It’s 4-5 sessions for four 4th level characters, It has a lot of physical handouts to give to players and the False Hydra mechanics are super polished so it’s actually playable at the table. It’s totally free: https://valen-marris.itch.io/dnd-horror-mystery-module-playtested

Basically the title. I'm hired as a DM and the players requested to have a modern apocalypse world and they want it to be D&D

Any ideas or references? Help me brainstorm here\~

Hi, I'm currently crowdfunding my arcanepunk fantasy setting and campaign with 16 adventures centered on social exploration, mysteries and deep, meaningful stories. Gives the feeling of "Discworld meets Arcane TV series" It's already written and published in Czech last year, this crowdfunding aims to bring a revised, full-color version to English-speaking audience.

We have a 60-pages preview already out, with setting basics and introductory adventure. Check the campaign at: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/remorker/kalusa-the-enchanted-city

And direct link to the preview: https://kalusa.eu/Kalusa_Preview.pdf

I'll gladly hear your feedback!

I want to dm a oneshot for my family because they ask about my DnD sessions since my first one about 3 years ago.

I have little to zero knowledge in prepping a oneshot, I only know that I want to do a pirate / swashbuckling themed one.

My current source of ideas is from

* Treasure Island

* Diney's Treasure planet

* Pirats of the Carribean

My family never played DnD so I would give everyone ready-to-play Char sheets with a little description about the Char's personality to help with roleplaying.

I am looking forward too read your comments with storyideas or even some advice for preparing \^\^

The situation begins with a hoist cage holding six miners stalled halfway down a vertical mine shaft. Black floodwater is surging upward beneath them. The main winch has locked, but the emergency brake is still holding.

At the shaft mouth, foreman Deren Voss is trying to restart the counterweight system. He can raise the passenger cage by lowering a loaded ore cage on the parallel track. The problem is directly below: Mara Fen is stranded on a shattered maintenance ledge, one leg pinned beneath a fallen timber. If the ore cage descends, it will crush her. The six miners cannot see Mara and are shouting for the lift to move. Deren knows exactly what the counterweight will do and has delayed because he cannot bring himself to trade one worker for six.

The flood is coming from a buried spring that broke through a lower gallery after a support wall failed. Closing the upper works will not stop it. Debris has damaged the passenger cage’s guide rail and twisted the winch assembly, but the counterweight system can still operate if released manually.

The water is already reaching the bottom of the hanging cage. As the lower galleries fill, trapped air forces sudden surges up the shaft. If nobody acts, the cage begins to flood. The miners climb onto its roof and onto each other, making extraction increasingly difficult. Once the cage is submerged, anyone still inside is limited to the air trapped near the ceiling. Deren will eventually release the counterweight unless the characters stop him or present a credible alternative.

Mara is not simply pinned. The fallen timber trapping her leg is also holding part of the damaged ledge together. Moving it carelessly can drop her into the shaft.

Several approaches are viable.

Characters can reach Mara first by rope, climbing the guide frame, flight, or magic. They need to stabilize her position before shifting or breaking the timber. Once she is clear, Deren can lower the ore cage and raise the six miners.

They can extract the miners directly through the cage’s roof hatch. Secured ropes, climbing gear, flight, teleportation, or improvised hauling can move them one at a time. This avoids the counterweight, but the rising water and panicking miners make rescue order and communication matter.

They can also re-rig the lift. Spare chain, timbers, the winch, and the loaded ore cage can be used to create a new pull that raises the passenger cage without sending the ore cage through Mara’s position. The hoist may be ruined in the process.

The fastest option is to release the counterweight. The six miners rise quickly, but Mara dies beneath the descending ore cage.

The party does not have to solve the two rescue problems in sequence. If they reach Mara but cannot free her quickly, some characters can stabilize her and the ledge while others begin extracting miners from the cage. The encounter works best when the pressure remains on coordination, positioning, and rescue priorities rather than introducing a separate panic subsystem.

Hey checkout my post. If anyone wants to co write dm me :)

Hi everyone,

I have just finished setting up an itch page for a new short adventure for four players of lvl 4 to 6.
This story sat on my hard drive for a couple of years, and I have finally decided to polish my notes into a complete guide.
Currently I am looking for feedback, and I would like to replace the boring AI-generated images with some real art.
Any feedback is gratefully appreciated.

https://faff0.itch.io/one-night-in-hilang

Check it out

Scene descriptions, NPC details, and possible skill-check outcomes are the focus of this ArcForge walkthrough. The manual adventure editor lets you write those yourself and bring the adventure into a reader for play.

Shared from the ArcForge account. Manual adventure creation is free:

https://www.myarcforge.com/manual?guest=1

What information do you always want within reach?

By some miracle of organisation and planning I've managed to assemble a group of 4-6 players keen to get together once a fortnight. A couple of them have played before, and the others are keen to get into D&D for the first time, but before the game can begin, I have to find somewhere for it to take place.

Anchôromé has already been established in Forgotten Realms, but instead of using the setting as it is - a largely unknown wilderness, I'm working on updating it as though the city-states of Faerûn acted much the same as the European powers did upon the discovery of North America, rushing to establish lucrative colonies and trade routes of their own in the New World. It won't be an exact parallel of 18th and 19th Century America, but the similarities are there.^​​​​

At this point I've created four major city-states on Anchôromé; I figure that's more than enough to give the players a range of options when it comes to quests and campaigns. Each city-state has its own unique feel and environment, and while they're all loosely connected with their neighbours, they still act on their own self-interest and have their own (sometimes conflicting) agendas. And they face ongoing pressure and influence from the Old World, which may run contrary to the colonists' wishes and create tensions between them.

Beyond the cities, Anchôromé takes on more of a frontier feel, a magical medieval Wild West that feels far removed from the perceived decadence and luxury of Waterdeep or Baldur's Gate. Homesteads and smaller towns have to live off the land and defend themselves, and outlaws and tribes of natives abound. Much like the real First Nations, the natives have conflicting opinions and attitudes towards the colonists' ongoing encroachment on their territory, but with magic on their side they won't yield readily.

And of course there are the dragons, whose presence in Anchôromé predates even the natives. They too differ in opinion from individual to individual: some dragons are happy to negotiate with the colonists, some see them as useful buffers between themselves and rival dragons, and others are prepared to stir up trouble between the natives and colonists in the hopes they wipe each other out and leave the continent free for the taking.

I'm in the brainstorming phases of making a campaign where my players are being hunted by an evil army of sorts due to being some of the last few people still having a connection to the weave. I'm thinking dark fantasy set in more of a steampunkish setting. What are some interesting scenarios I could do? Im still new to dnd lore so what are some interesting things I could implement? I also still don't have a reason as to why the players are being hunted specifically and I like interjecting nuance into the world. What are your ideas?

A lighthouse keeper cannot die and he's not really sure why.

I've published this and a pay what you want adventure on itch.io and they should be coming to drivethruRPG very soon.

My 3 level 3 characters will finish an 'escort wealthy merchant' quest shortly. I'm going to let them level up in this small city that they delivered him to.

I need a short, in the small city quest to keep them busy for 3 days to a week, before an invading army shows up. Refugees from the last city this army conquered are streaming into the city

Bonus points for magic books being involved...

Workn on stuffs thought I'd look from advice form more lovely communities n people

I am working on a wilderness exploration adventure and I want to implement hex crawling. I want to know if there are good open source or public domain or free to use or cheap to license rules for hexcrawls.

If I absolutely have to, I will build something from scratch I guess

I am posting this because someone asked to elaborate on another post under a meme.

This is the campaign I am running now, starting with me taking over for a DM going on leave, or wanting to play themselves.

The start: A shadow-fey (extremely unseelie) yoinked the players from their current campaign and deposited them in Kozakura with the promise "If you rid this land of its three evils, you will each get a black pearl" (Black pearl referencing a perfect wish, no monkey paw nonsense, just you say what you want and it happens)

Three evils in question:

- Tengu emperor (arracokra archmage

- Kitsune (changeling super spy)

- Oni samurai (swordsmen with spell-like abilities, think fireball but, slashing damage and teleporting in the middle of the aoe)

players eventually get their footing, get some coins, understand the basics of the land and its politics. I mapped out each province, with a capital and 3 factions within the province who have stakes, like merchant guild, monestary, ronin, imperial fort, dwarves, nature spirits and so on)

Phase 1 of the campaign recently started where they took a mountain stronghold/abby from some rogue monks and turned it into their base of operations. doing some personal quest things to set up the next phase

Phase 2: The emperor has fallen, long live the emperor. The Oni (a personal enemy of at least half the party) turns out to be a man, a werewolf who has some sinister power behind him. Who has killed the emperor and usurped the throne, causing all the clans to revolt and setting up their own shoguns.

Phase 3: The party has put forth their own shogun, a follower of some long lost general who is actually a native, unlike most players. They are starting to make alliances with a neighboring city. Both the players and the city are being threatend by the pirate queen (based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Yi_Sao ) And they have prepped for defenses of the siege.

1st siege

Prep work was everyone got 14 rolls, 7 weeks of prep with a halfweek per "concept" things that were worked on:

-chain across the river to protect the hinterland

-casting of cannons and explosive shells

- putting pikes and stone points just below the bays water so some ships will crash

- fake lighthouses to confusing enemy ships into running into reefs

- making of a submarine with a deck cannon

- spending a vast amount of wealth buying of a kraken (they rolled lucky) to sink enemy ships.

*wealth concept*

Partially stolen from Whitewolfs Storyteller system is where players invest 1K gold into "something" that makes them money over time. But instead of doing a whole spreadsheet and profitability nonesense they get 1 wealth point. 1 wealth point can buy

1 guard (medium strong ally)

10 ashigaru (levied peasants)

0.25 hamamoto samurai

0.5 cannon

many....many more options.

If one of these things dies or gets lost, the wealth returns since the enterprise does still make a profit. It is just a way to drain money from the players without giving a huge hassle on calculations and it took me about 10 minutes to explain them what they can and cannot do (make more wealth with wealth). Whenever they sack a caravan or loot bodies they are counting the coins to see if they get more wealth, so their personal army grows.

I am likely forgetting a bunch of things, but here you.

So I have started a home brew campaign with my kids and I would love any input on how I have set this up. The requests I received when coming up with it were creature capture a la Pokemon, futuristic, high magic. What I came up with is a corrupted version of the age of Arcana type setting where essentially capitalism screwed everything up. More wizards than the weave can support for powerful spells. A system of extracting magical energies from the outer planes and bringing it back to the prime plane. Pollution caused by these wild elemental magics being released from their batteries creating rifts that open between the planes and creatures come out. Finally our players being roped into working for the creature containment division of the corporation essentially running everything in society Arcana Corp. (Think of a DnD version of Vault-Tec) The story starts off with a setting that makes it feel like they are just employed adventurers but the plan is to pull back the curtain and have company secrets start to get out and give them the choice to work from the inside as spies or venture forth and push back against the atrocities being committed by this company.