As for tiring of combat, yeah, that's been a big part of what's been eating up the momentum of two of the campaigns I'm in right now. The DMs kinda lost the plot and just keep tossing combats our way with minimal reason and any attempts to do otherwise get shot down even when we ask out of game to do something else. They act like any attempts by the players to not do combat are us cheating the game and undoing their prep but it's like just prep something that isn't combat next time! 😭 Since communication has broken down, I'm looking for other games even if it means making my own.

I disagree on how "extra" and "super unnecessary" you say doing a recap is. I've found it saves so much time for those games because we don't need to stop and catch people back up (because there are ALWAYS 2 or more of those people...) what happened last time. Instead, we can just dive right in.

I've actually been prepping my first dnd campaign around those last two tactics. Way more "toys" scattered about battlefields and some lead to new NPCs entering the encounter. They're usually "neutral" and will attack either the closest creature or the one who caused them to come out onto the battlemap. Things like guardian constructs, beasts, and even members of a different faction than the one the players are currently fighting. It's more work than just tossing a random creature(s) into an empty featureless void but hopefully it leads to more fulfilling games in return.

The issue with cover rules is so many DMs don't provide cover on the map and even more don't use the rules at all. Even among them, the only time I've ever seen characters """allowed""" to act as meat shields it was moreso that they were forced to. As missed rolls would magically hit the person in front even if they failed to meet that character's AC. Even worse, low enough rolls, mainly nat 1s, from the character hiding behind this character would ALSO hit them. 🙄

Something that has bugged me about the potion-drinking time debate since I learned about it is a rule regarding the "use an item action." You get one as a free action every turn to do things like pull a lever or open a door. Downing a whole ale is an example of using an item action elsewhere in the book. Yet for, presumably, balance reasons they made drinking potions that are sometimes even just tiny vials a whole action in '14. Now that we're taking so many things off of the action and bonus action slot and turning them into the free actions they always should have been in '24 rules, why go the opposite direction with potions and fill up the bonus action slot with them? Are rangers, monks, paladins, and rogues not expected to use them? That seems silly. Just keep them in the "use an item" slot.

Good ideas indeed... Mwahahahaha! (no, I'm not that cruel to have one of the PCs vanish just for absence, but it may come in handy at some time). Background: We're old players, >50, and some kid's, nieces' or nephews' birthday or some wedding anniversary or other event often keeps players from joining. Soon the grandchildren will disturb the schedule, which is a joyous event in itself. Good to have a nifty in-game explanation of why what happened (or not). 🙂

Weighting my first campaign just needed some quest inspiration thank you 🙏

Don't give this man any more likes, lets keep it 44 XD

Rule 20 is the best; all tables need to include it!

Rule 45: Keep freshly chopped onion fumes in your car.

I hate #43 and also it makes really good sense and i want to tell me DM about it now.

whats rule 34

Man I just got into dnd in my 30s and not even 3min in I already dig this content. Apparently a wild time to get into dnd 😅 but there seems to be a fair amount of good nature fellas out there

Is it too much to say too many that we’re building our own 2d10 system?

Zelda lofi as the music choice on a Robin Williams clip. 😏

Man that "I will cry in the car ride" really got me 😂

I wouldn't comply with the miniature confiscation rule. If I paid for it, you're not getting it. I like most of the rest of these rules, though.

Oh I love the exhaustion on 0 hp rule, may have to use that one 🤔

Is that what he was playing in the chair when he died?

He most likely had ADHD, so you if you ever had a humble actor that struggled with addiction and managing ADHD, you would probably get pretty close to what he was. I think he was really inspiring in a way. I always look up to him whenever I feel my addiction coming back.

It's an entirely player focusd game where all the pressure is on the GM to create the experience and who, up until very recently, have had very poor tools to support them.

I agree very much with your point about some players just not wanting to talk as much. As DMs we have to account for players that just like to roll dice & see how the story unfolds. For a very long time I was (misguidedly) ashamed that I had some players like that, but the truth is, they turn up every session for a reason.

I have been a forever DM for more than 35 years now. I can 100 percent assure you that I have made every mistake and lived through every horror story you’ve ever read. This is not one of those stories. THIS is a tale of the time that I built a PERFECT campaign by making every mistake a DM can possibly make. Characters: Stumpy = Dwarf fighter Silver (Because mere humans can’t pronounce her elven name) = Elf Ranger Skarlet = Human Rogue Tye = Human Paladin So, let’s get the obvious out of the way. Tye was a DMPC. Yes, Tye was MY DMPC. I started a new group with 3 completely new players. First time ever playing new. We we’re all friends and they wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I picked out a level 3 to 8 module to run and set out helping them learn about character creation. I very quickly realized that they should NOT start at level 3, so I designed a few random adventures to run pre-module to take them from level 1 to 3 while teaching them how to run their characters and just how to play in general. They were COMPLETELY lost. Worst feeling in the world for a good DM is when you have three eager players looking at you across the table waiting for you to TELL them what YOU WANT them to do. So, I handle new players all the time, but this was a whole new level of “beginner” even for me. “But I’m not a novice, I can handle this” I lied to myself. Tye was originally supposed to be the priest of a small chapel looking for help handling things around the small village. Despite all of the warnings, critics and honestly, my own experiences, Tye became a Paladin PC, looking to hire some backup as HE helped those in his district with their problems. So, not only did I now have a DMPC that was the main character, but said DMPC was effectively the party's EMPLOYER. Basically, a railroad ride on a bullet train. “It will only be to level 3, then he will leave the party.” I again lied to myself, desperately trying to justify my actions to myself. But this group needed A LOT of guidance. So, we proceeded to investigate rat infestations, curb goblin activities, you know all the fun stuff level 1 characters occupy their time with. It was working! Over just a few sessions, they were really getting into it. Everyone was learning their characters. They were learning to work together in combat. Stumpy was taking great pride in setting up Skarlet’s sneak attack on nearly every turn. They were even getting into role play among themselves. It was working perfectly! I couldn’t believe it. As all this was happening, I was steadily downplaying Tye’s involvement with the party, getting ready to pull him out. They were starting to come into their game and making decisions for themselves. Only one thing left to do. Level 3, 3 months in. Time to leave the group. Now, I thought I knew the all the pitfalls and, believe me, I had NO intention of running a character during an actual campaign. To be honest, I have run characters before if a player will be missing a few sessions or such, but I find it just mentally exhausting trying to keep the balance between character knowledge and DM knowledge. It's hard enough not to meta as a player, much less as DM. So now it’s time to introduce the plot hooks for the actual module I had intended for them to run. They meet the quest giver. Tye informs them that they are free to aid the person in need, but he would not be allowed to join them. The quest would take him too far away from his chapel and he is duty bound to protect this area. Thus, he releases them from their contract with the Church and grants them a token of service that will gain them free services at any Chapel of Light that they might run across in the future. Perfectly reasonable right?... WRONG! Conversation goes something like this(Quite in character even): Silver: “I don’t think I what to go with them.” Me: “Sure, ok. Wait WHAT?” Skarlet “Yeah, Me either. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I kinda like this Church. It's starting to grow on me.” Me (in my head…. Oh Crap Oh Crap Oh Crap) Stumpy: “Yeah, there’s gotta be more stuff we can help with. And I like your style. Do you think I can train to be a Paladin?” (I had in no way even mentioned multiclassing to them yet) Silver: “Hey, what about those cultists you were telling us about? Maybe we really should go see what they are really up to.” Me: “You may be right. we can do that. I wouldn’t mind having a bit of help there.” (Again in my head; Cultists? What’s she talking about? Oh Crap! That was 2 months ago. She pays more attention to what I say than I do.) As I begin a weeklong frantic attempt to design a cultist mini adventure for the next few sessions, I suddenly came to the realization that they were NOT going to let me leave this party peacefully. Tye was their crutch. Tye was their pet. Tye was being held hostage. Tye was going to ruin everything. Then, my sinister plan became crystal clear. Tye… had to DIE… We played through the mini adventure leading us to the mini boss that would carry us to level 4. This was it. I made sure it was a HARD fight. We had to stop the cult leader from opening a rift to abyss allowing demons access to our plane. We won, barely. Everyone was bloodied and barely alive. It was time. Just before the rift closed 2 huge, clawed hands reached through from the other side and ripped open the tear. A full-on Demon Lord bursts through the rift. “I’m getting tired of you messing up my plans little Paladin!” he screamed “This will be the last time you interfere with ME!” The party is terrified. They are completely spent. They all know that there is NO WAY they are getting out of this alive. Tye yells “RUN! GET OUT OF HERE! IT’S ME HE WANTS!” and does a full flying charge, tackling the demon lord back through the rift. The rift snaps closed with deafening thunder and a blinding flash of light. When the party can see again, both the demon lord and Tye and gone. Fade out. End of Session. See Everyone Next Week. And I disappear just as quickly. I deliberately ignored group chat that entire week. Mission accomplished. Right?... WRONG AGAIN!! Everyone shows up the next week and these people are literally IN MOURNING. I am thinking to myself; What have I done!?!? Maybe I should have at least CHECKED the chat. I felt so bad. They were getting so good that I had forgotten that they were still really new players. I should have made sure they were ok. I should have TALKED to them. But at least they all came back. Again, I am not a novice. I’ve dealt with in game grief before. We’ll work through it and we can FINALLY get started on the “prepared” module. I ask them what they want to do. They decide that they are duty bound to inform the Church of Light what happened and tell them how Tye sacrificed himself to save them…and probably the world. I’m like cool, that’s fair. Really good step. We can start healing from this and move on. Right?.... You guessed it… Wrong YET AGAIN! When they got back to the chapel. I let each one take a turn telling the high priest their story of what happened and share their thoughts about Tye. Then it happened. They entered the anger stage of grief. They turned full CSI investigator on the priest. The next 3 hours were filled with the absolute most intense improvisation I have EVER had to do, in 30 YEARS! We are talking rapid fire, nonstop questions. They were ruthlessly interrogating this poor priest that didn't even know his own name 5 minutes ago. Who was that demon? Why was he after Tye? What are his plans? What has Tye been looking into? I have no idea who this demon was or what he was doing. I pulled him off a random table in the DMG… The session ended with the party swearing an oath to the Church that they would FIND HIM and avenge Tye! What followed was a 3 year, 4 to 20, completely homebrewed campaign that had the party scouring the world investigating this demon. Killing cultists, researching the demon’s name, location, finding artifacts necessary to kill him permanently, even fighting their way through literal Hell to get to him. In the last battle, Skarlet, knowing full well it would absolutely kill her character, activated an artifact that would not just free Tye’s soul, but actually bring him back from Hell alive, sacrificing herself in the process. “He was a better person than I could ever be.” Were the last words she spoke as she activated the orb. ***Stumpy did train as a Paladin and rose in rank becoming the first Dwarf to be named High Defender and took his place next to the Matriarch of Light at the head of the Order. ***Silver retired to her homeland to ponder the meaning of the events she had been a part of. ***Skarlet was reincarnated by the Goddess of Light in recognition of her service and sacrifice. She went on to grand new adventures as a Divine Celestial. ***Tye returned to his humble chapel in the wood, completely content in the knowledge that he had just miraculously pulled off possibly the greatest campaign of his entire life. Oh, and you may have noticed I didn’t name the original module they were supposed to run… That’s because I don’t even remember which one I had picked.

That's really cool though I'd appreciate that. [Embarrassingly enough I kept losing the D4, it was called the stupid triangle for several sessions]

Very creative ideas!

Love this puzzle so much

Where do you get your terrain foam and other supplies - i live in Australia too and have absolutely no idea where to try looking for building supplies

Personally i think this puzzle is great! Sometimes things are just not what we expect.

The answer, as to many "problems": talk to each other. Who would have thought ^^

I'm in a campaign where my twin sister is the DM. I have about 4 NPCs in my backstory with varying importance but one of them is a hard no for anything bad happening to her (my character's daughter). On the flip side I basically told her she has free reign on what happens to her aasimar spouse and human dad, and given we've found an aasimar feather last session I think they might be in danger 😂👀

It’s crazy how many issues can be solved by just talking about it lmfao

Magnet pin,*noted Thanks for the idea

i think one dm i know of that did exploit his players for sexual favors was worse

I thought this was going into fetishist territory with the love mask, but didn't. Glad that he just turned out to be a shitty DM and not a weirdo I suppose.

Its pretty terrible, but at least the dm didnt make you waste the next 10- sessions being forced to do stupid stuff because every time you saw a woman you turned into an idiot obsessed with them. You basically become a passenger without any real control over your own character having to dance to the tune of the dm until he mercifully grants you death or a curse breaking of some sort.

I tried railroading a wee bit in my game (haven’t dm’d a bunch so it was my first attempt) I wanted the characters to get captured so I could do a bunch of stuff and originally it was gonna happen somewhat organically, communications issues and me basically random bs going my friend. They got arrested and had them meet an npc I hid in the combat who I didn’t want to die as he was kinda important XD. He led them back somewhere and we pm ended there since it was late Was given a solid B on my game but I did agree that it did feel a little railroady as I didn’t make a world map in case they fucked off somewhere else

Had a DM like this once. We all stood up, told him that if he wants to basically control everything we do, he should just write a novel. I have not played since.

i'm a rogue so i must stela it??? no not needed for a rogue except if u want to be that kind of rogue.... futher dm is also bad

There are many many many red flags about that DM. The rail roading is one but then to rail road into a character death with no chance of survival is insane and then those red flags have hidden the fact this DM created a very weird magical item that would force a player to flirt with all opposite gender NPC’s…. Weird

I don’t understand… What is he talking about..

Centaurs. When your first centaur PC is a wholesome country farmgal donkey centaur druid, they tend to stick with you 🥰

- I'm physically inspecting it *1/20* - well, it has burned your eyes out. Now you're blind

If you actually take roleplaying seriously metagaming breaks immersion and is therefor a bad thing. The less you value roleplaying the less of a problem metagaming is.

"Boy toy" love it

My favorite underrated DM is Felix Irnich, aka the dm for the Fool's Gold campaign which is animated and told by his wife DingoDoodles :]

i honestly think a very underrated dm is Anthony Burch he was the dm for the podcast dungeons and daddies for the past two seasons and he did it so well and i honestly think he deserves some praise

I genuinely think a big chunk of his "special sauce" comes from his experience with improv comedy. Not only does that play into the stage theatrics of DMs like MM, but having that adjacent comedy experience really works when you're juggling so many elements at once while also trying to be funny and engaging.

At the moment printing the same ship painstakingly

Make like it`s WW2. Use Foxholes for cover. If you are not playing a spellcaster, then take the Magic Initiate feat and pick up the Mold Earth cantrip. For the cost of one Action you can create a five foot deep hole and a five foot high pile of dirt. This potentially gives cover to two (or more!) characters. Depending on your character`s size it can give anywhere from 3/4ths cover for medium sized characters, to full cover for smaller characters. This works really well for both casting spells and firing ranged weapons from relative safety. Drop prone to impose disadvantage on ranged attackers. Again, for both spellcasters and ranged damage dealers. The Prone condition gives disadvantage to to all ranged attack rolls made against the prone character. Just stand up and cast a spell or fire your bow or crossbow, then move back to keep some distance and drop prone again. It basically acts like the Dodge action, only instead of taking up your Action it uses half your movement to stand back up. Obviously don't do this if you are in melee, because it does give advantage to melee attacks within 5 feet. Have a handful of agreed upon tactics for your party and stick with them. This could be anything from moving from cover to cover, focused fire, cover fire, scouting an area before the party goes rushing in, NOT rushing at a group of enemies right before the Wizard casts Fire Ball, etc... All the way up to coordinated grapple builds to take down tough enemies quickly. Whatever works for your parties composition. That little bit of coordination makes a huge difference.

" Oh look, a mysterious note! what does it say?" paper rustles "It says 'I prepared Explosive Runes this morni-'"