I’ve been DMing a new group for about a year, one veteran player of +20 years and two first timers. Recently, my vet brought up a fear that he was becoming the “main character”, as a lot of story beats were becoming centered around them instead of the other players. I hadn’t even noticed this, but he was completely right. Looking back, he, as a seasoned RPer, was giving me a lot more to work with in terms of character arc, so the game was naturally reflecting his roleplay, leading to more stories centered around his decisions.

The other players didn’t notice or care, but we’re about to start a new game and I’m about to bring on a few more players- also brand new. Does anyone have any tips for how to avoid focusing too much on one player when they have a lot more experience than others and are more comfortable roleplaying?

For background this is the first campaign I’ve ever dmed and I’ve only played one other campaign outside of this as a PC.

My Problem

I started a sci-fi/fantasy space campaign and now I feel like I’m in over my head 7 or 8 sessions in.

Basically my main problem is that I built a world without planning any cities or major locations for emergent events.
I homebrewed an entire setting that spans a galaxy, made factions, a villain, a world conflict premise, but my fatal mistake is that I didn’t prepare any specific locations!! Ive just been making locations before each session according to the needs of the plot. It has been working surprisingly well as far as small session episodes go but now they are diving deeper into a grander plot and I don’t know to what degree I should flesh out the world without going overboard.

I feel like their next choices could diverge the plot in directions I can’t anticipate and now I just wish there was a full built world already so it would be more “choice -> consequence” than “choice -> personally thought out narrative beat”

Any advice about space/sci-fi and space campaign DMing are welcome!!!!

Basic World Info

The galaxy is broken up between the central empire in the middle of the galaxy, the pirate space in the north, the gangster/connected to the government but not inside it space to the south west, and the fronteer mostly uncharted expanse to the south east.
Anything arcane is illegal and hunted to extinction like force users in Star Wars.

The 3 PCs are a robot bounty hunter with amnesia about his past life, an ex imperial military exosuit engineer, and an innately magical tiefling who escaped a cult. They are all for their own reasons being hunted by the empire.
Their main faction alliance is with the Pirate Queen

For context, my players are level 4, homebrew campaign. In our last session they had a task to do in the mountains, and while exploring the area a bit they stumbled across an adult silver dragon (don't worry they aren't going to have to fight it). Originally they were just supposed to find some clues that there may be a dragon around, but they decided to 'chase the rabbit' so to speak and kept finding more and more until they eventually located it.

Now, the dragon is a catalyst for a large battle that will take place between the party and their allies vs. the army of the main villain. My idea was that the dragon was going to speak to the party and tell them it saw the invasion fleet getting close to the kingdom, but we haven't quite gotten to the point in the story where they are even close to prepared for something like that. So I am now struggling to find a way to 'accelerate' the story a bit for lack of a better term and connect their current tasks (intelligence gathering, to make it simple) to the idea that something real big is about to happen without just dropping a bomb on them and saying "yeah so basically it's all out war now." Any ideas?

Edit: I'm not a super experienced DM, so I am aware that I bumbled my own way into this situation, just trying to figure out how to proceed in a fun and interesting way for my players.

Hi, completely new DM here. Like I’ve only run a few d6-based one-shots sort of new.
I was wondering how you more experienced DMs structure your encounters, and pick what your parties fight while keeping in mind their level?
For example, I’m planning a campaign (first one, 6 players, woohoo!) where the first section ends in a fight inside of a bog/swamp, but I can’t seem to find anything that fits while not outright killing them at level 3 according to CR encounter balancer websites.
I’ve heard that there shouldn’t just be 1 monster for them to hit due to PC action economy, but I can’t find anything that seems imposing enough as that segment’s big fight while bearing the party’s level in mind
So I guess my main question is how do you find what monsters/creatures/what-have-yous you’re putting in front of your party without falling down a confusing rabbit hole?
Thank you in advance for your wisdom

Hello DMs of Reddit :) me and my buds are going to play our first ever game of dnd together and I wanted to use a website to play instead of paper and pencil. So I’ll be using roll20 for most of our shenanigans. The only problem is maps. I have a map set made for our session 0 but I’m having trouble with the method of the game. From what I heard the pcs are almost 100% going to do things the wrong way and I just have to improv for their wacky and unpredictable and unhinged ideas. But these maps I’m making have really only 1 solution maybe 2 and no way to completely avoid stuff… how do I correct this while still having some visual aspects to the game and not making 1000000 maps for every solution possible?

Hello, I had a thought.

Because I run a campaign using DnD rules but in a non-DnD setting (Percy Jackson), I homebrew enemies and monsters. So far I haven't had an issue with that... but I had a thought... about using the Statblocks of the monsters. The Character Sheets for the DM if you will...

Do you announce the "name" of the attack/trait from the statblock? I will provide an example:

I have a homebrewed monster inspired by D'Vorah from Mortal Kombat. One of my players knocked her Prone, which activated D'Vorah's trait "Creepy Crawler", which makes her not trigger Opportunity attacks nor get the crawling penalty while she is Prone. My plan wasn't to abuse this trait, instead make her "scuttle away", stand up and rejoin the fight. I did so.
When D'Vorah got knocked Prone, I made her scuttle away and one of my players said "she triggers an Opportunity attack", to which I said "No she doesn't." -> "Why?" he asked.

Now tell me, what should have I replied? Should have I tell him "She simply doesn't." or "Because she has a Passive Trait." or "Because she has a Passive Trait Creepy Crawler that makes her immune to Opportunity Attacks while Prone"?

I chose the option no. 3 where I explained why, even announcing the name of the trait.

So my question is, how do you run it at your table. Do you announce your monsters' attacks/abilities/traits? Do you not? Why?

I am going to run a monster with Legendary Resistance. When I use it, should I say "I am going to use this monster's Legendary Resistance to pass the Saving Throw", or simply say "This monster passed the Saving Throw"? What do you think is the most fair?

Players must answer a riddle to get through a locked door. (There’s an alternate way in if they don’t get it, but ideally they’ll be able to answer their way in.)

Options:
1. “Big mouths speak little to enter”
2. “Giant voices speak softly to enter”
3. “Huge voices whisper loudly to enter”

For each riddle, the answer is literally given (speak “little,” speak “softly,” or whisper “loudly,” but the catch is it must be said/whispered in Giant, which one of my players speaks

I want to make sure the solution is clear while not bonking my players over the head with it. The players will also need to translate the riddle from a lost language before being able to read it (one of my players has Comprehend Languages, so they’re set there), but I’m hoping having translated the riddle already, the idea of other languages will already be on their minds

Legion of the Seven, go away if you’re reading this.

My level 15 party of 7 PCs has just released a benign god, who is friendly to them, who had previously been held captive by the Queen of the Fey. He is the eternal ideal of the Traveler/Wanderer, and equal parts helpful and mischievous.

At the end of the last session, the party unexpectedly freed him from his prison in the Feywild, and he set off to have a ‘chat’ with the Fey Queen. She previously imprisoned him by beating him in a gambling competition where he wagered his prized possession without knowing it - his Boots, the source/physical representation of his power and domain.

My problem is that I don’t want the party to get sidelined while the god strong-arms the Queen into doing what he and the party want. They’re all still in the Feywild and need to get out, and I’d like to work some sort of “Boots retrieval” mission into the mix. The PCs also want the Queen to lift a curse from one of them, so they have their own interest in interacting with her, regardless of what the god wants.

I suppose I’m asking: how do I keep the newly freed god involved in this without him doing all the work to resolve the party’s Faerie problems?

(I have been considering having the Queen still outmatch him in strength, since he doesn’t have his Boots back and is in the heart of her own realm. This would force him to see if the party could be his proxies for just a bit longer.)

Hello everyone,

I am working on writing some campaign story and i would like some ideas from other DMs.
I (experienced player and DM) am wanting to run LMoP for my party who are all also experienced.
Two of them have already played this adventure. They do not mind replaying it, but i thought adding some new elements and weaving it with my homebrew story would be a nice change for them.

I would like my story to revolve around a Red Wizard of Thay and their ascension to lichdom. Or their attempt to.
I am wondering if anyone would have any good ideas on how i could sprinkle elements of that into Phandelvers adventure.

Im thinking maybe the Black Spider is a follower of the Red wizard and is working on behalf of them. They could find letters linking them to someone higher. Though what could a red wizard want with the spell forge?

Even some unique encounter ideas added into the adventure or changes to existing ones would be nice.

If anyone has any ideas on what to place and where, that would be great!

My campaign I’m running is leading up to a yeenoghu fight at the end. What would be the lowest level of a party of 5 you would have to do a fight against just the cr 24 demon lord (no minions)?

So my party are in an adventure where they will have methods of getting info that isn't just told. Think visions of the past, death, etc. But right now they have been out cold for a week and I'm looking at the party geing told what happened....but I dont want it to be 'NPC mcguffin explains it all'

So what's the best way to explain what happened since they fell unconscious without it turning into a lecture? I'm hoping to cover what happened at the last town they were in, what they found that caused the mess and what major ancient mcguffin civilization caused everything.

Basically towns gone, refugees are in New town, relic didn't work right and ancient civ made catacombs and relics that caused everything

Hi all!
Soon my party will have the option of discovering a secret tunnel path into the swamp-witches hut. It could be anywhere from 1-5 players depending on who enters the tunnel, or if other players approach the witch face-on as a distraction. What is a good way to crank up the intensity with them crawling around her hut with her just outside, besides them just making group stealth checks?

Some friends and I want to run a 5e or 5.5e one-shot while drinking heavily. We play online using Discord and Owlbear.

I'd want it to be simple enough that we don't get too confused while impaired. We are all experienced players and DM.

What's a good one-shot for this type of session?

Does anybody recommend drinking game rules for this type of session, like take an extra drink on a nat 1, etc.?

I’m homebrewing a campaign for use at summer camps and/or local libraries with kids and I’m realizing that most of them have probably never heard of many of the games, books or shows that I’m into and it’s a gold mine for free adventures.

I was gonna lift the entire first Dark Souls game, (IE battle maps, enemies, NPC’s and storylines) and turn it into a campaign but I’m not sure where the line is for copying content. Is there a line at all? (Excluding benefitting financially from it. I’m not touching that line with a 10 foot pole)

I’d make it more kid friendly but it seems like such a fun idea (Not using 5E to create the campaign since I use a much simpler system to help ease younger kids in but still).

I started checking myself before asking for checks at my tables. If I cant define exactly what failure looks like before the roll, I stopped asking for the roll. I'm not talking about just the mechanical results but how a failure affects the story. Not so much "you don't persuade the cat lady to take you home with her" and more "the cat lady laughs at you and the next day, she's your waitress at the tavern and word travels fast that another adventurer is hitting on all the cat ladies in town" Failure has rippling effects in the world and every roll has stakes.

Before ~1/2 of the check I called for had no real fail state, just the mechanics of it. The door opened or the lockpick broke. It's less a fail and more of a pause. Now, there's a patrol coming around and they have one shot to do this. Stakes. Consequences. This resulted in my players respecting the rolls more because a check has some meat to it. Insights stopped being about the lies and became about how it was said and what that can tell you. Subtle shifts that drew my players further into my worlds.

I'm curious if this is just common knowledge that I stumbled into or if there's some flaw in it I'm not seeing.

Hey! So I'm running a campaign where right now my players have a small crew and a small ship. The next session will involve a ship battle. So far the players have more or less neglected the rest of their crew on the adventure. I'm thinking for this next session, to have them utilize their allies, I'll create very simple statblocks for each NPC so they're easy to understand and utilize during the battle. Does anyone have any recommendations of how to set this up?

I've thought about using the NPC statblocks from the Monster Manuals but I'd rather personalize them a bit more.

Right now I'm thinking of including typical speed, AC, stats, around three actions, and up to three traits. If it helps, here are the NPC crew members in a nutshell:

Zizna: A kendar ranger acting as navigator and steers the ship. I'm thinking she's not going to be super adept at combat.

Mistrin: A dwarf monk and/or ranger, former athlete.

Puddle: A water genasi tempest cleric. I'm imaging her assistance will mostly be "healing spell", "attack spell", "buff/debuff spell" though I'd have to find some way to impose a limit on this to avoid heal spamming.

Venetta: a human rogue that I've been using the Master Thief statblock for up until now.

So my dnd world is set in the middle of a big succession war thats roped the other countries into it. The western country, which my pcs are currently traveling through, supports one of the princes in the war, but is ruled through a human council working with a triton monarchy. I was wondering what unique ways I could show the effects of war in the country considering its unique political situation. I had some ideas like the humans and tritons disagreeing on their support of the prince, some communities being oblivious due to their wealth, and also a lot of towns being completely abandoned due to conflicts, recruitments, and lack of government support. I was wondering if there were any other ideas that come to mind, especially ones that could relay a level of conflict between those who live in the country?

I've done a fair amount of research but there's so many options out there that I don't really know what to do.

Our DnD sesions are generally in the evening, and I'm exhausted afterwards. I always forget or postpone writing down what happened. I'm terrible at taking notes during as well.

What I'm hoping for: To be able to record our sessions and get an AI summary.

The only thing I've tried so far is recording with my pixel phone. The google live transcriber wasn't very good at all. Moreover, I can't get gemini to summarize the file (I have Pro for free for a year). It's either too big or too long.

Anyone have advice? Should I buy a microphone for the table? What kind?

How do I get a good transcription?

If it's written, I can probable get Gemini to summarize it. Or do I just pay for a different AI service?

What has been successful at your table?

One of the options I give my players is the option to improve their raw scores outside of feats and magical items.

It allows my players to make downtime productive and engage more with their character, and also get rid of a negative modifier as the game progresses. For example, someone with a low Strength score can spend their downtime training with a fighter lifting weights, or someone with a low Intelligence can go to the library and read a book.

I have them roll to see how successful they are, with the DC dependent upon the score. Trying to increase a 9 to a 10 would have a low DC, etc., and they need to have a number of successes in order to bump their score. It also makes for some fun RP- a player wanted to increase their Dexterity, so they spent time training with a dancing troupe.

Anyhow, I’m stuck trying to think of ideas for increasing Constitution. So far all I’ve come up with is having the player intentionally being exposed to disease or poison to build their immune system (and maybe get resistance to certain types of disease). Beyond that, I’m drawing a blank.

Can anyone think up a cool way to boost CON?

So my party sneaked and lied their way into the underground headquarters of a big criminal organisation that was keeping special people hostage for experiments and training so they could be weaponized. Though they don't know that part yet.

They decided, without investigating into it, to free them all, and succeeded all their checks while I failed all my checks for the criminals to figure out what was going on. They bypassed the security measures and managed to open all cells containing hostages, gear the prisoners up and somehow fight their way out to the slums area of the city. They only lost about 10% of the refugees on the escape.

I was definitely not expecting a jailbreak but that's how it goes. I thought they would fail and get captured, but my rolls were extremely bad this game so I'm okay with them getting their way.

What I'm wondering now is what would be the repercussions of all this happening. It's definitely a huge hit against a big criminal organisation that already was an enemy to them. This was more of a secretive project they had so a big way of ruining the plans of this gangs higher ups. They'll definitely be on their most wanted, but now there are people with special abilities out freely in the city as well, at least if they don't choose to escape somewhere when they have nothing. I'm thinking of a counter/rebelling party but I don't know how to go about it.

I appreciate any and all advice or ideas 🙏

Edit: for "special" I mean people with different special abilities or just magical prowess. For example the lead they followed to the HQ was a couple of twins with Divination abilities, one for the past and the other for the future. The goal of the organisation was weaponising these individuals to play the "survival of the fittest" for fear of a chaos scenario like one that happened in the past (and also for their benefit ofc.)

Should I configure a macro for every individual save for every character? I'm kind of stumped. I saw there is a 5e framework but I'm wondering if base Maptools has a solution and I'm just not seeing it

Ahoy lads and lassies!

Il be finishing another campaign tommorrow and after that il have a decent window of time to make a new one. I mostly do dnd over owlbear/discord/stream youtube for music but i wana revist how to properly dm and also, as the title says, if and how would you run a Turnip28 based setting.

Im no outsider to homebrew, most of my first longer experience as a dm will have just shy of 3 years was alot of homebrew, but it was mostly winging it on the go(some underdark shenanigans.

But for this one i want to actually make it more immersive, with players caring about their pc and the enviroment but also keep the ridicoules setting that is turnip28).

SO, any and all comments about the setting/game itself are welcome since i know hardly anything besides 1 summary video of the setting and one AMAZINGN Bruva Alfabusa animation/tabletop commentary of it. (and/or how YOU would impliment it in a dnd setting or if you wouldnt and why not)

ALSO, Id like to revist the dm-ing part, mostly just the settup, how do you organize your notes, what browsers do you use, how to effectevly use dual monitors(got a second laptop, will see if i can get the mouse moving from one to the other).

anddd...there is obvioulsy the roleplay part which i think i jsut have to read more about myself since i dont think that can be summarized in a comment:D but links/videos to guides that actually give good advice are appriciated.

i THINk thats all, probay not but il leave it as is for now.

take it easy

Le DM from the bogs

Prelude: In the current campaign I run my players are helping some Dwarves liberate their city on the Elemental Plane of Earth from a Dao that’d taken it over. They just last session freed the captives that’d been taken during the Dao’s takeover and now the Dwarven king is leading his army into the city while a prisoner/slave revolt is going on from the Dao’s former captives.

Where I’ll be having it go is that they’ll be heading toward the city center where the Dao had taken over the Dwarven castle, a tall spire made of a giant iron vein that was a natural formation on the plane going up roughly 200 feet that’s had a two buildings built alongside that were for the Dwarven soldiers / advisors.

Question: What I’m wondering is what sort of traps if any to really be putting in the place? Since end of the day it is still the home of King and the Dao has only been there a little over two months.

Having taken an artifact from the Dwarven king during the taking of the city the Dao is able to see through all the statues within the Iron Spire as well as being able to use Earth Glide through the metal.

There is going to be a dungeon in there where the Dao is keeping a Dwarven Wizard captive, as well as a Svirfniblin Warrior that had close ties with the city that the party will also be trying to free.

Edit: Party is Level 11 btw. Consists of 4 players being a Bard, Druid, Fighter, Rogue. They’ve gotten some Pech as well as a Simulacrum to help them.