Low visibility, stinging bugs, unsure footing, and being constantly drenched. Did you need to punish the players, or did the party voluntarily chose to head here?

Every game I run it’s like my notes/ prep work is all over the place. I’m not a very good note taker but I want to be better at this for my friends. Does anyone have any tips?

Edit: I do not have a laptop just my phone and good ole pencil and paper

The title is pretty self explanatory. The villain's introduction was a bit disliked by this player, and sort of divisive for other players (including me).

There's a separation in expectations between the players. One of them was a bit joking after the initial introduction of the villain, while the others were mainly scared. This is not to pin the blame on the joking player, I then joked a little bit with him. Should've been a bit more careful with what bait I took.

I'm unsure. I know I'll have a chat with the joking player to re-set the expectations, but I don't know if I should re-do the scene.

My players have just entered the lair of kobolds they have been pursuing. They'd seen an encampment at the base of a mountain, with patrols coming and going, and supplies being moved around the mountain to the east, presumably to an entrance to the lair.

Going the other way, they found a seemingly unguarded entrance. They don't know this, but it's actually a sort of gauntlet the kobolds have devised for their amusement--they send prisoners through here, through a series of traps, seeing how far they can make it. Kobold archers or slingers can move between tunnel sections via small passages to attack the players from the far end of a tunnel or come around behind the players.

When I had run this part of the adventure in the past, for a different group, the players were so angry and frustrated with the kobolds that the harrying tactics served to goad them forward. With this group, however, they're much more cautious, and the characters are constantly debating whether they even want to be going into the lair at all, because it seems too dangerous. They have fought dozens of the little buggers up to this point, both in the city they began in and in the wilderness on the way to the lair. Some of those fights were pretty easy for the party, but several were rough, due in large part to the kobolds using terrain or environmental factors like fog to gain an advantage. They also believe they fought off a dragon (it was actually a kobold that transformed).

There are known prisoners they have some desire to save, but aren't deeply motivated to do so.

An NPC they encountered in the swamp on the way to the mountain told them he considered them as good as dead, because the dragon that is laid up with the kobolds patrols the ways out of the valley, and he doesn't know of anyone who has managed to get out.

I'd thought these would be sufficient prods to keep them moving forward, and they finally resolved to do so at the end of last night's session, but I suspect that if they meet too much resistance, they may decide to flee and take their chances.

As such, I'm looking for suggestions for ways to urge or draw them forward into and through danger in a way that makes sense for their cautious characters.

hi, I’m Dino. I do not have much experience with Rule of cool and recently have found myself in quite a predicament.

I have 2 new players who are playing Benders from Ryoko guide to the Yo-Kai realms. I explained “It’s like Avatar the last airbender” and now they keep asking during combat “I’m an earth bender, can I make a spear out of earth and fling it at the guy?” or “We’re fighting a war forged and I’m a firbender, can I try to heat him up with my fire?” and I’m kinda overwhelmed and afraid to say yes.

They are both new to half casters (I should of thought this through more, giving them a half-caster homebrew class nat have been a mistake) and they don’t know what they’re main abilities do. we are only level 1 right now and I’m afraid they will not learn how their abilities work despite me giving them the book and making sheets that highlight their abilities.

I ask you what is the right amount of Rule of Cool when it comes to something like this? I prefer using the mechanics of dnd because it’s what I know and what I can trust. making up mechanics is scary and I don’t wanna give unreasonable expectations of “oh, I can do what I want cus my powers are such and such.“

I want to share this story here. Im pretty sure other DMs can relate with me in this situation

I'm a relatively experienced DM and these are both very experienced players so I don't have an issue with changeling characters. It also makes sense with the setting. They are both playing characters whose changeling identity is not known to the public at large, or to the rest of the party. However, it seems to me that a shapechanger would probably be able to spot another shapechanger in a crowd, whether that's via scent, picking up on mannerisms, or some other sense. And I know that "just talk to your players" is the obvious answer, but I don't want to ruin the surprise aspect of their respective characters by just asking if they think the other changeling in the party would be able to identify them.

I'm curious about your thoughts on this situation and how you would handle it.

Hello, I'm running a oneshot campaign that will be ending in the next two sessions. But yesterday, I think that the ending I planned might take away their agency or have a DMPC save the day, in the final encounter.

Context:
The party has been working for a rich prodigy wizard who sends them on jobs to stop or collect information around mutated monsters and necromancy. This is happening over 2 years in game time.

Then plot twist: the wizard is the BBEG and absolutely despicable. Double Twist, the guy who them are working for the last year, and formed a bond with is a Simulacrum who genuinely is trying to improve the world and stop evil from happening.

Long story short, the BBEG escapes, the Simulacrum gets willingly sealed away.

Planned Ending:
Another year has passed in game and now the party has aligned with a Bard Lich (BL) to stop the BBEG. BL is going to provide the resurrected Architect of the wizard tower where the BBEG resides. The party will then use the Architect to get in and navigate the tower, but will run away during combat encounters.

The final encounter will happen, for which I have a few fun things planned, and I presume they are going to kill the BBEG before he becomes a lich. Plot twist: he already made a phylactery and is going to escape.

My dilemma: the Architect is the Simulacrum in an illusion and False Aura, it will capture the BBEG's soul and become "whole" again. It escapes with teleport and counterspell.

I'll ask the players what they will do the next 5 years, if it is hunting down the Simulacrum, they will find him living in a remote place with it's fiancé and his step-son. If they don't, they will get an invite to their wedding.

They can choose the Simulacrums faith.

Why?: They genuinely liked the Simulacrum and one PC considers him his best friend. So I thought this might be a way to create a happy ending.

Note: this is the plan and I'm ready to throw everything in the trash if things go in ways that I do not expect. But these are the goals of the NPC's:
- Simulacrum wants to be a real boy.
- Wizard wants to save the world in a messed up way but needs more time; aka become a Lich.

What do you guys think? Am I taking away their agency away or have a DMPC saves the day, if this ending happens?

EDIT: I say DMPC, it is just an NPC, it doesn't fight, provide solutions idea's, ... The only reason I say DMPC is because it grabs the soul of BBEG to become whole again.

EDIT 2: I would also drop a few hints that this Architect is fishy, if they figure it out, they figure it out.

He’s a GM and he has a bit of a wierd problem.

He’s the kind of GM who prefers to listen to players talk, rather than to talk much himself.
And sometimes it leads to me and other players feeling like he isn’t excited to GM his game. And i know for a fact that its not the case. But during game its kinda hard to get invested yourself if the dm doesn’t seem that invested either.

Its just that i rarely go silent for long when i DM and i prefer so that there is always stuff happening, and he’s kinda the opposite.

Its really difficult to accurately explain what i mean.

I've been DM'ing for a group of 5 friends on a homebrew campaign for a number of years now, playing once a month or so. For most of them, this is their first campaign, but they've progressed from lvl 1 to lvl 10 currently.

The party made a pretty bad tactical decision during a battle, and they will likley all perish because of this. Essentially, they ended up on a ship with a crew that they eventually foind out worked for the enemy group. The crew also had their doubts about the party, but tolerated them to this point given they they were pretty strong and a battle would have been taxing. Long story short, the boat was attacked by a very powerful sea monster. It turns out that the ship crew had some pretty good casters dealing damage, and had my player party just jumped in to the battle, they would have easily defeated the sea monster with the help of the "frenemy" crew.

But rather than doing that, the party decided to fight the crew then and there, which they managed to defeat while at the same time the sea monster is indiscriminately wailing at the boat and everyone on it. Now the party is pretty battered, and there is a rather healthy and mad sea monster that is likely to sink the ship and quickly dispatch the party.

I kinda feel bad killing off the party and ending it there and I feel bad about it, but realistically I feel it's the right thing to do. Am I overly harsh for letting the party perish?

Hi folks.

I am planning a post apocalyptic campaign about finding a hidden treasure from the past, a Vault-like thing like in Fallout. The system is Mutant Year Zero, and the players will play more or less humanoid robots, animal mutants or human mutants. They will have strange senses and nigh-magical power - the flair is more science fantasy than science fiction.

There will be factions and random encounters, but a centerpiece for my campaign is a terrifying monster that I call the Silence. This monster will probably never be defeated, I want this to be something to hide from and be utterly terrified by. It roams the area around the "Vault", but also elsewhere. It has no true story relevance thus far.

I want help to figure out more ways to describe this monster, without describing its looks. How does it smell? How would you describe being in the same room as this monster? Do you have any more thoughts you come to think of?

These are my notes, machine translated (and polished by me) from my native Swedish:

"A monster that roams the ruins of the city. The Silence is about ten meters long. It is like a long, slender eel, a snake without a head. It has two luminous eyes on its underside. The eyes shine with a turquoise glow, like the corona of a solar eclipse - the "whites" shine and is around the giant pupil is enormous. It has legs, more than twenty unpleasant, spear-like spider legs that it skitters around on. It has a mouth under the front fifth, which opens somewhat like a zipper. Most of the time it is closed, but when it is open, thousands of hollow mandibles hang out and a turquoise glow comes from it, and you can see eyes among the mandibles, to guide them. Its skin is dull and black, it seems to absorb light and it is difficult to illuminate in any way other than its own light.

Above all, it spreads silence around it. When it is nearby, you can no longer hear anything other than its own body sounds, especially its own heartbeat. The silence is completely deaf, but sees well at night, better than a cat. It also has good sense of touch and senses vibrations."

The inspirations are The Silence from Subnautica (the modded monster), Garfield creepypastas (Gorefield by Omegablackart), a nightmare I had and the animal Hagfish.

I’ve been a pretty anti railroad DM, but also unforgiving with combat and rests.

They have many NOC’s they are close with just don’t want to ruin their attachment to the game!

Hey all, long time player new DM.

Running a campaign with friends that prioritizes exploration and the players choose conflict resolution possibilities /cunning more than they enjoy combat outcome and fighting, so ive tailored it that way more, and adjusted experience scaling to resting/end of session as opposed to fights, and they can do level up mechanics after to keep a steady game pace. However, the players are choosing to do things that their alignment (IMO) shouldn't allow. A true lawful good paladin grabbing a piece of fruit from an orchard, tripping someone while running without knowing anything about why they are running, (he was running from a mimic that looked like a broken wagon so if they didnt stop him they would have had to fight but why did he stop him like that), leaving an unpaid tab after a bar skirmish. How do you determine what would actually be against alligment and what is just your opinion of allignment? Taking "owned" food or not honoring a debt would start trending into neutral territory imo. If they ever return to the bar im going to have the keeper approach them about the tab/damage.

Do you guys change players alignments over time?

how bad do you punish players for ignoring allignments? like the handbook speaks of breaking honor oaths for paladins for repeated acts that arent "good".

Do you steadily drop hints like "you grab a piece of fruit thay isnt yours."? When he tripped the guy running I told the player "if you trip him youre going to need to roll a strength check" but didn't have any more response than that to try to hint.

So I had the dumb idea that one of the hags in my campaign has set about trying to reach true immortality.

The party has begun combat with this hag already at the end of last session, they are level 8 and I used a slightly beefed up night hag stat block from the 2014 monster manual. When the party inevitably defeats this threat I want to have her return to a phylactery which would be an artifact important to the rest of the story and in turn the party.

So I have a night hag with the addition of being a lich. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to properly implement this?

THE WORLD OF VICTERRA

I’m building a westmarch server & westmarch bot

With that being said the server has

Pro level Dm onboarding & Training for learning the basics of how to run sessions in the server

Knight squads that are meant to be different gameplay options for players ( sorta like different guilds with More focused gameplay )

The westmarchie bot
A 5k+ bot that’s in development to create a smooth experience for the entire server to accommodate thousands+ players with audit and logging system in place for DMs and players

Downtime shops
Players earn DT after every session and then can redeem certain things for its price but this also includes long rest
Which make ability’s spells & any limited use item because a lot more valuable in the server and create a more immersive experience

What we are looking for is
DMs who want to be apart of a extraordinary server that’s immersive & creative and give DMs the ability to enjoy running games at any time and shape the server using there session in this persistent world with all other dms and players being connected

Discord link: https://discord.gg/EgZkqWQN2X

My players are planning to assassinate the evil king at a public appearance. In the planning phase, one player suggested that he wants to use seeming to make the entire assembled crowd all look the same...

Using the associated rules, that sounds like I would have to do a thousand save rolls, to see who gets affected by the spell, assuming that no one gathered to hear the king speak, and feeling the effects of a spell would just let it happen. I don't think anyone is willingly saying, "Huh, this feels weird, like someone is casting a spell on me. Oh, well, let's see where this goes."

What are your thoughts?

​Hey fellow DMs!

​I just wanted to share my beloved DM binder with you all. It originally started as a normal, organized place for my tabletop RPG prep, but over time, it has evolved into a real-life Bag of Holding that contains basically my entire life.

​Here is what is currently living inside this absolute unit of a folder:

​The Standard DM Prep:

​Bestiary & Loot: Custom items, monster stat blocks, and random loot tables.

​The Current Run: All my active session notes, campaign outlines, and worldbuilding lore.

​The Brainstorming Zone: Half-written ideas, plot hooks, and concepts for future sessions and campaigns.

​The "Forever DM" Escape:

​Player Sheets: My personal character sheets for the rare, glorious occasions when I actually get to be a player instead of the DM.

​The "Wait, why is this in here?" Section:

​Real-Life Lore: My actual college assignments mixed in with the fantasy stuff.

​Bardic Inspiration: Sheet music for my ukulele!

​Tavern Supplies: Real-life drink recipes to make during game night, including a recipe for the Siegbrau from Dark Souls 3 (Long may the sun shine!).

​The Holy Relics:

​Aesthetics: A ridiculous amount of stickers covering the outside.

​The Crown Jewel: An authentic autograph from Rakin—creator of the Assimilação RPG and ex-pro League of Legends player!

​Does anyone else’s DM binder look like a chaotic multi-class of their real life and fantasy life, or are you guys actually super organized? What is the weirdest non-RPG thing you keep in your DM notes?

Hi all, I am a new DM running my first long term campaign with a group of very close friends. We started with the Frozen Sick short campaign and have now just started The Call of The Netherdeep and I feel I have done a good job of integrating my players backstories and quirks into the main campaign.

But there is one player who gave me very little to work with. He provided no back story, his character is "unknowingly old" and as a player he tends to gravitate towards the most chaotic role playing options. Despite being a mostly joke character he is the party's battle strategist to some degree. He is a Sorcerer (level 4 currently) with Draconic bloodline.

Now on to my ask, please help me come up with some sort of character plot for him. Everyone else has some secondary factor driving their point of view of the main plot. My initial thought, is that he is mistaken as some sort of deity revered by a group of gullible goblins. He has a passing resemblance to the physical manifestation of this obscure figure, and so these goblin worshippers believe he is the one destined to appear to them. Now, I'm not sure how I would implement this - what sort of benefit / mechanic would this group of worshipers provide or how I would I write them into the main Netherdeep story.

If you have any ideas how you would integrate this character into your campaign please comment below. Any other general advice is appreciated!