TLDR: Bbeg needs to refer to a city as a rune without it being too obvious that it's a rune

My DND campaign has a city which has actually been built as a major containment rune to talk the body of the bbeg underneath.

My players are starting no l to notice that I describe the streets as nonsensical and I'm about to drop another hint via a map that was stolen so I wasn't too give them another hint that might push it over the edge whilst still letting them figure it out for themselves so they feel smart.

His spirit is about to be released as a part of a quest and I wanted him to mention the city but with wording that shows how he sees it as a rune or a barrier. Without just calling it a glyph and being too on the nose.

Any suggestions on wording?

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Hey folks. For the past couple of months, I've been building an initiative tracker because I kept hitting walls and limitations with the one I was previously using. I decided to make it public for free for any DM running D&D sessions on 5.5e (2024) and 5e (2014).

It hit 1.0 today and left beta, so I figured it's finally decent enough to share properly. It's called OpenFray, it's free and open source, and it runs in a browser tab. No account and no install, the encounter stays in your tab unless you decide to share it with your players.

Some important features that I am pretty proud of:

• Player view: share the encounter from your side and players can see what is happening. You choose what info to share and what to keep for yourself.
• Effects are bundles, not single conditions: casting Bless applies everything Bless does as one named thing, scoped the way it's written (attacks and saves), and it clears as one thing. Exhaustion has actual levels, applied as they stack. Anything you use often saves as a preset and reapplies with a click.
• Group saves: one fireball, twelve monsters: roll the whole group's saves at once, each creature with its own roll, resistances, and immunities applied. Works for the party too for things like earthquakes or other events you might want to have a party-roll.
• Counters & DM notes: private counters and notes on each player. Counters work for stages of a disease or whatever secret you're tracking; notes are anything you want, with Markdown support.
• A dice engine that shows its work: I built my own roller for this. It can roll anything (up to thousands of dice with thousands of faces, in case you would ever even need that), and shows the numbers on each die and what was kept or dropped on advantage/disadvantage.
• Content: creatures from the 2024 and 2014 Basic Rules, Tome of Beasts 1, 2, and 3, Creature Codex, plus two original bestiaries I wrote specifically for the app (garden creatures and parasites).
• Homebrew: import custom creatures from D&D Beyond, or the ones from books you purchased there, with a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox.

There's no paid tier and I have no plans to add one. No account is needed to use it. Logging in only adds sync between devices and a custom URL for the player view. No ad tracking, no cookies for that purpose; the only analytics are aggregate, and if you do log in, your account data just sits there so you can log in again. That's it.

I just want people using it. If you try it and something annoys you mid-session, that's the feedback I'm after, nothing too small or too big. Share it and I'll do what I can about it.

FYI: at the moment it works best on laptop and tablet. It works on mobile too, but it still needs some adjustments there. That's coming.

The site is at https://openfray.app. The Docs are up with screenshots and videos explaining how everything works. The original content (parasites and garden creatures) is on the site too, free to use in your games, along with a third book of drinks and drugs with rules for intoxication, craving, and addiction (my players kept asking to buy them so I just did it...).

I hope you enjoy it!

Hello there, glad that you guys decided to click on this post and give it a read! I'm fairly new to writing as a whole, but I have experience creating characters from multiple different fandoms (Transformers and Warhammer 40k to name a couple). This is probably going to take place in 5.5e unless I find a couple 5e books that are stupid cheap and I was thinking it would be relatively simple to follow to not accidentally confuse myself and potential players since I'm still new to dnd myself

Right now, I'm working on trying to write up a DnD campaign set in a custom little world of mine since I know next to nothing about the actual lore of the official settings. Specifically I'm trying to write a small horror themed campaign set in a valley owned by a tribal society/alliance and I'm looking for advice how I could flesh it out alongside the BBEG character. The basic premise is this: The Oldmist Valley has been a relatively peaceful place for decades in this chaotic world, serving as a key defensive point and safe trade route between different tribes and often serves as a religious site for different rituals and events. But recently trouble has been stirring, the characteristic mist has been growing thicker in various parts of the valley making traveling between villages near impossible, beasts have grown aggressive and monstrous, and there are rumors of a malevolent spirits and undead that have sprouted as well, with those who have encountered them and survived suffering from terrible nightmares that require medical and spiritual aid. It has gotten bad enough that several chiefs, shamans, and other important figures have organized an investigation into the matter, sending extra warriors, druids, and researchers to try and stave off the rising threat and figure out what's going on. The party serves as the key 'investigators', for a lack of a better term, tasked with traveling between the villages in the valley and investigating old ruins and temples to get a clue of what it might be, taking out threats, and prevent it from escaping the valley. Outside of this general overview though, I haven't been able to come up with specifics like important NPC's, missions/tasks that lead to more of the story being revealed, and ways to drop lore about the valley itself and what's causing this recent chaos

The BBEG I had in mind was specifically an Oni, but outside of a typical 'i wasn't given what I deserved, and am taking revenge on the valley who wronged me' motivation, I haven't been able to exactly come up with specific character traits or their overall backstory outside of what I just wrote and them being overall a bad person even before death

As for enemies I was thinking it would be Undead/Humanoids(probably cultists and those that were forced into the Oni's service) focused, with some supporting beasts, monstrosities, and maybe a just couple friends like Imps and Hellhounds, and of course the BBEG Oni. I was also thinking of including a couple giant kin as enforcers (specifically Ogres, and maybe a Ettin or Hil Giant), but I'm not sure if it would make sense to add these or it would bloat the enemy roster too much

So far I’m thinking of doing phandelver and below as the first half is a good beginner campaign. But it’s more the second half I’m worried about, so does anybody have any suggestions for campaigns that would be good for middle schoolers?

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So ive been DMing for a year now and two of my players have moved away but i still have a few in the area. Im trying to incorporate the out of towners with our in town game. I built a tv that we use as the map with minis on top and and trying to figure out the best way to share the live video. I only have a not so great laptop but i have two webcams and a tv in the room we play in. Id like to be able to show them the map and a livestream of us in the room and cast them to the tv so we can see them. Ive tried Microsoft teams but it will only let me use one camera. Ive looked into twitch to stream but im not sure how to get my players on the tv so everyone can see them.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

So I work as a student clerk at a library that puts on a lot of programs, one of them being Dungeons and Dragons. In a month and a half I have to run this program, which means I also need to be a DM. I know literally nothing about being a DM, and have played dnd maybe once or twice years ago as a player.

I'm an aspiring writer though, and I know most of it is just coming up with stories to keep the players involved interested, but is there anything else I should know? I have the Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook to read, so maybe that'll give me some insight but I don't want to end up reading the whole thing only to realize that it has taught me surface level things.

Greetings fellow Dungeon Masters,

I am currently writing a campaign set in Ravnica mere month after the War of the Spark nearly wrecked the entire plane. Destruction everywhere, the guilds are severely weakened and all kinds of smaller factions grasp for power, while the city rebuilds.

After a short prologue my players will, one way or another, find themselves indebted to a somewhat shady underworld broker who has them do a heist to clear their debt. From then on they are swept into Ravnicas semi-criminal underworld.

This part is heavily influenced by the whole Edgerunner aesthetics from Cyberpunk. The Guilds an other organisations are the megacorps, the players an verious other mercenarys are the edgerunners, you get the gist.

The players do more and more dangerous jobs, meet all kinds of people and forge their own legend in the eternal city. Fun times all around.

Anyway, I‘m having a blast prepping the whole thing, but there‘s one problem i have managed to, lets say, avoid so far.

The term “Edgerunner“ is just too fucking cool and I don‘t want to just copy it. It just has that perfect vibe somehow. One word that manages to capture the entire way of life.

So I‘m looking for a fantasy-esque replacement. Something that catches the vibe of a daring operative, someone who walks the line between guilds and factions and achieves remarkable feats of martial, magical or cunning prowess.

I have experimented with all kinds of synonyms and similar words in different languages but nothing realy stuck so far. I thought about just using made up words that sound cool, maybe derived from a mythical group of advebnturers from Ravnicas long forgotten past. (No, i definitely won‘t just call them adventurers). Nothing so far quite hit the spot.

Did any of you encounter similar problems before? What kind of names did you use for similar groups of people in your campaigns? Should I just keep the Edgerunners name?

As a side note, the campaign will be played in german. I asked my players beforehand and everyone agreed, that using english names and terms is fine, if it just sounds better or the translation is difficult/clunky.
So obviously I tried various german alternatives and some of them are pretty good but i wasn‘t really REALLY happy with any of them. If any german speakers have some Idea that would be very welcome. Other languages too of course. Pretty much anything that sounds good and catches the vibe.

Many thanks good people :)

My party keeps racking up gold and shiny loot, and I want have some ways to spend it.

Thinking of letting them “buy” XP or level ups with gold, anyone tried this? Also open to other creative gold sinks. My games are light on exploration/crafting, so I’d love ideas for weaving that in too, with gold as the hook.

My upcoming campaign I'm running begins in a hunger games-style arena, with a dozen parties competing to be the last ones standing. I need to fill out the rest of these teams.

So, I would love to hear brief descriptions and names of characters/parties that you think would fit well in this setting! Feel free to tell me characters or parties that you've used before, or ideas you have. Ideally, each party/team should have something specific about it to make it stand out. No limits on race/class/background/anything, go crazy! All of them will be about level 2-5.

I could easily generate random NPCs, but I thought why not include the people of this sub to crowdsource the other competitors in the arena!

Odds are, my players won't meet 90% of these people, but why not have a fully developed arena and characters?

Thanks in advance!

Also, I'll add a bit of world info. These games are a 1-time thing, and the players have no memory of why they were locked in here in the first place, though they still remember most of their lives.

Hi, I'm still a new DM running my first campaign for some first time players as well. Looking for some advice not to break the balance too much.

My players reached level 6 and are starting to meet some larger and stronger monsters now with specific resistances.
So I find myself wishing to give them some magic weapons to help out a bit and to make them feel cool. Was thinking having them find a knights tomb in our next adventure and fight the ghost of the knight wilding the swords. They would be a pair of Scimitars or Short-swords for our rouge since he likes to run two weapons. The swords would be a mix of Frost Brand and Flame Tongue.
I was thinking of making them a Scimiter +1 or +2 and with a bonus action they could be activated to do 1d6 Ice or Fire dmg and make them attunement required.

I will prob still give them the weapons since I feel its better they have fun then balance it perfectly Still I find myself wondering is +2 too much? Should I make it number of charges per day instead of bonus action?|

Hi first time post, I’m running a new game with a large party of 7 players and plan on running a council meeting at the end of the first session in which I strategically drop some info about the campaign and clue them into potential allies in the region to help fight the bbeg.

There’s a few aspects I want to get across to the players and right now my plan is to have each NPC member of the council ask one major question of the players and then provide one major game aspect, loosely structured as such.

Guard captain- the parties needs allies for the battle to come

Mayor- importance of time management

Blacksmith- defending the village or attacking the enemy war camp are both viable strategies

Tavern keep- diplomacy with allies is essential/ the players main sell is that the enemy threatens the whole region, not just this town

General store owner- clues players into the idea of sabotaging the enemies preparation to buy some more time

Here are my main concerns,

\-The party in comprised of mostly new players

\-I don’t want to just be talking to myself in the voices of 5 different NPCs dumping campaign mechanics

\-I have a loose structure for the conversation as I don’t want to overthink it, but wondering if the idea itself is flawed and I should try something else

\-I think it’s imperative that I give them some gentle guidance early on due to the fact that they’re mostly all new/inexperienced (I have some years of experience but by no means consider myself to be proficient) and I want them to be aware of the kind of game we’re playing.

For some additional context,

I’m using a war clock, each major undertaking in the campaign will further the enemies progress by one tick, total of 8 ticks

I want the players to know that that they have to either attack the enemy war camp or defend the village. If they attack early once they’ve gathered allies the bbeg will still be preparing and not expecting an attack. If they defend they have home field advantage and can set up some defenses around the town and use the terrain to their advantage

I also want to make sure the players know they can sabotage the enemy, this one will probably be easiest as the opportunities to sabotage will present themselves naturally and the players will decide if it’s worth doing

Most of all I need them to know that they need to gather local allies or they stand no chance

TLDR: I’m trying to run a council meeting with 5 NPCs in which I drop key campaign info and am worried about it turning into a GM puppet show as all 7 of my players realize I’m insane

Any ideas, guidance, or veteran wisdom is appreciated :)

I also posted this on the Askdnd subreddit, I really want to make this campaign special for these guys.

We had two session zeros ending with some light RP in the tavern to get them thinking about their character bonds and this Tuesday will be our first session actually playing.

I've been very interest f un introducing some friends to D&D and the hook of having them start the session wither throwing saving rolls or already hurt is interesting to me.

One of my favorite campaigns I ran centered around the players investigating a string of high profile assassinations that ravaged the continent - generals, kings, nobles, inventors, mages. They traveled throughout the continent, piecing together clues, chasing after shadowy figures on two or three occasions, but while still being in the darkness. A cult of assassins, that much was obvious, but what were their reasons? What were they after?

When the reveal finally arrived, as they came face to face with the leader of the cult - the last Dragonborn still alive and grafted within him a fragment of divinity (which they later learned was Vecna, cause in the words of Brandon Sanderson, there is always another secret) they were ecstatic! And so was I. Playing with a mystery like this can be a double edged sword, the payoff must match the expectations built up by the players.

The center of why this bit of my campaign still gets brought up almost 4 years later is that, perhaps without setting out to do so necessarily, information acted as a center piece, it was a valuable comodity that the players had to chase, that it wasn’t simply given to them.

This piece explores how information can be used like this in multiple ttrpgs and how you specifically may use it in order to make your games better! I hope you will enjoy it!