#Dming

[dungeonmastersconsortium]

Limit Break - An Experimental 5e OPTIONAL feature

I posted a while about an experimental feature for 5e that lets players do things not accounted for by the rules, or lets them do Cool Shit™ they wouldn't ordinarily be able to do! This is the VERY rough draft, while I work on tables of consequences for DM's that struggle with improvising or creating such elements off-hand.

Feedback is welcome, but if you're a dick about it, I'll block or ignore you as usual. I know it has been a while since I posted new original content, and this is a new feature/system to tack on to your games, so PLEASE feel free to reblog it for additional exposure so I can get more feedback. More feedback and more exposure means more original content, in the long run!

#dungeons and dragons #d&d #dnd #d&d 5e #dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons 5e #dnd 5e #dungeons & dragons 5e #dming #5e homebrew #homebrew #dnd homebrew #dnd 5e homebrew #ttrpg #d&d homebrew #original content #original work

[thechekhov]

Can you share more funny moments from your DnD campaign please

I’ll do you one better.

For context: This happened during our Curse of Strahd game, which is now leaning into Homebrew territory because my players refuse to go to Ravenloft. 

Not pictured: The unicorn, immediately after taking falling damage, also got electrocuted into oblivion because one of the players is cursed, courtesy of the Amber Temple. 

Needless to say, I was thrilled concerned about how much I packed into the dungeon crawl to wear them down, only to realize they were fully capable of doing it themselves. 

#chekhov answers #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #curse of strahd #only kinda #because homebrew #DMing #dungeon master #game master #ttrpg #dnd stories #chekhov draws #chekhov draws dnd

[dmcatbat]

This is for explicitly DM EXTRAS! Things people dont necessarily expect from a DM but that are a fun perk when the DM does them!

This does not include things like "good story," "world building," or "session 0" as these are typically somewhat expected things, not "extras."

#poll #dungeons and dragons #ttrpg #pathfinder #dming

[babybluesquid]

My players will question how I seem to crit more often than them but it's just simple statistics. As the DM, I am rolling so many more attacks. Your sample size is like under ten for the whole combat, meanwhile mine scales with the number of enemies. Of course I crit more.

#dming #dnd #dungeons and dragons #d&d

[cyanomys]

Hey TTRPG nerds

Anybody got recommendations for indie ttrpg youtubers? I'm looking for content that is broadly not D&D-specific, and not actual plays. So, video essays/reviews of games, how-to-plays, GMing/playing advice, game design, etc.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #youtubers #tabletop games #tabletop #video essays #how to play #game master #dungeon master #DMing #GMing #gaming advice #indie youtube #help me find

[dmdog]

A lil flip on the guy turns into a creature story. Demon realizes he’s turning into a human and has a meltdown in a bar bathroom about it.

Based on my sisters thought that fiends who fail to do evil stuff and sin will start losing their demonic abilities and appearance

#art #digital art #digital illustration #comic #dnd5e #dming #waterdeep #waterdeep dragon heist #vincent trench #rakshasa

[catbatart]

Last Pathfinder session, I got to give my players a magical item- a dollhouse that provides the party with a manor in which they can find shelter and rest by turning the characters doll-sized. In elvish runes, inscribed on the bottom of the dollhouse, is written "Polly's Pocket Dimension."

Tomorrow they get to find out what Polly's been up to this whole time. >:)

#would tell but they have tumblr accounts #dnd #pathfinder #dming #not art

[leidensygdom]

I wanted to mention that my partner and me are working on opening a Battlemap patreon opened. It'd include a mix of animated battlemaps made by yours truly (specially for boss fights), and assets and maps with a focus on more modern settings, since there isn't much for that currently.

I'm quite excited to show some stuff- My partner has been absolutely slaying it with the assets!

Here's a couple of examples of my animated battlemap/token work~ Let me know if this is something you'd be interested in!

#battlemap #map #maps #battle map #dungeon master #dming #dm resources

[the-ashen-gm]

I don’t think magic items should be named after their function, but their story.

In Dungeon Crawl Classics, there’s a chapter on magic items that briefly mentions that magic items are rare and powerful to the point that any one magic item is probably quite famous. That fame usually comes with a name.

So a particular flame tongue sword might be called “Hellfire” or “The Sword of Durageddon’s Bane”. A particular bag of holding might be “Kingslocks” or “The Blinding of the Gorgon”. These items get their names from the adventures they were involved in, which to me is a lot more interesting than a name that is purely functional.

Those functional names make the items feel less magical and more mechanical to me. If a bag of holding is recognisable as such, it must be fairly unremarkable to just have a generic name - implying that a great many people own one. It’s like owning a Ferrari racecar (impressive, but you’re hardly the only one) versus owning “The Carriage of the Ninth Angel” that is famed for being blessed by three angels with three heads in preparation for its death race against Satan himself.

I bought a zine recently (Through Ultan’s Door: Downtime in Zyon) that has a simple system for making magic items:

Commission a master artisan to make you a masterwork (a sword, armour, or book)

Use that item in a quest in an interesting way (such as slaying a particularly powerful foe)

That item, by becoming part of a spectacular story, then takes on magical properties once given a suitable name

Lots of players find it boring to find a generic +1 sword or what have you in dungeons, so I think this is a good solution to make it more interesting. And suitably mythic!

#magic items #ttrpg #rpg #dming #gming #homebrew #dnd #osr #osr rpg

[anim-ttrpgs]

It was mentioned that EUREKA would be the easiest DM-able system ever. From a newcomer's perspective, how is it so?

Well, firstly, it strongly encourages the use of prewritten adventure modules, which just already take a lot of work off the GM's shoulders, and maybe others can elaborate on how much of a burden that is lifting, but it isn't exactly very unique to Eureka.

What Eureka does do however is have rules and play advice which enourages, or even necessitates, players and player-characters taking initiative and driving the story themselves with their own deliberate actions, rather than sitting back and asking the GM "okay where are our characters going next?" The game in general both encourages and facilitates a very hands-off GM approach where the GM's main job is to be a referee for the rules and a voice for the NPCs, not a novelist that inserts the names of the PCs into their plot. There's a lot of similarity here between this approach and a lot of OSR type games' "situations, not plots" approach. This makes feel more like playing a game than being a full-time job.

None of the character abilities in Eureka necessitate that a certain NPC exist for them to work, meaning the GM will never have to come up with a whole character on the fly that has a whole believable relationship with the PCs. In fact, there is an optional system in Eureka by which the players are the ones who come up with NPCs their PCs know, using a series of questions to formulate their relationship to one-another and then handing that over to the GM.

Many things that are traditionally up to the GM in many other RPGs or RPG-groups such as note-taking and in-game time-keeping are instead explicitly assigned to a player.

The system just also has a lot of rules for helping GMs make calls in many different situations, rather than having to arbitrate a bunch of mechanical effects on the fly, and has very simple and easy-to-work-with NPC stat-lines.

All of these things and more add up to a lighter workload for the GM, so that instead of the effort investment in a 1-GM-4-player group being split 80-5-5-5-5% like in D&D5e and many other popular systems, in Eureka it's split more like 40-15-15-15-15%.

Check out our Kickstarter page for the best accumulation of info on what Eureka: investigative Urban Fantasy even is! The Kickstarter campaign launches April 10th 2024!

Check out our Patreon to get the whole prerelease rulebook + multiple adventure modules and pieces of short fiction for a subscription of only $5!

If you wanna try before you buy, check out our website for more information on Eureka as well as a download link to the free demo version!

Interested in actually playing this game, and many others, with the developers? Check out A.N.I.M.'s TTRPG Book Club, a club of nearly 100 members at the time of writing this where we regularly nominate, vote on, and then play indie TTRPGs! At the time of writing this, we are playing Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, and sign-ups are closed for actually playing it, but you can still join in to pick up a PDF club copy of the rulebook to read and follow along with discussion, and sit in on and observe sessions! There is no schedule obligation for joining this club, as we keep things very flexible by assigning multiple GMs with different timeslots each round, to try and accomodate everyone! This round, we had over thirty people sign up, and were able to fit in all but one! Here is the invite link! See you there!

#monsters #eureka #eureka: investigative urban fantasy #ttrpg #rpg #roleplaying #coc #tabletop #DMing #DM #dungeon master #game master #GM #indie game #indie #indie games #indiegames #ttrpg design #ttrpg tumblr #indie ttrpg #ttrpg community #ttrpg character #dungeons and dragons #pathfinder #dnd

[mytortoisegotstuckinatupperware]

fun dm tip

if your players roll a perception check and ask "is there a [insert specific thing that I definitely didn't design but go off queen] nearby"

say

yes

always

#within reason #“is there a flamethrower” #rolls nat 1 #“yeah and somehow you tripped over it and are on fire” #“whoops” #"yeah: #dming #dnd character #dnd #dungeons and dragons #dnd5e #ttrpg #dnd ocs #homebrew #funny #tabletop rpg #dm tips

[thechekhov]

Do you have any advice for someone about to dm for the first time? I'm less worried about running the session than how the hell do you plan one?

Btw Iove your art and it's inspired me to try out line work again

Thanks! And hey, that's a good question.

Here's the thing I've learned as a DM - you don't have to plan EVERYTHING.

In fact, the less you plan, the more prepared you'll be!*

*Some restrictions apply

How I like to think of when I DM is that me and my players sit in the middle of a WHEEL of possibilities. It looks something like this:

Every session you start with, you have a set amount of possible go-to points. These are limited. Usually, your party won't go from sipping drinks at a tavern to walking out the door and fighting cult members in ONE session.

The possibilities are endless, so what you need to prepare is just the next few steps. In the above image, what I mean is that they first two darker shades are representative of what you need to have prepared immediately, and the lighter shades are plans you can have on the back burner, but don't need to flesh out.

As your party makes choices and travels outside of the Starting Spot, you can prepare the NEXT steps based on the ones they chose.

So, say your party is in your tavern, and they decide to go to the Adventuring Guild to look for a job. You don't HAVE to prepare the Heist Mission in the Wizard's tower for that - you can know it's a possibility, but once they've made their first choice, you have a direction.

You can then kind of visualize what their next steps are.

Of course, this wheel isn't one way! Your players could always just... hop over to an adjacent topic! If they're solving a mystery, that could link up to a Cult involvement. And from there, they can discover a Secret Hideout for the Cult, which you already know was a possibility if they were to go into the forest.

And once that sort of adventure has started, you can go ahead and think about what other things you had planned out might link up to or evolve from where they are.

At that point, it's like playing a giant board-game. Which involves laying down track in front of an oncoming train.

My recommendation is that you keep a few things on hand which can be used anywhere:

a few maps that somewhat relate to multiple things on your map (for example, a dungeon-looking map that could be a Secret Hideout OR the Wizard's tower)

Some named NPCs - at least one per location that you can throw up immediately when they arrive

a few puzzles/plotpoints which can act as a placeholder while you think of details (for example, a Mystery can be hard to think of on the spot. Give them some random clues, such as a missing person, a few discarded items, etc and then take your time before the next session to link those items together!)

The rest is.. well... just making it up as you go along!

Of course, that's just MY personal way of doing things. Some people prepare way less, and some prepare way more. It's just all up to how quickly your players move/how comfortable you are with details.

#dnd #d&d #dming #dm #gm #dungeon master #game master #dungeons and dragons #ttrpg #chekhov answers #infograph #kinda?

[greetings-inferiors]

Part of the joys of dming is giving names and unique statspreads to npcs which most likely are going to be killed without a line of dialogue. They're my blorbos, even if no one else will ever know their names.

#text post #randyposting #dming #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #blorbos that time forgot

[heroineimages]

Had one of the best sessions I've DMed so far tonight at the library. So we're still playing as Roman gladiators, and I let the teens do a PvP training session in their ludus's practice arena with 3v3 teams, adding a 4th plus an NPC when another showed up late. As a DM, it was kind of nice because all I had to do was referee, while I let them pound each other. And since they're all the same level, and all fighting classes, it worked out to be pretty even and brutal. And since it was a training session, none of them had to die when they went down.

I really want to have them PvP in the Colosseum now, but I worry about creating animosity between players, since they'll have to actually kill each other's characters if the audience down-votes someone.

#D&D #dming

[mystical-cinnamoon]

i am loving my dnd campaign

in one session someone rizzed up an NPC SO HARD OMFG, and they went to a sweet teacher, attacked each other in her office, splashed water on her, and secretly decided to blackmail her to get out of the ONE DETENTION she gave a character by claiming she's a racist and telling the board about an accident she made

they might be expelled

oh also i have to make a lawyer NPC bc one of the characters who got attacked/attacked back is suing another character for assault & battery

#dnd #dungeon master #dungeons and dragons #dm #dming

[dmdog]

I wanted to draw a diatryma so bad. Sickass murder bird

I named jarlaxle’s bird Aasha because I couldn’t find a canon name for her (when the party found aasha sleeping in a corner in his office they thought jax turned into a bird howl movingcastle style)

#art #digital art #digital illustration #comic #dnd5e #dming #waterdeep #jarlaxle baenre #waterdeep dragon heist #diatryma #axebeak