Any D&D players around? How'd your last session go?

The bard in our group broke her lute as we were traveling through the wilderness on our way to deliver some valuable cargo. We then came across a small town, and decided to stop in. A group of musicians were performing in the tavern, and we decided to delay our quest for the obviously more important task of stealing a new instrument for our bard.

We learned what room the musicians were staying in, and waited for them to fall asleep. Outside the tavern, I hoisted our rogue up to their room's window, who then fumbled his way around the room looking for instruments to snatch. He then accidentally woke one of them, and rather than jumping back out the window made the brilliant decision to hide under a bed. The musicians woke up, confused and angry. Inside the tavern, listening to them from behind their door, our bard then made the equally brilliant decision to cast ghost sounds. The musicians did not like that, and the town guards liked it even less.

She went to hide in her room before she was discovered. Our rogue's poorly planned hiding spot was quickly discovered by the musicians, who shouted for the guards. The guards barged in and grappled the rogue, who began shouting inexplicable threats such as "You'll never catch me!" Miraculously, he was was able to break their grasp and dive out the window and into the dark, finding a new hiding spot in a nearby barn.

Meanwhile, I kicked back against the outside wall of the tavern, lighting a roll "herbs" that we had liberated from some "farmers" previously, waiting for the nonsense to end. The guards accosted me, but had no suspicions that I was involved. I went to bed.

In the morning, my group met at the town gate as planned, except for our rogue. As we gathered, we heard guards scrambling, only to see our rogue heroically scale the palisades and bolt for his life across the surrounding farmland, still shouting rambling taunts. It didn't take long for guards on horseback to catch him. He was ordered to hand over the flute that he managed to steal, along with all other possessions. The guards learned that he was with our group, and demanded retribution. Our leader had the choice of paying a hefty fine or surrendering the rogue to prison. After a moment of hesitation, our leader made the questionable decision of paying the fine. He also had to convince the guards, who were mainly concerned with the magic that had been cast, that our rogue was not a mage. That didn't take long, as the big-mouthed rogue clearly did not have the intellectual capacity to cast any sort of magic.

We then set back out on our adventure, poorer, weaker, and still without an instrument.

The worst part? We are a thieves guild.

After helping to save Waterdeep from an evil murderous cult that had taken over, we were granted a keep and lands. My character got to be Lord (because no one else wanted the title). We spent the next session going over the Stronghold rules and figuring out how we wanted to set up our keep and local village. We set out to a nearby town to get supplies when we happened upon a small village that was plagued by hobgoblin raids. We figured this was exactly what we needed and offered them the opportunity to set up a new town on our lands. There's the workforce we needed right there. So we started escorting those who were willing to come with us back to the keep while two of our party continued on to get the supplies (seed and food and such). Our Druid kept as many as she could fed on the journey with Goodberries cast by herself and two conjured dryads. Of course the hobgoblins attacked on the way back but we managed to drive them off with minimal casualties.

I've been a D&D (and other P&P RPGs) player for a long time. I've recently moved countries and it's so damn hard to get my friends online for gaming sessions. All the issues of having different schedules, having kids, etc. And playing online is not the same as playing with your friends in real life, around a table, telling jokes and rolling dices. But you do what you must to keep playing.

It's nice that you are fitting well in the DM role. I'm a reasoneable good DM myself, but I'm terrible at creating stories. So the released adventures are always such a pleasure for me to DM, as they have everything there. I'm good to improvise and change things around, but no so good to create things out of nothing. But the DM role is so rewarding and seeing your players having a blast is all that we can hope for.

My last session was the first in a new campaign. Our DM has great intentions and always wants us to have a great time. The problem is that he's not the best story teller. His stories generally have the same characters in them from campaign to campaigns (homebrew). Our last session was good and enriching, but I worry that it will end up like our last campaign where our DM doesn't put the effort into each session and merely makes stuff up on the fly. We had quite a few deviations in our last campaign where our DM realized he was taking the story way off-course and would lazily create something like "this sword kills the bad guy on contact" so we could get back to the main storyline.

I am a very RPG based person and I really dislike "lazy writing" so it can be hard for me to take those results sometimes.

I started a new campaign in a homebrew setting. It went better than I expected! I'm trying out a new level up scheme where the players started at level 2 and will take 2 levels every level up (so they'll level up to 4, then 6, 8, etc.). I've only been a part of one campaign that made it past 10th level, so I'm hoping this scheme will advance them to the upper levels before we wear out the setting/campaign.

The players roleplayed very well, which just made the whole night a lot of fun. I introduced them to a goblin historian studying ancient ruins in a desert. They played up to his quirks and chatted with a few of his students. I usually don't feel comfortable doing quirky or distinct character voices, but my players really made it comfortable for everybody. Since they were level 2, I had their first encounter be a group of cockatrices (CR 1/2 each, if I remember right). I had one too many enemies in the combat, but the players managed it well enough. Saturday is session 2 and I'm getting excited!

Also, I'd love for a ~games.dnd to be added

I just played for the first time the other night! I had a lot of fun! I had to ask a lot of questions, but overall it was pretty fun

My previous session went very well.

We had a couple players absent and one new joining, so I ran a one-shot. It was set in the middle of a siege on a city by an Elven army and the players had to deliver a magic item to determine the fate of their home. It was an action-packed, low-RP session that ended spot on the time limit.

Some highlights:

• One player couldn't think of a personality so he just did an impression of Dr Doofenshmirtz. This culminated in him getting the finishing blow on the Elven Prince, exclaiming "I use my Taser-inator!" and frying him to death with Shocking Grasp.

• A race against time on the top of a tower, trying to use the plot mcguffin while a CR 17 dragon (They were lv 8) tried to stop them.

• Two players being polymorphed into giant gorillas and King Kong boxing this dragon at the top of the tower.

Also, I second the need for a TTRPG-specific sub~. Maybe don't call it DnD though. Something more inclusive of other systems would be better IMO.

-LTADnD

Oof. Not trying to double dip but I decided to make a separate reply about the Savage Worlds Rifts game I'm in. We played that this past weekend and I'm loving my character: the race is a bioengineered cat (think Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy) piloting Robot Armor. I've been throwing cat puns where I can and the GM is really great at managing games so it's usually a blast playing.

Last session was generally good, but I am experiencing a real frustration with my GM (who is also my brother and best friend). It's about range of spells. Long story short:

• monster is standing at the bottom of a 10 foot chasm
• teammate is at the top of the chasm
• I cast Fireball at a spot 20 feet away from both the monster and twenty feet away from the player, but 10 feet below the player
• GM insists that the player is hit by the fireball (obviously that's not the case, since the character is sqrt(20^2 + 10^2) == 22 feet away)

I am getting increasingly frustrated at this, because the reasoning that I keep being given is

but think about a situation where people are flying, or maybe swimming underwater. Then EVERY TIME someone attacks or casts a spell, we're doing extra math to check for the elevation differences. I know it is technically wrong to ignore the elevation, but it's trading a bit of realism for a lot of pacing

I understand that the DM is god, and I accepted it, but I have several problems.

• It's not a whole bunch of math. It's a tiny bit of grade 6 level math. If A^2 + B^2 > C^2, then the player standing at C is safe.
• The warrior in the group routinely takes a whole bunch of time to figure out how to stack his attacks. I don't mind this at all - it's part of his character's play! - but it's aggravating that I cannot do the same.

GM is insisting that if we move to Underwater or Aerial combat that he will continue to make these simplifications. I'm okay to roll with it, but I asked for what the new range rules were, and he's just saying "I'm just going to approximate as I go".

I can't cast the spell if I can't tell what it's going to do and if it's going to incinerate my teammates.

During the game, I asked to just change what I did, and then I apologized in our team chat later for slowing things down and being uncool in the game, but I asked for clarification, and the GM and one other player are basically telling me to just suck it up and deal with the GM's ruling, which I'm doing (I mean... I don't really have any choice) but I'm also asking for a clarification on the rule so I can actually plan my turns without teamkilling, but have just been refused. I have to do what I'm doing to figure out of I'm teamkilling.

I might just lean into it and start teamkilling. To be fair, my character is secretly evil, so I'm okay with it.

I just got back from a session and Oh My God it was insane.

We needed to cross this wide river and had just arrived at a bridge we had been told about only to find that it had collapsed (there was a thieves' mark on it indicating that its construction was a money laundering scheme and it shouldn't be trusted)

Suddenly an old repeat comic relief villian, Dr. Diablory, shows up. We had taken a cursed spellbook off him a while back (the curse drove him insane and made him talk like an old time carnival barker). Turns out that the guy is a Wild Sorcerer, so every time he casts a spell something insane happens. He summons a bunch of Slaad and Slaad tadpoles, demanding the book back.

The fight goes on and we manage to defeat the monsters, and the DM has each of in turn roll a d10000 to see what happens when he casts a spell. Here's a few of the things that happen.

The entire river freezing for as far as we can see.
Every peice of food in all of our inventories turning to stone.
Deafening bells ringing.
One of the Slaads turning into a steel statue.
A portal opening emitting gale force winds.
Several of us getting nausea.
One PC's feet becoming lighter than air and starting to float away while hanging upside down.
My clothes turning from common rags to fine silks.
The upper half of Dr. Diablory's body turning invisible.

My gnome mystic is in a cart with our dwarf warlock when the fight starts. Warlock manages to Eldritch Blast a couple tadpoles while I drive full speed into two in front of us, trying to trample them, missing one. I then Tokyo Drift the cart into a Slaad attacking from the side. I manage to get close enough to our Aasimar cleric to heal her (0hp and 2 failed death saves) and tell Diablory to end the fight and he can have his book back, or else I'd burn it. Because of the aforementioned bells ringing he can't hear me, so I try to tell him telepathically, but get nothing but static and realize that has to be what the book did to him. I try to Energy Beam (Fire) through the book, but some kind of magic protected it. The fire just went around it, so I used Diablory as my secondary target.

Eventually he starts running away. We chase after him, but before we can take him out a portal opens and black tentacles reach out and grab him. We're pretty sure this is some elder god or something that was using him as a tool (that seems to be a theme in this campaign).

Without missing a beat we all make a beeline for the frozen river, trying to cross it before the magic fades. I'm driving the cart again, trying to get it and all our stuff across. Shortly after getting out on the river we realize the ice is breaking up too quickly and we need to turn back. Warlock casts Fly on the horse so it can go faster and not worry about sinking into the water. Unfortunately my Animal Handling isn't quite up to snuff because the horse panics, not knowing why it's flying, and drifts straight up. Now the problem is that the Fly spell was only on the horse and not the cart. The carts hangs straight down vertically from the horse, dumping us and all our equipment out onto the rapidly disappearing ice. One by one we grab something from the pile and race toward shore (which is only 10 feet away, but the river was raging before it was frozen and is returning to that state). One thing no one can pick up is a suit of magic animated armor that we had collected. When it's my turn I grab the last bag that's worth anything (some crafting/tinkering materials). I jump on top of the prone armor and use my Move psionic ability, pushing the armor with me on it onto shore.

Everyone cheered.

At this point, the cleric (who had rushed headlong into battle and gotten herself nearly killed, not for the first time) remembers that since we had just hit level 5, she can cast Water Walk on us all when she prepares it tomorrow.

I just finished DMing a campaign of princes of the apocalypse. Let me tell you, the book is fairly well organized, but there are a few things you should watch out for else your party will not be ready for the final fight.

1. In each section, towards the beginning but in some cases a few pages in there will be a little box on progression. It's very easy to miss. This will tell you when you should be progressing the levels of your party. In my case, the players are very experienced and were crushing things even slightly above the CR suggestions for their level. As an experienced DM I thought they were progressing fine, until I saw the final boss, a jump of over 10 CR above everything they've fought before.
2. The campaign is designed for them to leave the underground after they eliminate the leaders of each cult. But all of the underground are connected. So if your party likes to "clear" an area before leaving, they'll never leave the underground. I would suggest to a DM to either physically block off an area preventing their progress, or find some way to entice the party to go back up. There's a bunch of small side quests and good flavor that happens once you make it top side, if you are regularly going up.
3. Depending on who they choose for the final boss, you may need to provide them with an NPC to help them fight the final boss. In our case, they happened to interact with the cultists of wind first, and were "recruited" to their side. This meant that they left the wind cult for last, which is a big mistake for their party (no true spell casters; cleric was focused on lightning based damage).

I’ll go ahead and assume that Starfinder counts close enough to D&D to merit commentary here ;).

We just ran a Skittermander unlocking module today, and I think I learned what I dislike about living module style RPGs. The modules feel excessively focused on doing some formulaic combo of fight, skill checks, fight, skill checks. The story feels so disconnected because of its rigidity mechanically. I know when I’m doing something that isn’t intended when I get a non-response from my GM about my actions.

Once I start to feel this railroad, I stop exploring. I stop feeling a drive to search around because I know the mission, I might as well go do it, and most of time, searching everything results in nothing special happening.

It has been eye-opening as someone who played Table top RPGs for around 15 years, and never having done modules before, to experience first hand.

I think a ~games.tabletop is going to be coming soon. A hell of a lot of the invites we sent out went to people who frequent the RPG subs on reddit.

I'm currently running three games with groups of 5-9 players (with some overlap) but as usual the summertime scheduling is difficult, so we haven't played in a couple weeks. The first two are D&D 5e games both set on The Forge, co-occuring good and evil campaigns. Which one we play depends on how folks are feeling that night, it's mostly the same people. Their characters haven't overlapped yet but that's going to be a distinct possibility further down the line.

The third campaign is our off-game (for the nights when 2 or more of the full crew can't make it) and that's a Deadlands classic campaign. It's barely started, right now the characters are feeling out Dodge City for the first time. I've managed to get the group curious about how 'other systems do things' so it's also possible we'll be pulling Earthdawn off the shelves later in the year. I'm trying to decide if they are ready for Paranoia and Continuum yet... but those take a different mindset. A lot of these guys came into my games off of D&D 4e with a hack and slash mindset, so I'm taking my time getting them into full/proper roleplaying.

The 'good campaign' group has been power-building in Oasis/Penance for a while, dealing with Oasis' need to expand westward and reclaim more of the abandoned city. The section they've been eying is currently in the hands of a powerful cult of Vecna worshippers who are interested in something buried beneath the place. The party Warlock has already cut a deal with Vecna and discovered that big V is after his heart (having already put the rest of himself back together). That's going to cause problems with the rest of the group, though, considering two of the other characters are Bahamut-worshipping dragonkin Paladins. They are currently on a vision quest to find one of the forge's legendary artifacts that might actually be able to destroy the heart - though the party paladin/leader has mistaken the visions for a 'holy avenger' so he's in for a surprise when he finds it.

The evil campaign is much further south, everyone's part of Abbydon's rather Nazi-esque cult of godhood/personality. They've been dealing with a growing and very deadly threat from the druids of the plains who are not taking kindly to Abbydon's war machine grinding up everything it can find to use as resources in his battle to take the pedestal.

I mostly free-form my games, and occasionally drop a module in (with some major on the fly retooling) if I'm feeling too lazy to design a massive dungeon on my own.

These guys fucking love creating characters. I've got a folder here with closing on thirty sheets in it (and god bless MPMB for making that so damn easy to manage). I usually encourage my players to make as many as they like, there's always a role for henchmen and friend-of-a-friend characters. Once they lock down that section west of Oasis there's going to be some major base-building going on. I'll have to decide if I let them finish it or not before the clock strikes apocalypse on the forge's timeline and things get really crazy.

Maaaaaaan, adult life sucks. lol
I BARELY remember our last session.
They were just heading up into the Serpent Hills when my wife and I moved out of state.
Im trying to pick up Roll20 in the mean time so we can continue.

Just got home from tonight's game, we are playing the Mines of phandelver. I'll try to be vague with the part we were in so not to spoil anything for anyone else playing their first time.

So we had two rooms to the left and right at the bottom of a set of stairs, inside the room was 3 bugbears. The plan was to scatter 500 ball bearings on the floor and open the door and provoke them into charging out and hopefully into the other room and they would do the clean up for us. I actually managed to pull off the rolls (for once) the plan went better than we could have thought! if I share anything else I'll probably end up spoiling the story :/

Party members 1-3 finally met the fourth one, because that player made it to that session. The players met some vampire scouts, but everyone in the party thought they were just very pale humans. The players snuck past the guards so they could get into the dungeon without paying an adventuring tax, and were almost defeated by some goblins.

They then returned home to realize that the pale humanoids they met had been sent to assassinate a local shopkeeper. He had somehow managed to kill two and knock out a third, and both shopkeeper and would-be assassin were being held in city hall until someone could determine which one started the fight. The players tried to heal the assassin back up to consciousness, killing him. Oops.

The session ended around there, but we had some good roleplay between our utilitarian Dwarf Cleric, our Anarcho-Capitalist Bard, and our freedom-loving Rogue and Ranger. This is a great group to GM for, but it's hard yet rewarding to find plot hooks that entice all their characters.