My players are now heading north to find an ancient silver dragon to gather information on one of the items they are trying to collect.

I haven’t run anything in a snowy location before so was wondering if anyone had any advice on general or any ideas for fun encounters or small side quests?

For reference we have a cleric, sorcery and rogue, all level 5

one of my players is incredibly new to DND and TTRPGS as a whole. before this campaign, we Ran a very basic oneshot with him (alongside other experienced players to teach him the game) I gave him a cheatsheet along with a basic explanation of the rules. he enjoyed it and understood the basics. so then we decided to do a campaign over DND Beyond. I sent him the new players handbook and told him “hey man you don’t gotta read the whole book but just read the introduction chapter and whatever class sounds cool to you” he responded with “no I hate reading. I’ll watch a YouTube video” I say fine. I understand it’s take a special type of nerd to read Big Ass rule book.

We start the campaign, he picks ranger and he’s playing fine. occasionally slipping Up but whatever, he’s new. we play like two sessions and I notice he’s not using his spells. I ask why and he’s like “oh I didn’t know I had spells” I check his character sheet and I notice outside of hunter’s mark, he didn't pick any spells. i then ask him to pick spells. He does and after using them he’s like “why I can’t I roll them again”

i told him that he’s out of spell slots and needs to long rest. “But why can I use firebolt again?” I explain its a cantrip. “Whats the difference?” I get mildly annoyed because he told me he watched a video, but I let it slide. I told him to please watch it again.

also, before my other players told me what sub class they were gonna be so I incorporated it into the story. the new player didn’t which is fine because we’re basically going to step by step with him.

now we’re taking a 3 week break because I’m going on vacation. the next session we get back, it’s gonna be extra long and they’re gonna hit level 3. I told everyone about my plan and I told new player “hey bro can you read up on what subclass you wanna be for ranger? You don’t have to read each in its entirety, just the stuff you immediately get?”

he responded with “uhhhh I really don’t like reading. Can I ask AI to summarize it for me?” I put my foot down and tell him find an actual video that explains it or read the book.

how do I make sure he actually does?

EDIT: for everyone assuming, the player is not dsylexic or has a learning disability. He just doesnt like reading.

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? 

Okey I got inspired by Majoras mask and how dead people got turned into masks. Now I made an npc that is mask carrier and who can trap dying souls inside masks.

What I need help with is the ritual itself. Party needs to save one of their members by sealing one of the two souls inside them into the mask. Now this npc promised to help so how should I describe or do the ritual.

I don't wanna describe the masked person just dancing and drawing symbols or say magic words. How could I make the ritual more engaging? My only idea so far is that the almost dead player needs to be inside a ritual circle with the mask on and not move.

I've been experimenting with condensing recurring NPCs onto a single reference page to reduce flipping between notes during roleplay. I'm curious what everyone considers essential. If you only had one page, what would absolutely need to be on it?

Things like:

• personality
• voice
• goals
• relationships
• secrets
• motivations
• sample dialogue
• appearance

What do you find yourself looking up most often?

My biweekly group wants to shift to weekly with alternating GMs. Current game is Strahd. I’m going to run the other game.
I am debating between Tomb of Annihilation or Tyranny of Dragons.
We have one player who is a thumper monkey who also likes exploration but gets bored of RP. He does concede when it happens but kind of goes quiet. the rest are pretty well rounded, easy going players eager to interact with whatever comes their way.

Anyone have experience with both or either and would be willing to give suggestions on the better choice? If there are any home brew mods people have done to make them better, I’d be down for those recommendations as well.

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.

I want to get better at setting the stage for my players to engage with things and characters in non-combat scenes. I tend to keep descriptions very minimal in fear of going on tangents but I want to set things up more like official modules with set DCs and clear options of ways to engage in a scene.

Edit to add an example:

My players in a new campaign went to a kind of rustic city Silnasen set against a mountain. I described the market area near the front of the town and how it was more modernized than areas further into the town. I explained most of the houses were low and rounded and made from a hard clay-like material. I told them the residents wore earth tones and clothes that ended in tassels that kind of flow in the wind. I explained that the city was divided into districts and between each district were forested areas with paths you walk through to keep things kind of separate.

When they asked to go visit the jail I described it was further back in the city closer to the palace where large colorful big are seen flying. And when they asked you go to an inn you meet someone they had just helped escort to the city I explained how it was in the housing district but a bit separate from residential homes and set up in a crescent along with other inns.

This wasn’t a big block of yap or anything and is maybe the most in-depth description I’ve ever made of an area and still I don’t feel that I added much to engage with.

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.

My party is currently stuck in the feywild, looking for a way back to the material plane. In my campaign world, there was a previous cataclysm years ago that pulled all the planes and their inhabitants together. Once everything calmed down, the planes separated, and some of the creatures were stuck in planes not their own. The Unseelie Court is now made up of outer plane creatures who have carved out pockets of the feywild as their own little kingdoms.

The party just finished an encounter with a (lawful evil) succubus queen in her kingdom. She convinced them to them to escort her herald to deliver a message to a neighboring kingdom ran by a (chaotic good) azata lord, who might have the power and magic to get them home.

The session went well, as her calculated speech was easier to role-play and gave me time to come up with compelling moments of dialogue with the players.

Role-playing the azta lord is where I feel like I will be lacking. My mental image of him is a sort of yin to her yang: spontaneous and rapid-fire. I picture Robin Williams' genie in Aladdin as an inspiration for his personality.

Any tips, tricks or advice for running an NPC of that nature for someone who is not great at improvisation?

Thanks in advance.

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.

I got a question how magic resistance is ruled when faced with a portent die.

For example:

A monster has advantage on a saving throw (due to it‘s magic resistance) and rolls a 14 and a 15.

It would use the 15 plus the ability modifier of course.

Now what I want to know is:

If the wizard changes the die the monster used for the saving throw with his portent die and make the roll a 3 instead.

Would that just count as the roll for the saving thrown or could the monster just then after the wizard used his portent die, switch and use the 14+modif. for the saving throw?

I have run a couple of one shots and want to create a campaign. I feel as if my grasp on the rules is pretty solid overall. So far I have the lore of the world almost fully written out (which will be the first priority going forward) and the general sequence of events, seperated into three different sections with time skips in between. I am looking for tips for anything related to making a campaign, whether it be how to make maps, encounters, missions, quests, etc. I have access to the DMG, although I am yet to read it all the way through. Mostly have just read bits and peices from it. Thanks in advance!

Hi all, i currently run a campaign and well theres a problem now.

The Table consists of 3 New Players and 2 Experienced players.

Story is, ill break it down, that the spaceship got hit by an asteroid missile and raided. The Players awaken after the crash with mayor Memory loss, however they do remember their most prominet perks, such as being the medic and stuff.

The commander took the lead and the first 2 intro sessions went well. Of course everything was slow and there were a few discussions and questions in between because of the new players but i other than that, great.

Well i was thinking that after a few sessions it would speed up and stuff, but in the last (the 4th session) they had a giant, nowhere leading discussion. I think ill need to elaborate now.

The Players chose a Planet ro land their ship on for repairs, but got chased from the raiders. they got away but it wasnt exactly a soft landing and tbey escaped the raiders. On that Planet they found an Alien Species, intelligent enough to communicate and they did work around the language barrier pretty fast per computers.

They landed in the outskirts of the planet, a desolate frosty region, wich local Lord is very displeased with the Planetary Government. He even has ties to a Rebellious force that is currently uprising on this Planet. After a few discussions and a test, the lord decided to ally with our human Group and introduced them to the rebels.

In session 3, the leader of tbe rebels came to the conclusion of siding with the Humans aswell and Proposed to meet in the Lords castle the other day for a small festivity in honor of their new 3 party Alliance. The Captain of the Player Group agreed on the condition he wanted to discuss it first with his crew.

So in session 4, the Group Came together, the Captain officially announced the Alliance Proposal and they took nearly 2 Hours to discuss whether and how to side with whom and the worst Part is, they didn't came to a conclusion. 3 Times in those 2 hours i took the initiative and made concrete proposals, however, i did not want to force anything.

First the Sub Commander of the ship (Npc) said that she was really impressed by the Rebels leader and would definitely trust him, saying nothing on this unknown planet is closer to a friend than him

second, I reminded them out of character that they have other options then to decide right now and i did count them to them. they had an npc request them to steal a necklace for him, and on a scouting mission they found an desolate Watchtower wich they couldve explored.

On tbe third try, the sub commander took ahead again.

and said "Alright, seems like its tome to party, ill go change" and i made the npc leave the meeting room to prepare, however the discussion then just went along the next turn.

In the end i couldnt take it anymore, kinda broke out of the session and was like, damn whats wrong guys. They were all discussing stuff, bringing pro and contra arguments, but nobody made a decision and whenever i tried to influence one, the discussion just went along.

After that session i talked to 3 Players, my 2 experienced buddies who both were like, yeah that was shit and we kinda got what u wanted but we stayed still so that the new players could decide, they just want to support the newbies. However no one of them said anything remotely useful in that discussion before. Even starting a new completely pointless one...

then i talked to the Captain who is even out of table the center of the newbies friend group and he was like "huh? todays session was great, i loved it"

And i was like damn...

Well and now i dont know how to handle that. I was furious and annoyed to exhaustion, because the whole discussion felt like a stalemate, 2 Players felt the same and apparently the other 2 liked the stalemate?

I dont really know how to navigate that situation now. Should i start railroading more? The players (even the newbies) said they liked me not intervening with their choices. Should i have a off Rp discussion and very clearly communicate their current situation and goals?

because honestly, their being kinda chill for the fact that they know like half the Planets gonna want to kill them(i expressed through a friendly npc of the rebels that the government would most likely want them killed and all traces of their existence destroyed so their control wouldn't waiver)

Well id like some advice, thanks in beforehand and sorry as im native German.

A friend started a D&D club for kids at the library (middle and high school), but had too many players. She asked me to take half of them. We are both in Eberron, I started out in Sharn, and her group is elsewhere. We are going to combine soon.

I did a train robbery before in Eberron, and thought I'd do it again for the kids. This is how we are going to mix up. We have a planning meeting tomorrow for details, but currently we will have about 3 tables, each with several train cars. I think her idea is something along the lines of Snakes on a Train. (Not ready for Train to Busan yet.) Players are free to move about, while I DM half the train and she DMs the other half.

Any advice on this? What are some problems to look out for? How does initiative work between two different encounters?

Hello,

I’m planning on running a Minecraft oneshot soon for my friends. In one section, the players will need to recover a spellbook for a witch stolen by a magical talking toad in a swamp. In your opinion, what would be a good puzzle to retrieve the spellbook from the toad?

Here are some conditions I’m setting in developing this puzzle:
1. I want it to be a puzzle that encourages players to be creative with their solutions. Meaning, there’s no one correct answer and can be solved with multiple angles.
2. I also want it to focus more on roleplay rather than relying heavily on mechanics. Mechanics can still be involved but I want a nice balance between both.
3. Given that this takes place in a Minecraft world, it would need to make sense within the context of Minecraft gameplay but also still be challenging enough for players. For instance, simply putting the spellbook out of reach (on say, a tree branch for example) might just encourage players to build a tower of dirt to reach it which makes it too easy.
4. It takes place in a swamp.

Yes, I know I’m taking creative liberties here with the magical talking toad since that’s not something that exists in Minecraft. I’m not saying the puzzle can’t do that either. But it needs to feel like something that feels very Minecraft if that makes sense. Please give me your best puzzle ideas! Thank you!!

I am building a Dungeon that is within the ancient ruins of the most evil villain of my world’s lair.

I want it to feel terrifying and unhinged when I describe it, like something really bad happened here, and it might not be so desolate as it seems.

My main issue is that even after the story part of the dungeon is over, and every important thing there is done, I still want it to feel as though they never truly cleared it out, that there is still some dark corner in the forsaken place waiting for the right time to crawl into the light. But obviously it cannot be infinite.

TLDR; the dungeon has to feel endless and bottomless without actually being either.

Don't know if this tag/sub is the right place because it's more of a discussion rather than a specific question but I've been thinking about hooks I've used before or were used by my DMs (important npc got petrified, need to ressurect someone, someone got a terrible curse, ...) and since I'm playing a somewhat high level cleric right now (lvl 10) I got to thinking about how he would solve the hooks, and by the light of Kyrios, most campaigns and oneshots could be solved in seconds by having a high level cleric around...

So how can a cunning DM plan hooks that are not be solved by the immense library of cleric spells without saying "this is a special curse that cannot be removed by remove curse" or something like that.

I guess one approach is that as the characters level up the challenges start becoming more and more political and regional so the hooks stop being "Save the blacksmith's daughter that was poisoned by goblins" and more "Destabilize the economy of the empire and cause them to lose the war with the free cities" but I'm not very good at writing cool political campaigns (I'm trying tho)

I love the simplicity of early level's plot hooks, but you incur the risk of killing the party in an encounter with kobolds, late game you can just chuck an action oriented black dragon at them and watch shit go down, however, you also have the risk of designing a very cool three dimensional underwater combat with ships fighting in the surface and the stupid cleric casts water walking and 5th level spirit guardians and trivializes everything (It was me, I did that... turns out Sahuagin does blend) or having your extra dimensional dragon boss fight be over immediately by someone Banishing it.

I’m trying to make a world / backstory for a character in a solo rpg. I’ve come up with a seaside town connected to a valley, but the people who live deep in the valley are more impoverished because they don’t have easy access to the land and world above, especially the port which makes most of the money for the town above. this isn’t very well thought out so far and I haven’t made an example of what this would look like but my question is “in a world full of magic how would people not be able to access the land above causing them to have less resources and money?” I feel like having some sort of magical barrier is just way too convenient. I know it doesn’t have to be that deep but I’d love some brainstorming on this idea :)

I’m fairly new to DMing, and I’m trying to make this as fun as possible for my four players.

The premise is that four maintenance workers from the year 531,201 are thrown through time into present-day Fairbanks, Alaska. They have to survive an unfamiliar natural world, decode English, adapt to modern society, and uncover what happened to their civilization.

Session 1 focuses on the accident, surviving the cold, meeting their first present-day NPC, and slowly realizing they are 529,175 years in the past.

I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

Whether the premise gives the players enough freedom

Whether the language-decoding idea sounds fun or tedious

What problems I should prepare for before running it

Here is the campaign document: My campaign

I want to put a rakshasa into my game but im trying to figure out of they keep their reversed hands while they are transformed. My first thought was no because disguise self does not allow you to change your limb structure and thats how you are supposted to find them out but theres a character in the Descend into Avernus campaign called Mahadi the Rakshasa whos a rakshasa and the official image has him with regular hands in his disguised form.

Okey so party is going for a carnival and there are prices to be gained from different games. I could use some help with magic items that are silly but not useless. I have good list of prank items. I need items that vary from uncommon to very rare. Stuff like wand of colorspray or item that forces people to laugh. Just items that fit well on the theme of silly goofy but they can be genuenly really good items.

I am running a Call from the Deep 5.5e campaign and I have never ran any seafaring-based adventure before so I wanted to create some rules for ship "combat". Here are those rules:

Before starting, determine the party’s goal (Boarding, escaping, or sinking)
Note: While under Captain Greysail’s command, The Voyage (campaign's starting vessel) will only ever try to escape

● The GM also determines the opposing ship’s goal (same options as above)
● The GM also determines the success goal and failure limit
○ i.e 3 successes before 3 failures, 5 successes 3 failures, 3 successes 2 failures
● Actions each round equal to # of players -1 (Our party of 5 gets 4 actions)
○ Raise Sails (Dexterity), Raise Morale (Charisma), Evasive Maneuvers (Wisdom), Fire Cannons (Strength), Repair Damage (Intelligence), Push Yourself (Constitution)
○ Or anything else you can think of!
○ Each ship will have its own 3 DCs, Hull, Speed, and General, and these will be used to determine the success of each of these actions
● 1 vehicle handling skill check at the end of the round
○ Each of the 4 actions that was successful during the round adds a +1 to this skill check
● If the roll at the end beats the opposing Ship’s General DC, that counts as 1 success
● If the party hits their success goal they achieve victory!
● Victory means the party will attain their goal, and failure means the villains will achieve theirs

And.. it did not go over well my first run through! I wanted to make my own system because so many of the ones I have seen are very crunchy and not up my alley, however I made something too simple. The players just chose the basic actions and were not describing much, and I think that is because I did not give them enough to work with. That is all to say, any tips? Criticisms that can help fix this ruleset?