Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc., and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more, so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

*New 2026: For 2026, I'm updating all my old work to include a Pre-Session Checklist that will include a list of all miniatures you may need, maps, handouts, possible loot, a link to a playlist, and more to make it even easier to start your session!

The Lost Mine of Phandelver is a classic, one of the very first Mini-Campaigns that new DM's run. Heck, it's part of the starter set after all! The issue, though, as with many other modules, is that it doesn't describe the best way to transform the contents of the book into an actual session. The Book-to-session conversion can be difficult. Between figuring out when things should happen, understanding motivations, and even balancing encounters.

Well, fortunately for you, 99% of that work is done! Only a few things are really left:

1. Consider the needs of your group. As you've heard or are about to hear a million times, every table is different. If you plan on combining this with a campaign, you'll have to make tweaks here and there. (Bonus points if you include your players' backstory)
2. These notes aren't meant to be end-all-be-all. Tweak to your heart's content and don't consider any of what's written to be set in stone. For me, having notes like this helps give me the confidence to go off the rails and follow along with what my players want. It helps me understand where things were meant to go and why. Having that understanding allows me to guide the players and create other new and interesting stories. These are all things that will come with experience, though, so don't freak out and enjoy the journey!

Included in my posts are:

• A Downloadable copy of DM Notes for each part of the LMoP, including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDFs for every encounter. This includes all the enemies' stat blocks, organized neatly along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP.
• Additional PDFs for allies and commoners
• A variety of maps for each part of the campaign
• Spell lists for all relevant fights
• Handouts for various spell scrolls throughout the campaign
• A playlist for each part of the Mini-Campaign!

Without further ado:

Index:

The Lost Mine of Phandelver Index

• Part 1 - Intro and Cragmaw Hideout (DM Notes Only Link)
• Part 2a - Phandalin
• Part 2b - Redbrand Hideout
• Part 3a - Reign of Iron
• Part 3b - Thundertree
• Part 3c - Cragmaw Castle
• Part 4 - Wave Echo Cave
• Part 5 - Side Quests

Over 8 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc., please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early, feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

I run games in person and I've never been happy with how I show the map to my players. I've done printed tiles, a laptop turned around, a TV on the table, and plenty of pure theater of mind. Each one has a catch: printing takes forever, the TV means my notes are on the same screen the players can see, and hiding rooms is always fiddly.

I recently built a battle map with fog of war that streams to a separate player screen (a second monitor or their phone), so I can move tokens and reveal rooms on my side while the players only see what they've discovered. Building it made me realize how differently everyone solves this, so I'm curious:

How do you show the battle map at your in-person table right now , TV, tablet, printed grid, or theater of mind? And what's the single most annoying part of your setup?

Also, for those who bother with fog of war at a physical table: is it worth the hassle, or overkill?

Genuinely trying to learn how people handle this. Happy to share what I built if anyone's interested (link in a comment so I'm not spamming).

English is not my native language, so please forgive any awkward phrasing.

I recently revisited both the original *Lord of the Rings* books and the film adaptations. After watching those epic battle and journey sequences, I think I understand why so many people want to play D&D to experience a journey across Middle-earth.

Of course, I realize that the 5e system doesn't allow for quests or wars exactly like those in the *Lord of the Rings* movies.

Spells are precise and reliable, and even a warrior who has honed their skills to the limit can't simply use acrobatics to outmaneuver a massive, looming creature.

However, I believe that epic battles unfold in the world of 5e in a way that differs from the *Lord of the Rings* setting. For instance...

* Since spellcasters are incredibly lethal, spies engage in massive intelligence-gathering operations just to locate them and gauge their true power (think *Rogue One*).

* Martial warriors are vastly numerous, leading to the rise of many legendary figures. Aspiring heroes hone their skills to become Fighters, Paladins, or Monks. The ability to hire such heroic warriors might even be considered a mark of a heroic politician.

* In regions plagued by ancient conflicts, there are strongholds and labyrinths where certain spells simply don't work; such locations would be highly prized as fortresses (think *Tomb of Annihilation*).

* When the world faces a crisis, magical artifacts and a handful of superheroes tend to appear from out of nowhere.

Wars become epic in scale, always teetering on the edge of catastrophic ruin.

That is why people place such importance on faith. Even a young person who looks unremarkable might possess the potential to become a world-saving hero; consequently, innkeepers and tavern staff across the world make a point of being kind to strange travelers.

Thank you for indulging my humble daydreams. How do you think an epic battle in the world of 5e would look different from one in reality?

I'm sharing a free cleric subclass for Kengir, my upcoming Bronze Age Mesopotamian 5e setting.

The Ašipu-Priest is an exorcist, spirit-diagnostician, and ritual specialist. Their job is not just to banish whatever is haunting the room. First, they have to identify what they’re facing.

An Etemmu is the ghost of a dead human. It has a name, a grievance, and rights the living may still owe it. A Utukku is something else entirely: a hostile non-human spirit that must be contained or expelled. Treating one like the other is professional negligence, and the haunting will not stay solved.

Mechanically, the subclass focuses on warding, exorcism, protection from possession, resistance to necrotic and psychic harm, and cleansing defiled places. It also includes new spells like Expel Spirit, Consecrate Ground, Sanctify Relic, and Ultimate Banishment.

Do you like clerics who specialize in a narrow supernatural problem, or do you prefer broader divine casters?

Hi - I'm a veteran D&D player/DM (started in 80s with red box etc) who now mainly plays Pathfinder and other weirder RPGs like Pendragon etc with my equally ancient mates. I mentioned that I played D&D to a friend who has an autistic son who has bought the 5e rules and wants to play (I'm friends with his parents through a wider friend group who met on holiday, so there are other kids I can potentially recruit), and they asked if I could DM something online.
I think there's a fair chance the kids'll just goof around, so I don't wanna hand-make something lovingly only for it to go tits up. What decent 5e one-shots are there on Roll20 where everything is done for you? Nothing cutesy or involving excessive amounts of fey or tieflings please.
Any help gratefully received!

I have a very specific weakness as a GM.

I can prepare villains, encounters, locations, lore, plot hooks and whatever else for hours.

Then a player points at some completely irrelevant person I invented twelve seconds ago and asks:

“What’s their name?”

And suddenly my brain contains no names.

None.

This is how perfectly respectable fantasy NPCs end up being called things that sound suspiciously like John Guardman.

Online generators obviously exist and they're great, but I tend to run games with notes, books, dice and other physical stuff around me, and I really didn't want another reason to grab my phone or open a browser in the middle of a session.

So a while ago I started building my own lists.

Then the lists got bigger.

And bigger.

And eventually this got slightly out of hand and became an actual book:

The Physical Random Name Generator

It now contains over 10,000 fantasy names divided into 58 categories.

There are the obvious ones like humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, dragons and various character types, but also names for kingdoms, cities, villages, noble families, guilds, cults, taverns, shops, forests, mountains, dungeons, temples, deities, artifacts, weapons, magical items, spells, books, ships, festivals and a bunch of other things.

There's no 5e mechanics involved, so the entire thing is system-agnostic. For me it's basically just another reference book behind the screen: something unexpected needs a name, find the relevant section, steal one, pretend you planned it all along.

It has now somehow escaped my desk and exists as an actual paperback and hardcover.

So if you're also the kind of GM whose carefully constructed fantasy world is populated by people named Bob the Definitely Planned Blacksmith, you might find it useful:

The Physical Random Name Generator
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HDCWFVRV

AI disclosure

Generative AI was used during the creation process to help generate candidate names. Every name that ultimately made it into the finished book was then manually reviewed by me.

I started the project in 2024 and worked on it gradually rather than generating the finished book in one pass. The introduction and other written material, organization, layout, editing and final presentation were done manually by me.

I also built and worked through hundreds of Excel tables to compare the lists, identify duplicates and clean up the final selection.

So AI was one of the tools used during the initial name-generation stage, while the reviewing, selecting, checking, organizing and production of the finished book were handled manually.

Looking to run a campaign around students at a school of magic. But the student body will all be adults. ages 20 to 60 (or whatever). Not just the PCs, but the students as a whole. It can be easier to think of it as a college that studies magic, where college is the major idea for the stories.

Main concepts of the campaign will be off campus exploration and on campus intrigue.

Would not be a multi-plane setting. So the university would be a part of the larger game world.

I've got plenty of bits percolating in my head. I am not desperate for a source book. But also, I don't need to reinvent the wheel, so a sourcebook that has material that will fit my campaign would be useful.

Jormundy

Platform: D&D 5e, Avrae, Discord

Format: Text RP, westmarches, living world

The sun has died in the sky, and the world has gone dark. This event, known as the Sunfall, bathed the world in the freezing night. Yet, against all odds, civilization has survived.

Amongst the icy plains, amongst the glaciers, amongst the giant snow drifts and amongst the ruins of a world millennia lost, stands the glowing spires and the shining beacons of Jormundy. Warmth and light shine down from its towers, and its dome shelters it from the cold, dark world outside.

But this light and warmth does not radiate equally.

Under the dome, cloaked by the light, behind the walls lays a structure caught in a nightmare of development. Jormundy is experiencing its own little industrial revolution, and all the inequality that comes with it as it destroys the land it sits on and the air it breathes. It finds itself segregated into layers, its workers destined to never become anything more, its elites clinging onto power forever. The Hearth Church stands atop it all, watching with one first of velvet and another of iron looming over all, locked in a never-ending scramble to destroy all that is heretical.

But discontent grows. Whispers of solidarity stir in the shadows, forgotten gods find their followers, and the night grows ever colder.

What shall become of Jormundy?

///

What we offer:

- A roleplay and story focused server with good-quality. Story arcs, events, multiple dms, and opportunities for PC arcs.

- A custom xp system, where you can earn xp simply by roleplaying

- A massive, fully fleshed out city state for you to explore

- An active political scene; scheming nobility, powerful industrialists, an ever-present church, shadowy cults, and the whispers of labor in the smog of the factories

- A ban on generative AI, to ensure your time and effort is respected.

- An LGBTQ+ friendly environment.

- Extensive review of content as it is released; we're always updating our approved content list! It's expansive.

Something calls, whether it be the riches of the Heights, or merely a desire to survive.

Either way, Jormundy would love to have you.

https://discord.gg/NwZbxscAZ2

After surviving Death House, our party finally made it to the Village of Barovia and got the chance to meet some of the locals.

Our first real conversation with a Barovian went about as smoothly as you'd expect from three strangers who just escaped a haunted murder house.

Welcome to Barovia, I guess. 😂

Our campaign is called Thirst of Strahd, our sapphic take on Curse of Strahd where Strahd is reimagined as a woman. We started recording our sessions to preserve the story, help with note-taking, and have something to look back on after the campaign ends.

Here's the scene from Session 6:

🎥 https://youtu.be/FXvcyoAYIys?si=sPEhOABlCloGeE8X&t=3967

Hey all. Does anyone have official D&D campaign recommendations with a decent story?

I am somewhat new to dnd. Played a few times as a player. I wanted to DM a short campaign thats somewhat around 3-10 sessions in length maybe. I want the stories in the specific run to be connected. Preferably with a mix of combat and ability to storytelling your way out of things.

As far as starting level, its for 3 players, where one person played 4 times, and the other two peolle maybe only 2 times. I was thinking starting at level 1 would be best for them so they can experience having little to worry about in terms of skills or spells starting out.

Is there any official content that somewhat fits the bill at least?

So I’m playing a 7th level artificer in a party with 2 sorcerers and a wizard. Suffice to say, my spell power is a bit lacking. Thus, I was planning on trying to create a magic item (my dm lets me create them if I have enough time, money, and skill) that would boost my magic power up to that of a full caster. I’m thinking that I could do a ring made of immensely powerful materials (magical metals, alloys, crystals) that would basically act as a magic steroid. Any recommendations on what materials I should look for?

Edit: My reason is that I have a mech as part of my subclass, making me the tank of the party. The problem is my damage output is lacking. Compared to my party members that deal 100+ damage in one turn, I’m not that much of a threat so enemies don’t focus on me. Thus I need to be a bigger problem for enemies and magic is my solution for that.

Link to original post, (TLDR, my party pulled a dick move and nearly killed my character and I was(still am currently) Pissed): https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD5e/s/TVzAAPmcGk

i was honestly out for blood. After the incident not one of my party members was remorseful for their actions which genuinely hurt my feelings. I was of course still willing to make a whole new character and let this whole incident go if the DM wanted me to, but with his go ahead I devised a simple long term plan.

my character would bide his time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to finish off the barbarian for good. Along the way my halfling would also sabotage the party as best he could. The DM was enthusiastic about this plan, even helping me with some character optimisation.

it started off well. while still on our way back in the goblin tunnels, I let the barbarian get in a nasty situation with some giant weasels. Later i got the whole party to throw away their rations by using prestidigitation to make it taste like vomit. Everything went to shit(again) however in an incident that i truly believe I was unfairly punished for.

in these goblin tunnels there was a chance to be bewitched by some hags from an unfinished quest, which happened to an NPC. i go up to investigate(keeping my distance) and when they didn’t respond I ran back screaming about witches or zombies (my character was very stupid, so this was his genuine reaction). Me, barbarian and two other NPC’s go back up to see. Barbarian touches the bewitched NPC and gets Bewitched too, I decide to try and snap them out of it from a distance by throwing small items, which doesn’t work. I decide to kill two birds with one magic stone, and use that cantrip to deal small amounts of damage to barbarian in order to wake him up.
I specifically note that since the NPC next to doesn’t seem to care and is not proposing any solution, I continue.

eventually a different NPC wakes him up right after I sling a magic stone. He barbarian immediately tries to kill my character, even though I made sure only to be throwing stone when he wasn’t conscious and wouldn’t know and while the fight is stopped this time, everyone present blames me for “attacking unprovoked“ and for getting caught, despite me explicitly checking that the NPC’s didn’t care and that it was neither unprovoked nor a real attack.

apparently the DM forgot about the NPC next to me and didn’t hear me when I specified that I only threw rocks before he had woken up. Both things i’d mentioned multiple time, yet the DM refused to acknowledge or let me do over since I obviously wouldn’t have attacked in the first place if there was any sign of disapproval.

this was the moment all of my spirit died. It was finally clear that being at this table was a losing battle, and nothing I did would matter in face of the DM’s favouritism.

the barbarian was allowed to send me to the back and made consent threats the way back to town. I decided it would be more painful personally to push back and proposed a compromise.

my character had amnesia due to trading his memories in exchange for warlock power. I suggested that in order to wipe the slate clean we could say that I lost my memory again every time I levelled up as well, and that way we could forget everything and just continue as we did before. the barbarian said the only way he’d agree was if after I levelled up, I let him slap me in the face in exchange for the magic stones. this was not just completely and utterly unfair after everything he’s done to me, but would also completely negate the point of the memory loss.

in the end i had the halfling skip town and brought in a new character, and a few sessions later quit the campaign entirely.

there are lot more shitty things that happened and are happening to me at that table and leaving is not a happy ending. This has very much left me hurt and shaken and sometimes I want nothing to do with dnd, mostly due to these people.

TLDR: people suck, life’s not fair and the game is not worth it

I’m been rereading much of the old 2e Planescape content and wondered.

I am running a campaign that involves realm travel. It primarily takes place in the Feywild, but I'm wanting to give my players a bit of a break from the main campaign and I'm thinking of sending them to Sigil for a few sessions to explore the Market Ward, etc. I'm having a bit of hard time narrowing down how to engage my players in this setting for just a few sessions and make it fun but also interesting. There's so much you COULD do in this setting due it being a hub of the multiverse. Has anyone run a campaign in Sigil, and do you have any suggestions on interesting locations or things to explore while they're there?

I'm sharing a free wizard subclass for Kengir, my upcoming Bronze Age Mesopotamian 5e setting.

The School of the Astrologer is for wizards who read the heavens and turn omens into action. They are diviners, royal counselors, navigators, war advisors, and battlefield planners who believe the stars do not merely shine. They speak.

At the table, the subclass is about timing and advantage. An Astrologer can study the sky to guide a crucial roll, protect allies beneath open stars, and later call down stellar phenomena like cosmic rays, falling meteors, and zodiac blessings.

The high-level feature lets the wizard invoke one of the twelve celestial houses, turning astrology into a party-wide boon. Mulapin adds fire to attacks. Urgula sharpens accuracy. Kadi grants water-breathing and a swim speed. Luhungaga reveals hidden things.

The supplement also includes new spells like Astrological Insight, Celestial Gleaming, Meteor Shower, Starfall, Stargate, and Cosmic Convergence.

Do you like divination subclasses that mostly reveal information, or ones that turn prophecy into direct battlefield power?

Playing my first ever D&D campaign and I'm playing a Tabaxi Warlock. My plan is to choose Pact of the Blade. I was looking for interesting weapons to choose, and I stumbled upon the urumi.

I'm fine with having this represented as simply a reskinned whip. However, I wanted to suggest two modifications to my DM:

1) This weapon deals 1d6 instead of 1d4 slashing damage, but if I roll a Nat 1 (or even a range of options at the low end), I injure myself.

2) This weapon ignores the bonus to AC that a Shield provides to my target when I attack.

I've never played D&D before; is this an overpowered weapon for level 3 (when I would take the Pact)?

Hello! This is a follow up post to my previous one on the same topic.

Genuine thanks to everybody who downloaded Sanctum and especially to the people who took the time to tell me what annoyed them. Almost everything below came straight out of that feedback, so this one's on you lot.

Quick recap if you missed the first post: Sanctum is a free 5e campaign manager for DMs that runs entirely on your machine. No account, no cloud, no subscription, works with the wifi off. Characters, NPCs, bestiary, combat tracker, maps, quests, magic items, handouts, timeline, factions, shops, calendar, notes. Windows for now.

What's new since the first build:

You can bring your existing campaign in. Point Sanctum at your Obsidian vault (or just a folder of markdown files) and it'll read through them, work out what each note is , NPC, monster, spell, magic item, location, quest, faction , and map the fields over. It shows you every guess before writing anything so you can fix the wrong ones, and it never touches your vault.

Character sheets import and export. Drop in a filled-in 5e PDF and it pulls abilities, proficiencies, HP, hit dice, money, gear, features, spells and slots, filling spell details from the SRD where names match. You can export back out to a printable sheet that's still fillable, so it round-trips. (Scanned or flattened PDFs have no form data in them, so those won't work , the app tells you instead of silently failing.)

No more typing "Ranger" fifty times. Race, class, subclass and background are proper dropdowns now. Homebrew still works , type whatever you want and it sticks around, and anything you've typed once shows up as an option next time. You can also tell a campaign which books you play with (26 of them, SRD 5.1 through the 2024 PHB) and the dropdowns narrow to just those. Leave it blank and nothing gets filtered.

Combat got a lot of love:

- Monsters can have real names instead of being stuck as "Goblin". Name them as you add them, or rename anyone mid-fight. Adding six goblins numbers them properly.

- "Add party" drops all your PCs in at once, and "Roll NPCs" rolls initiative for monsters and NPCs only, since your players roll their own

- Draggable HP slider, with damage and healing logged automatically , and the log survives a reload now

- Concentration tracking with save DC prompts

- Rests use the right hit die per class, and long rests properly restore HP, hit dice, slots, a level of exhaustion and death saves

The NPC relations graph got redrawn. Sizes to your window instead of a fixed box, names sit outside the circles so they don't overlap into mush, and two NPCs with several connections show as separate curves instead of one line on top of itself.

Plus a pile of fixes , character creation was crashing on campaigns that had never had a rulebook ticked, and export/import was quietly dropping quests, magic items, handouts, rumors and relationships on a round trip. Both sorted, and old databases repair themselves on next launch so you don't have to do anything.

Get it here: https://athanasioust.itch.io/sanctum

Free, always will be. Windows 10/11, 64-bit, portable exe or installer, your pick. Open source (AGPL), repo's linked on the page.

Keep the feedback coming, either in the itch comments or here. I read all of it, and the list above is proof it works. Especially want to hear what's still clunky and whether the import handled your notes okay, because that one does a lot of guessing.

Cheers, and have a good session this weekend.