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    1. D&D does dystopian children's fantasy: Looking for some ideas

      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...

      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.

      15 votes
    2. How do you design a dungeon with a lot of backtracking for the purposes of puzzle solving?

      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...

      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!

      17 votes
    3. Let's hear some Tabletop RPG stories!

      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. Some of my favorite moments My...

      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.

      Some of my favorite moments
      1. My group had a guy - Thorgrimm - who was extremely impulsive and often did whatever first came to mind. It was often hilarious as the DM to play out, but alarming as a player to deal with. One such time, the group was face-to-face with a large host of Inquisitors (read: super soldiers) from another realm. They were in an anti-magic field, outmatched and outnumbered. Not to be deterred, Thorgrimm decides to parlay in his usual bombastic style, and one of the inquisitors silenced him (there were ways around the anti-magic field which had not been fully explored yet by the party). Thorgrimm took offense to this and attacked, alone, against 30+ inquisitors. The rest of the party distanced themselves from him. Well, Throgrimm got absolutely wrecked but was somehow clinging to life with a handful of HP. He then conveniently remembered his gimmick Wish spell, that I had given the party some time ago (I considered it a funny thing to do, I've been told I create a lot of trap items). With the party screaming at him not to, he used up the Wish spell to get them out of jail free.
      2. Which brings us to my second favorite moment... The group teleported back to their employer, The Wizard Who Did It (TM), known as Nobb. He had contracted them to retrieve an artifact of great power (Dymlingen Dire, a knife so sharp it can cut you if you look at it). The party bard, Jarl, thought this was crazy cool and wanted to keep the knife. Nobb said "Yes, as long as you forfeit all other rewards for this contract." Jarl readily agreed, while the rest of the party was distracted by arguing over Throgrimm's decision earlier. Suddenly, all the amazing items they had found over the last several adventures while in Nobb's employ disappeared. Jarl, in forfeiting the reward, had given up the rights to owning those items. The party was LIVID. Jarl's Player thought it was hilarious and one of the other Player's, a lawyer, began searching for loopholes. In the end, many of the PC's made more bargains with Nobb in order to receive their items back, meaning they had worked for him at great length and somehow become even more indebted to him... Which is totally perfect since Nobb would secretly turn out to be Loki, trying to kick off Ragnarok.
      26 votes
    4. I'm looking for a suggestion on how best to organize my ideas for my weekly RPG

      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 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?

      12 votes