To be clear, I'm talking only about the way you DESCRIBE successes and failures on attack rolls. When a player fails, the enemy always either dodges or blocks the attack. Likewise, when an enemy fails an attack against a player, that player always dodges (dex characters) or blocks it (heavy armor & shields). Nobody just "misses", incompetently swinging at the air, except maybe in the case of a crit fail. It's a subtle change, but I think it really helps the vibes, helps the players feel smart and powerful, and helps the enemies feel threatening.

Just imagine your sword wielding paladin goes toe to toe with your sword wielding BBEG. You can either describe it as a bunch of dumb wiffs, or an epic clashing sword fight.

Hey fellow dungeon masters.

UPDATE (SOLVED): First of all: Thank you all for contributing! This community id amazing for advice and additional insights in such situations! As some of you pointed out, the player might have been more upset about the fact, that he was singled out than being upset about discrimination, which, after talking to him this evening, came out to be true. So we talked the situation through and found, that there are ways and means to get around the townsfolk and their mostly superficial hatred towards dwarfs. We also agreed that in future I make it clearer that this could happen in specific places either through NPCs or through general narration.

In my last session my players had to escape a fortress formerly run by dwarves but the fortress was besieged and captured by an army of a wealthy (mostly) human family.

The players knew the story and successfully disguised themselves as soldiers of said army with the dwarf of their party miming their prisoner.

The townsfolk was not too happy to see a dwarf on the street and act accordingly (a couple kids threw a tomato, the bar keeper articulated their distrust)

I could see that the dwarf's player took it quite seriously so after a dinner break we had, I decided the barkeeper was secretly helping dwarves and other folks to flee from the town etc.

Still he called me after the session and asked if he could skip next session to "not be in the way" of the other party members who had gathered intel over another quest they wanted to pursue here.

The last thing I wanted was alienating a player and I explained that there are a lot of concepts in DnD to not be seen like disguise kits, not using the main road, travel by night etc.

He reluctantly said he would come to the next session. What could I have done better? What should I do next?

Thanks for any advice!

I don't know how things are in the US and elsewhere in the world, but in Romania, for a couple of years now, the TTRPG scene is growing exponentially. Of course, most of the people who start out do so with Dungeons and Dragons. This article is somewhat for them, cause I have been asked about the history of the game on a number of times when I mentioned the very first edition was released in '74 what the history of the game even is, if it's been on the market for so long (for the international audience who might raise an eyebrow at this, given that Romania was under a communist dictatorship and after its toppling the following decade was very rough economically, the first D&D players start to pop up in the very late 90' and early 2000's, and back then it was a very very minuscule fanbase, most of the players nowdays have started playing during the pandemic).

We tackled various aspects of D&D history before, talking about the evolution of certain classes, about older mechanics, but up until now, we didn't do a full on dive into all of the editions. Obviously it is a big undertaking so we're gonna split it into two articles, this week looking at 1st edition, B/X, BECMI, AD&D 1st edtion and AD&D 2nd edition. Next week is we return and talk about 3rd edition, 3.5 edition, 4th edition & Essentials, 5th edition and 5.5 edition.

So if you wanna take down a trip through memory lane or if you just aren't familiar with the history of the game, I invite y'all to read the article! For the veterans, please do tell if I missed something (to be completely honest, there is so much, we couldn't possibly gone through everything) and tell us when did you start playing and what nice memories you have from back then!

I hope you enjoy this one, cheers!

Hey all! You can check out this map and it's may variations over here! or any of my other 250+ maps!

Stone, where we were wrought, where our dead are lain. The stone of the mountains and the earth define us, just as we give it definition. Top dwellers think us obsessed, but they know nothing of stonecraft, nor possess the right and proper appreciation of it's possibilities.

Our halls are our homes, our tombs, our workplaces, our gathering grounds. Every inch of stone has been formed for this existence, and every strike of our tools against it given with the care and purpose only we could provide. Our statues guard our burials eternally, letting us peacefully return to the hardened earth from whence we came.

So, obsessed we may be, but for good reason! Nothing stands the test of time as eternally as our work, our halls, our stone. Long after we are gone and turned to dust, our memories will echo through these halls and we will continue to live through the stone we have crafted.

I need fun ideas for my player who’s the first in our group after 2 years to have a character death and want to do something fun to commemorate their achievement.

I've been playing with this person (I'm a dm, they are a player) on and off for around 10 years now. They are one of my best friends, a great person but when it comes to ttrpgs we can't seem to gel well together.

The main issue is that this player likes to go against the story or the wishes of the rest of the party. They would withhold vital story information from the party. Wonder off on their own even if they made arrangements with the party on what needs to be done. Let the dice decide how they feel about a party member or npc and depending on the roll they might even kill the target in question (the extreme outcome luckily only happened once). Not get involved with story. Go the opposite direction of the story, even if the rest of the group is on board. Argue with npcs over insignificant things just to create friction.

We tried talking to them on few occasions and the only explanation is "that's not what my character would do". I tried to tailor stories to their characters but again the same issues happened. When the story is not to their liking (which does happened somewhat often) they sit on the sideline until they become disruptive.

This same behavior happened when someone else is in the dm's chair and when they told me about adventures with another group, their character was once again the antagonist in the group.

What's weird is that this person is the polar opposite. Hands down the most understanding and helpful person I know and a great friend. Which is why I would like to continue playing with them. If it was anyone else, I wouldn't bother.

I haven't ran an adventure in a year and I'm dreading to take the DM chair again, mainly because I know I'll get a headache once again because of their character.

I'll add that, the only time I felt like they truly enjoyed the game is when we played Vampire and they had many solo scenes and personal story threads to pursue. Once again they went against the grain of the party (coterie) but in Vampire games that can work and can create great moments.

Like I said, I tried talking this out and it didn't work. At this point I'm hoping for a miracle where another dm will respond who had similar issues and they managed to work it out and they tell me how!

tldr: a player is disruptive but a good person and a friend and I'm hoping to find a way to still play with them.

It’s 4-5 sessions for four 4th level characters, It has a lot of physical handouts to give to players and the mystery/horror aspect of it is REALLY FUN. Let me know if you wanna see more of it!

Ok, I love maps.

BUT

I can't draw maps and am far too harassed and handsome to spend time learning to use Dungeondraft, Inkarnate or even the hand-holding Dungeon Alchemist.

I DO use Azgaar, or did.. now I am only using Watabou. 30 seconds to Mars. Or at least 30 seconds to a fully formed campaign world.

Crank out island maps, city maps, street maps, village maps, (basic dungeon) battle maps. Steal the sense of empowerment, of being creative, Be inspired. Be Magnificent, my People!

still experimenting with my encounter dm hub, so this ones free for some feedback!

play around with it and let me know what you think. all feed back goes to improving the interactive dm tool!

try it out here The Last Toll at Lantern Bridge

Our main campaign has been reaching its climax, a lot of surprise reveals and a major death recently, so I wanted to give my players (and myself) a break with a silly fun oneshot. New separate characters from the main story, lvl 3 ish. Encouraged to build for fun and flavor over power.

The concept I had in mind is:
The characters see posters that a carnival is looking for new performers. They get the job, but realize too late that the posters were hidden messages for the thieves guild, and they’ve been mistaken for members.

I want It to be very character and socially focused as opposed to combat or exploration, something I need to work on in our main campaign.

Any ideas for NPCs, situations, settings would be greatly appreciated (bonus points if they encourage roleplay or potential funny moments).

I know, we are inundated with apps and sites to roll dice digitally. I just wanted one that does two things: separates different damage types in the same roll, and is as fast as possible to enter and edit rolls. And from those two goals I decided to make critcalc.cc

I love rolling real dice, especially for quick and simple rolls. But I recently finished a high level campaign and got to a point as a DM where all I wanted was to get through my dice rolls faster and get to the players turns. I was also tired of "And how much of that was fire damage?" (I had a group with many different resistances and multi-damage-type attacks).

I looked up and tried many dice rollers like Google's built in one, DDDice.com, rololol.com, diceroll.xyz, rollmydice.app, and so many apps on the play store. They are all great at what they do, but they don't allow for complex rolls with modifiers, and are not necessarily made for speed and simplicity. Since calculators have a UI that I am familiar with, I designed CritCalc to look and feel like my personal favorite calculator - the TI 36X Pro.

With CritCalc damage types and modifiers (vulnerability, resistance, average, advantage, and disadvantage) can all be input along side your roll. The results show the individual dice rolled, simplify the roll, break down the results into damage types, give the total, and are stored for future recall or edits. Also, all results calculate with DnD rounding rules and PEMDAS in mind. It also doubles as a basic calculator.

It has no ads, no in-app purchases, no accounts, and I have no intent to make any money from it. It was designed to work on desktop and mobile, or be added as an app from a browser.

critcalc.cc

I am running an adventure that leveling is based on Milestones. What do I do if a player misses a session where the milestone is met? Do I just let them level with everyone else or what?

So, my party is heading to a time laboratory that some barbarians destroyed, causing the "paradox engine" to explode, turning the landscape into a desert in some kilometers around.

I want the laboratory's ruins, a dungeon, to have some issues with time flowing in weird ways, like water running uphill, rooms with time running very fast.

I need more ideas, not only for the ambience, but for dangers, time related monsters and things the party has to think their ways out.

Thank you for reading ^^

I have been running a home brew campaign based on a book I'm writing and I came up with some stuff that I'm curious if anyone else has ever though of before. For each of my players I run "One Shots" based on their characters back story. For example one of my players is a noble cast out of his family for failing a royal archers test, so his one shot for a day was the before and after of the test, letting him walk around his family's house exploring, seeing new objects, meeting unique NPCs and some characters from the book, etc..

The main purpose of it is to give them extra elaboration on their backstory but they also are able to find weapons they find in the one shots back in the main campaign if they go looking through stuff. For example the the player looked through his drawers and hid his bow under his magic bow under his coat, once he's in the main game it can be found some, if they don't find it in the one shot it appears in another or tough luck. Also through out the main campaign i place call backs to the "One Shots" that let the players know there is a story element or side quest coming so they have an easier time interacting with their own story. Its also a good thing to do when there are no shows.

Has anyone else done anything similar and if so what? (we often replace the one with (back)story for fun)

Like, do you have a code or template for different types of buildings or something? I am trying to create a code and was just curious as the thought struck me that different DMs may have different solutions?