The Party

• Jeff, half-elf Druid 6 / Fighter 4 / Magus 4
• Lee, gray elf Fighter 4 / Magic-User 4 / Thief 5
• Oryn, high elf Magic-User 5 / Thief 6
• Rudy, halfling Druid 2 / Thief 3
• Takeshi, human Ranger 4
• Varda, human Cleric 6 / Magic-User 4
• Vordt, half-ogre Cleric 4 / Fighter 5

Ran the group through some werewolf hunting the other day. Thanks to the local army scouts, they knew where the hideout was; a chapel on a hill in the badlands, about ten miles from town. The party arrives, takes a look in one of the side windows, climbs the bell tower for a vantage point around the thing, including the graveyard and mausoleum, and then pushes their way into the building.

There's no light inside, but Takeshi has a broadsword with continual light on it, as well as a ring that increases the radius of light sources he commands, so the hall and sanctuary ahead are well lit through the 80' of luminescence in his hands. As they enter the sanctuary, three people materialize behind the altar, outlanders in appearance, claiming to be using this building as protection from the elements. Some players noted the lack of a "lived in" feeling here, no bedrolls or typical litter you'd expect of a temporary living space, and these people appeared well-fed and hale. Sensing that the party is about to lash out, the werewolves attack pre-emptively and gain surprise.

(Round 1) Takeshi and Lee ended up targets between these three werewolves. Four more tried to ambush from behind, but Vordt was in the back filling up the hallway, blocking their way. Oryn casts amplify damage at one while Varda fires magic missile and Jeff fills the hallway with web as Takeshi and Lee retaliate in melee; Rudy provides missile support with their sling. (R2) Oryn and Varda wait for an an opportunity to capitalize on while Takeshi and Lee continue trading blows, with Rudy continuing to provide missile support and Jeff casting a magic missile; Vordt is 5' deep in the web begins to leverage his obscene Strength to break free of them. One werewolf lies dead. (R3) Varda continues waiting, confident in their allies' abilities as Oryn charges in, Rudy provides missile support, Jeff supplies another magic missile, Takeshi and Lee continue trading blows with the two remaining werewolves, and Vordt is working himself free of the webs. Three werewolves lie dead.

Over the next couple of minutes, Vordt breaks free from the web. Not wanting to try and jump through windows, the party opts to wait for the spell to expire, as the remaining four werewolves trapped in it yell muffled requests for mercy. Their progress was much slower than Vordt's, and they had to go through 8' of web rather than 5', but after about an hour they'd all suffocated. During the wait, both Takeshi and Lee ate some belladonna to stave off potential infection.

The party finds a trap door to a cellar and checks it out. There's a wight hiding in the shadows, but it doesn't surprise them. It still slaps Lee and eats about 5k XP off his thief levels, but it dies by the end of the first round. In exchange, they found an iron chest, within which was 21k gold, 13 gems, a scroll of protection from magic, dwarf-sized field plate +1, and a pouch of dust of dryness.

Then Takeshi and Lee both vomit up their lunch and pass out on the floor. Lee is no longer breathing. Ingesting belladonna does a few things: (1) small chance of curing lycanthropy if taken quickly after infection, (2) incapacitates you for 1d4 days, (3) has a 1% chance of killing you. Lee is the 1%.

They get both of their bodies and the treasure out and back to town, then broker a deal with the local lordling MU to get Lee poked with a rod of resurrection, which drops him from 20 to 19 Constitution, removing his natural regeneration. Takeshi remains incapacitated for a day and Lee for a week, due to resurrection sickness.

Kingmaker was last night. Some minor spoilers to follow.

Party, Level 3

• Marisiel, Elf Witch
• Nok-Nok, Goblin Rogue
• Linzi, Halfling Bard
• Amiri, Human Barbarian
• Titus, Human Fighter
• Valerie, Human Fighter
• Stik, Kobold Monk

Variants in Play: Ancestry Paragon, Free Archetype, Gradual Ability Boosts, Slow Leveling, Stamina. I also allow Hero Points to adjust the degree of success on a check by one step rather than re-roll; this primarily gets used to either mitigate a crit fail or turn a failure into a success.

Realizing they had just under a week before the Stag Lord's bandits tried to strong-arm Oleg's Trading Post for goods again, the party stopped their trip towards the tatzlwyrm lair and immediately turned around to return to Oleg's to stock up and then head towards the fort.

On the way back, they encountered yet more bandits and, on one evening, an owlbear and its mate. Once at Oleg's, they spent a day turning in their quests and buying some of the goods available at the trading post. When ready, they set out. About twelve miles from the fort, they were about to start cooking dinner when some of the Stag Lord's bandits showed up in a neutral manner, presuming the party to be aspiring recruits. Linzi takes the opportunity to try and get some information out of them by indulging their fantasy.

Titus eventually gets bored and challenges one of the bandits to a duel. The bandit rightfully declines, but Titus begins pushing forward with intent to attack him anyways. Linzi threatened to force him to spend his night in a laughing fit to get him to back off, and he calmed down. Unfortunately, after dinner was taken care of, the bandits took their leave, not wanting to be shanked in the night by the crazy man.

The next morning they stop a few hundred feet from the fort and Marisiel sends her familiar, Youmu, forward to scout the hills since the bandits don't seem to be paying them much mind. Youmu returns shortly and informs Marisiel that something's off about the hill; he suspects undead. Armed with that information, the party decided to waltz up to the front door and just infiltrate by providing the password.

Once inside, introductions are made, stories are shared, and after the party learns that there's a late shipment of alcohol and the Stag Lord loves the stuff, Stik taps into their knowledge of alchemy (via dedication) to create a bottle of booze. The Stag Lord quickly comes out and snatches the bottle before returning to his chamber.

Stik is quickly inducted as the brewmeister, but instead of delivering alcohol to the other bandits, they deliver lightning. In a bottle. One Extreme encounter later (as they triggered the entire compound, including the Stag Lord, and the owlbear was let free at some point), the Stag Lord lies dead on the ground along with most of his lieutenants.

PF2, Kingmaker tonight. Minor spoilers re: names of potential companions and side-quest details.

Party, Level 3

• Marisiel, Elf Witch
• Nok-Nok, Goblin Rogue
• Linzi, Halfling Bard
• Amiri, Human Barbarian
• Titus, Human Fighter
• Valerie, Human Fighter
• Stik, Kobold Monk

Variants in Play: Ancestry Paragon, Free Archetype, Gradual Ability Boosts, Slow Leveling, Stamina. I also allow Hero Points to adjust the degree of success on a check by one step rather than re-roll; this primarily gets used to either mitigate a crit fail or turn a failure into a success.

The group had set out at the end of last session with the intention of picking some radishes and hunting two local monsters of some renown, a boar called Tuskgutter and some tatzlwyrms. Amiri was especially excited about going after Tuskgutter.

They arrive at the radish patch to find four kobolds suffering from The Itis™ that quickly scramble to protect their patch, but the monk eases tensions and ends up receiving an entire basket of the spicy radishes.

They spend a few days following the edge of the forest, crossing a rickety old bridge, disturbing some hunting spiders but dispatching them quickly. One evening, just after a meal, several of the Stag Lord's bandits had managed to sneak up on them, which turned out to be the last thing any of them did. Another afternoon saw Stik, Amiri, and Valerie attacked by thylacines while out foraging for ingredients, but by now they're used to that kind of thing.

They get into the general area of where they expect Tuskgutter's lair to be and spend the day searching for it. They eventually find it and have themselves their third proper Solo encounter since starting the game; I took the base profile for Tuskgutter and scaled it to be a Creature 7, so as to make the anticipation set up by the bounty poster and Amiri's vibrating in place worth it. With some good use of debuffing actions/spells and Hero Points, they take it down within a couple of rounds, albeit Titus did fall to an attack routine. One lesser healing potion and a soothe later, along with a short breather, and he's fine.

Trophy in hand, they make camp. As they're breaking camp in the morning, a hunter approaches the group to warn them of the dangers of Tuskgutter, only to be offered bacon.

Next stop, the tatzlwyrm lair.

Party hit level 3 at the end of the last session. Started tonight's session with an encounter with three hunting spiders (Low threat). Barbarian got inflicted with the poison and managed to stay on stage 3 (2d6 poison, clumsy 2, off-guard) for the majority of the six-round duration, which ran its full course.

Still on the way back to the trading post, they encountered more thylacines (Moderate threat), but they push through that just fine. A wolf approached them as they were walking alongside the great forest and was beckoning them to follow. They did, and were led to a man bleeding out and trapped under a couple of boulders. In the distance they hear crashing and bellowing as something big approaches them. They get the guy out from under the boulder and put an elixir of life in his mouth, which wakes him up. His immediate suspicion of the party allayed, he quickly fills them in on the fact that a troll is approaching and tells them to use fire or acid. Also don't let it get its hands on you.

The fight ended up being a bit of a slaughter due to dice rolls. I kept rolling low, they kept rolling high, so the troll went down at the very end of the second round despite being Creature 6. They nab the cold iron kukri and +1 light hammer from the troll's sack, and the man, a ranger, accompanies them back to the trading post.

They spend a week here doing various things; retraining, crafting, Earning Income. At the end of the week, they get their 70 gold reward from the quests they turned in, as well as the +1 striking bastard sword they'd ordered from a relatively distant city.

After spending some time going over their plans going forward, such as what quests to tackle, they head southwest to pick some radishes for the wife of the tradesman. We ended the session after wrapping up a bandit encounter during the camping portion of the day.

The party tonight consisted of

• Jeff, half-elf Druid 5 / Fighter 3 / Magus* 4
• Lee, gray elf Fighter 4 / Magic-User 4 / Thief 5
• Oryn, high elf Magic-User 5 / Thief 6
  • Henchman Takeshi, human Ranger 4
• Varda, human dual-class** Cleric 6 -> Magic-User 3
  • Henchman Rudy, halfling Druid 2 / Thief 3
• Vordt, half-ogre Cleric 4 / Fighter 4
  *Magus is a custom subclass of Magic-User I created.
  **Varda intends to become an occultist, another custom class of mine; becoming one functions similarly to bard, where you begin as Cleric, transition to Magic-User, and then finally become a proper occultist.

To recap the prior session, the party went into the dungeon again and explored a new direction, finding a long hallway with bas reliefs in brass decorating the walls. Behind a set of brass double-doors was a 90' by 40' chamber with four major points of interest.

• An oblong, 4' tall x 10' wide altar with a basin filled with water and treasure.
• A fountain streaming endless water without overflowing.
• Four pillars with gargoyles atop them, unmoving.
• A drape along the south wall covering something.
  After a cursory search, Rudy set to looting the basin, which triggered the entire altar to begin rolling forward and the marine life carved into it to animate. Rudy jumped out of the way as several combatants closed in. Many attacks and spells were slung its way, and it lashed out with teeth, tentacles, and pincers as it slowly rolled to face individual combatants. As Lee was caught by the fury of the altar, the gargoyles animated and began flying in to harass the party. Though the altar was defeated, the gargoyles seemed keen on taking Takeshi out, as by the end of that round he is bleeding on the floor. Varda then invokes a chant and uses a limited wish to revive Lee and transport everyone to a safe location. As everyone blinked, they found themselves in the domicile of the two old clerics hiding out in Woodpine, sage and incense filling their noses rather than the brine of the altar chamber.

They spend a week licking their wounds and allowing the clerics to tend to them, then set out again. Oryn casts invisbility, 10' radius on the party as they leave town and travel to the Temple dungeon. They work their way back to the altar room and have an easier time clearing out the gargoyles, afterwards noticing that these appear to be zombies wearing cloaks. All but one of the cloaks were too damaged to be of any use or value, so they remove the one and continue on.

They enter a room whose main attraction is a pool with a triton in it. The triton telepathically connects with the party and pleads for assistance before a kraken is summoned through his sacrifice and they all die. Varda, through knowledge granted by their patron, is slowly becoming suspect of the situation. The triton pleads individually with several party members, attempting to suggest they enter the pool and remove his chains, unbeknownst to them; I am rolling their saves in secret and they're passing them. Lee attempts to shoot it with an arrow, and the arrow dissolves before reaching the triton.

Finally, its gaze meets with Vordt's, who was ready to leave, and he fails the save. Vordt begins removing his armor to jump into the pool. Lee (4'9" 191 lbs accounting for gear) attempts to stop Vordt (7'8" 441 lbs accounts for gear) via grappling. He gets a lucky waist cinch that is immediately broken by Vordt as he lands a knee to Lee's jaw, dealing a staggering 11 points of subdual damage to him, but he takes it like a champ as he sits out, stunned from the blow.

Jeff casts web in a wall between Vordt and the pool as they figure out how best to handle him as Oryn and Takeshi move to open the door behind them. Varda, in a desperate attempt to save Vordt, utilizes a clerical dispel magic and fails to remove the charm from Vordt. Varda then utilizes their anything item to turn it into a rope of entanglement, which then hogties Vordt.

The party drags Vordt out of the dungeon safely and regains his senses the following day, shortly before the rope returns to its original form, t hen makes the several-day journey back to town to split the loot. Varda will receive no XP this go around, but the gems the party found elsewhere amounted to the PC shares totalling about 3700 gold each. Oh, and Oryn is now partially gargoyle, as they put on that cloak I mentioned earlier and then took it off.

I'm in the planning stages of a custom setting for a new campaign I'm aiming to start next year with my current table. We're doing PF2's Kingmaker and AD&D's Temple of Elemental Evil in the meantime.

The game is to be Viking themed, in that the starting locale and civilization will be structured in similar ways to the coastal Scandinavian settlements and there will be an on/off season. During the on season, they will board boats and sail many hundreds of miles across water to distant lands to find dungeons and ruins to loot, with a clock they have to keep an eye on; the expedition can only afford to be out for so long, and they need to ultimately make a profit. During the off season, they will be home and can spend time locally engaging in low-tier politics, explore the untamed parts of the continent, or both.

I'm intending for gods to play a more concrete and available part in this game and have been chewing on how best to represent that mechanically. I discovered that one of D&D 5e's supplements for a Magic: The Gathering setting, Mythic Odysseys of Theros, does something similar and has mechanics for tracking Piety with a given deity, which comes with boons at specific breakpoints. I liked the idea, though I'd be making my own boons for my pantheon rather than use these as-is, especially since I wouldn't be running this game in 5e, but rather in AD&D 1e.

I have a group chat with a few of my players that I can trust for this kind of thing to bounce ideas off of for various things, so I put this forth to them and got their thoughts. They universally thought the example boons from 5e were too personal and individual for the kind of stuff Norse gods would get up to, and there wasn't really a way to track a given deity's disdain of you in a similar manner. They also didn't like that you could track the Piety with a discrete score and could reliably measure when your next boon would be.

What we settled on doing is utilizing my custom tarot effects we're already doing in my regular AD&D campaign, but having it apply in certain regions or during certain stretches of adventure. This would allow for randomly coming across an avatar of a god and earning a minor boon or bane for assisting or denying them.

I was recently thinking of a new way to describe to my spouse (and to myself) how my mind works when it comes to performing tasks. This is a regularly occuring conversation, as her needs and mine often run counter to each other and leave us both frustrated. I have trouble understanding even my own reactions to things, let alone hers, so I try to explain them in new terms occasionally to see if it makes things click.

Anyway, I came up with one that I found apt and kinda fun, if maybe a bit sad in places: a DnD 5e character sheet. For the purposes of this exercise, the sheet is for a sorcerer, not a wizard (learning new tasks happens slowly, almost at random) and the Frustration mechanic is effectively identical to Exhaustion in the PHB.

Here it is. I'm curious if any of you have thoughts on this or find it feeling familiar.

Spell list:

Cantrips:

Relax
Read
Eat
Get ready for bed ¹

1st level:

Choose to go to bed ²
Get ready to leave
Choose a meal
Prepare a meal
Work on dishes
Take out trash
Do laundry
Other chores
Do a favor (unasked)*

2nd level:

Do a favor (asked)*
Stifle frustration ³

3rd level:

Do a big favor (asked)*
Dismiss frustration ⁴

Feat - People Pleaser: When casting "Do a favor (unasked)", roll a d20. On a 15 or higher, cast as a cantrip instead. When casting "Do a favor (asked)", roll a d20. On a 5 or lower, add 1 level of frustration. When casting "Do a big favor (asked)", roll a d20. On a 10 or lower, add 1 level of frustration.

Feat - Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures: Regenerate 1 spell slot of any level. Add 1 level of frustration.

Feat - Self Soothe: whenever casting a cantrip, roll a d20. On a 19 or 20, remove 1 level of frustration.

Curse - Temper: whenever casting a spell of 1st level or higher, roll a d20 with advantage. On a 2 or lower, add a level of frustration.

Curse - Social Anxiety: when interacting with another character, roll a d20. On a 5 or lower, burn 1 spell slot or add 1 level of frustration.

¹ Must be cast on the turn following casting "Choose to go to bed." Otherwise, this becomes a 1st level spell.

² After casting this spell, any spell other than a cantrip must be cast one level higher than usual (e.g., 1st level spells can only be cast using 2nd level spell slots).

³ Temporarily remove 1 level of frustration. It returns after d20X10 minutes.

⁴ Permanently remove 1 level of frustration.

I’m starting a new 5e campaign with some friends, and I think I have some performance anxiety. I’m not the most creative person, and the last thing I want to do is kill the fun. The only other time I've played a ttrpg was years ago in high school.

I’m curious what you all have found detracts from a session as well as any advice that enhances the experience for everyone.

I wanted to share this, in case there are interested folks who haven't checked it out yet. This is me gushing about a thing I love and hoping other folks are listening because the story is so good.

Worlds Beyond Number is a podcast run and owned by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii, and Lou Wilson with the goal of being able to tell the stories they want without time/production pressures. Taylor Moore is the producer and composer.

What stories are they telling?
The first and largest story so far is The Wizard, The Witch and The Wild One, set in the world of Umora using D&D, that starts from Level 1 (with a children's level 0 adventure) with the intent of this being the first long term campaign. The characters are in a world that I'd describe as Ghibli inspired - which includes some of the lightest sweetest moments and some of the most devastating moments of war. There's a bit of a running joke about which character is getting a Kiki or Ponyo moment vs a Mononoke moment in an episode. The Witch is a custom class, the Wizard has a custom subclass, and the Wild One has a custom paladin subclass.

But they've also played a few side games, Erika ran a game of Roll for Shoes, a chaotic game featuring a gangster chicken, a goat that may or may not be the devil, and a retired race horse doing a heist of corn from the county fair. A space jam inspired Space Cram two shot Aabria ran using Tournament Arc and a few prequels set in different areas of the world of Umora.

Where can it be found?
Any podcatcher, with the talkback "Fireside Chats," Children's Adventure, and the side adventures behind a $5 a month Patreon. No other tiers, the goal is to just fund the podcast.

What makes it stand out from other shows

The level of sincerity, and the fact these are some of the absolute best storytellers in the field who consider this their favorite story. In most actual play the rails are firmly on (dimension 20 due to # of episodes) or the episodes are essentially unedited (Critical Role), but these characters have fully split the party multiple times, and have come into genuine conflict, so much so that listeners have, para socially, been upset with players on behalf of the other players for how the characters are acting.

The show is also edited so some rolls and table talk are cut from the finished episodes (the narrative play label), but never to a point where you can't track what's happening. And you still get to hear a delighted squeal, a stressed exhale or a "let's go!" at the table.

The aesthetics are also wonderful with music and sound effects, the characters and different factions have themes that will come back and blend into motifs.

What's coming up next
The fourth "chapter" and first "book" is wrapping up here soon with a bit over 50 episodes, characters around level 5, and major character arc conclusions and then the show is going to take a break from Umora to start another longer campaign run by Aabria, probably hopping back and forth in the future as the goal is not for Brennan to run for like 5 years straight.

Anyway I love these folks (in a non-boundary crossing way) and I love their stories and hope some of y'all are already watching or will check it out and want to talk about it too!

(Note idk where to put this, podcast isn't a group, I went with games.tabletop)

I'm in the planning stages of a Viking-themed game I'll be running sometime next year, and I'm noticing a nice little progression in the armor types that ends with chain mail. When combined with a silver-based economy that cares more about the weight of the silver over the number of coins you have, that puts a lot of emphasis on looking towards magic for your better AC values, as armor will generally be more expensive and the (typically) highest tiers of armor--namely, plate mail, but also things like splint and banded mails--are simply unavailable for sale or amongst the majority of the enemies you might face.

That magic will most commonly be from the runecaster, probably, since there's a rune available that can be worn like a necklace and improve AC, as well as another that can reduce damage taken. Magic armor will still be--likely even moreso--coveted and sought out by the players.

A PC with average Dexterity can reasonably hit AC 3 (or AC 17 if you're used to ascending values); this assumes chain mail, shield, and a protection rune. Normally AC 3 (banded mail and a shield) is the best a starting PC (with no adjustment from Dex) can hope for in a traditional game.

The game is AD&D 1e. I'm happy to discuss any mechanics behind the report if anyone asks.

The party:

• Iskandar, human Magic-User 7
• Jurgen, human Ranger 6
• DeBeaux, half-orc Cleric 1 / Fighter 1 / Assassin 1
• Bite, half-orc Fighter 1
• Rowan, human Magic-User 6
  • Henchman Freya, human Fighter 4
  • Henchman Rikka, human Fighter 4
• Vortigern, dwarf Fighter 6 / Thief 6
  • Henchman Ingrid, human Ranger 4
  • Henchman Runa, human Magic-User 4

The location: an underwater facility inhabited by aquatic elves who are currently suffering from a wasting disease of the mind that's been spreading amongst them. Those affected have been forcibly sent to the lower levels. A faerie elf (C6/F6/MU9) named Alfred has enlisted the party's assistance.

The plan this evening was to delve into the third floor of this facility. They left the safety of the first floor and quickly navigated through the second, back to the lift that would take them down to the third.

The party wanders through the halls, checking each of the iron doors for traps before attempting to pry them open. During one such attempt, a few dozen elves (and then some), horribly mutated into beings with sightless orbs but exceptional hearing, approaches from behind. The party was not caught unawares, and one fireball from Rowan later, they finish up with the door and loot the bodies of any loose coin. It's noted that many of the coins were destroyed in the blast.

They make their way through a kitchen and eventually come across a dead-end hallway with seemingly no purpose. Before they can do much with that information, another group of a couple dozen mutant elves shows up, but the party catches them by surprise and manages to shock & awe in a way that led to the mutant elves fleeing.

A few members of the party spread out to start checking the walls, and Rikka stumbles through one of the walls with a shout. An illusory wall hid a room with an elven corpse in full battle gear and another lift to a fourth floor. Rowan begins unstrapping the armor from the corpse and then he stops, now unresponsive and non-verbal. Seeing his ally struck with a feeblemind curse, Jurgen does the most sensible thing and tries to loot the sword off the corpse, falling prey to the same curse.

Iskandar borrows some rope and creates a leash for his allies, leading them along. The party decides they should leave and see if Alfred can fix this. He can, and does, for a total sum of 5200 gold. During this, Vortigern's player began feeling unwell and stepped away for the evening.

The party goes back down and decides to try a different direction, bringing them to a hallway filled with razor wire, thickly enough that passage would be both slow and painful. After some discussion, Iskandar uses levitate on himself and creates a tightrope above the wire, along the wall, utilizing some rope and door spikes.

They follow the hall to another couple of doors, one straight ahead and one to their left. Their attentions turns to the left one, which has been locked from this side and welded shut. DeBeaux unlatches the door as Bite moves forward to force it open with his exceptionally high strength. The party moves into the room, seeing a number of effigies fashioned from elven flesh placed around a bone ramp that ends at an altar with a large marble bowl resting on it. Iskandar approaches and sees text inscribed in Elvish within the bowl, so he casts comprehend languages and runs his hands along it. 'The rowan wand lies in blood'.

Unsure of how to proceed with that, he steps away as Rowan approaches, dagger in hand. Rowan cuts across his palm and bleeds into the bowl, at which point an unseen force pulls his hand within, drawing yet more and more of his essence into it, the blood forming and solidifying into a wand. Upon inspection, it has inscribed 'fir-aga' on the bottom.

The party moves into another room through a stuck iron door and sees a big cylinder of glass holding a mass of slime, vegetation, and refuse. Laid around said cylinder is a small hoard; silver, jewelry, scroll cases. Iskandar rushes forth to the scroll cases, Jurgen and Bite close behind, which angers the shambling mound in its glass container. Breaking forth from its cage, the shambling mound strikes at the lot of them, landing hits on Rikka and Bite. Many attacks fly towards it as Iskandar carefully backs away from the creature, and Bite is struck by one of its limbs, going down with broken ribs. Iskandar follows up with a magic missile, which is sufficient to kill the creature. Jurgen applies healing to Bite via a potion of light healing, the party gathers all the loot they've found, and then they all leave for the first floor.

Notable magic items found

• ivory goat trio figurines of wondrous power [sold]
• scroll of protection from earth elementals [sold]
• scroll containing three cleric spells [sold]
• wand of fireballs [kept]
• scroll containing seven magic-user spells [kept]
• frostbrand [kept]

Current player-kept map of the third floor.

The game is AD&D 1e. The party:

• Jurgen, human Ranger 6
• Aeliana, elf Fighter 3 / Magic-User 2 / Thief 4
• DeBeaux, half-orc Cleric 1 / Fighter 1 / Assassin 1
• Iskandar, human Magic-User 7
  • Henchman Thorgisl, Fighter 1
• Vortigern, dwarf Fighter 6 / Thief 6
  • Henchman Runa, human Magic-User 4
  • Henchman Ingrid, human Ranger 4
• 6 crossbowmen and 2 infantrymen

The location: an underwater facility inhabited by aquatic elves who are currently suffering from a wasting disease of the mind that's been spreading amongst them. Those affected have been forcibly sent to the lower levels. A faerie elf (C6/F6/MU9) named Alfred has enlisted the party's assistance.

This is not their first foray into the dungeon, but they have their first encounter with the affected elves here. The ten elves are immediately suspicious and eventually attack once they learn the party was sent here by Alfred. One successful sleep and a decent set of rolls later, the remaining three elves flee. The sleeping ones were tied up, and the party attempted an inquiry, but the elves decided a forever-sleep was preferable, though their movements prior to that were oddly jerky.

They wander the halls of this facility, eventually encountering a gelatinous cube, which two magic missiles from Iskandar & Runa took care of.

In one chamber, they solved a puzzle and activated a Shrine (from the TSR Diablo supplement for 2e) that opened town portals back to the safe floor. Through trial, they discovered what these do, but only two (Aeliana's and Iskandar's portals) remained.

The highlight of the evening was the party coming across a set-up they'd seen in another room; two ceremonial masks kept inside a glass case, framed with iron, and watched by nearby metal torches that would loose blasts of arcane energy at any that got too close. Aeliana and Vortigern attempt to disarm the trap. Vortigern succeeds, but Aeliana fails significantly enough to accidentally trigger the trap, forcing a save vs. breath for 15 damage. She fails, and with her maximum HP of 8, she is incinerated on the spot. Luckily, her gear remains. They travel back to the portals activated earlier and send a hobilar in with Aeliana's corpse while the rest of them found their way back up. They petition Alfred for a revival, and he does have a scroll with a couple castings of raise dead on them, and the party can certainly afford the price for it, but he gently reminds them that elves are soulless, requiring more powerful magic to revive than he has access to.

After some discussion, Runa rests a while before casting invisibility on herself and her horse so that she might make a trip to a town some 35 miles out to grab:

• Rowan, a human MU 6
  • Henchman Rikka & Freya, both human Fighter 4

Rowan uses invisibility, 10' radius on everyone relevant and they travel back to the elven city to continue exploring. In doing so, they encounter another set of 15 elves, but dispatch them quickly and decisively due to surprise, though Ingrid took a heavy amount of damage (10 damage to her maximum of 22 HP).

We stop shortly after the group finds the lift to the lower level, whereupon their crossbowmen and hobilars refuse to go any deeper, indicating a dungeon floor of at least DL 4 difficulty.

A while back I asked for some advice about running a haunted Beaver Dam game, and a few people popped up to ask why I wasn't trying out a narrative RPG system instead of using classic DnD.

Well, you got me. After some discussion (particularly about the painful amount of time to conduct a high level fight in 5e), we're going to try out the Dungeon World system instead. I've never run a TTRPG like this, and I'm rapidly working through the rulebook to figure it out. But rules only take you so far, there's a lot of learning that only comes with experience.

So for those of you with experience, I ask you: What do you wish you would have known before running a narrative TTRPG?

When I was in elementary school, I found some Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books at a yardsale. I read through them, brought them to school, and played through a basic campaign with some friends. Since then, I haven't met anyone interested in pen-and-paper RPGs. I still hope that I can one day convince someone to play with me, but I don't even know which system I should try to learn. There are now so many different editions of D&D, in addition to countless alternatives and endless arguments over the merits of each.

Whatever system I decide to learn, I will need to invest time and energy into learning and teaching the game to others, and I'll most likely be the DM, so I'd like to choose one that won't be too difficult for beginners to get into. While I enjoy exploring interesting game mechanics, I think the idea of creating an interactive adventure story or a world to explore with friends is what attracts me the most. The Fate system sounded interesting, but I had a hard time understanding the core rulebook. I've recently read short summaries of several other systems that seem like they could be fun and not too hard to get into, such as Index Card RPG, Shadowdark, Tiny Dungeon, Five Torches Deep, Fantasy AGE, and Creative Card Chaos; but I can't afford to read through each of them and seven editions of D&D to determine which one is most suitable for me.

Does anyone have any advice on how to evaluate my options or a suggestion for a good one to start out with?

Hey ho, so I'm taking over running one of my existing D&D groups. I have a campaign in my pocket that I have run part of before, A dystopian Narnia. If somehow my players meet just the right overlaps of nerd and techness to have ended up here. Leave now .

But it's really a set up for a longer campaign that I hope bridges into more worlds. I have the Narnian World really fleshed out, but if somebody feels particularly passionate and has ideas, please let me know. I can provide any detail folks would like into being asked a tricky question just helps me World build so please go for it.

The general gist is that our adventurers are pulled by a much weakened aslan from faerun or whatever default world we start from into Narnia. There they find it has been a thousand years of winter and rule by The White Witch. I'm familiar enough with the lore that if they decide to leave the country of Narnia or seek out another witch as an ally I have some options. Hopefully they save the day and free Narnia from Christmas-less winter. (I'm leaning hard into all the broad references to mythology in Narnia, Dionysus and the Maenads, the River God

If they do, they will receive a set of the magic rings used in The magician's nephew to allow people to pop between Narnia and the wood between the worlds. Allowing them to hop into other stories that have been similarly messed up.

I am looking for One Big Idea But also some other suggestions

1. The suggestions I'm looking for are other stories from about the same realm of stories that could be similarly messed up, ideas I had included Dinotopia, Wrinkle in Time, The Rats of NIMH, maybe one of the Discworld stories (I feel like half of those characters would be self aware) particularly thinking middle grade books with a dip towards children's or younger YA stuff, particularly fantasy stories, particularly those with some nostalgia for my fellow millennial PCs. I don't want to touch Harry Potter.

2. My idea for the reason why the story went wrong is that someone is rewriting it, possibly due to hating children or hating happy endings or something. I wanted a BBEG but I can't think of one. Umbridge is out for the Harry Potter reasons, but who else would go to the trouble? I am planning on the villain having acquired "magical book mcguffin" (that I also need to figure out) that's letting them do this. I like the idea of a villain who gets a lot of power but uses it in such a petty way, to rewrite children's stories

It'll take a long time to get out of Narnia, we don't play very often, and we may not continue depending on how players feel but as someone who's worked this idea over and over in their head for a while, I would love to get past these things.

Hi DnD friends,

I'm tackling a new DM challenge and could use some guidance. I'm designing a dungeon where humanoid beavers are attempting to awaken a sleeping god. Their efforts get derailed when they offer the god a magical plant that overgrows their entire base, warping the rooms and fusing many surviving beavers into half-plant, half-beaver creatures.

Since our group is relatively new, I've found that combat can be a bit slow. To speed things up and make combat more dynamic, I want to include environmental elements and traps—things like shelves that can be pushed over or a chandelier that can be dropped on enemies. I hope this will make the players feel more impactful when they pull off creative moves.

I plan to design a large building that encourages investigation, puzzle solving, and backtracking. My goal is for the players to get familiar with the map before combat, allowing them to discover useful items or environmental features they can take advantage of when enemies appear.

Since I've never done anything like this, I'm seeking advice on how to approach the design. Are there common pitfalls I should avoid to keep the building fun? How large should the maps be if I want to run this over 3 sessions, each about 3 hours long? And what types of puzzles would fit well in this environment?

Thanks a ton for your ideas! I’m already feeling like I may be reaching too high, but I’m excited to give it a shot!

I absolutely LOVE hearing other's stories from their games. Crazy things happen in game land, and these kinds of tales inspire others to play and experiment as well.

I implore anyone who can think of a better way to phrase the title, please suggest it.

Essentially, I use a self-hosted MediaWiki which is where I write everything, but when I just have an 'idea', I have a private Discord channel that I submit the information to. It can be a picture, or a character idea, or an idea for a scene or a shop or whatever-- I just have a channel where I dump all of my ideas, and then when I have time, I go back through them, iterate, add them to my wiki (making them 'canon'), and then deleting the messages.

I would really like something else to do this, because Discord is obviously not meant for this. Unfortunately, the caveat is that it needs to be useable on mobile, because I'd say 80%+ of my ideas like this happen when I'm not at my computer.

My first thought was to set up and self-host a ticketing system-- something like Znuny, but outside of using Zendesk for work, I don't really know that much about them, and it feels like it might be overkill (on top of not working on mobile, I don't think). It has the benefit of being able to immediately have the data organized, so I can double-check to make sure I'm not repeating character names, or ideas, or anything like that.

So, with that in mind, what all are my options?

GMs: do you have any gaps in the worldbuilding of your setting that you're looking for help filling? Post them here!

In case it wasn't already clear, I need help as well. My setting is a near-future hybrid of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk, in 5e. There are two major gaps. First, in my setting North America has fractured into a handful of nations - but the middle part split into a radioactive wasteland and a loose coalition of city states. What locations might be concealed in the wasteland? (A fallout vault-like society living in the NORAD mountains of Colorado?) Which city states would have survived and what would their character be?

I also need ideas for more megacorporate factions.

Here is the work in progress for the setting, if you're interested.

Help me and I promise I'll help you!

I’ve been looking for a good system for my friends and I to share TTRPG character sheets (primarily DnD) with one another.

We’re not interested in a full-digital VTT, but the ecosystem is pretty fragmented for charsheet-only apps (many immature and abandoned projects). Self-hosted webapp makes the most sense for our needs, but I’m open to suggestions for some other sync method that’s not PDF-based.

This seems like a viable candidate:

https://github.com/Orcpub/orcpub

…but I’d love to hear better options if anyone’s found em.

While there were conversations about this in the past, those were much more generalized.

Now, I personally don't have issues creating world maps, regional maps, or 'battle' maps, as it were, but when it comes to city maps... I'm consistently at a loss. That said, I don't want this to just be me begging and whining into the void about how I can't find something that I prefer to make city maps in, so here's what I've used and would recommend over the past 15 years or so:

• World Maps: Wonderdraft, Photoshop, Campaign Cartographer (probably about ten years ago, and I never finished a map with it)

Of these, I definitely recommend Wonderdraft the most. I think if you put in enough time and effort, Photoshop can turn out better (and most detailed), but if you're interested in a style that Wonderdraft has support (and assets) for, it's pretty much perfect. It's a one-time cost, has been getting consistent updates and support since it was in beta years ago, and the community assets are pretty much unending. The one caveat to Wonderdraft is that if you want to make an absolute behemoth of a map (like I'm apt to do), it will eat some serious resources and can begin to lag, due to how it handles each individual tree/mountain/path as a singular, editable asset.

Campaign Cartographer is an oldie that I tried about ten years ago, had some success with (mostly in how it designed continent outlines and things), but just didn't feel like it had enough malleability to create things the way I saw fit.

• Region/Continent Maps: Wonderdraft, Photoshop, Inkarnate

I think everything I said about world maps applies here, as well. I haven't used Inkarnate in the better part of a decade, but I know the free version was very limiting and there were some concerns about the company 'owning' anything you created in the program. That said, a brief look at it now makes it look like a more closed-off version of Wonderdraft, but with a subscription instead of a one-time purchase.

• Battle Maps: Dungeondraft, Photoshop, a plethora of generators that I can't even begin to remember dating back 10+ years

Before Dungeondraft, I pretty much hated making maps for combat. Early in my GMing 'career', I would just have a blank canvas on Roll20 and draw on details as it was needed, and eventually I just pivoted completely to theater of the mind for all of my combat. And then Dungeondraft rolled around, and it was pretty quick to export from there, incredibly quick to import to Foundry (with a module), and Just WorkedTM. Before that, I did occasionally try and make things in Photoshop, and would follow tutorials from time to time, but it was all just so time-consuming, and with a lot of asset hunting if you wanted consistent art style and detail to what you were doing. It was just so much.

Which, of course, brings me to...

• City Maps: Wonderdraft, Dungeondraft, City Designer 3, Photoshop, Watabou's Medieval City/District/Village generators, AI...?

Ah, the problems. So, I tried to make city maps in Wonderdraft, but it's very obvious that it was built for a larger scale, and there are a lot of 'hacks' (or workarounds, I guess?) you need to do to make it work, and it can be frustrating and very time-consuming, as there's nothing there to really automate the process at all. For example, Wonderdraft has this beautiful 'paint brush' for assets such as trees or mountains that will 'spatter' them across a set radius, with a set density, etc. This is very helpful for something random like forests, but essentially useless for placing buildings. Dungeondraft is a little better in this regard, but has the opposite issue: Everything is too 'small' and focuses on more grid-based, rigid design, given that it's built for, well, dungeons. And battle maps in general.

I purchased City Designer 3 (along with a big pack of Campaign Cartographer add-ons) as part of a Humble Bundle a while ago, and I kind of enjoyed it, but it really felt like the amount of effort required wasn't worth the end result, which - at best - would be using art assets designed to give the feel of the maps from D&D 5E. And even then, that limited the asset options because it didn't seem like there was a lot of additional third party support for the program (which is definitely showing age). That said, it's the only one I've used that seemed able to handle good building placement along roads, able to do it automatically. That said, Photoshop?

Probably the best time I had making city maps. I had to stylize them, but with enough ingenuity, good knowledge of automation (through recording Actions), and following some art style tutorials, you can make a "cheap" city map that's able to have a lot of variation. If you're interested in map design in Photoshop, I highly recommend the tutorials of Jonathan Roberts, who is very much my 'gold standard' for map creation. Unfortunately, he doesn't really update his site any more, and some of the tutorials show their age, but all of the content there is still great.

Then, we have generators. The ones linked above are the best ones I've found, though the city ones leave a lot to be desired as far as graphics and specific details go. But the village generator for small towns and the like? Beautiful. It's genuinely just a perfect little generator if you don't care all that much about the specifics of the map. So, for most towns and villages, it's fine. But what if it's a town built up against a mountain, that sprouted up around a mine? Well... that's not gonna work. What if it's a town that's split on two sides of a river, protecting passage? No such luck. A swamp town, or one in tree-tops? No, not really gonna work all that well.

And just last year, I was turned towards AI generation here on tildes, thanks to @atomicshoreline and his fairly extended description of how to set things up. But, I eventually gave up bothering him after my old video card kept having VRAM issues with only 8GB.

I have seen some very good city maps made in Inkarnate, but I don't know that I'm interested in something that has a yearly subscription, and I can imagine it being very frustrating long-term to invest in something that I've seen issues with in the past.

So, all of this is to say that I really enjoy making detailed content for my world, but I've always had issues with cities. There's just so much content that needs to be hand-placed in almost every program, and even an un-finished city has taken me well over a hundred hours in Dungeondraft, and that was with me still actively hating looking at it..

So, if anyone has other suggestions, I am quite literally always searching for new ways to make city maps, and I've tried just about every suggestion given to me at least once, often to the detriment of my bank account.

Oh, if someone can think of a better title to this post and wants to change it, please be my guest. I just wanted to contribute my knowledge and recommendations, rather than just throw a "give suggestions" post out into the ether, and wasn't sure how to phrase that.

My weekly D&D group has been running for a number of years now and unfortunately our current DM is suffering from some pretty severe burnout at the moment (both in life and D&D in general). I think ultimately we're going to end up shuttering our D&D campaign, and may well never pick the game up again as we've almost all soured on WotC/Hasbro after the OGL debacle.

This week we entertained ourselves by messing around with image generation (velociraptor nun was a favorite result and became a bit of a running theme through the evening) but the fun in that can only last so long. We've also had some nights playing games like Dead by Daylight and Midnight Ghost Haunt but those are typically games we reserve for around Halloween. We also play some of the Jackbox Party Pack games, but they're only moderately fun to be honest.

We're usually a group of 7, and this particular formation of the friend group has been meeting almost exclusively online and will probably want to continue that way for the foreseeable future. I'd like some suggestions for games we could play together (either video game or TTRPG that works well online) that are: mostly cooperative or at least team based (we're not very competitive), something that won't become repetitive and dry after a couple of sessions (goal-oriented I guess), and something that we don't have to pay a subscription for. The ability to drop in or out as life dictates would be a plus too. Any thoughts?

Hello tabletop peeps! I have completed a monster design for my first ever boss creature, and I wanted to get some quick feedback. This is all based on a previous post where I got ideas from y'all, here: https://tildes.net/~games.tabletop/1cjn/designing_my_first_dnd_boss_fight_with_a_giant_mimic_5x_lvl_5_characters

Players are a group of 5 lvl 5 characters, fairly magic heavy and lower hp overall.

The boss creature is a mimic that appears to be a large stone fountain with blood in it. If a PC touches it or stabs it, then they (or their weapon) will be grappled for the start of combat. At that point, the mimic will sprout 6 tentacles that each can travel up to 40ft from the main body and wield a weapon. All tentacles will operate on the same turn as the main body.

Healing Pool in the boss room

The boss room is a large room with a pool in it where blood is mixed with water that has flowed over a magic crystal to produce a healing solution. The idea is that the PCs will figure out that they can either heal themselves by dipping into the pool, prevent the boss from getting close to the pool, or that they can break the magic crystal to prevent the boss from healing. Several of the boss abilities reference this pool.

Mimic main body:

STR 16 (+3)
DEX 10 (+0)
CON 20 (+5)
INT 16 (+3)
WIS 12 (+1)
CHA 8 (-1)

HP 200
Main body loses 20hp if a tentacle dies

Armor Class: 13
Speed: 15 ft
Proficiency Bonus: 2
Damage Resistances: None
Immunities: Poison, Acid, Sleep, Charm

Abilities

Harden: Cannot take other actions, harden body to stone and increase AC to 18, as well as resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, cold, fire
Spew Blood: Begin charging up blood, PCs can see mouth direction. At the beginning of next turn, spew acidic blood in a 180 degree arc for 30 ft. Deals 3d6 acid damage, half damage on DEX 14 save. Mimic main body cannot do anything on its next turn as it recovers.
Chomp: +5 to hit. 1d12+3 piercing damage
Charge: If no arms are left, it will spew blood from the back and charge at a target. Increase speed to 45ft, and deal (+5 to hit) 4d6+3 bludgeoning damage to a target. Dex15 save for half damage.

Sword Tentacle (x3)

HP 20
Armor Class 13
Speed 30 ft
Damage Resistances: None
Damage Immunities: Poison, Acid

Abilities

Harden: Cannot take other actions, harden body to stone and increase AC to 18, as well as resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, cold, fire
Heal: If the healing pool is nearby, soak arm in the pool to heal it fully, and heal the main body for 15hp. Alternatively, resurrect a different defeated tentacle instead of healing self or the main body.
Slice: +5 to hit. 1d8+3 slashing damage

Shield Tentacle (x1)

HP 20
Armor Class 13
Speed 30 ft
Damage Resistances: None
Damage Immunities: Poison, Acid

Abilities

Harden: Cannot take other actions, harden body to stone and increase AC to 18, as well as resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, cold, fire
Heal: If the healing pool is nearby, soak arm in the pool to heal it fully, and heal the main body for 15hp. Alternatively, resurrect a different defeated tentacle instead of healing self or the main body.
Shield Bash: +5 to hit. 1d4 + 3 bludgeoning damage
Defend: As a reaction, give disadvantage to an attack when an ally 5ft away is attacked

Crossbow Tentacle (x1)

HP 20
Armor Class 13
Speed 30 ft
Damage Resistances: None
Damage Immunities: Poison, Acid

Abilities

Harden: Cannot take other actions, harden body to stone and increase AC to 18, as well as resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, cold, fire
Heal: If the healing pool is nearby, soak arm in the pool to heal it fully, and heal the main body for 15hp. Alternatively, resurrect a different defeated tentacle instead of healing self or the main body.
Heavy Crossbow shot: +2 to hit. 1d10 piercing damage

Handy Tentacle (x1)

HP 20
Armor Class 13
Speed 30 ft
Damage Resistances: None
Damage Immunities: Poison, Acid

Abilities

Harden: Cannot take other actions, harden body to stone and increase AC to 18, as well as resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, cold, fire. Cannot harden when grappling a PC.
Heal: If the healing pool is nearby, soak arm in the pool to heal it fully, and heal the main body for 15hp. Alternatively, resurrect a different defeated tentacle instead of healing self or the main body.
Grapple: +5 to hit. Grab a target, they can avoid it with a DC16 strength saving throw. If the target is successfully grappled, they can escape with a DC14 strength save at the start of their turn.
Squeeze: If a target is grappled, squeeze them for 1d6+3 bludgeoning damage.
Throw juice: If the healing pool is within range, scoop up a handful of purple juice and throw it at a skeleton to resurrect it.

Potential Adds

There are two skeletons in the room that can be resurrected by the Handy Tentacle with it's "throw juice" ability, should the fight is too easy for the PCs or they are hanging back too far. These adds are Boneknights from page 6 on this link: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-Mv5UKsPhrHkBqSf9vo1

Conclusion and Questions

Is this a fun boss? I aim to have the tentacles each fighting a different person, so I don't think I'll wipe the party out too quickly, but I know of the mystical "action economy" and I might be overdoing things.

Also, how do I rate the CR of such a creature? And how much gold should a party earn for such a fight? Thanks for helping out a new DM!

Hello tabletop community,

I am designing my first ever boss fight, meant to really challenge my players. I don't want to kill any of them off since we're all new and it feels weird to lose a character, but I also want it to feel threatening. I could use some advice about how to execute this situation:

Boss is a big mimic disguised as a blood fountain with 6 long tentacle arms, each of which will be it's own figure on the board that can be up to 3 tiles from the 3x3 mimic figure.

Four of the tentacles have weapons that can deal 2d6 damage and have 30hp AC11 (roughly making it in line with a Brown Bear for threat and HP). They can grapple (squeeze the target) instead for 1d8 damage per turn, escapable on DC13 strength.

Two of the tentacles have shield-like hard points that defend neighboring enemies by giving disadvantage on attack rolls against them. AC14 HP30. I couldn't find anything to base these on for an encounter designer app.

Main body has low movement (10ft), and has 200hp AC19, and loses 20hp per tentacle lost. It has a bite attack +6 to hit 2d8. It also floods blood through sections of the room, forcing player movement and dealing 2d8 poison damage. I based it on a Roper for difficulty and attacks.

I think this combination creature would provide a very interesting and movement focused fight, but I'm very new to DM'ing and I'm afraid of accidentally killing the players.

My questions are: (1) How do I avoid accidentally killing everyone? (2) Is this fight too hard for a newbie group of 5 new players? (3) Any other cool ideas I didn't think of?

Hello Tildes community,

I am soon going to DM my second ever mini-session for a small group of fairly new players. I'd like to send the group into a haunted tavern that has an unusually intelligent mimic in the basement that has been eating tourists that pass through, leaving behind undead creatures throughout the basement.

My primary goal with this is to help the players (most pretty new) understand how to conserve their magic instead of firing it all off in each battle, so I wanted to prevent them from long resting. I figure I could magically lock them inside when they arrive, and then let them learn that if they should rest, previously killed undead creatures (like Minotaur Skeleton or zombies) resurrect after about an hour.

I am looking for two pieces of advice. First, I'd like to know good creatures to put into the dungeon that would provide a challenge, but not be too devastating. I looked at Wraith, for example, but a Wraith could easily one-shot any of the casters in the group and instantly kill them, which isn't fun. What should I be using instead? Remember that each individual fight doesn't need to be too hard, I just want the group to start feeling the strain of resources getting exhausted.

Secondly, the primary DM (who I am running a single session for) has said I can level up the party to 6 during the dungeon. Does this essentially heal the whole party and refresh their spell slots, ala most RPG games? I'm a bit confused how this part would work, tbh.

Thanks for your help, and big thanks to everyone who answered my last question about a Kobold Brewery. It was a blast, and the party loved it, particularly some of the traps that y'all came up with. By the time the party escaped, the entire brewery was on fire, which was amazing.

Appreciate your help!

Artificer school is rough. You have to learn so many ways to manipulate magic forces and try to shove it all into small items. Sometimes it doesn't work as well as hoped. Even if every student gives it their best effort, someone has to be the worst passing student in the class.

In my campaigns, I try to explore this concept by adding niche items or items of student project quality. Often times these items end up adding quite a bit of fun to the lower levels before access to "real" magic items is available.

I would love to throw this idea out to the world and maybe get a bigger collection of these items for all of the Tildes DMs to use in their campaigns if they fit in the setting.

What tools do you use to make maps for your table?

I've tried looking and I have found a few decent generators, but I'm really looking for a making tool I already have a general layout in my head of what the city/region/continent but I can't draw for shit, and I want to find a tool that makes this easy? Makes it look nice, makes it easy to add points of interest and features, etc.

What do you use?

Edit: for clarification, this is for city/region maps, not battlemaps.

I recently got some superb advice here on making a fun brewery adventure, and I had a few more questions for the more experienced DMs out there. To reiterate, I am DMing a group of lvl 3 characters for only 1-2 sessions so I can learn the ropes, and I would like to include some fun traps they need to look out for. I'd love to also make sure that everyone gets a chance to contribute, and not just have the rogue (our most experienced player) do all the detection and disarming.

What sort of things would be fun to set up so that players would all need to watch their step, but could also contribute a bit?

Party has a bard, ranger, druid, and rogue.

There have been a lot of complaints from DMs over the years about Critical Role and the "Matt Mercer Effect" causing new players to have unrealistic expectations of tabletop RPGs. Baldur's Gate 3 has the opportunity to introduce many new players to the d20 system/5e DnD specifically. Though it's a bit different in that the game is obviously scripted and you can't do literally anything, the game provides a ton of options and fleshed out paths, including full support of niche spells like speak with animals/speak with dead. Do you think this might have a similar influence on expectations from some new players moving forward or do you think since BG3 is a video game it will have less of an impact than CR and other tabletop shows have?

I've been participating in my first DnD sessions with a friend, and I'm greatly enjoying it. I've asked permission to DM a single session to get my feet wet, and one place I've always loved (since Planescape Torment) is Sigil. I'd love to have my party wind up there as they sleep, then have them try to learn how to get back home.

I thought it might be fun to have a heist of sorts where they need to get into a brewery to steal some items. I'd like to have some creatures working there that they could fight (if thievery goes wrong), but also some bigger creatures they might be able to avoid in the narrow hallways.

What might be some good options? I've looked at goblins with an ogre moving barrels around, or perhaps some Kua-Toa creatures.

Hello Everyone!

I am currently doing research on the TTRPG community, specifically the feasibility of professional game mastering. I have a survey for players and a survey for Game Masters. These surveys are system agnostic and are for everyone who plays TTRPG's. Please fill in the survey(s) that apply to you!

GM Survey - https://forms.gle/GVCQ6EfxGJPwt5so6

Player Survey - https://forms.gle/y5a3UmC4gfADrjdX6

I'm currently reading over and learning Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e I'm moving more and more away from D&D and Pathfinder games towards others due to different mechanics, fantastic design, etc.

I've seen much conversation about WFRP 4e online and how it's not as good as 2e, or too complex, or other arguments. I'm not looking to start edition warring, but how many of these arguments still hold true in 2023 with the newer rules from Up in Arms and Winds of Magic?

If there are complexities/gaps in 4e, what variant rules, house rules, or homebrew are you using to fix those things or fill them out?

I'm not especially creative, but I love having props at the table for games. Some games seem like a better fit for props than others - for example, Call of Cthulhu's focus on investigation makes having prop newspaper clippings, diaries and journals, maps and other ephemera feel natural and rewarding. It's made that much easier when the publisher provides them with a scenario, which is what Chaosium does for Cthulhu - the starter set handouts are freely available at their site.

Recently, I've added a mix of etsy and more premium products to various games:

• a fun set of inn menus, maps and store price list handouts for Lost Mine of Phandelver (link)
• I'm waiting for the Silver edition of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist to release from Beadle and Grimm (link)
• For the introductory Cthulhu adventure 'The Haunting', I found some really nice non-combat maps on DTRPG (link) and added the handouts from the HPLHS Classic Game Prop Set (link)

I'm curious to know how other people use props at the table, if you make your own, or have found something on etsy or elsewhere that you'd recommend.

I'm starting a new campaign soon and I plan to create a homebrew setting and story like I've done in the past. I've used a combination of Google Docs, Evernote, and other general purpose tools for other settings and campaigns. Does anyone use something like World Anvil or Legend Keeper? Something else?

I'm still in the brainstorming stage of world building, and I'd like a place to collect my thoughts and plans. Ideally I'd be able to easily convert that into something searchable and updateable when it's time to actually play in the setting.

Do you use a single tool for creating maps, NPCs, plot points, history, and adventures? Or do you have a suite of tools you find works well to cover all those aspects?