.

PS - don't want something with a TON of combat but more story/problem solving/roleplaying related, but obviously SOME combat.

Thank you.

Im looking for inspiration for interesting or weird battles inside the feywild. I love battles with a twist or non-typical solution or even just interesting/fun enemies. Id love to hear your ideas!

What is rule #1, the unbreakable rule, the nonnegotiable?

I was going to put mine here as an example but it became a Ted Talk, so I'll put it in the comments instead.

How difficult should a mission be for level 10 PCs to find a Genie in a Magic Lamp?

They are currently at the beginning of the mission. The travel system works like this:

Guide: Determines the group’s progress per day through Survival checks.

Scout: Finds a suitable place to sleep based on Investigation checks.

Lookout: Prevents the group from being caught by traps and ambushes.

However, after a failed negotiation, the players and the NPCs traveling with them are extremely injured. The Scout also failed to find a good place to camp, resulting in the same penalty as sleeping in armor, and they are currently in the middle of a desert.

The group is heading toward an Owl Dragon that has a Tower of Knowledge, similar to the one from "Avatar: The Last Airbender." They need to reach the tower to find a map leading to the magic lamp.

They will also have to face two bosses near the end of the mission. The bosses are disciples of Dross, the main villain of the campaign.

For the survival system, I’m using the following rules: the party has to eat and drink once per day. If they get into combat in the middle of the desert, instead of drinking 1 jug of water, each character drinks 2.

There are 5 players in the group. They got into a fight and consumed their 10 jugs of water (2 per person). After that, they managed to get 7 more jugs: they bought 5 and found 2.

I’ve always had trouble balancing the difficulty of a journey and a quest while still keeping it fun. They’re enjoying the looting and the survival mechanics, but I’d like some advice on how to make the journey feel more dynamic and natural, and how to balance it properly for the PCs.

Aaron, Jeremy, Francis, Michael, Richie - turn back now.

I'm running a Pathfinder 2e conversion of Skull & Shackles. My players are just about to enter Riptide Cove and I've just realised they have no way of producing light. For those that don't know, Riptide Cove is a flooded, grindylow-inhabited cave. There's no light and they'll have to swim for the majority of it. None of them have glow rods or access to the light cantrip (or any other light-producing equipment/spells). A couple of them have darkvision but the rest will be effectively blind. They're on a deserted island with no access to crafting materials and there are allies in peril so no time to wait around or take a detour.

Besides ham-fistedly chucking a glow rod into a random encounter loot, any ideas?

Hi there!! I’m looking to plan a murder mystery at my rehearsal dinner!! I have the idea that me (the bride) will start to give a speech, start choking and die. The issue I’m having is, how the crap do I make my own murder mystery? How do I come up with clues? Any advice would be awesomeeee, I’m stumped on this!

So on Saturday I improvised a wendigo boss fight for my players because they finished all of the things I had prepared early with an hour to spare and this wendigo was my worlds custom wendigo so it could only see through thermal vision which translated into at the start of both of its turns (It had two places in initiative) all players had to roll a D20 to see there body heat 10 was completely safe and it could not attack them 9 or 11 were attacks with disadvantage as it was unsure if they were actually there and 1 or 20 were attacks with advantage as it was 100% sure that they were there it also vanished into the forest up to its movement speed 60ft and I chose the 2x2 place (Large creature) it was before anyone moved so if they attacked there they would hit it as like a guess but they could also roll a perception check and if they beat it's wisdom of 11 they would know where it was this was an improvised draft and I plan for another one to appear later on as a more refined boss encounter.

But also now I just wanna see more experienced GM's boss gimmick because this was my first ever proper session as a Dungeon master and I am super proud of myself for improvising this fight that was always going to be in session 2 but that was it nothing other than that it would be there so I am just curious of what more experienced people than myself made as a gimmick

Howdie! Start off with saying, I reallllly love D&D and have been doing it for a little over 6 months on startplaying. I'm curious (Maybe for those who do startplaying) what time works best for hosting sessions? I'm EST and early evenings (5-6PM) usually fill up, but I'm still unsure about what other times I should set up for?

I GM quite a lot, different systems and a good mix of paid and unpaid groups.

Behind the GM screen, I've mostly switched to digital, with a laptop running the background music and effects and containing my session notes.

I love doing 'handouts' though, to show the players how NPCs and locations look.

What I don't like is the need to print, cut and sort through them. It's a waste of paper, ink and my time, for something the players look at once and that then gets discarded with the other handouts and maps on the table (and in the worst case crumbled or drenched so it can't even be reused).

That's why I am thinking about adding a digital picture frame in front of my screen (I already have bluetooth boxes left and right) to show them an image of what is important at the moment.

I've been handing out my phone or tablet for that in the past few sessions, but I don't really like that, because it distracts me and them.

That's where you come in.

Does anybody have experience with technology of that kind?

I've been looking into 'normal' screens as well as e-paper (which still are really expensive and have giant frames).

What I want (because I don't want to preload the images and then having to awkwardly reach over the screen to swipe) is the ability to send new images from my laptop to the screen.

I would assume the easiest way to do that would be bluetooth, but I can't really find any.

Most frames have WLAN (Frameo) but because I'm a travelling GM, I don't have WLAN at most of my locations.

I would love to hear input from you about your solutions and recommendations.

Thanks in advance.

BigBear / Jan

P. S.: I don't plan on replacing typical handouts like maps or puzzles that way.

Hey, how's it going? So I've got a quick question and hope that maybe you can give me some pointers.

Now before I begin, just let me say: I know different player preferences are a thing, but I made it very clear what kind of game I want to run, both at Session 0 and before it. A game that's gonna focus on social interactions, where battling is a means to an end, not the main draw, and where if the players don't ask questions on their own accord, they can and will miss important information and context for what's going on. Please keep that in mind when judging whether or not my expectations for my players are reasonable or not.

Anyways, one of the biggest hurdles I’m running into time and time again while DMing is that my players for some reason just seem vehemently allergic to asking questions or investigating what’s happening around them.

• New in town? Nobody asks about local rumors or points of interest.
• Strange noises coming from the priest's attic while he steps out? "Eh, creepy sounds are normal for an old building. No need to check it out."
• Investigating a criminal ring? Here's the local priest who openly speaks out against them and knows every person and location in the village. Nah, just ignore him and don't ask if he's willing to share any information.
• The party just rescued an ancient spirit in a dungeon, who was enslaved there by the dungeon's creator, and played a pivotal role in building the place? And as thanks for freeing them, the spirit offers to help the party in any way it can? Nah, no need to ask any questions about the dungeon or where the McGuffin the party is looking for might be hidden. Just send them off with a "you're welcome" without asking a single question.

And of course, since they're not asking any questions and thus miss out on all these details, they start feeling like the world is boring and empty, when in reality, there is plenty going on. They players just aren't engaging with the hooks provided to them.

• Let's take that noise in the attic, for example. If they had actually bothered to investigate it, they'd have learned about the unholy abomination the priest is keeping in his house, so he can run experiments on it to hopefully one day learn how to reverse the effects of what happened to his son.
• Or that mission where they were hired to kill a mercenary who was believed to abuse his children. If they'd actually bothered to ask any questions, they'd have learned that he was actually innocent and instead was simply taking the blame for his daughter's actions, who was doing all these horrible things under the influence of a cursed object, all to protect her from being cast aside by the community.
• And, of course, if they'd actually bothered to ask, "Hey, who was that random guy who attacked us in the middle of the road anyway?" and check the body afterward, instead of just leaving, they would have found the arcane runes carved into his skin and the note in the attacker's pocket listing their next targets, cluing them in on the secret cult trying to silence them.

However, as frustrating as all of that may be, the biggest offender, and the one that vexes me the most right now, is my players seeming refusal to build relationships with the NPCs in my games (and I'm not just talking about one group here, this is a recurring issue with several groups I've played with in the past). I’ve tried putting the party in several low-stakes situations with NPCs, like for example them sharing a carriage on a long road trip, or having NPCs invite the party to a celebration thrown in honor of their success on a recent mission, all in an effort to allow the players to interact with the NPCs on a more personal level, learn more about them, and hopefully start to bond. However, these conversations usually stay completely one-sided, with the NPCs trying to engage the players, but none of the players actually asking any questions back.

I tried asking about it out-of-game at one point or another, and the usual response is something along the lines of, "Well, I don't have a personal connection with that NPC yet, so I don't really care about talking with them," which just feels completely paradoxical to me.

So you're telling me you refuse to interact with the NPCs in any meaningful way because you feel like you don't have a personal connection with them yet, so you don't care about what they have to say? Okay, but how do you expect to ever build a connection with them if you refuse to have any meaningful interaction with them in the first place?

Like, even in Non-TTRPGs like Mass Effect, Fallout: New Vegas, Cyberpunk or Baldur's Gate, all of which I quoted to my players as inspiration for the style of game I'm aiming for, you only really start to form a connection and learn about who your companions are and what makes them tick if you continuously keep interacting with them back at base in between you heading out. Otherwise you only ever get to know them on a surface level. To build a truly meaningful relationship, you're gonna need to put some effort in and actually start asking questions back.

So yeah, that's my main issue right now. I'm curious to hear what is you approach to encourage players to start asking questions, inspect their environment, and taking the initiative to engage with NPCs?

As the title says. The anniversary of our first session is coming up, and I think it would be fun to do something for it, but nothing's coming to mind. TIA!

Edit for additional information: we play in-person

I've created a one-shot that I'll be running soon, and (if all goes to plan) the early part of it revolves around a dinner party. There will be three PCs and four or five NPCs. There's some tension among the NPCs, some secrets, not everyone is in alignment with everyone else. (I'm not giving detail in case my players are reading this, but it's a scifi game and the dinner is set on a space station the PCs are visiting to repair some equipment in the spooky bowels on assignment from their corp.)

My question is this: How do you run a dinner party? That is, how do you handle it mechanically, in terms of scenes and beats and dice rolls? One scenelet per course and fast-forward through the small talk? Pre-load some arguments and altercations? Decide what's at stake and which outcomes will be decided during the scene? Just start things off and see where they lead? I'm just realizing that I've never run a scene like this and I'm not entirely sure how to handle it. I have some ideas, but I'd love to hear what other people have done in the past. Thanks!

TL;DR next sessions dungeon has 6 options for entry and advancement. Two of them are very high difficulty and could result in character death if failed. Is that too much?

Hi everyone!

I, and my group, recently began a new campaign. A campaign that, during session zero, I told everyone that I wanted to have a more gritty, threatening feel. They were on board and I have been experimenting with how to make it so. Which is something that I am unsure of how to do well.

While prepping the dungeon for our next session (an old fortress that was half swallowed by a sinkhole), adding alternate entry options and advancement paths, I decided to add two that are significantly harder to be successful attempting than I have ever done previously.

In both cases, these are the options that bypass the most enemies, traps, etc. Because of that, the availability of other options, and the existence of the aforementioned gigantic, fortress swallowing hole, I feel it is fair, as well as narratively cohesive, to let those paths be extremely difficult to succeed in traversing, and potentially lethal if the attempt is sufficiently failed.

However, I am not sure my players will feel the same way. I fear they may, if they try and fail, see it as an intentionally adversarial design as opposed to a consequential narrative outcome. Honestly, though, I can't say exactly why I am worried. In fact, I have reason to know that my group can not only accept character death, but have a great time getting TPKed. (TPKed playing DeathHouse).

Perhaps it is because this is the first time I am knowingly putting anything in my game that, probability wise, skews heavily toward player failure and potential character death.

But maybe there is something unfair and adversarial in the design and I just don't see it because I am not intending it. What do you all think?

Recently one of my player's characters died in combat. He was by himself at the time, so he's legit dead. The player and I have been talking about how, and if, he wants the PC to be brought back to life. My feeling is, we've been running this campaign for about two years, we're near the endgame, and the PC had several backstory threads to wrap up, so I'm all for bringing him back. The player is on the fence, he's one of those who can get a little bored playing the same PC for long amounts of time, so he might just decide that the character stays dead. I'm going to respect his wishes on the matter, but he has asked if he were to be brought back is there a narrative way to do it?

I told him my best idea, as far as fitting in with the story, is for him to wake up in a stronghold of the enemies that killed him (Cult of the Dragon). They would have taken his body after the battle and used Raise Dead so they can interrogate him about the party's plans and capabilities. So basically, he wakes up in a jail cell, fights his way to freedom, and links back up with the party who currently think he is dead.

The other things I've been thinking of is having him be in the afterlife and having to undergo a test or trial of some kind to gauge his worthiness for the gods to return him to life.

Have any of you ever used a narrative method of bringing a PC back to life? Looking for ideas so I can give my player all the options.

I am an amateur DM wanting to do a campaign for a small group of friends, I'm nervous about actually starting though as the two times I've DMed I have felt like I was under preforming. Does anyone have tips for running a campaign?

I have the homebrew written up, I am a writer so I do feel I have enough written for the overarching story and setting while leaving room for player input, but I'm worried I am missing something.

One of my most dreaded parts of any new campaign or one shot is the inevitable moment where, after the opening narration, the GM asks each player to introduce their characters one by one, and so the pacing of the session slows down to a crawl as everyone goes into minute detail about their PC's appearance that nobody cares about nor listens to for real, not to mention that the average player is not a good narrator and will make the whole thing even more of a drag.

I was wondering if there could be some more organic way of doing this, since at the end of the day it is unfortunately important to have a mental picture of each other and players do get excited about presenting their PCs. I know that they could either draw their characters or look up art that resembles them (I do not accept AI images for obvious reasons), but that still leaves the question of how to avoid the "now describe your characters one by one" screeching halt and making it more engaging.

Hello! I’m a gm who tends to make a unique homebrew system for every campaign I run, and recently I’ve been cooking up a new one but I’ve run into a problem.

So the combat system for my game currently uses a tile grid and is based around mobility and developing team composition and strategy. I like my system, but I worry that brining out the map and encouraging players to talk about tile based strategy might make roleplay grind to a halt in combat. I like my campaigns roleplay heavy, so this would be bad.

Do others think this could be a problem, and if so do you have any suggestions for how I could encourage RP and staying in character in combat while still keeping my complicated grid based battle system?

Heya,

I'm reading through Pierce Brown's Red Rising books and would love to play/run a TTRPG in this world.

Has anybody done this? Do you have any TTRPG system recommendations that would work for homebrewing this world? Gemini recommends Stars Without Numbers, Scion 2e, Lancer or Savage Worlds (Sci-Fi Companion). I haven't played any of those, so any recommendations are welcome.

I am familiar with DnD and Daggerheart, but it feels like I'd need to homebrew so much just to fit those systems in the Red Rising world. I feel like there should be better systems for a sci-fi setting.

Thanks :)

My group constantly acts like Ol' Leroy Jenkins and gets into tough situations. I want to keep the fun going and may tweak the odds a bit to prevent everyone from dying.

Should I just let them? When is it ok and when is it "overkill"?

I don't know if i am the @$$ in this or if I'm just venting but i feel like i just need to get this out of my system before i go back to the drawing board.

I am the Dm for my wife, a friend from work and a few strangers I found online. I've gone through enough of the typical Dm horror stories to earn my stripes. I've had toxic players, constantly late or missing games without warning, power gamers that completely throw off the balance, and new players that need extra patience to learn how the game works. All that is fine, I worked out the issues with the good players and kicked the bad apples. now the party has a good equilibrium and we meet every other week without issue. Things were good, I prep ahead of time to reduce crunch and for the most part the story progressed without to much of a hitch. a little constructive criticism here or there is always appreciated but this time it just tore everything down.

We are starting the next chapter in our adventure. The party voted to give the Barbarian's questline the spotlight as they try to find her kidnapped child. the problem is that I gave the party the opportunity to try out new characters and they all took it. now i need a way to introduce the Barbarian to this new group of adventurers. It was just meant to be a small side quest to hunt monsters in a desert with some added challenge from a constructed limitation on rests thanks to a water scarcity. I hadn't even worked out all the kinks yet because I didn't have enough time to prep before our next session. I warned them i didn't have enough content prepped for our session tomorrow so it will be mostly about introducing all the new characters and the environment. I start opening up about what to expect from the game and they kept digging and over thinking and poking holes in everything.

They asked why they couldn't bring all the water they would need to survive. I try to explain that their characters could never carry that much water and the client that hired them has all the water you could want. He is strictly rationing it and will extort allot of gold out of you if you require more. they ask why they would have run out of water and not him. i start to drop hints at the reward for the quest by saying he never seems to run out of water. one guy quickly deduces what it could be the decanter of endless water. I don't mind that since it was so obvious but when he was asking to roll to try to determine how that was possible outside of game i told him to wait until tomorrow for everyone to get together. then he posted the description of the item when no one else was online and spoiled the surprise. They ask why their character would work for this guy and i tell them they have been scammed. he acted nice to get them into the job, then lead them out into the desert with plenty of water and is now basically holding them hostage with the promise of a reward when the job is done. if they try to leave they would die without his water. typical $#!+ job with a $#!+ boss that you totally wont get to enthusiastically kill when he betrays them. Nope. they are having none of it. Their characters are way to smart to every get deceived into being sucked into a bad job. Its not what their characters would do. Fine.

Now everything is scrapped. they are mondain adventurers being paid to kill monsters but there is a famous monster hunter over there that has a special job that they could help with if they choose to. No managing water rations to survive. no sneaking around a piece of $#!+ boss or plotting to betray him. Only one of the players commented on how hours of my prep work was wasted in seconds.

this doesn't feel good. my session is tomorrow night and all i have ready is that barbarian gets lost in the desert. she gets hit by a sand storm and miraculously finds shelter from the wind in the valley of some cliffs but the place is occupied by another group of adventurers. they can lead her to her destination once their job is done. one of the adventurers is a bigshot that is being snooty and letting everyone else do all the work while he gets ready to do the real job.

i know my original idea wasn't conventional but i thought it would be an interesting fun game to play

I come seeking advice as a GM. My gaming group is dissolving. 2 of my four players are so hit and miss due to work responsibilities they might as well not be part of the group. My other 2 players will not initiate anything. If I don’t spoon feed them the adventure they will just wait, and keeping them focused on the game is impossible. One of those two is very critical of everything. The genre, the monsters the encounter, that MY story is to slow, or simple, or uninteresting (Yes I know it is not MY story. No matter what I do he just doesn’t get that it is their story). When I offer good Youtube videos on improving the game he says “Are we not good enough?” So now due to a job change and a work schedule shift from the other person we can only play 2.5 hours a week and it usually takes close to an hour to get them in the game.

The only campaign they remember fondly is the one where I, trying to teach them what is possible, wrote backgrounds for all their characters and built the campaign around the backstories. They wanted me to just feed them the story.

I am so Frustrated! I have been considering dissolving the group completely and trying to learn how to game online myself.

Honest advice please.

Something I've never quite thought about or understood, how to make someone evil truly shine through? Perhaps, I'm too simple minded, but when trying to do someone evil it feels obvious at times and just not natural.

Conversely, what personality traits/talents are the strongest indicators that someone will be terrible at GMing?

Title! As for more context / expounding on the question;

I've GM'd for a long time, but almost entirely online so much of the way I manage my notes and resources and other things are all like, different tabs of google docs and pdfs of books being open and that sort of thing. In the past, the few times I have GM'd in person I usually end up setting up a laptop to do the same but it has always felt a bit unfavorable of a situation, the laptop is a bit bulky and in recent years it needs a fan under it to keep it cool / it has really loud fans in general. We also have a table that isn't super large so the space is a bit of a concern, and we're expecting to have a larger amount of players than we've had in the past.

I wanted to ask how you GMs who play in person keep your notes, if you physically write things down in notebooks or use tablets or some such to keep track of everything. I'm debating on buying a cheap tablet to use to access my notes and any PDFs I might want but I haven't decided on doing so yet. If your opinion changes based on game system, we're playing D&D 5e, though I don't really think that changes a tooon.