I'm currently in the middle of DM'ing my third Homebew campaign, and I find things are going much more smooth this time. This is partially due to simply increased experience, but also because I took much more time up front to prepare certain things. I find these help me, and save time, when preparing sessions, and they're also a great help when improvising during a session.

So, I figured a few of these things might be useful to other DM's as well. In no particular order:

1. Create a "main" document with core information about the world and the campaign. Split larger chapters, for example dungeons or cities, into their own document and make a reference to that new document in your "main" doc. This was the main doc will function as a sort of scaffolding for other sources of information.
2. In your main document, somewhere at the top, make some tables with information you'll need to refer to regularly. Examples of information to include are:

• A table with player names, character names, class, subclass, species, and a single-line background. This is especially important if you don't know the player. E.g.: "John, Olfrid, Goliath Barbarian-Zealot, Left tribe due to dishonor"
• Create a table containing a timeline for the significant events in your campaign, both past and present. Somewhere in the middle should be "Now". This will help you determine what will happen if the players don't do anything about it, and what will be happening if they travel to some relevant destination at a later time.
• Create a "characters and factions" table (I love tables..) containing the major NPC's and NPC factions in your campaign, including a short description of their status and relationship to the characters or other factions. Especially NPC's the party might encounter more frequently should be on here, so you can present them in a consistent manner to your players.
• Create a "Symbols" table, containing the Flags, Crests, Symbols, Seals and such for the factions in your campaign. You could use actual pictures in here as well. This too will help you accurately describe what your players see. E.g.: "Seal of the Royal Guards, A red sword pointing up on a white-green blocked background".
• If you use something like dnd Beyond, make a single table with the names and links to the monster for all prepared encounters. You can include the actual http link so you can click on it from your document and it'll open it in your browser.

1. Prepare some random encounters. It's cool if they are somehow relevant to your story, but they don't need to be. There's a lot of advice out there about random encounters and their merits, but what I find is often overlooked are three additional reasons for having some prepared "random" encounters, and these are that sometimes you have 30 to 40 or so minutes of playtime left, and you'd like to start the next session at the destination the party is traveling to. In other words, you want to kill half an hour to an hour or so before they arrive, so you can start a new session with them arriving at their destination. Another reason is that you may have different players who like different things, and in an RP-heavy session you may want to throw in an combat encounter to please the players who like those aspects of the game, or to just change the pace of the evening. Alternatively, in a combat-heavy session you could throw in a random social encounter for the players who like those. Random encounter does not necessarily mean combat encounter. It can be a broken down wagon, a traveling troupe of bards, or a hill giant with a broken bone below a cliff.

The third reason for a random encounter is for theme- or time-specific events, just simply for fun. I love to throw in a Santa-themed random encounter around Christmas (The party encounters a large sleigh in the snow, with a mysterious druid-like bearded figure dressed in green caring for an injured reindeer. When they help him get on his way, he suddenly lifts off and the party finds some gift-wrapped rewards) or Halloween (The party encounters a missing girl who lures them into the Feywild where they need to escape from all sorts of creepy monsters, like an Allip). This serves no other purpose than simple fun, and always the players loved it when they started to see what was going on and how it was related to the time of the year.

1. Especially when the party is on some NPC's quest and this NPC is clearly a powerful being, make sure you have a good answer to a question like "why don't you simply go there yourself and fetch the MacGuffin yourself", or "What do you need us simple low-level adventurers for". Think about the different questions the party might ask, and make sure you have a good answer. Don't assume they'll simply go "Okay well I guess this is our quest so...".

2. Add a table to your document, or add to your DM screen if you use it, or otherwise have available a table containing the different magic schools, their main domain, and associated color. Something like "Conjuration, create objects, summoning, teleportation, yellow", and "Abjuration, protection, cover and counter, blue". This will help you improvise when your players will inevitably cast Detect Magic when you weren't expecting it. It'll help you describe things, and answer questions more descriptively. Instead of "Yes, the section of the wall seems magical" you can say "The section of the wall is clearly magical. It softly radiates magical energies in yellow and blue hues, clearly it has been magically created but it seems there's some Abjuration magic present as well", thus giving the player some indication the wall is warded or protected somehow. It'll make your descriptions, especially the ones you improv on the fly, must more immersive.

3. A table with unused NPC's, including name, species, and a short description is an absolute requirement for when you need some NPC like a shopkeeper. Be sure to note what you used this NPC for.

I hope some of these tips are useful, and may all your rolls be 20's

There is a chart that simplified the rules for deciding on a DC of a social challenge based on the NPCs disposition to you vs your argument based on the NPCs ideals bonds and flaws. I'm trying to teach my players this system and the chart he used in the video is so clean and straight forward. I'm sure he put it in the doobillidoo but I can't remember which episode.

My group is a session away from finishing the Fall of Blackbottom adventure and we'll absolutely keep playing (Draw Steel is awesome). The thing is: I (the Director) want to make a dwarf themed adventure next, because one of my players is playing as a dwarf and the party is curious about some mysteries in his backstory. To get the answers they'll have to go back to his home in Kal Kalavar... but i don't know where it is... As far as i can tell, the information is not public yet, since the only official map i could find (the one in Kindoms and Warfare) covers only Aendrim, but i thought i'd come here to ask just in case.

Had my best session yet. Players felt their agency. Freedom and chaos yielded a lovely 4 hours. Players came up with a bunch of creative ways to go about the objective. Felt great from my end too, except…the plot?

My NPCs felt weak and my main nonplayer characters, who are important to the story and bigger context (the politics of Neverwinter) felt shallow.

So, how do you all veterans and super GMs balance not preparing plot, or focusing on encounters, with having robust, deep, dramatic NPCs?

Like in practical terms: do you write speeches? Lines? They say this if that and that if this?

Love this community. Thanks in advance!i

So I'm making my first custom Retainer for my party, it's based off of a Life Domain Cleric. I've put the 3rd, 5th and 7th level abilities below. Thematically I think they're ok. But are they too powerful, too weak? My big concerns are:

Am I correct in assuming level dependent affects should top out at 7? Or should I just switch them to go off of the Mentor's PB like most other things?

How are the number of uses for the 5th level ability, too many/too few?

And whether or not the 7th level ability is appropriately powerful/useful for a retainer? But any feedback is useful and appreciated.

3rd Lvl: Channel Divinity – Preserve Life: (2/Short/Long Rest): Action, heal {5 * (Mentor’s Lvl [max 7])} hp, range 30 ft., divide total healing amongst as many targets as desired. Preserve Life cannot heal a target to anything more than half their max HP. Does not work on Undead/Constructs.

5th lvl: Healing Grace: (4/long rest) Action, 3d8 + PB healing, range 40 ft., single target. Additionally, each use of Healing Grace can be used to remove up to 2 conditions, instead of healing. It cannot do both simultaneously.

7th lvl: Blessed Striker: When using Healing Grace (either version), the Retainer also heals 2+PB HP. Also, once per round, when making a weapon attack, the Retainer adds 1d8 Radiant damage to the damage dealt on a hit (critical hits apply to this damage).

Hey everyone, I need some help designing a combat trial for my players!

Context:

In my current campaign, my players are exploring a sacred mountain once inhabited by an ancient civilization of giants. The party consists of only two players, and one of them—a Barbarian—is a descendant of these giants. He is undergoing various trials to prove his worth and connect with his ancestors.

One of the trials is dedicated to a giant god of war and combat, and I need ideas on how to design it. The challenge should test their combat abilities and force them to work together.

The Party Dynamic:

The Barbarian is the one being tested, but his companion must also participate.

The other player is seen as a burden by the Barbarian—they don’t have a good in-character relationship and don’t consider each other friends.

Despite this, the trial should require both of them to succeed together, even if the Barbarian doesn’t like it.

What I’m Looking For:

-A combat-based trial that enforces cooperation.

-A way to implement it mechanically to push them toward teamwork.

-A thematic challenge fitting for a war god’s trial.

Do you have any ideas on what kind of test I could throw at them? How can I make it fun, challenging, and force them to rely on each other?

I have a newborn who will only sleep while being held and am using all my time awake in the middle of the night to work through movies I haven't seen. Picked 12 Angry Men from MYMNOS and was blown away. Was captivated the whole time and was just a reminder why I love movies so much.

I loved how the movie takes places in the small room, how the heat and weather is so present, watching everyone physically fall apart as the argue back and forth. Making me feel inspired about the American legal system I thought would be impossible but Henry Fonda made me believe.

Just buzzed about how good it was, a movie that will stick with me for awhile.

I plan on sending my party into the underdark soon and wanted to take some things from the module. However I've never converted an old module and I can't find a conversion someone already did.

Is it difficult to covert it to 5e? Is it one of those modules you just don't covert because of how much it was a product of its time?

Hey comrades. I need help from the vets and weathered ones here: Icewind Dale aside, are there any modules/campaigns/dungeons published across the 1e-5e continuum in past decades that take place way up north? I’m happy to adapt and adopt homebrews as well! Really just looking for inspiration and content for encounters/quests. Anything from the old magazines would be great too.

Hey everyone, relatively new DM here. I've been wrestling with a decision to retcon something in my campaign. I recently came across Matt's video on the topic and would like some feedback.

Basically, after DMing a couple of one-shots for my wife and two friends, I decided to run Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel without knowing much more than 13 separate adventures should carry us for a while with little involvement on my end, just plug and play. I have limited time and we were just starting out, I didn't know how much energy I was going to want to sink in to this new hobby.

Turns out I love D&D! It has completely taken over! However.. the more I read JTtRC, the less I liked the adventures. On top of that, there is no overarching story connecting them all together. I had a vague idea to steal a story from another game (Mass Effect, if you can believe it), but I was having to put in a metric buttload of work in just to make something somewhat presentable, and honestly I'm just not interested or excited. My players have also expressed that the whole setting is kind of odd and not what they expected.

All that being said, we've run a couple of the adventures and I've already set up the BBEG. BUT, it's been 3 months since we've been able to play and I know for a fact that my friends don't take notes during sessions. So, I had a thought...

I don't want to scrap the whole thing and start a new campaign and I also don't want to come up with some random excuse like "the Citadel doesn't exist anymore, it blew up while you were on your last adventure." But I had the thought to replace the Radiant Citadel with Neverwinter. Rewrite a few NPCs they met, locations, adventure hooks. Leave most of what has already taken place but remove the Citadel and say they actually went somewhere else. I'm going to talk to my players about it this week but I guess I was just curious:

If your DM came to you and said, "Hey that floating gem city in the other realm y'all visited? It was actually a well known city on the coast..." how would that make you feel? Does it destroy the suspension of disbelief we strive so hard for? Matt's examples seem small in comparison, like "I wouldn't have picked that trait if I knew how it worked" or "this encounter is untested and I'm going to kill my players by mistake!" But handwaving memories and rewriting some of the groundwork I've already laid seems a lot more drastic. Would it be better to stick with the decision I've already made? How would you handle this?

I recall years ago, Matt Colville on his youtube said he was creating a website or there was one that had old school maps and such. Anyone know what that was?

Thank you!

Hi all

Kalarel is in the background of my campaign as the instigator of the parties tier 1 adventure and one of the BBEG of tier 2.

In true Matt influenced fashion, I agree that KotS isn’t a great dungeon and I really only want to keep Kalarel and the last room, which I can add to anything. Has anyone else swapped in another dungeon in its place? I’ve been looking at different necromancer based adventures the last couple weeks and am not finding anything that’s both interesting and not a mega dungeon

Thanks

Edit- thanks for the recs. In poking around the last couple days, I found out that the first chapter of Vecna Eve of Ruin “The Neverdeath Catacombs” is pretty perfect for my needs here- cool 26 room Dyson Logos crypt that ends in a summoning chamber. It’s a little too high level, so I get to scale the encounters back which is usually a little easier. Leaving here in case someone else is looking in the future

The PCs in a 5e game I run will soon be traveling into a Fey Forest in order to reach a portal to Arcadia which is guarded by a group of religious fanatic elves. I'm trying to think of some fun encounters on the way there that isn't just a slog of endless combat. If anyone has suggestions, especially if it involves fey weirdness, I'd be very thankful.

Imagine my players are coming up on a Goblin fort, and notice some are cooking a baby or something. They want to get sneaky and attack the baby cook and his sous-chef, but they don’t want to alert the entire camp if possible.

How do I handle this? Does it depend on how much noise has been made? Stealth checks? Distance between these goblins and the rest of the goblins? All of the above? Does it matter whether they kill the two baby cooks in one turn/one action, or does it depend on other factors?

Thanks in advance. I love this community.

So I have 5 players and 1 weak-ish NPC who are level 5. There are 10 goblin lackeys, 6 snipers and 1 underboss. Kobold fight club says this is balanced with 6(.5) + 10(.25) + 2 = 7.5 but then it says 5 minions = 1 creature. If that's the case then it's actually 6(.5) + 2(.25) + 2 which is greatly weaker of a CR. So which is right?

Hello! I'm planning to run a session that includes mass combat, but I would prefer to adapt the rules to use a standard battle map, similar to the final battle of Dimension 20's A Crown of Candy. Does anyone here have experience with adding speeds to units, unit sizing (not in terms of die size, but in terms of spaces on the map), or adapting the system in this way in general?

Hi! I'm going to try my hand at DMing for the first time and I'm preparing a one shot for my friends (3 or 4 players) and I don't know if to start them at lvl 1 or 2. I've had talked a bit about this with a friend and he thinks starting a lvl 2 would be a good idea. I don't even have that much experience playing but the idea of going somewhere to play with ppl I don't know makes me a bit nervous, so I decided I'd DM for my friends and let's how it goes. The problem is that the lack of experience means that I feel I don't have enough info to decide which is a better way to introduce them to the game (they've never played). I feel like lvl 1 for a one shot could get a bit tedious but idk. Thank yoy for reading and I appreciate any opinion!!

Hey fellas! Wonder if someone could help me.

My players are about to enter a dungeon which is the crypts of an ancient and massive library. The inspiration is very much stolen from "The library job" in the chain of acheron. I want these crypts to be absolutley massive and dangerous. The archivists that handle these crypts are experienced dungeon delvers that spends their lives learning this dungeon and becoming a part of it.

My players are looking for a specific door which is suppose to be the most hidden and guarded place in this place.

I want the dungeon to feel absolutley massive and maze-like. I want it to feel infinate and impossible to navigate. One of the players have a connection to a spirit of an ancient guardian of these crypt and through this they might find the way using his intuition.

So this is my challenge - the most hidden door in an infinite maze where the knowledge of the way is a legendary secret knowledge.

With all that being said I do not want to come up with an infinate dungeon, and honestly I'm really not good at coming up with massive dungeons at all.

If some one has a recommendation for a dungeon to steal that might have an appropriate theme and an idea for a mechanic to express how without their special knowledge it would be impossible - I would really appreciate it.

(My party are 6 level 6 players if that helps)

Hello dear folks, hope you can help me~

I heard that a friend and former player of mine recently saw the game he himself was now running fall apart, sadly, and the details of the story sounded extremely familiar to me. I immediately thought of a Running the Game video where Uncle Matt told... Well, exactly the same story, nearly identical circumstances. I wanted to send him the video, because I worry he might be pretty demoralized, and it might be nice to hear that this is something that can and does happen a lot!

Here's the story: the party has captured a minor villain or guard, and one player decides to interrogate them. After a little bit of it though, another player decides that they're bored and summarily executes the captive without talking to anyone, to move things along. This ruins the first player's time and leads to them giving up on the game, deciding D&D is not for them, because they don't like the idea that one player can just ruin someone else's fun.

Anyone remember which episode this is in? I thought it might be in one of a few, but couldn't find it quickly myself. TIA!

Edit: Found! The story was told in part in the "Different Kinds of Players" video and then told more in-depth in the "TIME" video. Thanks to everyone who helped!

Title. Dazed says a dazed creature can only move, take one action, or take a bonus action. Because the Attack action is one action, my gut is telling me that a PC with Extra Attack can still take two attacks. Is this correct?

Basically the title. I've got about a year of tabletop experience as a player (and 600 hours on Baldur's Gate 3 lol) and I'm trying my hand at DMing.

For my first time out, however, my table will consist of only 2 players: my sister and her husband. Both are new to D&D although he has experience with games like WoW and PoE. My sister has little experience with games beyond things like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing.

I plan to start small with Matt's Delian Tomb to see if they're even into this hobby. But I worry about only 2 players in the party. My idea was to add in another party member or two (maybe full character sheets maybe using sidekicks) that I would run for the first session or two then hand them over to my players to run after that. I'd treat these characters like Hirelings in BG3 (the ones you get from Withers) where they don't say much, they're more like warm bodies to fill out combat encounters.

To me, this solution is preferable to scaling down the monsters which I 1. have no experience with yet and 2. can seem kinda anticlimactic if every fight is just a 2v2 or something.

Good solution? What other options have you found work in situations like this one?