For those of you who don't know about this yet, this is Fast Character! Quickly generate a DND 5e character for your campaign! As a DM, I've been using it to make NPCs in an army that my characters are fighting against.

I hope you can find it as useful as I did :)

Do you have a list of tasks you do every in-game morning as a DM? For example:

• roll for weather
• keep track of that curse time bomb
• roll for encounters for the day
• check for public holidays
• ....

I want to make my game more consistent and feel more alive. I'm wondering if there are things I should be tracking to achieve the feeling that the world is moving no matter what the players decide to do that day.

I've only DM'd for ~3 times so far, and only once in person (this past weekend). I was introducing two friends to the game, and we're all excited to continue.

Originally planned for a one-off (we're doing Mines of Phandelver. I aimed for it to be more introductory but the PCs are interested in continuing with what we have!)

So, with the second session booked, I'd like to scale up my setup to help be more immersive. I have a lot of work ahead (reading, notes) so I'm in a better position. I've discussed with a DM friend of mine with decades of experience, and I'd love to hear what people suggest.

Currently, I am aiming to purchase:

• "wet" battle map (dry-erase)
• tokens for characters/creatures (hoping to find dry-erase ones here, too)
• basic 'tiles' set for when the the scenery is more generic (optional)
• figurines for the PCs (optional)

I was thinking the figurines would be unpainted, and I'd love to find a company that sells them individual, with generic designs for race/class, that I can go back to again and again as my campaigns diversify.

Am I heading down the right path? Any other suggestions?

Welcome to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc. and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

The Lost Mine of Phandelver is a classic, one of the very first Mini-Campaigns that new DM's run. Hell, it's part of the starter set after all! The issue though, as with many other Campaigns, is that it doesn't describe the best way to transform the contents of the book into an actual session. The Book to session conversion can be difficult. Between figuring out when things should happen, to understanding motivations and even balancing encounters.

Well fortunately for you 99% of that work is done! Only a few things are really left:

1. Consider the needs of your group. As you've heard or are about to hear a million times, every table is different. If you plan on combining this with a campaign you'll have to make tweaks here and there. (Bonus points if you include your players' backstory)
2. These notes aren't meant to be end-all be-all. Tweak to your heart's content and don't consider any of what's written to be set in stone. For me, having notes like this helps give me the confidence to go off the rails and follow along with what my players want. It helps me understand where things were meant to go and why. Having that understanding allows me to guide the players and create other new and interesting stories. These are all things that will come with experience though, so don't freak out and enjoy the journey!

Without further ado:

• Google Docs Notes for The Lost Mine of Phandelver (Part 1 Cragmaw Hideout): DM Notes
• Link to: Intro + Cragmaw Hideout Playlist
• Link to: The Complete Collection

Included in The Complete Collection are:

• A Word document with all my notes including a link to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDFs for all the encounters. This includes all the enemies' stat blocks organized neatly along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP.
  • An additional PDF with Sildar's stats should he join the party as an ally
• A map of Cragmaw Hideout. I enlarged and printed this out for my players as a battle map!

Index:

The Lost Mine of Phandelver Index

• Part 1 - Intro and Cragmaw Hideout
• Part 2a - Phandalin (Coming Soon)
• Part 2b - Redbrand Hideout (Coming Soon)
• Part 3a - Reign of Iron (Coming Soon)
• Part 3b - Ruins of Thundertree (Coming Soon)
• Part 3c - Cragmaw Castle (Coming Soon)
• Part 4 - Wave Echo Cave (Coming Soon)
• Part 5 - Side Quests (Coming Soon)

Other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and More:

• The Wild Sheep Chase - Click Here
• Death House - Click Here
• We Be Goblins - Click Here
• The Egg of Estyr - Click Here
• Wolves of Welton - Click Here
• To the End of Time - Click Here
• A Most Potent Brew - Click Here
• Moon over Graymoor - Click Here
• A Wild West One-Shot - Click Here
• The Drunken Treasure - Click Here
• A Grimdark Adventure - Click Here
• D&D vs Rick and Morty - Click Here
• A Prison Break One-Shot - Click Here
• The Tavern at Death's Door - Click Here
• Dragons of Stormwreck Isle - Click Here
• Shadow of the Broodmother - Click Here
• L'Arsène's Ludicrous Larceny - Click Here
• The Night Before Wintermas - Click Here
• The Lost Mine of Phandelver - Click Here

As always, If you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc. please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,

Advent

I want to have my players travel through the Elemental Plane of Fire for a short period of time. None of them are immune to fire damage. How could they prepare themselves to survive this ordeal?

We have a wizard, a bard and a monk. They will be traveling with a Fire Giant to guide them.

I found the Resilient Sphere spell that the wizard could learn. I could drop that in as a boon for an earlier quest so that they have it handy... but I'd like some other ideas.

How would you handle this?

How do you all handle ready action for your players? Do you only allow calling of a single scenario or multiples?

I’m think of implementing a rule at my table where a player that readies an action can calls out a scenario and a “otherwise” option. The reason is that, we as players, often think about our options on our turn and strategize - simulating a character deciding what they would do in that moment.

An example of how I’d see this idea in use: Your character is next to a monster but there are a couple of enemies closing in that could choose you or a teammate. You ready an action so that you use Dodge if the enemy closing in reaches you to attack OTHERWISE you will attack the creature you’re engaged with when it makes their next attack.

Thoughts?

The party in my game (8 12th level characters who have a lot of items) stole some items from one of Mammon's vaults in Minauros. Now there are bounty hunters after the party. One is an Arcanaloth, and another is an Ultraloth, but I'm trying to flesh out the rest of the group. I'm trying to think of interesting additions, or maybe gear they might have. Anyone have any suggestions?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3: Gem Dragons

Part 4: Greatwyrms

Part 5: Deep Dragons and Sea Serpents

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1422655

> Will be running my players through the Seagrow Caves from Dragons of Stormwreck Isle this weekend. > > The area is mostly Myconid themed and I was thinking of planting a magic item for them as a reward for completing the quest, but what kind of magic item would a colony of Myconids have on hand to give away?

A short-ish video on the very basics of combat in TTRPGs. Got a new group and some players that absolutely insist on moving their wizard out to the front, being hacked apart within seconds?

Maybe this video can help steer them into a safer code of conduct!

Disclosure: I know the guy who made this, he's a DM of mine. Show him some love.

My players have recently become the heads of a mercenary company. I’d like to use this opportunity to involve the players in a bit of world building of sorts that might also be a rewarding minigame.

They’ll be responsible for assigning teams of NPC mercenaries to tasks. I’ve yet to decide exactly how this works and would love to pick the brains of you lovely people.

My thoughts are it might be fun for the players to be either “interview” NPCs and assign them teams and then assign those teams to tasks. But maybe they want to each bring a few quick-generated characters to the table that night and “interview” each other.

My group is very RP heavy and love inter-character dialogue. This session is also a bit of a cool down after defeating a major enemy in the last session.

Thoughts on how I can make this a fun experience but also lend to building the world? How can I help make the “minion assignment minigame” rewarding and fun as well throughout our campaign?

Thanks!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1312322

> I've been DMing a small group of new players. They've been literally "hit or miss" with combat. I know at least one is getting frustrated with combat because he can't roll to save his life. I'm planning on throwing a swarm of small creatures at them next session. goblins, spiders, whatever. just small easily killed, easily hit creatures. Thing is I don't want to do 'initiative' per se as I'm considering having a ton of these things. Anyone have any pointers?

If the name Thuradim Breakbones means anything to you, stop reading now! 🙈

I'm a first time DM running LMoP for a mix of old and new players. We play short sessions every couple of weeks, so I wanted to introduce fun magic items early in the campaign. As such, our level 2 fighter picked up a Berserker Axe at Cragmaw Hideout. However, he hasn't yet discovered that it's cursed:

> Whenever a hostile creature damages you while the axe is in your possession, you must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or go berserk. While berserk, you must use your action each round to attack the creature nearest to you with the axe. If you can make extra attacks as part of the Attack action, you use those extra attacks, moving to attack the next nearest creature after you fell your current target. If you have multiple possible targets, you attack one at random. You are berserk until you start your turn with no creatures within 60 feet of you that you can see or hear.

What I'm realizing is that he may not take damage and learn about the curse for the first time until they head into Tresendar Manor, where it will be impossible for the party to get 60 feet away from him without splitting into different rooms, or even fleeing the manor.

As I've read other posts about this item, there seems to be a consensus that it can be unfun, since it takes away player agency during combat. Between these two issues, I'm wondering if I should introduce some changes to the berserk status.

A few ideas I'm toying with:

• Once the party realizes the axe is cursed, I'd like for them to be able to get help from Sister Garaele. It could be part of her quest reward that she can either (a) help the fighter unattune the axe, or (b) help the fighter gain some resistance to the axe's curse (lowering the saving throw DC, for example). However, I don't want this to be a blocker for dealing with the Redbrands.
• In the meantime, I was thinking about allowing the following:
  • Once berserk, allow fighter to reroll the Wisdom saving throw if he is somehow prevented from using his action to attack on his turn (for example, if the party grapples him).
  • Allow other party members to use their action to roll Persuasion to snap him out of the berserk status.

Any suggestions? Alternatively, if the item is actually fine the way it is, any tips on how to run encounters in a fun way while it's in their possession? Thanks!

Virtual Tabletops

AboveVTT is an extension for dndbeyond (available for chrome and firefox), it uses your dnd beyond owned content to let you easily populate battlemaps with official monsters, recently they also added content from Open5e, more on that later, giving you more options for monsters.

Owlbear Rodeo v1 or Owlbear Rodeo v2, two versions of the best system neutral VTT im aware of, v2 does have payment options but if you're vigilant about the files you have saved the free 200MB should be plenty.

V1 is going to be removed on July 18th 2023, but the developers have promised that V1 will be open-sourced and self-hostable in the future. the source code is available now

Sounds and Music

Tabletop Audio is a massive filterable stockpile of ambience and music for all kinds of vibes and situations, they also have a built in soundboard, one of which can be customized. they have a patreon which gives you access to alternate takes of most of their sounds and early access to new ones but whats there is still plentiful.

Tabletop RPG Music has a narrower selection that Tabletop Audio, and more of it is locked behind patreon but whats there is more purely music focused.

Kenku is a pay what you want self-hosted discord bot that helps you play music from anywhere on the internet or saved locally on your pc through a discord voice chat. Setting up the bot is easy and the website has a walkthrough on how to do it.

Monsters, Combat, and Encounters.

Kobold Plus Club is a website made to replace the fantastic kobold fight club, a 5E resource that lets your easily balance and create encounters with randomized or hand-picked monsters, you can also add homebrewed or third-party published monsters using google sheets, json files, or csv files. The KPC discord has a large backlog of sources made for official monster books not on the site and a fair amount on 3pp monster books.

Improved initiative is a website that connects with KPC but can be used independently, it's a combat tracker that shows you the relevant monster statblock for that monsters turn and lets you apply damage and healing to monsters. Improved initiative only gets full statblocks for creatures available on open5e by default.

open5e is a collection of official 5e OGL and Third Party OGL content. there are extra races, subclasses, monsters, and spells available here for free.

Maps

!battlemaps@lemmy.world a community right here on lemmy for sharing battlemaps.

Dungeon Scrawl is a webapp that lets you create old-school style maps there's a fair few paid features, the main one being multiple map saves at once, but there's enough there to create and decorate maps quickly and easily.

Dungeon Generator is another tool made by the creators of kobold plus club. It randomly generates entire dungeons floor by floor and lets you export the in various formats. you can even cycle the styles of rooms if they're close but not quite what you want.

Miscellaneous Other Things

Fantasy Name Generators has a massive selection of name generators, not only fantasy npcs but also real life names from various cultures, k-pop bands, religious orders, diseases, daycares and just about any other thing you might need.

Chartopia is a website that lets you easily create and share rollable tables for loot, encounters, names or anything else you can need a random table for.

Welcome to Dungeons and Dragons - Chat, a /c/dnd Networked Community

This community is for those that want to learn and share ideas regarding being a Dungeon Master in Dungeons and Dragons. Much of what you learn here can also be applied to being a Game Master in other TTRPGs.

There are 3 types of posts here:

• Questions

These can be from beginners asking about the most simple of issues, to masters. It does not matter but be constructive and never discourage those that are new to the hobby.

• Tips/Advice

These are preemptive posts where more experienced DMs can share their advice and tips for running the game. Be sure to emphasize that this is YOUR way of doing things and is not prescriptive on HOW to run the game.

• Tools

These are posts regarding tools, both official and 3rd party that a DM can use to better run their games. BE SURE to adhere to the rules in the side bar regarding piracy. DO NOT link to sites that host pirated content as a "tool"

Please read the sidebar and familiarize yourself with our rules, and visit the other communities in our network!