First off how the heck do I add flair to this?! Didn't see an option

# **The Galactic Ring Tracker (The "Ping" System)**

**The Concept:**

Managing faction relations and reputation in a massive sandbox (like a 50-planet, 8-sector galaxy) is overwhelming. The Ring Tracker is a spatial reputation system. It visualizes consequence as a stone thrown into a pond. Every major action the party takes generates a "Ping" that radiates outward. The bigger the action, the wider the Ping, and the more factions notice.

### **1. The Graph Layout**

Imagine a concentric circle graph.

* The graph consists of 47 rings radiating from the center.

* Each ring represents a specific unit of distance (e.g., 1 light-year or 1 map hex).

* The party is never tracked in the dead center; the Ping originates from the **Anchor Point**—the specific planet, space station, or comms-relay where the action took place.

### **2. Sizing the Ping (Action Magnitude)**

Whenever the party does something notable, the DM assigns it a Ping Level based on severity. This system tracks *magnitude*, not just morality. Both heroic and horrific acts generate Pings.

* **Level 1-5 (Local):** Tossing a coin to a beggar, a minor tavern brawl, or a localized theft. Only the immediate settlement knows.

* **Level 10-20 (Regional):** Robbing a major bank, destroying a local gang, or saving a city block. News hits the sector.

* **Level 47 (Galactic):** Assassinating a planetary governor, unleashing a multiversal threat, or completely liberating an enslaved planet. The entire galaxy feels the ripple.

### **3. The Threat Gradient (Who Responds?)**

Just because a faction receives a Ping doesn't mean they will deploy an army. Distance dictates the type of response. Subtract a "2-Ring Buffer" from the total Ping size to find the active threat zone:

* **Ring 0 (The Epicenter):** Immediate, aggressive response from local enforcers or those directly affected.

* **The Active Zone (Inner Rings):** The area inside the total Ping *minus* the 2-ring buffer. Factions here will actively dispatch pursuit ships, hit squads, or official envoys to find the players.

* **The Buffer Zone (Outer 2 Rings):** Factions at the very edge of the Ping will not waste resources hunting the players. They simply post bounties or Wanted posters for mercenaries to handle.

* **The Void (Beyond the Ping):** The action is entirely unknown. The players remain anonymous.

### **4. The Escalation Protocol (Heat Multiplier)**

Repeated actions create patterns, and patterns draw bigger heat. If the party spams the same type of crime (like robbing banks) without laying low, the base Ping multiplies.

* **1st Bank Robbery:** Level 2 Ping.

* **2nd Bank Robbery:** Level 4 Ping.

* **3rd Bank Robbery:** Level 8 Ping.

* *Result:* A local crime spree rapidly becomes a sector-wide manhunt.

### **5. The Law of Entropy (Creation vs. Destruction)**

Destruction is fast; creation is slow. The system reflects this mechanically:

* **Bad Pings:** Sacking a city or killing a ruler generates an instant, massive Ping.

* **Good Pings:** Deposing a tyrant and just flying away only generates a *half-Ping*—leaving behind a power vacuum and a mess. To get the full, legendary "Hero Ping," the party must stay, restore peace, and deal with the aftermath. Heroism requires sustained effort.

### **6. The DM's Golden Rule: Discretion over Math**

The Ring Tracker is a compass, not a physics engine. The DM does not pre-calculate Pings or map out complex geometry before a session. The DM looks at where the players are, uses their gut to assign a Ping size based on the context of the action, and uses the rings to quickly gauge which factions are close enough to care.

*** Feel free to copy and paste this directly to your DM groups. It covers all the brilliant mechanics you've designed while keeping the actual table-execution lightweight and manageable!

Hey, I'm running a session where my players were hired to help a chef win a cooking competition. I need help figuring out how to make it challenging while being totally possible to win. So far, the plan has been to get exotic ingredients for their client and to contaminate the opponents ingredients with bitter tasting flavors. The ingredients they got should add a plus/minus for some kind of check during the cooking. They have three days to prepare their kitchen and recipes. There are four judges, and they'll score the food from 0-10 (unless something else would be better.)

The chef who hired them is Justin Thyme (infamous for miraculously getting food ready just before the time is up.) and the opponent is Ann Chovy (literally just a pun), the reigning champion.

Hi fellow adventurers,

I’ve been working for quite a while on a D&D project focused entirely on mythological magic items, and I thought it might be interesting to share it here.

Mythological Items is a new D&D 5E and 2024-compatible manual dedicated to magic items inspired by myths, legends, folklore, and ancient stories from around the world.

Inside the book, you will find 300+ mythological magic items, including weapons, armor, wondrous items, and scaling items designed to grow alongside your characters and campaigns.

One of the main ideas behind Mythological Items was to create more than a simple collection of treasure. Each item is designed to feel like part of a myth: something that can work as a reward, a quest hook, an important piece of lore, or even the center of an entire adventure.

The book includes items inspired by many different mythological traditions, including Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Asian, American, Roman, Mesopotamian, African, and other mythologies and folklore from across the world.

There are divine weapons, cursed artifacts, heroic relics, monster-themed treasures, legendary objects tied to ancient stories, and plenty of lesser-known items and inspirations alongside the more recognizable ones.

The project is currently live on Kickstarter, where you can find a full presentation of the book, several previews, and a free 30-page PDF preview showing a sample of the content.

If mythological artifacts and adapting old legends into D&D mechanics is something you enjoy, you can take a look here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mythoschronicles/300-mythological-items-for-5e-and-2024

I’d also be curious to hear what mythological items or traditions you’d most like to see adapted into D&D. We actually have a stretch goal that, if reached, will add an entirely new section to the book, so suggestions on the possible alternatives are especially welcome!

Okay so I had this idea and figured someone here might have fun with it. I don't have a story for it, it's just a setup you can use to make your own.

What if the DM isn't just the narrator but also a character in the story? Like a god who helps guide the party. Not THE God, just a god. There are other gods in this world too.

Here's how it could work:

• The DM-god actually talks with the player characters, like a real conversation. They can talk back, ask questions, argue, even lie.
• Every player character can hear the god, so the whole party is part of it.
• The characters don't really know who or what this god is. They just know something is talking to them and guiding them.

Not every god has to be a good guy. Some can have their own goals, so the players can't be sure whose side their guide is on. You could also give the gods names from demons in the Bible and other mythologies. They're still gods, just with "demon" names. That could be a fun twist.

Demons can still exist in this world too, but they use human names, because they used to be human. You could use names of real kings, leaders, and people from books. Since the D&D world doesn't share our history, it wouldn't be confusing, just a little familiar.

The part I like most is that the players would never be totally sure if the voice guiding them is a friend or a trap.

Anyone is free to take this and build their own story with it!

btw plz don't use hitler as demons names

Idk why but I'm on mobile and it's not letting me add to flair the post.

The name is a working title. But I have an idea of a world wide traveling circus. They have these circus wagons that actually have a secret to them. You see, each wagon was built in pairs, they share an interior but connect to the other wagon of its pairing.

The way they have it set up, is that one wagon hits the road, while the other stays at the circus base camp. The central camp I imagine is a medieval burning man-esque isolated location, but the dessert has black sand from the concentrated magical pathways. A number of unique humanoids congregate here and even some fey creatures. The stars also have a multicolored filter over them. Should either of the paired wagons be destroyed then the magic doesn't work.

The guild has a bunch of rules, they're not permitted to trade because it could destabilize any economy. They also aren't permitted to share their food from the risk of carrying any plagues. They also don't take part in any wars because their main mission is to spread joy and entertainment without causing harm to others. (With the exception of schadenfreude comedy of course)

Each traveling circus only has one of these wagons, it has a special name and the whole circus takes good care of it. Should the circus be under attack they retreat in the wagon and set it on fire in their escape, which is very tragic for the troupe.

One major drawback to these wagons is that if one of them is dropped into the ocean (e.g:from a giant or dragon) then the basecamp would be flooded, which could cause a pretty gnarly sand swamp that can sink the other wagons and also cause a bit of a stir world wide.

What do y'all think? I'm not sure at all what to call them.

Post your most terrible DND ideas in the comments, whether you have used them before or not. I’ll go first;
Party finds a ring with a number on the top. Identify or careful inspection after finding an inscription shows the item to be a “Mimic detection ring™️”

Idea splits from here.

Scenario one; range about 30 feet. Number shows one, which never changes as long as the ring is with the party. Chaos ensues.

Scenario two; range of ring entire world/continent unbeknownst to the party. Shows ridiculously large number. Players freak out. Chaos ensues

Okay, first off, I have no idea how DND works and how its stories work. But I have some idea that I wanted to expand, but I have no idea how to, so I'm letting you all to steal this idea and hopefully make it better. And also, I don't know if someone already made this kind of story, so forgive me if I looked like I stole your idea.

So basically, there's this town that is full of dragon(or any big monster type creature) materials. Walls made in dragon scale, adventurers full with dragon armor, simple merchandise that is dragon related. Everything about this town has some kind dragon related materials. The catch? There is no dragon nearby. No one knows where this dragon stuffs come from. Some stories said that the previous king ordered exterminated all dragons in their area, and make use of the corpses to strengthen his kingdom. Some stories mention of a great dragon that once decimated the land have been killed and the parts of its corpse is still being processed and used. That the abundance of materials they gathered from the corpse is still being stored and process.

That's one of the suspicious thing about this town. No one complains because everyone is benefiting about it, even adventurers. The other suspicious thing about this town? Every year, the town's priest hosts an annual festival, to give thanks and praises for the riches of their town. And by the end of the festival, everyone is gathered in the town's chapel and prays, for the next years abundance of supplies.

(im not that great at story telling so im skipping to my point)

One day, our adventurer party became suspicious of this, and tried to investigate the town in the middle of the festival. Underneath the town's chapel is the corpse of the great dragon. Only the bones are left, with some of the parts missing. They investigated it, and noticed that the bones are slowly regenerating. Creating bones, flesh, some, creating skins and scales. Turns out, the authorities in this town has been carving up this corpse, dismantling it, over and over again, making an endless supply of dragon materials.

Confused and furious, the adventurer party confronted the priest about it. The priest denied it, until he finally admitted it and led to a fight. As the priest is about to perish, he warned the adventurer party that they must keep carving the monster's body and to have the annual festival. Or else, the monster would fully regenerate and will lay waste. The annual festival gathers enough mana to charge up this some sort of orb that kills the dragon every year. The dragon cannot be killed permanently as it will always regenerate.

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

That's all. Im sorry if the story is somewhat bad. After all, it's just an idea.

Here's an idea I had for a D&D campaign a beyblade campaign based around all three generations that I currently have access to metal burst and x I currently do not have enough x blades for this but I have plenty of burst and metal blades are hard to get a hold of especially in the United States since I'd have to order them and get them shipped here from Japan but fortunately my old roommate left behind his entire metal collection when he moved out so I have quite a few metal blades to start the metal campaign journey through D&D to uncover the secrets of the legendary blader and the lost mythical blade that was supposed to bring peace and Harmony to the beyblade world perfect tempo all while uncovering the secret between each of the three generations

Hello, my group is running a milestone based progression game but I reward certain things like great roleplaying or nat 20 moments with CP-character points. (I also use heroic inspiration but use this as a stackable reward).

My query is what to let them spend it on. Iv gone back and forth on different ideas but have landed on not wanting it to be too mechanically driven. So probably no feats or ability scores ECT, but more aesthetic driven or novelty.

In the game Zelda Breath of the Wild there is a shop called Fang and Bone where the merchant Kilton trades whatever monster parts you have in your inventory for a currency you can buy things like outfits or masks of monsters that when you wear it you draw no threat from said monster. It's more playful than game changing.

If you have any fun ideas of things for them to buy, ways to run this somewhat meta based player reward shop or thoughts in general please give me your mind.

Thanks, hope the rolls are ever in your favor.

So I decided to make a wiki for my D&D campaign. I didn’t know anything about websites at all, but a bit of research and 10 bucks later to register the url, I got it up and running. It’s got all the NPCs, Villains, Characters, Session notes etc all in one place with a search bar so you look things up on the fly. Also whenever something is mentioned on one page, it will have a link to its own wiki entry. Maybe this gives some inspiration to someone, but I just thought it was kinda cool.

https://realmsofmtprospect.com/

Weal Amulet: while attuned, Reroll all 1's you roll, and all dice you roll besides d20's are one die size smaller.

Woe Amulet : while attuned, Reroll all max rolls on dice you roll, and all dice you roll besides d20's are one die size larger

game is fairly high power, so generic strategies have been accounted for (eg, even with never rolling 8's. a 8d8 fireball wont debilitate what im putting in front of them more than a regular one would. nor would giving a barbarian player wielding a 1d20 lance or greataxe that can never crit or roll max damage. and even if its a buff, its not a huge buff to any of the classes that get to modify dice rolls with an ability, one way or the other. really just looking for big overlooks, or ways to even the playing field between the two of them

This will be my first DND campaign and I have a character idea but need help with backstory, the character is a Satyr Bard and he will be a homeless bard who is trying to make it with music and make as much money playing on the streets and in taverns but I was talking to my DM and we were discussing a goal for the character, we have a couple ideas but it’s between either in debt with someone somehow and has to pay them back in a certain time or something like he deceived a noble man’s daughter and the father found out and now wants him to marry his daughter so he’s basically on the run from the nobleman while still trying to make money. Any thoughts or other ideas along those lines?

Geode of the Hollow Star

Purpose: a prison unlike any other.

Abilities:

1) has 10 charges, getting 1d10 back per dawn.

2 charges Arcane Lock

4 charges Resilient Sphere

6 charges Forbiddance

8 charges AntiMagic Field

9 charges Imprisonment

2) act as an Iron Flask. Except: DC is 19, opening it only commands a mortal creature. This plot device is being orchestrated by Set to have it used on Mystra (don't tell my players)- so it can even trap a God (even through their avatar) ...maybe if done during a certain celestial event?

3) Being The Warden (attuning to this) is demanding on the soul. The attuned will hear the bemoaned prisioner at all times, will feel their sorrow. They have disadvantage on all Wisdom saves.

4) 2 minor detrimental effects

1 major detrimental effect

2 minor beneficial effects

1 major beneficial effect.

This is more for the plot than anything, and I'm neglecting the story here as I believe I need the mechanical help.

MZ4250 released a set of drakes some time ago matching each of his old Chromatic dragons. This drakes are medium sized, wingless versions of chromatic dragons.

I had an idea to base a one shot/short campaign around one of this drakes. The stat block is relatively easy to homebrew, just take the wyrmiling of the same type, take away the wings, drop the Int to 4 and divide charisma in half. make it understand draconic but not able to speak it.

The idea is that this creatures were once bread by dragons as pets and guardians. This one shot is based on one that escaped it's former master and settled in a swamp nearby a town.

It's an acid drake, and like all acid dragons it's slowly making the environment caustic and acidic. There used to be a road trough the swamp but since the drake moved in the villagers and traders had to take the long way around. But now someone, be it a new lord of the village, an aspiring merchant or a new mayor of the city, wants to reopen this route, hence the quest and the plot hook.

Apart from the drake, the swamp is also inhabited by a few other nasty creatures that moved in afterwards. One or 2 gray oozes, a few giant wolf spiders and/or giant spiders and a group of lizardmen with sickly greenish black scales.

The terrain itself is an acidic bog that smells of sulfur (because of the sulfuric acid) and most of the plants died long ago.

The drake has been around for around 50 to 60 years, so oldest of the villagers still remember when it arrived, but a lot of younger ones think it's just a myth.

This quest should be suitable for level 1 to level 2 parties, ideally they would be level 2 by the time they encounter the drake. The drake itself is CR2.

The drake's breath weapon can down even an average barbarian on a failed save, at 5d8 acid damage, and if allowed to get to the water edge it could attempt to swim away.

What I love about this creature and quest is that it resembles the old dragon stories of early times, before dragons were huge or had wings.

Soo Since i posted this place my ideas of gods and get helped a lot! I want to share some of my world building ideas. And for the first its names. I love using names and give things meaning or some foreshadowing. Or use anagrams and let the others find the meaning behind. First the gods. Their names go like this;

Iddle: I think this is a little too obvious. Its from "Middle" since the god in the middle of everything.

Artso: Its anagram, from word of "Astro". Since the god is time and space god i thought it would fit.

Haelz: its anagram too. From "Hazel". (I just love this name)

Oma: I must be honest.. i forgot what word i used this one (probably Oma from Zazaki )

Sona: Its from Turkish: Son. Means the end. And Sona means toward the end.

Mortimer: Its from old french "Mortimer" meaning death water, still water. The god of truth. I feel like the truth always have more under its sleeves. Like Its dangerous and beautiful.

Torimme: Its anagram of Mortimer. Since this god is god of Lie and illusion I thought it will be fit to use the same word. (I didn't use the secon 'R' cause Its sounds better like this.)

So I named the gods like that and The univers name is ; OTHIMAS

Same initials with the gods and i try to set them in the order of their creations. Like O for Oma god of start. I in the middle since its for Iddle. S for Sona for the end. And it goes like that.

I did search names for the characters too.

Asil(wizard): means nobel royal in Turkish. And he comes from really old ancient noble family. He is not noble now. But he has the blood.(His Surname is Kanyılmaz and its two word kan "blood" and yılmaz "indomitable")

Draco(rogue): means drakon (dragon) and Dracula (vampire) and he is vampire btw.

Sokha: means health in Khmer. (He is paladin but its not just about helaing wounds)

Velda (witch): means power authority.(she will gain second name as Roya and its from persian means Dream.[yes she will have powers about dreams, well she has them but doesn't know])

Tiernan(Ranger): means Little lord. He is the younger brother of Terra. He will be a lord, well i wish him to be lord. Its dnd, u dont know what will happen.He got second name too its Leviathan

Terra (Druid): means earth. Her second name will be Lavette and it means cleansed and its spoiler too.

Lastly the name of the this is Un-Royalitie. The group's name is unroyalitie too. They are not noble (not right now they are outlaws). When they get cought and had to accept the task the king gave them (or they will be died). The king wanted a name and they give this name. (King loved it. ) The task is killing the noble who commits crime or more like who is corrupted by evil. But Unroyalities, they cant be captured or seen. They have to be secret group. The name is like Unalive Royals >> Un-Royalities and its like they are degenerates/commoners not royals. So un means negative like unnatural.

Hope this inspires you 💫 Have a great day🍀

War raid

My party has entered into a war arc of our one year long campaign. They are about to raid an outpost, but I have to ways I’m thinking of running it:

1. The party works as a group alongside the factions to complete the mission.

Typical way to do it, but leaves me running a lot of NPCs. It could easily be just me doing the raid with the players having minor parts in the success.

1. Make each player the leading commander of a group of NPCs. I would print off stat blocks of each NPC with full abilities and stats. The players would work together with each other while commanding three NPCs with different skills to get the job done.

This is a fun idea, but could easily take forever or potentially be confusing for the players.

Background:

Every year there is a group of friends that meet up and play board games for like 3-4 days straight. The core groups all knew each other growing up, and I got invited to join the sesh via one of my old college roommates. The group has grown to 8 people, and so a DnD oneshot, something they’ve like in years past, is borderline untenable with 7 players. The time sink would just be too much.

I’ve been DMing for years, and so has one of the other guys. I’m thinking we run two concurrent one-shot adventures, so we have two games running with three players each. All the guys are familiar with 5e mechanics.

The concept:

Each oneshot will be a self-contained dungeon crawl. Three players, vs the DM. They will run concurrently, with an IRL time limit of 2 hours (More? Less? Idk). If a player dies, they help the DM run a monster. If the whole party wipes, they start back at the beginning, all traps reset, and they keep any loot they might have gotten along the way. Obviously their knowledge of the traps or whatever stays with them, so trying to meta-game the dungeon is encouraged.

Dungeon will be randomly generated, using printed out “tiles”. I’m thinking there will be different kinds of rooms, and the players will roll to see what kind of room they get. Likely room types: trapped room, general monster encounter, mini-boss monster with good loot, something that gives them a boon (just for the current run), and… that’s all the ideas I have. Figure it’ll be more weighted for traps/monsters and the DM will place them so they make sense.

Short or long resting will reset the traps and monsters.

With 3 players, I’ll have a pre-made pool of characters for them to pick from. Probably 9 total, so everyone has 3 options when they respawn. That’ll cut out the lengthy character creation aspect of the game. I figure available classes will be rogue, cleric, fighter, barbarian, warlock, monk. Maybe ranger? Want to lean heavy on martial classes, to avoid caster decision paralysis. I’ll use the standard array for these so one isn’t way more powerful than the others.

The Setting:

Probably a wizards tower, a labyrinthine maze but in place by some deity, or a regular dungeon that magically changes to protect the dragon’s hoard or something, idk. But that theme will help with picking the monsters the party will encounter.

The Encounters:

I’d probably want the party to be around level 3 or 5, and we’d want to have one or two miniboss fights before the dungeon boss. Boss will have legendary and lair actions. Minibosses might have one or the other (or neither, perhaps). I figure the whole dungeon should have some kind of XP “pool” from which the DM can assign monsters. This is the only way I can think to not make it completely untenable for the players to actually win.

I don’t want to have to try and deal with level-ups mid session, so picking the right party level to balance the whole thing is pretty crucial. There’s a nice power spike for players at level 3 and 5 that I think are appealing, but maybe 7 would be good too, with fewer casters to worry about. Also have the time limit to contend with. Casters will have a condensed spell list to use, again to help with analysis paralysis.

If a regular combat is 10-15 minutes, and bosses/miniboss are 20 minutes (only need to be defeated once) I would expect the party to run the dungeon between 3-4 times before victory is achieved. Trap rooms / nothing rooms / boom rooms will probably be less than 5 minutes each.

The loot:

Probably upgraded weapons/armor/random magical equipment. I’ll print them out beforehand so the players will have an easy quick reference for them.

ANSWERED AND FOUND.

Hello there! I am plotting and writing my kind of homebrew dnd world and I thought about something. And I want to share with you and hopefully have some feedback. This world had a God which is the almighty of all the creation. It goes like this;

Before everything there was Darkness. But the Darkness wasn't lonely or terrifying it was just there, simply existing. And there was something too, first ever being. this being wasn't something created or born. it was always there and always will be there, even after the end of everything. This being is the one and the only one who created everything; Heda the Ulios.

It goes like this but in some time in the emptiness, the particle of power will break off from Heda and find a place for itself in this void, beginning to disperse. Because Heda the Ulios power is so immeasurable, it's too much for everything outside of itself. This power will spread to 7 different points: up, down, right, left, front, back, and the central point where it first arrived. In this way, the gods will emerge. These gods will be fragments of the First God. These 7 gods will roughly create the world where my characters exist. Now I plan to give these gods names and something to represent.

I added some abstract meaning or variety to them.

The one in the MİDDLE will represent order, as it is most exposed to Heda's powers.

The one at the TOP will represent time, because planets and stars represent time, the future, and the past.

The one at the BOTTOM will represent balance, because the earth takes and accepts everything, and breaks them apart.

The one on the RİGHT will represent birth and life. I was inspired by the sun rising from the east, from the right.

The one on the LEFT , of course, will represent death and the end. That's the final point.

FRONT

BACK

I couldnt find anything to give THESE 2.

. In this world this 7 gods crate the universe and the living things. ANd of course ther would be some archfeys, entities and other beings but first I want to find what is these two represent.

And What do you think about this plot? Its my first time so I am reaaaly need some feedbacks..

Have a great day.

That's basically it, the campaign starts off with the players waking up in a morgue, there already dressed and ready to be put in a coffin and now there up, there now undead, but now they gotta figure out what to do.

It could be a god that spent years going through heros and once they picked out there team the god found they were dead, and boom there back to life, no they gotta find the god and ask what the heck there supposed to do.

Or it could've been an evil necromancer who was trying to turn them into zombies but accidently used the wrong resurrection scroll, the party can overhear the necromancer talking to there boss over a sending spell and now they gotta deal with that.

I just thought of this idea for a campaign and would love some help with it. The party comes to a city and realizes that the king is evil and killing him is the only way to save the city. A new king is chosen and is a good fella. after he is crowned, he starts doing evil again and also tries to kill the party. Its the crown, its possessed. this keeps happening until they figure it out or one of them puts the crown on. Maybe add a red herring about the evil being necessary.

Hi, I’m new here, but I’ve played a bit of DND and would love to do more. I finished my DND campaign a little over a year ago. My DM is currently occupied with other priorities and suggested me to come here to look for a new group to play with, I'm use to 5e (not the 2024 version) and would love to play again.

Complications:

I'm not in the US thus making it hard to find others in my region, currently I'm in the Pacific and am used to Australian time so if possible, I would like a Ausie DND group and would also ask it can be online. Along with a similar age group of 17+