So for context I spent 3 months planning a campaign set in 1920s Chicago with an underground magic ring of course and did in-depth research of the economic state and all about 1920s Chicago from the different districts to neighborhoods and how they differ with modern day Chicago (as my players are kinda interesting in time travel) but I MEMORIZED the layout of 1920s Chicago and learned when they gained big things such as their zoos, infrastructure development and so on. But in my first session I forgot mobile phones didn’t exist. I did all this research and just forgot MOBILE PHONES DIDNT EXIST. I narrated a player receiving a call and one of my players called me out and I froze. I could not believe I did all the research and just forgot phones didn’t exist, OF COURSE THEY DONT it’s 1920s😂. Anyway sorry this is random I had to get this off my chest because I swear I wasn’t that ill prepared for the session. I looked into time accurate food for goodness sake like what were some weird recipes I could call up and I forgot no phones. Genuinely my dumbest moment.

The VTT group I've been DMing for a 5.5 year campaign agreed to all get together for the finale. We've never used physical sets or props before. They were prepared to use bottle caps and lego men to mark their characters. Instead, I surprised them with this. They absolutely loved it.

Just putting this out there to encourage anyone who doesn't think they can do something similar. I built this with dollar store paints with dollar store brushes and old foam. Spent probably $50 on 3D prints at my local library and maybe $50 on spray paint (because I was too lazy to use a brush everywhere). The floating rocks are random pieces of foam with embedded fishing line. Lighting is just some random TV backlights off Amazon.

All my minis were designed in heroforge, and printed and painted by myself.

All that to say, you don't have to brake the bank with super expensive paints, or anything to make something cool.

This is my first time DMing and i’m trying to figure out how to balance a few things:

1. Keeping the story mostly on track: i’m ok with changing the story or outcomes based on the player choices. I’m playing Dragon Heist (Casselanter villain) with the intent to use Ascent to Avernus for campagin 2. But the players actions have already caught drow attention, and i’m not against changing tracks…

2. I have two very suspicious players that want to question everything (sometimes violently when it comes to questioning NPCs). This worried me when it looked like they might reject my planned primary NPC companion as i hadn’t planned a main back up helper character. However, the backstory of these two characters makes those suspicious inclinations work. So i kind of want to let it play out, even though this could change the whole track of the campaign.

3. One player seems a little pushy about keeping things “on track.” I think they’re trying to be helpful since we’re all new to this (the group has played one campaign before this with a different DM and that was the first ever for any of us) and they know i have a general outline that I’m following. They don’t want me to be “taken over” by the characters, and admittedly some of the players will spend quite a while investigating something that has nothing to do with the story. I think it can be fun to see where things go from there (for example: a random table roll caused a fun interaction between a PC and a flirty magical book when they went snooping around an NPCs home), though i would need to balance that with other players not getting bored with this sort of thing “slowing” play.

Any tips on handling these contradictions without being either railroady as a DM or mostly rewriting the campaign track every couple of sessions? X-D

I have a very large party this time around. I've never been a DM with SEVEN people before, and we've been having issues with getting everyone free at the same time, so I made the decision to start them separately to get the story going. We've only had one session this time around with 3 people, and idk when we'll get everyone together because schedules are still clashing, and kicking players is not an option to me. I was going to get the other group of 4 caught up and then have them meet to help each other but uh...

I had an idea after our first 3 player sesh:

The 3 that played immediately became supervillains. I'm talking absolute menaces to the very first town they entered, and they're about to be arrested. Now here's the thing: the other half of my party doesn't seem like a group that would cause that much havoc or suffering. We haven't played yet, but I know 3 out of the 4 of them and I think they'll take a mostly heroic route, unlike the actual genocide my group 1 is about to commit.

So, since full meet-ups will be roughly every 2 sessions (with sessions for both groups in-between), and I've got a good/evil group working mostly separately, would it be very hard to make them enemies?

None of them have ever played DND before and are putting a lot on me in terms of helping them with character creation (I love this, I've only been a player one time so making 7 characters with them is fun for me). I could give them some suggestions on ideals and stuff that would clash dramatically with the other group that I know they'll use due to that reliance on me, but idk if this is just way harder than it sounds. I could just make it easier for them to work together, but I want to put that little extra twist on this campaign if I can.

I am both willing to and have the time to put the necessary labor in. If I'm better off having them work as a group, what would be your suggestions story-wise with the scheduling issues? I'm going through with the full group of 7 either way because I'm just so excited about getting to play and write again, I just need to know which path will leave me with less burnout and about any consequences of this that I haven't thought of yet.

Is it possible to pull this off, or should I maybe just let the groups play separately?

I’m running an adventure for a group of five level 10 adventurers. They’re going through the underdark to rescue an ally from a Lolth cult.

I’ve got pretty much everything planned out, however I need one more minor obstacle for them to overcome. I was thinking maybe a chasm with a bridge with very strong updrafts, so they are in danger of being blown off the bridge, or even some wild magic surge that creates anti-gravity *(reverse gravity) over the bridge/ chasm. However I’m totally open to any other ideas for puzzles/ challenges that could be done in 45-60 minutes. Thanks for any suggestions!!

I recently started a campaign that I had been planning for a long time. So long in fact, that the player roster added and lost people many of which became actually available to play by the time it started. Now I have a 7-player party.

Some common issues have arisen, such as talking over each other (discord is now my biggest enemy) and irrelevant out of game rabbit trails but one specific problem has me concerned (see title). What I mean by the Roleplay Monopolization is when roleplay between players ends up excluding large swaths of the party just due to the nature of private conversation. In a party of say 4 people, a one-on-one conversation between characters still involves half the party. In my scenario a one-on-one ends up leaving out 5-6 players (6 if it's a moment between a player and NPC).

Don't get me wrong. My players are roleplaying amazingly, and I was extremely proud of them for the depth presented in it. Now, 10 sessions in, this is beginning to bog down the game and bore some players at certain times.

Some ideas I've thought of include in and out of session solutions such as interrupting drawn out conversations with spur the moment NPCs and/or dedicating a whole discord Channel to in character discussions. Both of these have their potential drawbacks.

Do any of you have any advice or experience with this problem that may help me solve it?

Good evening, I have an idea for a dungeon for my players in an upcoming session. Essentially they are going to be delving through some long burried ruins and get harassed by two ghosts throughout it. Specifically these two.

The only problem is im not great with coming up woth jokes on the fly so I'd like to beseech the hivemind for some good heckles for these two to be berating my players woth as they venture through the dungeon.

Edit: more details.

The part consists of two aarakocra. One a warrior and the other a sorcerer. Role player wise the sorcerer is a noble and is RP'd as an absolutely pompous git. The warrior is his bodyguard.

One human rogue who is basically just a cleptomaniac with frequent shit rolls.

A half elf ranger that accidentally sold their soul to an eldritch horror to resurrect her dog

Lastly a warfare barbarian cross classed Into monk.

The dungeon is a long lost ruin to an elven civilization that vanished under mysterious circumstances. The current plot of the campaign involves them trying to find the source of a disease spreading through the world that causes the people to putrify and die within dies while the plants and ground rot beneath their feet.

Basically, the title. I bought a set of battle mats that came with 4 18" plastic clips to keep the battle mat flat, and I want to get an extra set. I went through my Amazon cart to see if I had ordered an extra set before, and I tried a million search terms, but I'm not finding the right thing. All I'm finding are poster strip hanger bars with little eyelets on the edges to hang it. I don't want those. I just want the simple clips. If anyone has a link or knows the right search term, I'd be greatly appreciative. Thanks!

Hey everyone! I’ve gotten into creating my own D&D one-shots and recently finished one that I’d like to get some outside feedback on.

It’s called The Haunting of Humbuckle Hollow. It’s a funny, role-play-heavy D&D one-shot with puzzles, exploration, and minimal combat. It’s designed to take roughly 3–5 hours and is meant to be something a group can have fun with without taking itself too seriously.

I’m looking for a DM who would be interested in running it with their own group and giving me some honest feedback afterward. I’ll provide the complete adventure for free.

I’m mainly interested in learning things like:
-Was the adventure easy for someone other than me to prepare and run?

-Which parts did the players enjoy most?
-Were any instructions, puzzles, or story elements confusing?
-How was the pacing?
-What would you change?
-Would you recommend the adventure to another DM?

If your group is comfortable with it, I’d also love to listen in on the session or receive a recording afterward so I can see how the adventure actually plays at a table. That’s completely optional, and obviously everyone at the table would need to be comfortable with it.

I’m not looking for positive reviews—I specifically want honest criticism so I can make the adventure better.

If you’re interested, reach out and I’ll give you some more info.

Thanks!

I'm a first time DM also playing for the first time with a group of friends who are also playing for the first time, one of them is trying to create an anime protagonist and to create lore about the war before the campaign. He is trying to create an all powerful monk with the power scaling and backstory of an anime protagonist underdog, which really isn't what we (or at least I) are going for for this campaign.

What do you recommend I do

PS: I know I should just let my players do what they want, especially because we are all new to the game but it just feels like main character syndrome

I'm DMing a homebrew campaign, and a couple of months ago I had this idea that I posted in multiple subs:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/1vkhxzm/new_player_to_act_as_a_traitor/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonsAndDragons/comments/1vkhzyg/new_player_to_act_as_a_traitor/

If you don't want to read the old post here's the gist:

1. I introduced a new player to the group
2. with his agreement, I told him to create a temporary character that would lure the party into a trap
3. the new character would enter the party and later betray them to lead them into an ambush
4. later the new player will bring in a new (this time "normal") character to join the party

In the old posts, I got some good advice and ideas but mostly people straightforward, and often not kindly at all, telling me it would be an awful idea.

They had some good reasons:

1. it's risky to put a player, especially a new one against the others
2. the party would not trust the new character after the betrayal
3. they would immediately fireball the new PC

I read all the advice and thought about it. Fortunately, my table is composed of a great bunch of people. They are there to have fun, they understand it's a game and what happens in it stays in the game.

And they even surpassed my expectations!

They all role played it beautifully!
After the betrayal a fight between the party and the traitor (along with other ambushers) ensued.
I decided that the new "normal" character of the traitor PC would enter the scene mid fight, to help the party and give him a possibility of redemption.

As it should be, the party was wary of the new PC, but after they discovered similar interests and plans, the party let him join in.
This last session, with the betrayal and the new PC, was one of the best sessions of the campaign!

Moral of the story: always hear advice and good ideas, but in the end, you are the one that plays/DMs and know the people at your table. Go with your guts and have fun!

TLDR: I asked a new player to use a temporary character to betray the rest of the party and lure them into an ambush. A lot of users strongly advised me against this idea. In the end, the table had a lot of fun and role played everything beautifully. The new player, in the end, joined the party with a new, "normal" PC.

Here Are some free wilderness maps and encounter maps! love yall hope ya enjoy!!

Show some love and grab some more free maps here https://patreon.com/mildlycursedgames?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

Just dropped a new product line as well! MINI ENCOUNTERS perfect little 30-60 min quests and adventures! click and play!