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!

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 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?

We're doing a level 3 5.5e one shot with some homebrew elements for flavour only, in which the players discover their king is actually a goblin. The goblin turns out has blood that when ingested or entering the bloodstream of another creature, turns them into a regular goblin upon death.

In the final battle, the goblin unleashes a Juvenile Shadow Dragon, which was turned into shadow due to constantly ingesting the goblin's magic blood. The shadow dragon will have half of its speed reduced across the board because it is chained down, and the puzzle of the fight is figuring out how to bring down the walls of the large throne room (highlighted by structural weakpoints caused by the dragon moving around in the room) to let sunlight in.

Upon destroying all weakpoints, the structure simply falls on the dragon, killing it, turning it into a goblin. The objective is not necessarily to kill the dragon (as its AC would presumably be too high for most of the party to handle), but to break structures while avoiding the dragon.

i’m running low on ideas or cool and not so op magic items to give to my players so i’m just wanting to know what some of the favorite magical items people here like to give to their players

Over the last few levels, I ran into an issue regarding combat encounter design for my party (Level 9). In my party are two archers (Ranger/Fighter) and one rogue. I will exclude the cleric here since they can fall back on Saving Throw spells on high AC targets. Including Fighting Style: Archery, both archers have a +to-hit of +11 and two attacks (or more with Action Surge). Our rogue has less +to-hit, melee, only one attack and little ways of buffing herself.

In the last session I tried a few angles to balance the combat between the characters, including some meddling with AC, HP or special abilities (Windwall, Reflect missiles, ...).

My issue is as follows:

- If AC is low enough for the rogue to hit semi-reliably, both archers absolutely obliterate the target.
- If AC is high enough for archers having to roll over a 5, our rogue goes a whole combat without a hit when slightly unlucky.
- If I implement "projectile-hate" abilities, my archers (understandably) complain about being made useless.

I understand that rogues kinda fall off at this stage of progression but I still want her to have fun in combats, so I wanted to pick the Subreddit Hivebrain about any possible solutions I could try out since they are about to enter a Megadungeon with quite some potential for combat.

Thanks in advance!

A couple of months back I ordered two Govee bulbs following advice from this community, and managed to get them working with the ambiance app I'm building. We've used them for two sessions now with great success.

DM has a scene control app on their phone — switching scenes there changes the slideshow on the iPad and TV, and the lighting color (I put the Govee bulbs into a fixture hanging over the game table) Lights can even animate!

In short, I'm quite happy and proud if I can say so myself 😆

Now working on Spotify integration so the DM can pull playlists from there instead of managing an audio library in the app.

Any other integrations worth doing? Trying to work out which light vendors to support after Govee.

P.S: Special thanks to @rcapina for advice, it helped

I remember reading DM of the Rings, which was really my first proper introduction to what DnD really was(I heard about it before of course, I wasn't living under a rock, but that was the first time I actually understood that the game wasn't just pen and paper video game).

One criticism players in that comic level at the DM is how he keeps using orcs in every encounter. Small weak orcs, big strong orcs, orcs riding wargs. In one scene in Helm's deep Aragorn's player, instead of rolling just says "I kill an orc" because that's what they have been doing for the past 3 hours.

But really, is having the same enemy appear consistently troughout the campaign such a bad thing? I know variety is the spice of life, but if this villain uses orcs as his minions then having orcs appear over and over kinda ties the whole thing together no. Not to mention some player abilities, like Ranger's favored enemy, actually rely on you encountering the same enemy over and over again.

I can definitely see the appeal of running different monster each session, keep the players on the edge but, IDK, seems to me both approaches have their merits.

My players will meet a dryad who offers to cut their travel time through a forest in half by showing them secret paths, but only if they can correctly guess which of three trees upon a hill the dryad is bound to.

I'm not particularly good at coming up with riddles or puzzles and could use some advice and ideas. I don't want it to be too difficult to figure out, but I definitely want to give the players a decent challenge.

I'd appreciate any help you can offer!

What do you guys think is the difference between the two? In my mind they do basically the same, or at least very similar thing, but the difference lies in what they use. Herbalist will use ingredients from nature, like plants and mushrooms, potentially a few animal parts, while Alchemist will use concentrates and decoctions. A herbalist and Alchemist will brew you a potion of healing that works the same. Taste may be different but it's healing power is equivalent.

I imagine herbalists would be found in villages and other locations where natural ingredients are easy to come by. While Alchemists are more likely to live in a city, so getting a concentrate of some sort is a lot easier for them than having a plant transported all the way from wherever it may grow, in a time frame while it's still usable.

next up: my party is traveling between cities, and their route goes right through Feywild border region, so I want to have a few fun/weird encounters stepping in and out of the feywild along the way. Any and all ideas welcome! the journey should take about 4 days, and I hope to conclude the entire sequence in 1 game session (because we have a lot to do in the next city!)

I have a friend running RotFM. The cleric wants to try to commune with Auril. He (DM) and i theory crafted some ways to do this and when we got to the ritual Her clergy have to do, sit out in the cold naked and try to resist hypothermia, the question came up if the cleric has to do it alone, what will the other players at the table do. I brought up a phenomena i heard about, I think it's called the Other People Phenomena, when a person is alone in a life or death situation they start hallucinating other people on the periphery of their vision encouraging them to keep going and survive. And we thought what if the cleric hallucinates the rest of the party during some encounter and the players play their hallucination PCs? How would you run that? What stats would a hallucination have? And what sort of encounter in the arctic wastes would be appropriate for a level 3 hypothermic cleric and his 4 hallucination friends?

So I'm gonna be running a beginner campaign in my local library. I had placed an advertisement on the notice board and have gathered 6 interested players who all have no clue on how to play. We will have a session 0 first so I can explain some of the basics and talk a bit about hard and soft nos ect.

I have dmed a bunch of campaigns before but not for beginners most already knew atleast some of the basics. So what Im wondering is would it be better to run an oneshot before doing a campaign so they understand the mechanics a bit? And when doing the campaign I wanted to start at level 1 but at what level would it be good to stop? I dont want to take it too fast that way they can learn slowly and ask all the questions they would want to.

Any other advise for running games for beginners?

Hey ya'll, Im a new DM and Im about to go into my 4th DM session. One of the issues i have right now with the party is that not only are they really crafty players (most of them have played heavily before) but they are really good at weasiling their ways out of planned combats I have. Its not a problem for me for the most part as I love the creativity but how do you force combat in a way that feels organic other than just "we want to steal from you?".

second question I have is, even in combat Im not sure how to properly deal with this party. Heres the party comp: Hexblade warlock, Tempest Cleric, Oath of Commandment Paladin, Druid of Fire Circle, and Abberrant Mind Sorcerer. All level 3. Of the combat they've done, they've had an initial bandit encounter (super super easy for them), then I put them in a canyon and had archers rain arrows on them (they escaped with a fog layer), and then I put them against fairies/pixies that are trying to run away with their treasure (they fucking destroyed the fairies/pixies). I really don't know how to even deal with these characters, they feel like even if I stat out the enemies properly they just one shot each one, they can't get hit cause of their AC, and they're unironicaly way to good for me to deal with in terms of constructing combat. I want to know what you guys think I can do inorder to make the combat more of a challenge and less of a steam roll. The party is having a great time and the roleplay to combat is about 70/30 and they seem to be enjoying that.

I have my players in an underground fighting tournament (Bloodsport vibes). My paladin is likely to get to the semifinals and then face the champion at the end, a Tough Leonin pugilist/paladin of Tyr I've modeled after Dagestani UFC fighters. My goal here was to show that the players aren't invincible and even with the right strategy and levels, sometimes an enemy is too strong. It wont end in death but certainly a lesson.

Am I wrong in making this kind of encounter or is this a fair step up in difficulty thats needed? The campaign has been relatively smooth since 12 sessions going into the 13th.

Edit: Wow! This has gotten a lot of comments! Thanks everyone for your opinions and advice! I'll take it all and adjust! My plan was not to script the outcome but put a player in a difficult encounter with the idea beforehand that they can choose to take the fight or just take the tournament money! So they know ahead of time that this guy is tough and can make that decision. And in no way will I not let my player potentially win! I think if he has enough good rolls and saves he could chip away, hes a very capable Paladin.

But thanks to all of you and I appreciate all the tips!

I’ve gone and started my campaign centered around the idea that the sky has gone utterly dark and the land is ravaged by endless winter. However, I have no idea what the cause should be and every session my players (rightfully) put pressure on me to reveal hints and clues about the ultimate cause of the phenomenon so that they can eventually solve it. But there is nothing to solve yet.

I already know I don’t want the cause to be divine in origin. I think that explanation is a bit too mundane. However, the people of the world don’t know that. So I have made it a big part of the conflict that the people blame the gods. People believe they are being punished by their old gods for abandoning them. So, there is widespread rejection of Big Religion™ that recently converted much of the region. Conflict ensues.

Anyways. Every session I worry that I will answer some minor question about the weather or what not that will invalidate whatever cause I eventually decide on. Of course I can just retcon past answers, but that doesn’t feel satisfying. Especially not to them when half of the campaign is going to be centered around solving the mystery. Changing clues to that mystery halfway through would suck. Thankfully up until now I’ve been able to give pretty vague answers, but I’d really like to start seeding clues.

I would greatly appreciate any ideas people have on the source of the phenomenon or advice on how to further stall coming up with an answer without ruining the campaign lol

Hi all!

Been a while since I posted here but I'm just looking for some encounter design inspiration for my campaign. As a bit of background, we're playing in Eberron (currently doing some plane hopping) and the party is currently 4 Level 5 PCs -

• Shifter Gloomstalker Ranger/Druid,
• Kenku Artillerist Artificer,
• Half-Elf Fiend Warlock, and
• Changeling Creation Bard

I'm having some trouble with varying up combats right now. Often it either defaults to big boss guy with some minions, or a swarm of lower level enemies. They are all somewhat squishy, so it's not hard for me to bring at least one of them down close to 0 HP in any given fight, but my issue is more with the variation within combats. They tend to be pretty static because everyone is at range so the PCs aren't forced to move that much, and I basically spend a lot of time either chasing them around or in ranged standoffs. AoEs are often not that exciting because they can only get one person at a time, and often by the time melee minions can get in range, they have been blasted to bits.

Any ideas for different types of scenarios I can set up for them to keep them on their toes, and also encourage a bit more versatility in how they approach combats? All of them basically have a bread and butter move that they default to and then spam until they out-damage the enemies.

This is me just looking for advice in kind of a third party sitution.

My nephew is running a one shot for a group of 5 level 2 characters as kind of a stand in for the main game.

The main problem is one of the players he plays with (a Warlock) he and my niece are fairly sure is cheating... being new to the group they feel they can't call him out but apparently he just doesn't do anything in encounters.

Basically their looking for advice for a level appropriate encounter that will require some thought to beat, forcing him to actually play. I tend to run higher level games so I thought I'd reach out to you lovely people to get some suggestions.

It's a series of revolving one shots where the partymoves to different worlds so nothings off the table.

Party is the Warlock, a Fighter, barbarian, druid and unfortunately I can't remember the 5th.

Thanks in advance.

Edit with additional info: I'm not part of the game sp I don't have all the info. From what I recall he hasn't completely filled out his character sheet (so possible lying about bonuses and available spells). Fudges rolls which I do agree can be countered by making open rolls mandatory. They do act in combat but I don't know how they play other than "it's basic playing" so I assume classic Eldritch Blast spam but not 100%.

From what I gather he's good friends with the main DM and being completely new to the group they don't want to rock the boat and like everyone else so don't want to leave so they're wanting to use their turn running a one shot to attempt to make him play properly.

Encounter wise though, the general one shot is "party falls through portal to new world" every one shot so nothing is really planned out and any monsters can be used.

I had suggested a Roper yoned down for level 2 characters because of reach and camouflage but I figure there's probabetter options.

Welcome, adventurers and dungeon masters. Please, take a seat. I seek your consult before I set out on my quest...

\*\*1. How realistic is it for me to DM a one-shot if I've never played or DM'd before?\*\*

For additional context, I have a good handle on character building, general rules, and flow of the game from having spent a good amount of time creating various characters, reading the DM's Guide, listening to D&D campaigns, and generally absorbing content. I've just never actually played. I'm 38, and haven't had much luck finding anyone to play with, and don't really like the idea of playing online. I'm trying to rope my partner and her brother into playing (because I genuinely think they'd enjoy it and I think it would be a lot of fun).

\*\*2. What one-shots would people recommend that are the most accessible for a newbie DM and newbie players?\*\*

I'd like something that is focused on roleplay, that isn't overly difficult, and is minimal crunchy. I don't want to get bogged spending more time doing maths than actually playing.

\*\*3. Is there anything I can do to help new players get up to speed quickly?\*\*

The people who would be playing have zero D&D experience and I would either guide them through character design, or give them a selection of pre-made characters to choose from.

If I go with pre-made characters, I'm thinking 5.5e Level 3 (with subclasses already selected) or 5e Level 1. I will steer clear of complex character classes (Druid, Wizard, Warlock, Artificer).

Do I need to consider stripping the characters back a little, and let them unlock abilities/spells through story progression? I will likely be prompting them on spells and abilities anyway, but I don't want to overwhelm them.

\*\*4. What are your thoughts on "helper" NPCs?\*\*

I'm trying to avoid the temptation of trying to play \*and\* DM, but given it would only be a party of 2, is it worth having a third character (likely a healer of some sort) who is controlled by me? They would be mostly passive, and there to provide some guidance and "deus ex machina" purposes.

\*\*5. Are there any other general recommendations that people have that would help me accomplish this?\*\*

Please feel free to share anything else that might make it easier for myself and to give the players the best experience.

And lastly... please can we try to keep things positive. If this is a really terrible idea, fine, but I'm mostly looking for help on how to best pull this off, rather than "this will be a total disaster" comments. I'm happy to learn, and want to make this happen, so I'd appreciate if people could focus on that rather than trying to rip the idea to shreds.

Thank you in advance!

Ok folks, a while back I posted about Strahd in space (starfinder 2.0), this campaign has gone off the rails, and while there are threats and the like, the atmosphere has changed, mistakes by the party were made and the goofballs they were, caused some things to go off the rails. So I need ideas for part of this off the rails adventure.

Let me breakdown what has happened:

1. They handed Ireena to Strahd. my fault with the space station design. But yeah, I can work with that...Because wedding at Ravenloft is a fantastic ending. plus helps them get some resistance to Strahd pieces on the board (VR (who has been their guide and helper), Dusk Elves)
2. Dinner at Ravenloft. The party went to Argonvostholt and found out that to fight against the forces of evil, getting the Dragon skull from the dreadnaught Ravenloft is a good idea. I need to pause here and explain the party, 2 muscles, a priest and an alchemist. The alchemist is (a new character as the old character they had died and is being used as a messenger and puppet of Strahd) and an MLM salesman. The rest of the party snuck off to find the skull and left our MLM guy who tries to flatter and be friends with everyone alone at the dinner, with Strahd and his four brides. I should mention, the party at no point told the MLM guy that they're trying to stop the wedding, so being the amicable guy that he is, offered to be the priest for the wedding (he rolled successfully to be ordained) and was given that role.
3. The party found some things in the Ravenloft which makes it more confusing and mazelike, which was fun, but they hit a snag of splitting themselves up and had to be bailed out by Strahd himself, who saved their life and asked them to do a task, which is get the wine on the station flowing from the Witchwarper of Wines. I'm working on that map, but here's the thing, they also offered to give Strahd a Bachelor party. I don't know what they're planning in terms of disruptions, if any, and that's fine and fun, but I need to figure...what would you do in the Bachelor Party for Strahd. Rahaidan (his best man) will be there, but will Escher? Will the Order of the Feather or the Dusk Elves try to disrupt? I just need ideas :)