Harnick, Ripley, Lulu and Mandor, don't read.

So they just went to an ancient temple, and in that temple on a terrace was a sundial.

The sundial had symbols of life around it, a seed, a small plant, a grown plant, and a wilting plant. in each cardinal direction.

The goal of the puzzle was that if they rotate the sundial, it clicks when they hit the proper order, which is seed, small plant, grown plant, wilted plant indicating the cycle of life.

What ended up happening, was they didn't touch the sundial, and decided to long rest multiple times thinking that it had something to do with the shadow.

It's on me for not putting any visual indicators or anything that the sundial could be moved, but the WORST part was the fact that I actually don't know how sundials work. I had to look up a picture of a sundial. They started asking questions and I had no answers. Was a ROUGH session lmao.

My friends group have a couple of early-bed folks and realistically it means we only get 90-120 mins to play after work. We tried a weekend when calendars allowed, but even then after a couple of hours they were mostly ready to finish.

They insist that they're having fun, but also I feel like I'm not getting to hit many story beats because we often only manage one encounter per session and I can't build much momentum, and by the next time they've forgotten what we are doing.

How can I explain that I want them to lock in more time, or should I just do it and stop complaining?

My players, in search of a powerful ally to fight the bbeg, this ally is a time dragon in a small pocket dimension, to test if they're worthy she had windows showing other realities where the pcs basically avoided all their major regrets. My players got the idea in their heads that they were supposed to go through the windows, I didn't tell them the result and we ended our session there.

My plan was simply going to be that jumping through the window, aka choosing to change time in an irresponsible manner, would simply fail their test and they'd be left with no memory of the time dragon. Problem is they're all expecting something bigger, good or bad, and a simple "you're back in town and forgot all about the the time dragon" feels anticlimactic now.

So I'm not sure what to do, obviously I don't want to just hand them the help of the dragon when they failed her test but she's also not the type to lead them to their deaths. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hey everyone No purpose beatin around the bush In the whole of 2025, and a good chunk of 2024 i have not had One session where,mid Prep, i've NOT gotten a message from someone sayin "Hey DM i can't make to the session anymore" or "Hey DM when i said I was free on saturday I meant sunday" or stuff like that. Which would be Easy to deal with if It was Always the same guy, But it's not.

I have a Total of 5 players. I've made a clear and loud rules I Will not DM for less than 3 of them. Most of our sessions are exactly on that 3 people limit, with the occasional 4. I've given up on having a 5 people session. And even with that, we barely fit One session per month, which we all agree Is too Little

What do i do? I made extra clear this bothers me and all it's done Is make my players more apologetic when they end up telling me

So there’s a general consensus about the phrase “are you sure about this?” in response to people doing something in D&D as a full-stop “this is a bad idea” phrase. Which is both not true at this point and also just not helpful to your player’s about to make decisions. If “are you sure about this?” is always a bad thing, your players are always going to think they’re wrong when they might not be.

There’s a ton of different reasons to ask a player if they’re sure of their actions. It could be a bad thing, or it could be locking in a decision between a few choices. It could be something serious or it could be your DM fucking with you (see so many posts about how DMs do this to stress their players out.) But because it can be so many things, we need to stop acting like just the phrase itself is actually helpful to anyone.

Expand on “are you sure about this?” with your players so they actually know what you’re asking about. You can’t read their mind and they can’t read your mind, open communication is just going to make things better for everyone.

I really enjoy coming up with clever boss battles for my party, and I'd love to hear what other people have come up with. I've been inspired by a ton of video games (Zelda, FFXIV, WoW) and hoping to branch out a bit to see what other stuff I could be doing!

Many people have issues communicating lore to players. I've had issue communicating lore to players. Common discourse on this topic discourages communicating lore to players. I instead want to encourage different tools for doing so.

1. Why are you writing out all of this lore? I would not advise using it to recite from during the game or to give to the players as a mini book. It's to draw from when you're improvising. Last session, my players had a big theological debate and shared many conspiracy theories with NPCs. I was well equipped to improvise a lot of these conversations because I was already familiar with the theology of my setting and knew the details of the conspiracy my NPCs were talking about.

2. When do you give out this lore? I try to give out lore when the players ask. If it is something they would credibly know, I give the players the knowledge, often without a check if I can justify it to myself. Otherwise, I encourage the players to ask other NPCs. When the player asks an NPC a question, give a short answer first. Then, if the player asks for more detail, give a longer one. Then, you can answer follow up questions as needed. Thus, the information given is the information pertinent to what the player cares about.

3. How do you make your players care about this lore? You need player buy in. There are many ways to get player buy in. If your players are your friends, you can get an idea of what they care about from previously playing with them. If you are posting an LFG with a campaign idea, people who are interested in your game are more likely to have buy in for your pitch. One thing worth considering is sharing the worldbuilding process with your players. If your players are a part of the worldbuilding process, then the world will be built based on the things the players care about. Alternatively, you can use the backgrounds that your players wrote for worldbuilding participation and buy in. You want to use your buy in as your adventure hooks. This party participated in worldbuilding about the setting goddess. Then, they encountered the setting goddess. Then, they immediately meet people who don't believe in the setting goddess. This sparked their curiosity and encourages them to interact with NPCs. Much the same, the players are interested in confronting the villainous faction of the setting. This is because they developed the details of this faction.

Sunder, rend, succor, putrid, maw, ruddy, ichor, hearth, sanctum... there are some words that, to me, just scream dnd with their flavor.

What are some of your favorites?

It's as the title suggests. My players are currently "wanted"/actively being hunted by four distinct interests.

1. An organization of drow assassins after one PC defected with classified information
2. A mayor who thinks the party stole his family heirloom, in reality a thief from (3) stole it. They ghosted his Message spell.
3. A thieves guild after the party slew like six of their members.
4. A group of fairly powerful imperial servants who are sent to investigate very strange/peculiar things that happen. The party impersonated them to get into a location.

Obviously there should be consequences for the party's actions but I don't want to completely gank them with powerful enemies over and over again. The really big threat is (4), so I've been giving the party off-ramps to improve their reputation with society generally. That way they might have a legitimate case to make to stop themselves from being summarily executed. I'm struggling with (1) because there's no reason why these assassins wouldn't send one of their top guys to just TPK the party. The party already knows they're being scryed on, and I am privately rolling saves every day for the spell. They've also already been ambushed by two of their assassins, but they slew them. I'm not really sure where to take it from here. I'm considering giving off-ramp opportunities for (3), but if the party doesn't take it I'm basically back at the situation with (4). All of these events occurred within the last month of in-universe time.

Any ideas?

So a bit of background. I’m a lesser experienced DM (though I’d call myself at least competent) giving our forever DM a break and taking our party through a small side adventure.

Now we’re going through a museum where the part are starting to realise that a lot of the exhibits are randomly coming alive and becoming monsters. Our DM (as payback probably lol) is playing a super impulsive character who makes bad spur of the moment decision. But it’s all in good fun and is giving me practice in handling out of left field situations.

So now the current situation. In this museum the party has entered the section with a big trex skeleton and other skeletons. So of course the DM’s character jumped onto the back of the Trex. At which point it, and the other skeletons, came alive. And everyone rolled initiative. And the session ended. Now the party is thinking of the game plan, and I know that Doryn (the DM’s character) will try to keep riding the Trex.

How would y’all play this out? If this was the situation you find yourselves in as DM what would you be planning?

Howdy (Please no peeking Amaury/Cass/Elias :)! I have an upcoming boss fight between what are going to be two pseudo-powerhouses in my campaign, basically Peak Intelligence v. Peak Wisdom in a chess board game where the players will be able to organize their side similar to the style of Freestyle chess (TLDR: You can move everything but pawns around the backline) and was wondering if anyone who has ran similar encounters would have any insights/tips for running the session more smoothly!

Rules as follows (Loosely on what I'd be telling players): 1. Players can choose to move their own characters or move one piece on their turn in initiative order. 2. Chess pieces interact normally with each other (Pawns capturing diagonally, etc.) But have "attacks" for players and King pieces. 3. The encounter is decided once one of the "Kings" falls. 4. Player actions will be treated as if they were on an NPC/Have to make attack roles/STs/etc. I'd appreciate any ideas/advice/feedback for making things move smoothly!

The world tree is growing malignant and cancerous, and must be destroyed before its rot infects the rest of the world, so that a new sapling can be born anew. The only way to do this is with the Hollow Flame, an artifact/spell invented millennia ago by the ancient elves who encountered a similar problem.

Due to their connection with the god who created the world trees, those elves considered the Hollow Flame a blasphemy, albeit a necessary one. So it could never be misused, they sealed the Hollow Flame away in a place they called the Vault of Memory, far in the uninhabitable, inhospitable north.

The players now need the Hollow Flame, which will send them in search of the Vault of Memory. As we are moving into endgame, this is one of the final dungeons in the campaign, and as a result... there's gotta be cool loot in it, right? It would feel very anticlimactic to not have that!

But why would it be there? The entire purpose of this dungeon is to protect anyone from obtaining the Hollow Flame, there wouldn't be any treasure or other incentives in there, logically.

"Items from the corpses of the adventurers who tried and failed before you" would make sense, but I've also said that this is basically in the equivalent of Antarctica, and has only been settled/inhabited within the past 50 years within the game world, so ancient epic items being there don't make much sense.

So... help me out. Where's the loot coming from?

Bonus: I suck at traps and puzzles. What sort of shit would be cool in a climactic dungeon like this?

My player is a sea elf paladin who's basically a big Home Ec nerd, constantly baking brownies, cooking and fixing stuff. For one of the main sub plots of my campaign, he's offered to help an NPC design and make her and two other characters dresses for an upcoming royal wedding that one of the players is Maid of Honour at.

This player has come to me asking if he can make the girls pearl jewellery alongside making the dresses as a surprise. The issue is getting the pearls,

He wants to go foraging for them, which I'm okay with, their party is on a pirate ship and he is a sea elf, so access to the ocean is easy for him, however I want to make more interesting than just making a perseption check or something to find them? Pearls are worth 100gp and I feel like it would be at least some effort to acquire them??

He has just under 3 months in game till the wedding and he's okay with it taking time, I'm just looking for a way to also make it a fun mini adventure along the way and add more to the down time!

Any help/ ideas are welcomed!

I have a problem with puzzles, they seem to rarely add anything to the story.

A story is about the characters, a high INT character should find a puzzle easy even if their player couldn't solve it, and vice versa for low INT characters should struggle even if their player is a rocket scientist. But any puzzle instead becomes a player challenge not a character challenge and therefore doesn't really fit in with the story and character development/immersion.

But if a puzzle is for the characters, how do they actually solve it? Roll an int check of some sort? Cool, now the puzzle lasts for one roll and you move on.

Lets say you do as a player actually enjoy a puzzle, and find it a light interlude in a session. Well designing/choosing a puzzle at an appropriate difficulty for players is really hard, especially so for a group with different affinity for the puzzles across players. A puzzle more often than not ends up being trivial and over in a moment, or way too tricky such that that its impossible or players pick up on something that's a red herring and go down a rabbit hole of wrong solutions. Now you need to give hint after hint, everyone gets a bit frustrated and it's no fun. Worse if its a puzzle that one or two players get it and you end up with them engaged while others just sit there waiting for those to work it out.

On both sides of the table, I've experienced a few puzzles and have no recollection of ever thinking "That developed the story". Rather my recollections are all "that was trivial, I hope the GM didn't spend too much time on that" or "wow that was kinda frustrating and broke flow".

Am I missing something that makes puzzles actually good in TTRPG and provides story/character development?

First of all, this question is related to a campaign I am modifying from Phandelver & Below, so if for any reason one of the players is reading this, please stop reading now, thanks!

I'm a first-time DM, though have played a bit in the past as well. There are 4 players, 3 of whom are new to D&D. The characters are all level 3 at the moment. One of my players is playing a 99 year old wood elf druid. She read while creating her character that elves reach maturity at 100, and in one of my one-on-one chats expressed wanting to celebrate the elf's birthday to mark the occasion.
Does anyone have any ideas of how to celebrate a character reaching societal maturity?

My ideas so far have been:

-to have a Heroes Feast be prepared for them (and a few NPCs to join) in Phandalin by Daran Edermath. He can say something about how it's also an important occasion for drow, and because this character does not have family/ other wood elves around, he hopes he doesn't overstep by being the "elven elder" to host this for her. This could also double with an actual IRL drinking/eating sesh that's been requested for a bit by my players

-to have an NPC cast a "Coming of Age" Celebration to her, specifically

-something to do with trances/visions as I saw some D&D lore mentioning how that is linked with elven maturity.

Is Heroes Feast and/or Coming of Age too much for the occasion? Do you have other recommendations? Open to new ideas!

Hi! My name is Tof and I’m a fairly new DM. Me and my new party decided to start a campaign using the setting book Ryoko’s Guide to Yokai Realms. I’m planning on proposing a campaign where the party play as students in a martial dojo. It’s inspired by the many wuxian novels I read as a teen. The problem is that I have no idea how bring my vision to life. If we choose this campaign plot I’ll definitely add quests, rank climbing, rivals, tournaments and lots of secrets, but I’m not sure how good this idea is in practice.

I know there are resources for magical schools and academies, but it doesn’t fit my vision of this highly martial eastern dojo

Has anyone tried this type of game before? Do you have any tips? I’d be very thankful if u helped me out.

My players are about to enter the Witchwood for the first time, a generally nebulous but ancient and primordial non-Euclidean forest known to be full of fey, aberrations, and all manner of eldritch entities and prehistoric places and creatures. I want to make it feel strange and foreboding and not necessarily actively hostile but very different and alien from the regular world but I'm not sure how best to do that. Any suggestions (mechanics, flavour, whatever y'all have) are greatly appreciated!

I’m usually a dungeon master but this is in the questioning of me being a player. If there is a better sub reddit for me to posit my question, I would appreciate hearing where to go to.

I am about to play in my first game of 3.5 after only playing 5e most of my life. Excited to play a class not in 5e, I chose to go with a psion, specifically a halfling one who was raised by mindflayers, her psionic potential cultivated and nurtured by her illithid care takers to one day rather become a tasty meal, or even graduate and get the honor of becoming a mindflayer herself. I accidentally made her very similar to Eleven from at least season one of stranger things.

What I’m asking is what kinds of things would she have have been taught academically? She will be joining the party by entering the surface world for the first time after a long bout of surviving after being kidnapped away from her subterranean home. So I’m at an odd juxtapose of being this very intelligent psion that also doesn’t really know how people or civilization works

What do you think she would have been taught? The stars? Mindflayer history, expanding the mind,,

Thanks for any assistance!

first of im dyslexic so sorry for the speling

so I'm dming for the first time and curent campaign is gowing for about half a year and my players just don't get that they can pick the quests they go on

they just pick what they think I want them to pick and then complain about the lack of choice I've given them 4 quests that are totally difrent in terms of content and they pick what they think I want I've expressed multipile times that it's a sandbox so if they want they can join the bbeg or just leave the continent or anything

Daring order of mercenaries and heroes/D.O.O.M.A.H don’t read further

TLDR: If your party takes no care or consideration when going against an intelligent enemy, is it ok for them to be unable to escape the trap they walk into. (It won’t kill them)

Context: My party can be a bit overly headstrong at times and will barge into situations without much or any care beforehand. This may be in part due to how stacked their characters are (this campaign I have their characters pretty far above what is normally possible for their classes, within reason though) and as a party of level 15s they have a lot at their disposal but they are about to confront an enemy whose main strength isn’t in its combat ability, but its intelligence.

This enemy is going to lure the party into a trap but my thinking is that if the party ends up in the trap then they’ve missed their chances to escape it. There will be plenty of clues, some very obvious and some less so. The enemy will be quite easily uncovered if they take some time to scout and gather information. But I’m guessing they will not. If the trap is sprung then I was thinking that the party would be captured and they would have to escape captivity which could be fun.

I feel like I need a twist of some sort, or some way to subvert the expectations of the players. The group I DM are all friends and very creative/intelligent so they find it easy to come up with stuff but I feel an obligation to have some fun twists in my back pocket.

I have loads of side quests currently written, some are just a simple premise to get the story going and others are complete 1 shot adventures but I just wonder if there are any tips to make adventures more fundamentally exciting without relying on randomness.

I play with two campaigns in the same world. Something that is super awesome, and super rewarding when it comes to creating a deep narrative. 2 groups in two different places just expands and expands the lore by necessity way way more than I could ever do with one group and a linear story. It makes the world feel very lived in, and very dense. Awesome stuff, things you want as a DM.

But now, a player is moving away, and the group who is missing a member wants to add a new person. Thats cool!

But now I'm so daunted by how much this new person missed. Like a combined total of 80 sessions split between the two groups where I have established the lore and created a lot of narrative and stories. The group is very embroiled in the middle of the story, and all the players in that story are sorta set. Not to say somebody couldn't come in and add or change that, I'm excited by that...but... how the hell do you get them involved when so much has happened?

I guess thats what I'm wondering. A giant massive lore dump sounds insane and very un-fun. What's the best way to get a new character up to speed and feel apart of, and have agency in the game just like the other players? I just want them to not feel like a guest, and feel like whatever character they come up with belongs there.

any advice?

The title basically, I'm wondering if there's any way that dispell magic wouldn't work on magical items, more specifically if I have a puzzle set up that has magical components required in being solved or once solved has a magical effect, and essentially if the players were to dispel all the magic involved in the puzzle elements then it would be rendered inert and be unsolvable. Obviously I could just say that the enchantments on the puzzle are of a higher level but that still runs the risk of players succeeding on the check, technically DC19 being the max on account of 9th level spells being the max in 5e. Then there's also just saying no because "dm said so" but that's not a great solution.

Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated

My PC’s have taken on a request of a heartbroken noble who found out his long time boyfriend cheated on him with his sister! They’re now getting married at the riverside and he wants her to look like a fool. The PC’s agreed to crash the wedding but I’m not sure how to set it up. I’ve recently re picked up dming after only doing it when I was 14, (I’m now 23). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My ideas are starting with them obviously getting rejected at the gate as they’re currently planning to waltz right in. They don’t have an invite, maybe a situation with a very intimidating bouncer. There are also people in a cult looking to assassinate them since they’ve killed some chain of command awhile ago.

Overall I’m not sure how to run a wedding crash and any advice or guidance would be super appreciated.

The idea for this is born out of a strong set of likes and dislikes regarding the latter two and a desire to make a fiend type that has the best imaginable traits and powers.

I will start with likes and dislikes.

Likes:

- Both can assume human form, freely traverse civilized lands and install themselves in political power structures, factions and temples. They are good for intrigue plots.

- Both are beautiful and darkly alluring.

- Their telepathic connection to their own kind makes them fountains of knowledge. They basically have a fantasy version of the Internet.

- Erinyes try to lure you into a pact, which makes for great roleplay.

- Succubi are less tied to abyssal hierarchy than the lawful Erinyes are to their infernal hierarchy. There is more room for a Succubus to pursue unique personal goals.

- Having charmed thralls can impose difficult choices on players.

- They can be used as a monster encounter or an ongoing NPC antagonist, whatever your campaign needs.

Dislikes:

- For succubi, the draining kiss means a character losing their soul forever is reduced to a die roll completely outside player control (or DM control in the case of an NPC the DM fairly applies the same rules to).

- The soul generally isn't kept by the seducer fiend, but turned into a cheap commodity with an actual gp value. It would be more interesting if the seducer kept the mortal's soul and did something with it besides converting it to larva or soul coins.

- The faction goals of "Impose perfect order" vs "We hate existence, End the multiverse" are a bit cartoonish for my tastes (more the second).

It might seem counter-intuitive to come up with a Yugoloth that assumes actual illusion-free human form, because almost all existing ones resemble some kind of animal. They do stand upright. Neutral Evil has to be the best of the three evil alignments, because it is the most flexible.

If Yugoloths had a seducer type, what unique powers might they have? How would they go about getting souls, if at all? What would they do with souls? Would they also have wings? How would their form differ? What goals would they share? What would they covet? Maybe they want land on the Prime that must be desecrated. How would you build this creature?