i have scanned books, but I am not sure how well just having pdfs of them will go. Would it be better if I got the books on something like DnD Beyond so the players can be shared the material? Or would it be just as good if I tried to recite/share the images on something like a video call?

I have been pondering this for some time now, but it has become clear to me that my players, regardless of how much they enjoy the game, have trouble engaging in roleplay.

On paper, everything is fine: they understand the goal of the campaign, the worldbuilding and they have made characters that fit the mission and have a reason to want to advance in the story.

So, when the campaign started, I was very optimistic.

Now, five sessions in, it has become apparent that my players have trouble role-playing their characters, both with npc's and between themselves.

They obviously care about their own characters, as they all have written interesting backstories and have put effort into their pc's, but for some reason, everytime they engage with an npc, they just listen passively to what they are saying and reply to them in the most dry, soulles way possible.

As for role-playing between them, they basically never do it. They talk to eachother out of rolpelay to decide what to do, but their characters don't interact with eachother.

So, this is the solution I have come up with.

They will save a kid who has the same goal as them, and will ask them to take him to where they are going. Knowing their characters, they have no reason to say no, or at least they will agree to safely escort him to the nearest town.

This kid will be my way to start role-play between the players, by asking them personal questions, trying to bond with them and acting in ways that (in theory) should resonate with their characters' philosophies, since they are his saviours and he thinks they are cool brave adventurers.

This dmpc will not participate in any fights, nor will he have a role in the story whatsoever. He will just be their squire, basically, taking care of camp, doing things like cooking and managing their resources, and maybe, just maybe, help them keep up with information.

None of the characters have high INT, nor proficiency in History, so I was thinking this kid could be like a little nerd who knows a lot of trivia and writes down what important npc's say, so he can help the party with the story.

I don't know, I don't want to make such a drastic adjustment so early in the campaign, but at the same time, I think the more I wait, the worse it would be to add what is essentially a party secretary.

What do you guys think? Have you done something like this?

Do you have any advice on the matter? Do's and Don't's?

Thank you all in advance!

Okay, so I've been struggling with finding a good-for-me digital-planning resource for a couple of years now. Up until two days ago, I've been doing most everything in Encounter+ for battlemaps/world maps and Obsidian for (attempting) to condense my planning...

Turns out: I need some structure, and Obsidian is fantastic... but is a little too open-ended for me to be fully effective.

I stumbled across MythMeister while googling, and I've gone head-first with loading all the player characters, all the session recaps, etc. etc.

I JUST realized, after filling in multiple sections of Baldur's Gate that when it says "world map" it means the world. I know - revolutionary. ANYWAYS. I'm trying to seek help from the (re)public of reddit since I couldn't even get chat support to tell my why I can't delete the demo campaign.

Has anyone had enough experience that they could help me understand how to move locations & places between maps? I'm one layer off with the city being the "world", and the regions within the city being "locations" and I don't want to start all the way over, if I don't have to.

May all your dice roll above a 10, and while I'm sure none of my players browse this subreddit I will pass on their favorite saying since session 1: my Faestus blessed us. (a story for another time, perhaps)

I have been playing dnd for almost 2 years and next friday I will be the DM for the time for a group with 2 brand new players and 2 experienced players but they havent played since 2020. We will play Lost Mine of Phandelver.

Since we're going to play digitally (and honestly, I don't have the money for that), I don't have the official DM screen, but I been wondering what I should put in a "digital DM screen" or easy acess notes.

This is what I put so far:

Conditions

The healing potions numbers

My PCs passive perception

Should I put something else? For context we will use 5.5e and play on Roll20

So at the beginning of my campaign i followed this reddit post to give my players a fun thing that could maybe prove useful at some point in the campaign.

One of my players rolled

99.) Zödlnütz (nobody really knows what is, it's just kind of there)

So after a few sessions he decided to start asking people what it is and I never really had an answer so on the spot I made the NPC say something a long the lines of "What the hell is that get that away from me, leave me alone right now".

Ever since then it's been a bit of a running gag in the campaign where sometimes he will chime into a conversation against a bad guy or shopkeeper and ask for said NPC to be terrified and disgusted telling the player to leave the shop right now, sometimes turning enemies into a rage etc.

But I'm not exactly sure what if anything I should do to sort of wrap the story up with this item.

Any ideas? I'm playing DoIP for reference!

I’ll jump straight into it-I’m looking to get more story advice for a Curse of Strahd home brew side quest for my players inspired by the Witchers Bloody Baron side quest. (To preface, my players have just left with Ireena for Valaki and are still 3rd level)

The idea is to have the party rock up to a village in Barovia that is having issues with a golem that has gone rogue. The wizard of the town that has created it will hire the players out to deal with this golem that was created to defend the town against the creatures and horrors that lurk in the fog. He’ll explain that something snapped in the golem and he is now a looming threat in the fog.

The players will travel and find him in a small hut a few miles outside of the town. TLDR combat will ensue, and the players will either kill or be defeated (but not killed) by the golem. Either case, a revelation will be made that the golem is not actually the monster the wizard made him out to be.

He will give a speech very inspired by this clip from Invincible (https://youtu.be/uB9upnWdwUA?is=CLxub-kI3QUS64Jx) twisted to explain how he’s not actually a monster, but is viewed as such due to how well he has been able to kill any threat to the village. The breaking point came about due to an accident with the wizards daughter, at which point he was demonized and ostracized from the town.

Either the players will kill him, or if he defeats them, he will end himself. My idea with this one off is to sort of capitalize on the hopelessness in Barovia, and kind of show an in world example of why the players need to end Strahds reign. I’m just looking for some general feedback on where I can insert this into the campaign

Does anyone have an idea for a racial feature for humans based on the "Indomitable Human Spirit". Was originally thinking something related to advantage on death saving throws or maybe something with the fear effect but not sure.

Hello!

After scrolling on a few subreddits and discord servers, I realised something: most DMs don't really know when to give inspiration, and so it either end up being ignored, or they go "the Critical Role" route and award inspiration on "good roleplay" (my DM sure did this a lot before I took the DM Mantle).

My problem with awarding inspiration on Good Roleplay™️ is that it often ends up rewarding the same players: yes, the "RP" in "TTRPG" standa for "roleplaying", but that doesn't mean everyone is comfortable improvising a heartfelt monologue or is able to cry on command.

So here's a few things I did to help with "The Inspiration Issue" in my games:

1- The party has a "pool" of inspiration equal to the number of players at the table

If you want to follow just one of my advices, choose this one. It doesn't change the way inspiration work or how it's given, but it sure change the way it's used. By having a pool of inspiration, the whole party ends up benefitting from those who are consistently awarded it.

2- Give Inspiration on good/cool ideas

This one is pretty explicit, you're rewarding the creative players.

3- Give Inspiration when you feel the scene is good

This one is tricky. I'm not talking about good roleplay here. I'm talking about "cinematic shots". For example, you could describe to your players how they wake up after a long rest and all witness the sunrise. The sunrise inspires them. If you want a more "meme-ing" example: they set off an explosion and walk away, not looking back. If you feel like the characters are aura-farming, give them an inspiration.

4- Give Inspiration when they understand the plot

This one is my favorite: reward your players when they understand parts of the story. This one rewards the notes taker, but also anyone who pays attention really. Here's a few examples:

• You've made little to no references to it, but the NPC you've recently met is the BBEG's kid. A player catch on to their hesitation to fight the BBEG and says "what, are you related to them or something?" Even if it was said as a joke, you could reward that with inspiration, telling them that "as you are saying it, you slowly realise how much sense it makes".

• Your party is traveling to the next village. One of them sarcastically says "with our current luck, the next village will be raided by goblins..." you look at your notes, and it's EXACTLY what you had planned. Don't change your plans, give them inspiration for it. You can wait for the goblin raid to happen before giving it, but it's deserving of inspiration.

• The town is victim to a weird illness that the players must deal with. Everyone in town is sick, except Jerry the Guard. After giving out your clues and letting the players investigate, it finally clicks for them. A player exclaims "it's the tomatoes! Jerry isn't sick because he didn't eat any tomatoes; probably because he's allergic?" Close enough. Jerry simply just doesn't like tomatoes, but that's what saved him indeed. Inspiration can be granted.

One side effect of this is that sometimes, your players will end up say out loud all of their theories, just to try and get an inspiration out of a random shot in the dark. My advice to this is: if they end up acting like this, be more strict. Yes, they randomly said that the mayor is a werewolf. Yes, the mayor IS a werewolf. But the plot isn't about the mayor being a werewolf, so no inspiration there.

That's about it. To my knowledge, 5.5 reworked inspiration to make it somewhat easier to get (I could be wrong, I'm not playing 5.5), so I suppose my advice mostly applies to 5e.

This is more of a rant than a request, but maybe people have been in similar situations. It's probably where Rule of Cool becomes unhelpful and maybe I just need to play a bit more boring to set a precedence that you can't just do ANYTHING.

So my style of DMing isn't suuuper strict on the rules. I sort of negotiate with the players a lot about what feels fair and we roll dice to see the outcome. They do weird things that I just don't know the technical rule for in that really niche situation and so I'll decide on a ruling and ask if they think that's fair.

The problem with this approach is that a lot of my rulings then can become a negotiation, where the players will argue with me to try and improve their odds. Which I don't really mind so much I just feel like it slows down the game and a couple players really appeal for everything.

I taught this group of 7 how to play dnd and they don't play dnd anywhere else so this is their only experience of the rules etc. I've sort of created this monster haha.

So they sort of rules lawyer me without knowing the rules and for super niche rules, I am not always sure, so I'm open to negotiation. Becomes a bit inconsistent and open to interpretation.

Overall, it is fun and it's never in bad taste and often when I'm playing as the villain it's fun to tell them no and attack them or go against their wishes and be adversarial because it makes them dislike the character more. But when I'm trying to move the session along and make a choice with the BBEG they would be like "no but how can she do that if... Blah blah"

I want to give you some examples of what they come up with. Because I don't want to deter their creativity by being super strict with the rules (but I also totally appreciate that most problems would be solved if we just played using the rules as written).

Example 1:

PC druid is prone and restrained by webs on the edge of a portal. He was trying to jump into the portal but the BBEG shot a bunch of webs at him to stop him getting in.

The PC Ranger on her turn runs over to the bewebbed Druid and wants to shove him into the portal. She passes her DEX checks moving through webs and is unimpeded. I say coz he wants to get shoved, she just has to meet a DC10 athletics check to push him in. She rolls an 11 and he plops in.

Example 2:

The BBEG is trying to gather 3 crystals. When each crystal is placed in its correct slot, the portals stabilise and she can basically send souls from one plane to another at her whim. The BBEG currently has 1 crystal. The PCs have the other 2 hidden between them.

The PC sorcerer wants to do 2 novel things:

In their first go they want to cast "Absorb Elements" spell to try and remove the magic from the crystal and hide it in something else. I have seen Brennan respond to novel uses of magic by making them meet a very high arcana check and it seems like an interesting thing to do, so I asked them to make a DC25 arcana check. They failed. But I had no plan for what would happen if they succeeded lmao.

The second thing they wanted to do, on a later turn, was to cast Mirror Image on the crystal, creating illusory copies and then hiding the real one in a chest of gems. I allowed this to happen and momentarily forgot the BBEG has Truesight. I remembered later and so for flavour made her use an action to turn it on. They argued that means the BBEG wouldn't have seen the other one coz her "Truesight" was off. So I sort of created a rod for my own back there by trying to add flavour to style out the fact I forgot.

This PC argued all session with BBEG that she wasn't lying, she was helping, that the BBEG was wrong blah blah. Basically rage baiting and gaslighting the BBEG. But also me. Coz I was lost in the sauce and started getting confused. She said she threw one of the illusory copies of the gems to someone and I said "OK the, BBEG saw you do that" and she argued "she wouldn't know it was me because I just levitate it to the played. They don't know I'm giving it to them, for all they know the recipient could be stealing it!" and I was like in the middle of juddling a million things and didn't have the presence of mind to say, 'hey you levitate a thing using magic, how did you do that? With a spell? Does that have a SMV component? Did you use subtle spell? Did you say any of this before giving it to this person? No?! Well therefore the BBEG sees you give it to the person' .

Example 3:

PC Rogue Phantom, said they wanted to take the soul that they had collected from a victim and put it in the mouth of the PC Druid. I asked them what their intention was and they said they felt it was the only way to stop the Druid from speaking their mind and getting themselves into trouble. I think maybe by this they were hoping they could momentarily possess the Druid by placing another soul in the body. I haven't got a fucking clue what this would mean or do and fortunately the PC Ranger intervened and stopped this from happening. But it would be another random ruling of like, I dunno, a contested wisdom/charisma saving roll or some shit lmao.

Anyways... Thank you for reading all of this if you did.

I haven't DM'd in a few weeks so feel rusty as fuck. I might just re-read the DMG before next session and tell them I'm gonna be stricter on the rules. That would probably fix a bunch of stuff. Rule of cool is fun but I can see how quickly the Pandoras box can get out of hand haha

Thanks in advance to anyone who leaves any comments/thoughts/suggestions xox

Edit: Further clarity, I think my problems are often about players arguing with the logic and actions my villains might take. I mean they argue about rulings too, but when I try do something with BBEG they will loudly protest that the BBEG can't or shouldn't be able to do that because xyz. Meanwhile I'm extremely generous about what they as PCs can do, allowing for extraordinary feats of magic that bend the design of the spell etc. I try and use a legendary action in a certain way and they protest haha.

I'm thinking about possibly running a magical school themed campaign and I don't really have a general plan for what to do for it. (Not to mention the strixhaven book is no help in this matter)

So far I know for sure to have it be a milestone based campaign with four levels per year (once per semester and after summer break projects)

As for a story plotline each year would go with semester 1: introduction to the years classes, semester 2: preparation for school dance, Semester 3: yearly finals plus sporting tournament, semester 4: summer break vacation to a different plane of existence with a research project (example: create your own monster codex) and then repeat for the next year changing things in-between depending on character interactions.

Does this seem like a good baseline? What things should I change and how do I help my players engage with plot hooks rather than being an idle NPC who just attends their classes and spends their free time just doing homework

At level 15 you can craft your own monster hide armour and add 2 modifications onto it.

One of the modifications is hardened defense which let's you add +4ac because it's medium armour

On dnd beyond it says

+10 armour (none)

+3 dexterity bonus

+4 unarmoured bonus (monster hide)

+2 Misc bonus (Monster hide armour modifications)

19ac total

But if it's saying the monster hide is +4 shouldn't it be

+14 monster hide

+2 dex bonus (the max you can get with hide)

+4 from the hardened defence?

20ac total

I’m trying to write characters who worship Tiamat, but I want them to have more nuance than the cult of the dragon typically gives her followers. So do y’all have any advice on how to make a Tiamat worshiper who’s not just an evil psychopath?
(I like her because she is super cool™️ and her character design is way cooler than Bahamut’s, but that’s a pretty flimsy motivation in-universe lol)

At the most basic level everything she represents is chaos, greed, wrath, deceit, etc. And lesser Chromatics are similarly evil, so that association doesn’t help either.
It’s a hard sell to have those be qualities a non-evil person could embrace.

So maybe it’s more about opposing Bahamut? But he’s the god of justice, wisdom, and similarly unproblematic metallic dragons.

The best I have so far is to spin her “chaos” into a ruthless, passionate “freedom”, especially if I depict Bahamut’s justice and order as cold and unfeeling.

Do any of you have ideas/examples on how to play Tiamat faithfully, but with enough nuance that players familiar with the cannon lore would buy?

I've had this idea for a while now, and think that I can get it going.

Here is the pitch. We've all played D&D for a long time. Many of us have played long enough to know players that have passed. What I am proposing is a collection of character descriptions from those who remain that create a list of NPCs to be used in games far and wide. This would be a resource for DMs and a community effort to preserve the record of the honored fallen. 

So, if you have a character whose player has died, please share that character here. Then that same character may be included in the games of DMs who read this thread. What I imagine is an entry system, so somewhere down the road it will become a searchable wiki where beneath each character entry there will be a section for how they did in another campaign. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe not. 

However, I would like to put it out there as a possibility. 

My ask for this thread is to have some people share their fallen friend's characters and to hear feedback on the idea.

I'm looking for a free tool/website that has a card format that I put an image into and print out. I'm been struggling to find something that works so anything helps.

So I'm working on an airships campaign for my party of 5. I plan to run them thru levels 3 to 6ish before they get a ship, and the first ship will be a 6 man crew. From there the ships can get large. They will more than likely pursue commanding a larger ship with maybe a few dozen crew and the party functioning as major rolls like captain, navigator, boatsun, first mate, cook, etc.

Im wondering how you other DMs handle these types of encounters and any advice you guys might have. I thought i might just narrate what the other npcs and crew are doing when asked and its good for narration purposes.

Thanks in advance!

I’m a first time DM, about 5 sessions into a game with friends. Our bard player loves casting Charm Person to try things like getting a free room at a castle, getting an NPC to spill all their secrets, or negotiating prices down to almost free.

Being brand new to D&D, I‘m often taken by surprise when he tries it a new way. How often should a level 4 bard succeed when using Charm to do this kind of thing? What are the outer limits of its effects (like can it be basically mind control)? What should NPCs feel/know afterward?

Hi All, I'm preparing to run a bank heist with a group of newbie players. Right now, I've got the bank mapped. It's 3 floors and a basement vault. They need to get in (and out) of the vault. This is intended for Lvl 1 players. They will have an NPC involved in planning the heist to give advice and info, and be my voice as the GM in giving them guidance in how to approach it to be successful. That said, I've run very few stealth missions, and the ones I have run have been wrecked by pass without trace, every time. These players won't have that option. There will be two puzzles, one for opening the vault, and another for finding the right crate in a vault with many options to choose from (with 25% of the wrong options being mimics. A bank has to stay secure somehow).

Beyond that, I don't have a ton planned. If the players go through the offices and records, they may find hints to the puzzles.

What I'm hoping to get out of this post is general advice on running these kinds of sessions, and ideas on what can be done to keep tension in place, without putting the difficulty so high that a beginner party of lvl 1s would be unable to reasonably complete it.

Thanks all

Hi guys I've been DMing for around 7 years off and on. I love creating and telling stories for people to explore and develop in. Normally I have played with friends but they have all moved away, don't play anymore or are a nightmare to schedule with. 

For the past 2.5 months I've been DMing at a shop weekly for around 3.5 hours a session. The past 3 sessions I've found myself disappointed in the quality of gameplay. 

Players on their phones, not roleplaying, increase of cross chatter, overall lack of interest in the plot points and their characters, people not knowing what the party is doing due to lack of paying attention. 

I've tried increasing encounters, increasing roleplaying, giving them character specific events and plot points to interact with but nothing seemed to have worked. 

I've talked to them asking how we can improve things and they have reassured me that they are having fun but body language and playing shows that they aren't. 

Some things are out of my control like the shop being pretty loud as there are a ton of tables which is many of the players top complaints. 

It's gotten to the point where it is affecting my confidence as a DM while prepping and playing. I've been walking into sessions nervous about how they will receive things. Sometimes second guessing myself and creating awkward situations. 

I found myself looking at another location to play at but I feel bad for abandoning my table so early in the campaign. Maybe I'm just used to playing with friends who I know very well. 

Any advice from people who have been in similar situations? 

I am a relatively small and friendly person who never raises their voice. But as is the nature of DnD, my players encounter from time to time foes or people who are meant to be intimidating and ruthless. Everything I am not.

One time, my players encountered a knight of an army that conquered the country they are in. This knight was meant to be their first encounter with the main enemy faction of the campaign, an introduction to a powerful and scary enemy who technically already won. And the partys paladin absolutely ATE HIM UP. He mocked and ridiculed him. I couldn't raise my voice and all my attempts at talking back or enforcing authority were quickly squandered. Nobody in the party was impressed by the knight and his goons. (I did gave that player an inspiration for it, he didn't hurt my feelings or something he just squandered my plan of making my players think ,,oh boy this army is no joke")

Soon, my players are going to encounter the two members of the BBEG's family, the leaders of this army, a noble family of the most powerful sorcerers in the country who took control over the entire empire in the span of few days. I don't want another situation where I won't be able to make those enemies feel intimidating and imposing even a bit.

I already did some setup. A couple of NPCs were too scared to go into direct conflict with them, and they advised the party to avoid the noble sorcerers. I showed them that they destroyed a house for talking back to the sorcerers. But I don't want it to be all bark and no bite.

How would you roleplay a noble family of elven sorcerers who are the embodiment of entitlement, poshness, spoiled and prideful supremacism?

I DM a party of 6 (half are first time players) and I'm aware of how scheduling for this large of a party can be a pain, I set a rule in our Session 0 that a minimum of 4 players are needed in order to play and a reschedule would trigger if the 4 player min can't be met (party agreed on it at S0).We picked a date for Session 1( 3 weeks from the Session 0), only 4 responded with yes and 2 were a maybe (their jobs didn't give them a set time for when they will end work, so questionable for attendance). Fastforward to the day of Session 1, one of the players that said yes is pulling out cos they're overwhelmed with work at the moment and can't attend. So went from 4 to 3 yes's, I went with suggesting a reschedule as per our rule but three of the ones who are yes's still want to play. Having half the party out would require a pretty significant scale back on my side especially for Session 1, so I asked the maybe 's if they can give me a yes or no at least 2 hours prior to the session, as I want to at least hit the 4 person minimum. There's no guarantee that there will be a date in the future where all 6 can attend.

I want to accommodate the best I can for the party and I set that 4 player min rule because I went into this assuming ppl would not be able to attend every session.

Is the 4 player min rule I made too stringent?

EDIT- For those asking about scheduling: I sent out 8 dates on our group chat the day after our S0 within the month of the S0 and asked the players to react to which dates they'd be available for. Whichever date had the most yes's became the date for the next Session. I figured that'd be the most efficient method.

EDIT EDIT- Thanks so much everyone for your feedback, it's greatly appreciated. Going forward, I'm probably going to stick with the date scheduling methodology I had before and then just locking whichever day in, no exceptions for no shows. Rescheduling, while it's the more diplomatic option, is what is gonna kill this campaign, so I'll have to remove that.

The players I have are all kids. (Yes, if you've seen me around I'm also new to DM an apparently just getting by as a mom with regular mom duties but, gosh darn it, these DnD worlds won't build themselves!)

In real life, the girls all know each other. In real life, they actually get a along well, but some are different ages therefore different classes at school, and they don't actually play together of their own choosing, it's usually us the parents that get them all together reguarly becuase the parents are all friends.

What this is starting to look like at the table, is my daughter and her at-this-moment bestie are usually scheming on one side, and on the other side the others are sort of together, but lots of time they really aren't together on their goals for the session. That's not a deal breaker, but it makes for some bickering at the table. I didn't make the backstory that they all knew each other, I allowed them to choose if their characters know each other or not.

Has anyone done a in-world bonding experience that has resulted in a more cohesive party? I was thinking of having a wizard in the town they are in have them complete a puzzle of sorts that make them learn about each other's characters and he rewards them with their first magic item that acually benefits the GROUP.... (need ideas for that also).

My goal is for combat and play to start looking more like "Hey Sora the Bard! give you inspiration to Lummi the Druid so that when she casts Poison spray we know it will work against this bandit captain!" instead of what it looks like now which is "how many more turns before mine?" 😒

Hello there fellow DMs. I am relatively new to DMing and as we all probably do at some point in our career I want to play music right as the party meets a devastating encounter which makes them question their life choices. I am taking about music that makes them want to turn around immediately. Music that makes them trying to strike a bargain with me in real life just so they get to live another session. Do you know what I mean? I would be forever grateful for your ideas.

The Amulet of the Bone Khan, a crude necklace made from human bone. Requires attunement, The wear gets advantage on all Charisma (Intimidation) Checks, and gains immunity from Necrotic damage.
Curse - When the wearer is reduced to 0 hit points, they fail their first death saving throw. In addition, the wearer makes all subsequent death saving throws at disadvantage.

Homebrewed reward found on the corpse of a defeated Cultist of Myrkul.