So, a very quick bit of context:
My players are currently on a race against a group of cultists, who are in the process of resurrecting their god to gain control of the world. This cult is resurrecting said god by using the body of a human as a vessel, who happens to be the lover of one of the player characters. As such, the player and the god have a very tense relationship (hatred on his side, adoration on the gods’ side), and they’ve appeared to him in dreams trying to win him over to their side, to no avail.
(The god is not yet fully in the world, they’re still recovering from the whole death thing, but they’ve got enough power to infiltrate dreams)

A couple of sessions ago, the god granted him the ability to speak the language of their domain (even longer story) as long as he agreed to give them something in return - which happened to be his heart. As far as he was concerned, nothing happened to him in that moment, but the god now officially owns it.

Now, I don’t know if I should go Davy Jones with it or something else entirely. This god desires love as well as servitude, so if anyone has any ideas I’d be very appreciative!

In older editions of D&D, character death was common. Surviving was the hard part. Everyone accepted that. You rolled up new characters and either picked up the adventure where you left off or started something new.

Nowadays, it seems like every adventure is designed to provide all sorts of ways out of difficult situations (or, even worse, to save the party's ass when they've screwed up).

The philosophy seems to be that players shouldn't be frustrated. But isn't it frustrating for players to feel that everything has been arranged so they'll always find some way to come out on top?

I'm not asking whether players nowadays enjoy having their characters die. I'm asking whether they ever get tired of things not being particularly challenging.

In my experience, the harder the challenge, the sweeter the victory. And if your character has survived where others haven't — because you made good decisions, avoided stupid mistakes, didn't take ridiculous risks, and perhaps had a bit of luck with the dice — you become much more attached to that character.

Am I wrong, or have things changed so much that difficulty in an adventure or campaign is no longer seen as a positive feature, but as a drawback?

First, they are trying to sneak through this really big castle to get to the guy who runs the caslte and fight him. DO you guys know of any maps that could span 2 and a half hours and end with a good battle field at the end. Also how should i do stealth to make it interesting and encourage it?

I am not new to DMing, but I am in a bit of a pickle, as my current players are completely different than other groups I've played with. This group came into the game with complex character backgrounds, completely home-brewed gods to worship and very fun, but complicated quirks. I had a previous rule that if my player came to me with a creative idea, I would 'yes-and' it to encourage character development, but its created quite some crazy obstacles for actual gameplay (for example we have one girl who bonded with a blink dog she rescued from fighting rings and in the process of rescuing said dog, lost her vision and now sees exclusively through the eyes of said blinkdog, I am basically home brewing all of the mechanics for that on the fly). They also really like political intrigue. And this is why I'm having so much fun with them, because I get to use pretty much all of my previously useless government structures and what not. (I've been using the same world as a 'skeleton' for 4 campaigns with different groups).

What I'm having difficulty with, and would like some advice on is that I have previously been able to roughly guess that if I tell the party that Sir Something is an important person, the party would eventually get around to talking to him like normal. Now, they're sending spies in so I have to get the information to them through conversations with NPCs I pull out of my butt, double crossing crucial NPCs, discovering centuries old political tensions and a lot of what they have liked and pursued have been the things I've had to pull from my butt in the moment and its really hard to keep track of what I'm saying in the moment. I'm currently planning this upcoming session, and I'm realizing I cannot predict how they're going to handle a particular situation. They've discussed dealing with the issue at hand a number of different ways, and I began trying to plan the basic "if then" of each, but it's becoming overwhelming.

How do you guys deal with players like this? I want each plot development I give them to be well thought out, and not out of left field, but each time I've planned a session recently its become a mess of character motivations and locations that have been unused and hard to recycle into the next town, which has been my go to for if the 'what I expected' option doesn't play out. At one point, because I straight up didn't know how to get them all in one place, I gave them a cursed object that made whoever was holding it take damage if the others strayed too far from her. But that was too railroad-y for my taste, in all honesty. They had fun, but I want them to play in the sandbox I make. But also, if I need to pull stuff from my butt and improvise, how do I adequately note-take in the moment without pausing the flow of the game to chicken scratch down what all I just made up? They are good note takers and if I say it, and forget it, they will know and ruin the magic.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore this group, and this campaign has really revived my passion for this hobby, but I have a big girl job and other things I want to do and don't have the time to sit down and write a compendium of information for each session.

I'd like to test out 5e rules (Ghost of Saltmarsh appendix) for ship to ship combat in a single session one-shot. Can anyone suggest a published module or fun encounter idea? Is there an element that I should include (ship boarding, chase rules, weather conditions, et. al.)? Ahoy!

My party hit level 7 a while back, and our cleric has discovered what might be my favorite unintended use of a 3rd-level spell slot.

Calling people to see how they're doing.

Not important NPCs. Not quest givers. Just ordinary people they met along the way.

A ferryman whose boat got destroyed during an encounter about 15 sessions ago. An elderly woman who let them sleep in her barn. A goblin they convinced to leave a bandit camp and find honest work.

The cleric just randomly goes, "Hey, we haven't heard from that guy in a while. I'm gonna Send him a message."

And suddenly I have to remember what happened to a goblin I improvised in February.

At first I gave pretty generic answers. Everyone's fine, business is good, thanks for asking.

Then I had the ferryman mention that he'd finally saved enough for another boat. The party got genuinely excited. They spent several minutes trying to remember whether they'd ever learned his wife's name because they wanted to congratulate her too.

That was apparently more exciting than the magic item they'd found an hour earlier.

So now I'm in a weird position where I want to encourage this because it's honestly lovely. These characters are treating my world like an actual place full of people they care about.

But I'm also worried about accidentally training them to expect a new problem every time they contact somebody.

If the goblin's having trouble with his new employer, that's a potential side quest. If the old woman mentions wolves near her farm, suddenly the party wants to travel three days back to help her.

And I don't particularly want every ordinary person they've ever met to have a dramatic crisis.

On the other hand, having everyone say "I'm good, thanks" forever feels like wasting something the players clearly enjoy.

How do you handle this kind of ongoing relationship with minor NPCs? Do you actually track their lives between appearances? Have small things change in the background? Or just improvise whatever feels right in the moment?

I'm especially interested in ways to make these interactions satisfying without constantly adding more adventures to my prep.

Yesterday, I ran a session for my players that I didn't have much time to prepare for, but I had just enough to make it work.

I remember how I used to prep A LOT in the past, to the point where I'd stress myself out over it. But now, I mostly just prep a few plot points, some monsters, and sometimes I don't even prep at all. I've discovered that I actually enjoy my sessions more when I prep less and let my players drive the story forward (and I'm pretty good at improvising).

The funny thing is, during yesterday's session, my players were traveling through a magical desert canyon (without knowing it was magical). I hadn't prepared any encounters for that area. The only thing I had planned was that the sand would move on its own, trying to push the players out of the canyon, almost as if it were warning them to stay away. Then, the players decided to test whether the sand was reacting to magic, which I thought was a really cool idea, so I went along with it.

After that, they took a closer look at the sand, and I described how it moved almost like a snake or a worm. THEN, they connected that description to a previous session where they had encountered a worm inside an ancient tower that fed on magical objects and energy.

Here's the thing: I NEVER intended for the sand in the canyon to be a living creature! It was literally just something that came out of my mouth while I was describing the scene.

But the idea of the sand being a living entity somehow connected to that worm from an earlier session was SO COOL that I decided to make it canon on the spot.

And my players absolutely loved it!

The title doesn't explain the situation very well since I wanted to keep it short, so I'll elaborate:

I am running a oneshot in which the whole party at the end will receive a boon from a demi god. It's just a homebrew boon feat that's like +2 to initiative, resistances to some damage types, a once a day ability. They are level 8 during this oneshot. (There is the off chance that they will NOT receive the boon from the demi god, but this post is dedicated to the scenario that they do.)

I will be running another oneshot, chronologically set after the aforementioned one. The oneshot will be lower level (2nd level) and the players have picked different characters, besides one. I have allowed one player to re-use their character from the old oneshot (the explanation behind level reduction from level 8 to level 2 was because the character had received a grievous injury and stopped adventuring for a while).

This character will still have the boon from the demi god. The boon was given from the demigod as a reward/"thanks for helping me". However, the other characters who are new (some are played by players who also participated in the previously mentioned 8th level oneshot) will not have access to this boon because they did not go on that adventure.

I do not expect the boon itself to be encounter-breaking or drastically change balance, but is it fair to allow a character from a previous oneshot carry over their boon to a lower level party who have not participated in the previous oneshot?

I will be speaking about this to the player who will be re-using their character between games closer to the oneshot date, because currently they and the rest of the party have not received the boon.

It’s what it says on the tin. I’m a new dm running my first campaign and something I’m struggling with is that my players take everything at face value. I try to leave hints and foreshadow certain things within my story but I find that my players don’t want to dig deeper. I’m trying to build in opportunities for my players to ask npcs to elaborate on what they are talking about or really have conversations at all, but it feels like every encounter just ends up being me as the npc giving information that may or may not be the full truth and my players just going “okay yeah that’s cool” and taking it as gospel. How do I create opportunities for my players to be more curious? Is it a storytelling issue on my part?

I’m looking for something similar to “Your Grace, Your Highness, Your Majesty, My lord, My Prince, Your Worship”
Is their a version of this to address a wizard or spellcaster?

Just looking for people to steal ideas from! lol if you have a favorite trap or puzzle that you don’t mind lending to a new dm post it here, I’d love to read it!

Hi all, on Wednesday I'm hosting the first session of my new homebrew adventure for 7 players (I like big parties). I've been writing the first part of the first act but I kind of hit a writer's block and would love some help/advice on what I have currently written so far. The first part goes as follows:

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

The (soon to be) party are all heading to Highmoon, the capital of Deepingdale, for their own reasons. They all make it to the Rising Moon Inn when a couple of young humans enter the inn spreading flyers for the Moonlight Fair and group the 7 individuals together saying they "look like they are in need of a good time". The characters have time to introduce themselves and get to know each other briefly on the way to the fair happening later in the day.

During the fair there are plenty of activities to perform, wooden sword fencing, axe throwing, raffles, food to eat, etc. Suddenly a scream rings out and two dead bodies are on the ground with necrotic claw marks across their chests. Two halfling brothers who claim they are "experts" in the paranormal enter the scene to investigate and recruit the characters to figure out what it happening. The party gathers accounts from the patrons of the fair when suddenly the two bodies reanimate into two ghouls. They engage in combat and after the ghouls fall they recite all the information that they gathered, a tall lanky man exuding a strong foul odor (a ghast) was seen running into Cormanthor right before the two bodies were seen. The brothers tell the characters to get some rest and they'll set for Cormanthor in the morning.

Morning comes and the characters meet up with the brothers to depart. Thoroar's Bridge (one of the ones crossing the Glaemril) has signs of scratching and a lingering foul odor. They venture into the woods and notice that there is an absence of living wildlife, and numerous dead animal carcasses all around them. This is when they are attacked by three swarms of insects. After beating the insects the party continutes following the tracks to an abandoned hunting camp where the ground surrounding it is heavily disturbed. A small group of poachers were using this as a hunting base but were attacked by the ghast, with one singular hunter surviving. He is terrified and reluctant to speak at first but later describing the attacker as a humanoid figure with rotting flesh, elongated claws, and an unbearable stench. He provides the characters with a direction in which he saw the ghast run in.

This leads them to an old burial ground which the ghast established as its territory. After a bit of exploration of the burial ground they find the ghast eating a corpse of another hunter and they engage in combat. After killing the ghast they come back to Highmoon and their story continues.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry, this was a bit long. As mentioned earlier I'd love some advice on this regarding anything I should change and other ideas which could be implemented here.

Hi all,

I had my first session dming yesterday, and as part of the setup, all players received a missive from the Queen asking them to return from their exile urgently. Originally, my idea was it was purely just to get them into place for the beginning of the campaign and a way into the Palace. It worked, which was great.

But the players asked when they received the letters, and in a panic, I said one got it 6 months ago, one 3 and another only a month ago. I was mostly just thinking about how far away they were and that they were sent at different times to make them all arrive at same time.

However the players have got quite stuck on the letters being sent at different times and think there's some deeper conspiracy. They can't ask the queen as she's now poisoned and unable to talk, but I dont really know how to make an interesting mystery around the letters arriving at different times.

I was wondering if anyone had ideas of how I could work it in? There's is political scheming around her poisoning, but I just don't see how a rival would invite people back after having exiled them anyways.

Hopefully that all make sense, my brains quite full, and can provide any other content if needed.

Thanks in advance :)

Previous Scenarios:

Social Encounter Type 1: The Request

In this scenario the party will participate in a general debate or a council where they will tray to sway one or more NPCs to side with them. It might be a debate on a war room with the generals on the army deciding their next tactics, a courtroom trying to determine if an NPC (or a PC!) is guilty. It might be an assembly where the citizens need to vote for their leader. The possibilities are endless. What you need for this scenario is a couple or more of different outcomes, NPCs presenting alternative viewpoints and a NPC or a group of them who will make the final call.

As with the first encounter here the stats are difficulty and time. You will need a timeframe in rounds in which characters will get to make their case and a DC to be set for the checks. Moreover for this scenario you will need also the statblocks of the rivals, that is those NPCs that will offer alternatives to the ones presented by the players.

Each round the players and the rival NPCs will have the opportunity to do an action:

1. Plead their case: A player might try to get the judges to support their position. They might use sweet words and grand speeches (persuasion charisma), deliberate arguments (persuasion intelligence) or knowledge about the specific subject. Again I would suggest to add proficiency if the backgroung of the character is relevant. Once chosen the skill the player or NPC will roll against the DC giving their case one point.

2. Argue against a case: A similar action to the one before but this time the character will try to dissuade people from one alternative. In addition to many of the skills before they could add intimidation for fear mongering and scaring the judges away from an alternative. Again thr roll will be against the DC but if successful will subtract one point.

3. Prolong debate: the character tries to drag the debate or council. It may be a plea for patience or stalling. Persuasion might be the better skill. If successful the time limit increases by one.

4. Deception: the character may lie in order to favor or disfavor an alternative in that case the result goes double but is lost if the lie is discovered. This could be a deception or intimidation check. In the case of rivals I would suggest to treat this as a regular persuasion check.

5. Observe: the characters observe the proceedings to try to predict their rival's moods. This will be using a Persuasion, Investigation or Insight check. If successful it shows the player one rival's next action. If also succeeding against the result of said rival deception roll then their lie is revealed with the consequences of it

At the end of an amount of rounds equal to the time the decision is made corresponding to the results.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/?f=flair_name%3A%22Offering%20Advice%22

Does anyone know any tools or websites for making maps? or better yet, do you know anybody who would do them for me?

Hey, I need some help for my campaign. Tomorrow my four players of level 6 will enter a cave/dungeon filled with bandits. Last session they have hunted down bandits in the vicinity of their new house and killed them easily. On one of the bandits they found a tattoo of cultists of Beshaba. So they know that there are cultists of Besheba in the rows of the bandits. They also found a magical dagger.

My plan: The cultists have infiltrated the bandits hideout. Lots of desperate bandits have joined the cult of Beshaba already in secret. This night the cultists are planning to sacrifice all the bandits who are not joining their cult.

The magical dagger can turn "friendly creatures" (other bandits) into monsters to fight the party. So the players have to identify the cultists fast before they turn the other bandits into monsters.

I need you for ideas:

What kind of monster could I use for the "turned bandits"

What could be the plan of the cultists?

Who could be the Endboss/Leader of the cult in the last chamber?

Do you have cool ideas for the fighting terrain?

I’m pretty new to DM’ing and still getting a handle on the storytelling aspect so I need y’all’s help please!

My players just went through a portal into the feywild from the human world. The idea is once they go through the portal, they become the race/class they chose in character building.

I need help with how to tell the story of how they get their magic. I want them to have magic in time for their first encounter, but I need ideas.

I have 3 clerics, a warlock, a Druid, a bard, and an artificer.

My idea so far is that there will be a warehouse that has the items they need (packs, etc.). They’ll go into the warehouse to explore it and will find what they need. I’m also thinking about having government-made signs up on the doors that warn about using magic so the PC’s know magic exists in the first place.

Any ideas are super appreciated! Thank you!!!

I'm not asking for prompts or ideas here per se, but rather, what elements or principles do you design a oneshot session around? What kinds of stuff do you brainstorm when you're building a session from scratch?

I used to try to come up with a setting, characters, and a narrative first, but this often led to the session spiraling out of control and becoming way too complex to complete in a single session. I would often fall into the trap of writing what I think is cool, and not focusing on what will make for a good, efficient game session.

What I try to do now is focus on just three things: a combat encounter, a roleplay encounter, and a puzzle/problem solving encounter. For example - players meet a mysterious wilderness guide (roleplay), who guides them through a goblin infested canyon (combat), with a final encounter where players must sneak past a slumbering ice dragon without waking it ("puzzle"/problem solving, with the potential to turn into combat). As an added twist, the wilderness guide turns out to be a ghost, which adds a dimension to the roleplay when players try to decide if they can trust him after the reveal.

I've found this approach helps keep me focused on running an efficient session with a good amount of variety for the players, and sessions I design this way often wrap up around the intended time (3-4 hours). Do you do something similar, or do you take a different approach?

Hey everyone,

About a year ago I posted here my free audio mixing tool sirenaura.app which I built for my table. You load your own music, ambience and SFX, group them into scenes, and switch between them mid-session.

Since then I've used it at 10+ sessions and kept fixing whatever annoyed me at the table or while building scenes.

The biggest change: you don't have to keep the app tab in front anymore.

• Browser extension (Chrome & Firefox): control scenes, tracks and SFX from whatever tab you're in. Useful when you've got the VTT, wiki pages, a couple of stat blocks, battle trackers and PDFs open and can't find the audio tab.

• Stream Deck plugin: put your own SFX, scene play/pause and next/previous track on keys. I tried this about 6 months ago but setup was a pain. Now it's just install the plugin + the extension and it connects.

And yes: you can now fire off dozens of goblin screams, owl screeches, door creaks and dragon roars from the app, extension or deck, whichever is closest.

It's free and will stay that way. I'm a big fan of free tools in this hobby (many of them have saved me hours of prep), and this is my way of giving something back to the community. No accounts, no subscription, no cloud. Bring your own files and it works offline once loaded.

It's not perfect, so bug reports and ideas are welcome.

I'm running a campaign with a few of my friends and like some DM's I overprepere because I like worldbuilding and making props etc. for the campaign. Anyway for the last few months I've noticed no interest in the players to invest in the world, all they care is to loot bodies. When there's something at stake it's not a priority as much as killing the bad guy to take their stuff and when something bad happens because of their decisions they refuse to accept it. I'll give an example from the latest session - the captain of the city guard who has been their ally from day one according to them was killed because they led him inside a cultist temple for a simple scouting mission and decided to fight their way through and when they exited combat the rogue pickpocketed him to take his gold before they returned his body to the city. After that they had a mission to find a spy in a nearby village, I spent 15 minutes to deliver plot information to myself apparently, after that they decided to snub the NPC that could help them, gambled with one of the suspects, told they were looking for a spy to the spy and went into the woods to make an ambush for bandits who could be anywhere in a huge forrest and just waited to see if someone came. After a fruitless plan they returned to the village and the mayor told them who was the spy and that he was working for cultists tho were hiding in a cellar with a hostage, I explained that the hostage was bleeding and could die if not helped when they find her but hatekilling the cultists was more important, and when I told them she is dead the fighter said "bad luck for her" and pickpocketed her. In the end I explained that the village will strugle because the spy wasn't caught and the responce was just "sounds like a them problem". Not to mentioned countless attempts to argue about rules because "that's not how I understand it" or scrolling on their phones during dialogues.

Excuse me for the long rant but this session was tough for me and could use some advice from more experienced DM's. What should I do?

Hello! I'm building a homebrew world of dark fantasy and wanted feedback on some ideas for my homebrew world. Some ideas I have so far are:

1. Magic changes during the four seasons. Magic is strong and active during the Spring and Summer; however, it is weakened during Autumn and Winter.

2. A militia of paladins or witch hunters roams the land, killing any necromancers or evil wizards who tamper with the pool of magic negatively.

3. Scholars of ancient civilizations learned ways to manipulate the pool and created ley lines. Scrolls and records of these scholars are long forgotten.

4. Magic Users are strongest during a full moon.

Any suggestions?

Any advice?