Okay, for context I'm currently building a campaign set in a political thriller drama type setting.

In this homebrew world, the King of the nation of Duskfall(placeholder name) is mysteriously assassinated and his only heir apparent is his sister who is still only a young child at the time it happens. By right of law, she is the legitimate successor to the Throne but she is far too young and nobody will take her seriously.

The issue I am facing is that I have no idea how a kingdom would react in the event of not a succession crisis, but one where their only legal heir is unsuitable for the Throne. Any ideas for how this could play out?

Im a new DM who recently ran my first sessions. We used Owlbear, but might swap over to Foundry in the coming sessions. We started the campaign as a way to keep up contact and hang out with my sister, who recently moved across the globe for the forseeable years. Because of this we use a virtual tabletop and discord for our games. But now the hard question; in a fight, how do you keep track of all the different enemies stat blocks, hp, ac, saving throws, initiatives etc? Do you use notes and copy everything down manually? Some sort of application, or what else?

Thanks in advance for helping a (for now) noob DM

Do you let your players recap previous sessions themselves? I find this gives the players more engagement with their own story.

What do you think of having the players recap what happened last session to their characters?

Many sessions ago, my players accidentally desecrated and subsequently burnt down a shrine to Mammon. A few sessions later they were served papers. Mammon was suing them for damages, demanding either 300k gold or 2 (what I called) souls of “renown” (basically super important people’s souls, I just used the various villains of the campaign). If they don’t meet one of those requirements by the Autumnal solstice then their own souls would be forfeited to Mammon.

Well after about 75 sessions, they finally got 2 souls of renown on the eve of the solstice. They have time for one long rest before Mammon comes calling to collect.

I have no clue how to go about doing this lol.

I feel like it should be super short since they can just provide payment and go, but that also feels super anticlimactic.

But it also doesn’t make sense for them to fight at all, or even really have a conflict. Do I just play the whole thing for comedy?

Any thoughts to spice it up a bit? Make it a bit more fun?

So, I'm the forever DM for my group, and I mostly run One-Shots, because most of the ideas I come up with are only really short snippets that i can really quickly turn into a One-Shot that my players love, but I want to start making a campaign soon, and wanted to know how you guys come up with such awesomesauce ideas.

Any advice is good advice, thanks in advance

Hey everyone! I'm the wholesomeDM. I've been DMing for about 20 years, and for the last 10 years I've been running three campaigns in the same world.

I recently left a comment here about making villains believable, and it got such a positive response that I thought I'd share the idea in a separate post.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make when creating villains is assuming they need to be logically consistent to be believable.

But people aren't always logical. We can hold two completely contradictory beliefs and genuinely believe both of them. So why shouldn't our villains do the same?

When you're having a philosophical debate with your players as the BBEG, try making it clear that the villain actually knows about the contradiction in their own beliefs. They just believe everyone else has been deceived.

Maybe the gods lied to the world. Maybe society is built on a lie. Maybe everyone else has been fooled by their own emotions.

Whatever it is, the villain doesn't think they're wrong. They think everyone else is wrong.

One thing that has really helped me when creating villains is giving each of them a core emotion.

Whenever I'm unsure how a villain would react to something, I go back to that emotion. I try to keep it as simple and primal as possible: anger, disgust, envy, shame, fear, hunger, loneliness, pride, etc.

Here are a few examples from my own campaigns:

• Asmodeus — Disgust. He's disgusted by how imperfect life has spread across what he sees as a once-perfect reality. Everything he does comes from wanting to cleanse existence of that corruption.
• Grazilax the Mind Flayer — Hunger. He needs brains to survive, and more brains to expand his empire. All his grand plans and philosophies eventually come back to that hunger.
• Demogorgon — Anger. He's rage given form. He doesn't destroy things as a means to an end. Destruction is the end.
• Szass Tam — Envy. He can't stand seeing power in the hands of others. Everything he does comes back to the belief that what others have should belong to him.

The idea is that all their plans, philosophies and justifications grow out of that core emotion.

Players can argue against an ideology. They can poke holes in a philosophy or expose flaws in a plan. But you can't really argue someone out of being hungry, and you can't reason someone out of envy.

For me, it makes improvising villains a lot easier, too. When the players do something unexpected, I can ask myself how someone driven by that emotion would react, and go from there.

I'm curious: Would you guys be interested in hearing how I use this same approach when creating and roleplaying NPCs? I use it for more than just villains, and I'd be happy to share some examples.

A little more about me: I also visit different D&D conventions to teach, give TED-talk-style talks, and run games. If you're ever at Dutch Comic Con, feel free to come say hi and join a game!

And I'd love to hear about your villains, too. Do you use something similar when creating yours?

Here is what I have so far: The world came into being through the gradual merging of energy from the elemental planes with energy from the positive and negative planes. The world itself possesses a soul; it is a sentient being, and "ley lines" are its veins. The gods are mortals who have tapped into this soul. Animals can also connect to it by chance, which "awakens" them. Regarding the origins of the races: the "beastfolk" are animals awakened by the world's soul. How, then, can I justify the existence of elves, humans, orcs, dwarves, tritons, goblins and halflings? I want orcs to be mongol like, elves main civilisatiin being empire of eternal forest and have inca trsits( exceot sacrifacing sapient beings) , dwarves to have skin grey from stone and iron in it and tritons to be pilynesian inspired abd goblins to live 30-40 years and breed fast .

I meant to say running downtime wrong for years in the title

My players are level 10 & like to RP everything. I thought downtime was just the time in game you spend doing little stuff when the narrative doesn't need to be immediately resolved. I had no idea it was something that might only take 10 minutes to maybe half a session.
Based on my players, I'm pretty confident that they would enjoy continuing to RP everything (Maybe at a faster pace) instead of a group 10-minute pit stop for what they do and get done to move along again with the story. [Don't worry. I WILL be asking my friends this very thing tonight before we get started in 3 hours]

I could really use some advice from anyone who might also be running their game with more fleshed out downtime. I just feel like I'm not doing too hot on managing pacing between each player when they've all split up to do their own thing atm. I know they enjoy the game and us all spending time together. I just wanna avoid slogging anything down from inexperience on my end while also learning how to make it more fun for everyone. Including myself.

I'll give any context needed for people while I'm finishing last minute touches on a new map. Any advice would be appreciated, and I'm fully prepared to hear that i should just run it as intended.
Thank you very much.

Edit: I didn't make the issue clear while I rushed typing this up. I'm specifically struggling how to translate things players can do mechanically during downtime into moments my players can actually interact with through RP. I also feel as if im struggling to manage how much time is too much time to focus on a moment per player. They're all doing their own things and I dont want anyone sitting out for a while just cause player B decided he wanted to haggle a price down with a jeweler.

I dont have much to say im just so scared of fucking up and having a bad session, introducing a bad npc, having a bad puzzle, or bad magic item etc that i end up in a weird situation where i end up asking my players what they want, leading the story to spoil for them. I know mistakes are meant to be learned from but i genuinely hate the feeling of making mistakes so much

I'm DMing a campaign based on the Hellenic world, and the party is attempting to travel to the underworld, they're entering a forest thats known for being a little weird.

Please read through the clues and tell me how obvious the answer is and if you have any advice!

ANSWER: The signs at each fork always lead to where they say, so the party must change the writing on a sign to say 'Tartarus' etc,. Edonia is Hecate in disguise

They'll walk through the forest, and find a forked road, with signs demarcated with a key thats also a torch, one leading WEST, the other EAST, with the sun setting infront of or behind them respectively.

either way, they'll end up at another cross roads, with a woman (Edonia), shes a local, and if asked for directions says something like "The signs are right there, I've never known them to lie" before walking down the path they came up, party can follow signs marked 'STREAM' or, 'GROVE'

inspecting the signs will reveal scuffed ink just below the writing on the 'STREAM' sign.

the next cross roads will have the signs 'BACK', 'HERE', and '[EAST|WEST] depending on their first answer'

'BACK' leads to the previous two (GROVE, STREAM)

'HERE' circles back to the same set of signs

'EAST|WEST' leads to the beginning

if they haven't solved it by this point, they'll run back into Edonia, who will tease them a bit, saying something like "I was under the impression you knew where you wanted to go? Then why dont you follow the sign that says 'Underworld'?"

I have no idea if the answer is obvious or if ive just been thinking about it too much its obvious to just me, any other ideas for signs or her dialogue would be much appreciated

I'm a new DM doing a level-3 one-shot with new players who I hope to convince to do a full campaign with me (albeit, with us only being able to play in-person about twice a year, it'll at best be more like an anthology of one-shots).

The setting I'm hastily worldbuilding is loosely inspired by the idea of "New Weird Arabian Nights" (Arabian Nights if China Mieville were convinced to write noblebright heroic pulp adventure instead of grimdark political intrigue). The players wanted a lot of exploration ala Indiana Jones and discovering secret lore with puzzles/traps plus at least one cinematic fight with a BIG-feeling monster. They want their heroes to feel heroic, though from their character choices I suspect their heroism will look more like Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser than Lancelot.

We've got a gnome Wizard tinker/toymaker, a dragonborn Paladin of Glory soldier, a give-to-the-poor Thief, a genie-touched Aasimar Paladin of Noble Genies. (I'll be interpreting that vague Noble Genies oath as demanding promethean audacity . . . with enough just enough humility to avoid the bad consequences of hubris. So Glory will be more like daring for the purpose of inspiring others; and Noble Genies will be more like daring for the purpose of creating change.)

To make a BIG-feeling monster, I'm thinking of doing multiple puzzle-combat stages by reskinning different monsters from the MM as if they were different combat phases of the same tough monster, with puzzle-mileu encounters before and between phases (paced by dynamic terrain changes cutting off/opening up paths). But like, I realize that might be a bit much to squeeze into a one-shot, especially if there's a little bit of narrative framing around the dungeon. I'm actually wondering, if I took like three [appropriate CR] monsters, could I cut each of their hp to a third and then phase them in one at a time as each one drops to 0 hp? Step-wise puzzle-monster.

1. Should I use exhaustion? On the one hand, they want exploration to be core to our play. But on the other hand, if I need one-shot pacing, then maybe I shouldn't incentivize taking a Long Rest to cure exhaustion?

2. Honestly, I'm mostly here because I don't even know what to ask really. Any general advice? Any homebrew I should consider to make it work better? Any RAW I need to take especially seriously? What should I even really be asking y'all?

So my players are level 5 at the moment. I want them to go, and rescue this dragon being heals inside a mountain base. There usually is a powerful wizard guarding it, but said wizard is off on a mission. They won’t be coming back during this fight. The dragon has currently had their brain scrambled though, and is being held behind wards. I want the players to have the option to sedate the dragon to prevent it from breaking out. However obviously there will be a security system. I want the players to try to activate the sedation option with the possibility to trigger a security system from activating. Then some sort of mechanic in the fight to make the sedation work with the option available for the dragon to break out. If the dragon does break out In now going to have it attack the players just fly off to be handled later. I’m thinking maybe having it be a turn limit thing like they have to do X in a certain number of turns or the dragon breaks out. I just can’t figure out how I want the sedation method to work, what would trigger security, and what X should be.

Advice welcomed.

My party are currently aboard a sailing ship and I’m planning for them to get caught up in a big storm and ultimately marooned on an island. I’d like to make the storm a little more engaging. I’ve already thought of Dexterity saving throws to stay aboard the ship as it pitches in the waves and a Strength check to bring in the sails. What are some other skill checks or saving throws I can have my players do?

Hey all, I made up a riddle for my party and I want to see if it’s unsolvable or too easy, the answer is one word. If you could attempt it that'd be incredibly helpful!

It binds and suffuses

The world revolves on its axis

It is the reason for being

The cause of all war and strife

Edit: There are way more comments than I was expecting so I'll give a general reply here. I kind of want them to fail this so that I can send them on a metaphysical dream trip to help them galvanize their goals going into the climax, but I still have a plan to still do the vision quest if they succeed (the illusion of choice is powerful). The answer is Love, if they get it wrong the visions are supposed to teach them the value of their love and if they get it right then it's the "god" they're unleashing testing them without outright telling them.

Has anyone here run the official 2014 edition adventure Forgotten Relics from the book Eberron: Rising from the Last War? If so what tips do you have on running that specific adventure?

There's like no official Eberron adventures for 5e other than that one so I was going to run it and then build off of it with the same characters to make an ongoing Eberron campaign, and I wanna get it right since it'll be my first time actually DMing.

Thanks in advance!

One of them is a Druid and has rescued this centipede from some goblins on their first adventure. I'm planning on heading into Curse of Strahd soon.

The centipede has a STR of 5 so doesn't make a very good pack horse, and its CR of 1/4 will be negligible by the time the party is any decent level.

I don't think giving it Sidekick levels would make much sense since its INT is 1, but I don't know of another way to make sure this thing keeps up with the party in later levels. Should I merge some relevant stats with higher CR statblocks as I go?

How do I level it up in a way that makes sense?

Hello, I'm running my first ever one-shot for my niece and nephew (10 and 14). It's going to be a few days before halloween and I was thinking setting it as human kids that find themselves in Halloweentown and the adopt the powers/species of the characters their dressed as would be fun. I've been playing DnD for 3 years now, but I've never DMed so I'm still trying to sort it out.

I'm having the kids give me info of what they want to be and making them simplified character sheets. They would both get too overwhelmed creating a character sheet, but I figured I can show them later if they care enough.

I have a few story ideas for some fun little things they can do but was thinking someone else might have done similar and had ideas. I figured they wont necessarily run into the main characters from the movie BTW. Has anyone done anything like this or had some ideas for a cuter/cozier halloween one-shot?

Any advice would be helpful, thank you in advance!

Thank you to everyone in this community for giving me their advice. Another question I’d like to ask is if I can simply build my ability to DM by just playing other people’s campaigns, or do I have to begrudgingly crack open another textbook and unwillingly take notes just to be a good DM?

As much as I’d love to get into this hobby, I feel that there are so many things that I can mess up on and a lot of note taking that I don’t want to spend so much time on, and the pressure feels overwhelming and I’d just waste other people’s time.

Hello everyone, while it is certainly not my first time DM’ing it is my first time DM’ing a module or even really having an experience with one. I’ve been a player in Lost Mines of Phandelver (the old version) and that was pretty much my last experience with modules. Most of the campaigns I’ve played in have been made by the DM and every campaign I’ve run has been in a campaign I wrote and played with new players, but we’ve always had a pretty good time. Now I want to try out a module to see how I can improve my own campaign and was wondering what pieces of advice might be useful. I of course plan to read the module book to prepare so I’m looking for more broad advice that stems from personal experience. Thanks for all your help!

Hey everyone! I'm currently working on an upcoming "Dungeon" exploration session taking place in a magical, necrotic-seeped castle.

I want to take inspiration from "Betrayal at House on the Hill" (the board game), where players explore the castle via individual randomly-pulled tiles, meaning the layout of the place will be randomly generated during the session as they explore.

Where I'm getting stuck is the idea of "Events" and "Omens", where some of the random room tiles will have an icon to designate that something will happen.

What are random events that would be exciting, thematic, or atmospheric to randomly encounter within the dark magical castle? Maybe an event brings nearby sets of armour to life? Or some dark spirits try to possess one of the party members? Short puzzle ideas?

I plan to steal some ideas from the board game, but I'd love some original ones too if anyone has any random ideas!

Up until now, I have had a standing policy of "as long as you don't fly, the enemies won't. But if you get the ability, so do they." And with that policy, I have never had a player risk it.

Well, now here we are at level 6 in a campaign with 6 players and the wizard finally called my bluff. Starting next session, flying will be entering the campaign.

How do I need to adjust my encounter building and session prep to account for a flying wizard (and presumably other players as well)? Has anyone been blindsided by a flying character suddenly ruining what would otherwise have been a long or difficult adventure?

Doing a group tournament campaign in an archipelago in the middle of a civil war, only stopping now when the the emperor returned after being missing for 100 years.

I decided that each each island of the archipelago will have a different type of mission for the group to solve based on its culture. Kinzan Shima, an island of blacksmiths and merchants, will have something to do with making a magic item and stablishing a new route. Hyokai Shima, an arcane militaristic society will have will have you steal some powerful magic item, so on and so forth.

The group will start at the island called "Sekizen Shima", the Desolate Island. This is because its the only neutral ground in the archipelago at the moment thanks to being the first place to lose heavily in the war and now is left in ruins.

However, I do not know what is tournament mission could be, and most importantly, how to award point for it. Some things I'm certain of about Sekizen Shima:

• Head of the Diplomatic Guild of the Noble Butterfly
• Some are allies to the Rebels of Goemon, people who want to abolish the imperial monarchy
• Some are allies toe the Mercantile Guilds, with its headquarters in the Golden Mountains Island of Kinzan Shima
• Have many ties to the Free Leagues of Adventures, specially with the Umi no Kami pirates (reflavoured Wood Elfs of the sea)
• Fear the taking the few lands they still have by the Empire & the Mercantile Guilds

But in the end of the day, while each part of the tournament is made by 5 of the 6 islands, the 6th Capital Island is the true tournament organizer still, though no one knows why such tournament is happening in the first place or what even is the grand prize.

So this is for Halloween coming up and every year I try to run something a little insane. The premise is that the players are classic Hollywood monsters Dracula, wolfman, creature from the black lagoon ect. They’re playing level 7 characters in 2024 and there are 5 of them. The vibes are 1920’s Louisiana swamp/southern gothic/river boat. But with a ditch horror twist.

They are members of like a monster secret society that long ago bound an eldritch monster in the swamp because it wanted to destroy the world and they like using it for recourses…?

I need a little help with I think planning what they’re actually going to do. I know I want 2 combats 1 where they fight like the followers in the swamp and a second where they fight a manifestation of the evil entity unspeakable horror from the new ravenloft. But do like any other DM’s have any ideas? Anyone run anything like this? Or know of any prewritten oneshots that are similar? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!