I'm preparing a scenario where a city has been overrun by pirates and monsters. The PCs are trying to rush through the city to get to the central keep, encountering enemies and obstacles along the way.

Do you think it's reasonable for me to tell my players the following? If your DM said this to you, would you find it immersion-breaking, railroady, denying player agency, or otherwise bad?

"Theoretically you could take any arbitrary route to the keep you want. But I can’t reasonably prepare a battle map of the entire city with 100 potential encounters depending which way you go.

So I’ve prepared this linear battlemap, representing the most direct route, or the route you pick. You can try to avoid a fight by sneaking past enemies or doing something clever. But you can’t dodge a fight by taking a different route. You know if you did that, you’d just take longer to get to the keep, and would have to fight something else equally difficult."

If you don't think I should do that/tell my players that, can you suggest an alternative that's feasible for me to prepare in a finite amount of time?

Note that I run a goal-based game, rather than a sandbox game. I want to run prepared, balanced encounters with battlemaps, rather than improvising on the fly based on what arbitrary turns they take at each intersection.

Im building an homebrew that is set in a metropoly that is magically separeted from the world. Why and how was separated is a big point in the story since the nobility of the city use propaganda to maintain the status quo.

My vibe would be "the city has been close for so long that noone even knows if there is still an outside" also because the official reason for the isolation is to protect themself from a big war.

In my mind this time would be like 3/400 years and that would tie well with other aspect of the story if it werent for the "oh lets just ask a middle age elf" solution. I cannot for pg preferences remove elfs from the world.

I thought about a "magic chaged their memory solution" but that doesnt tie well with investigative work the pg would do.

Any other suggtions?

(Disclaimer: If "Atlanta Falcons" means anything to you other than football or ornithology, please stop reading!)

Context: I am preparing a dungeon for a party of five level 10 PCs where the goal is to recover as much treasure as possible from a pirate cache in the caves of a volcano that is going to erupt in 8 hours. It will operate via dungeon turns (10 minutes rather than 6 seconds), and there will be a lot of treasure. I've prepared 130 aliquots of treasure weighing a total of nearly 8 tons, and the dungeon should be mostly combat-free. Most of the challenge should be "how do I get that treasure and how do I bring it back?" more so than just killing monsters and evading traps in traditional dungeon fare. The pirates are mostly already dead (the party intercepted them at their ships as they were trying to evacuate the cave). I do not expect the party to be able to recover everything, but it'll be neat to see how much they can get.

So the question I raise is this: What are some fun ways to "hide" treasure? This should range from simple (such as "the treasure chest is up on a platform that is easy enough to knock down, so you either have to find a way to safely bring it down or spend the time gathering scattered treasure off the ground") to complex ("there is a dangerous series of obstacles before you can even reach the treasure, and then it turns out you have to bring back more weight than 1 PC can carry").

A few other sample ideas I had (assuming treasure chests, but not all treasure will be a chest):

• A chest is across a chasm that's trivial to jump but not so trivial to carry a heavy chest over

• A chest is at the bottom of a pool of water but the water is very hot

• A chest is too heavy for 1 person to carry but is also locked so it can't be partitioned

• A chest is guarded by a mephit or some other relatively-weak enemy that will be an obstacle but is surmountable

• A chest is actively on fire

• Putting more than 200 pounds of weight on a rope bridge causes it to snap (and that includes a PC walking across)

• A chest is a mimic (I can't not do this one)

• There is a pitfall trap before a chest

• Exotic vines hold a chest in place

• A chest is at the bottom of a big pit

• A chest is greased

• A defector pirate is trying to escape with a chest

Any cool suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Note - I decided I needed to repost this with a more descripted title.

My group will be staring a new adventure finishing one that got to around level 12. For some of the players it was their first time playing D&D. We started with Lost Mine of Phandelver so we fought a lot of the "classics".

As I'm brainstorming ideas for the new adventure I'm trying to come up with interesting low level monster encounters and I'm struggling a bit. These players are all a little more experienced now so some of the things that maybe might have felt challenging and new to a brand-new player may not be as challenging or engaging now they they've had experience with the game.

Does anyone have any ideas, monsters or monster group/combinations they used to make low level play for experienced players a bit more interesting?

I was thinking on other ways for a bard support their allies in battle and I thought on the dancers in Fire Emblem series, where they can use their action to rejuvenate an ally to grant them one extra action.

By spending a Bardic Inspiration and an action, do you guys think it would be OP and a cool idea?

Edit: typos

Anyone just sort of improvise their adventures based on what the players feed you? How does it work for you?

Hello all. Brand new DM here. Played as a PC for a while and in a few different game systems, but want to learn to DM to get a local session going with some friends. I was planning to start with the one shot A Most Potent Brew, and get a feel for the party and get a taste of DMing. However, where do you go to next?

Watched some videos and read some posts, and saw a lot of people recommend running this and a few other one shots. However, how would you all typically handle one shots as a DM? Do you just create a town and house all the one shots inside that town and let them kind of explore the area and make things up as you go? What would you do exactly?

I've got a hag coven in the area where my players are, and I want to have a few encounters where they see some monkey paw hag deals that have been taken by the farmers around town. I've got two so far.

In one, the farmer had pests destroy last year's crop. So the hag gave this year's crop magical protection so that “no creature of the soil, nor the land, nor the sky shall touch your crops!” Turns out people are 'creatures of the land'. It's harvest time, and no one can touch the crops.

In the other, a woman's husband died and she wished she could just wake up next to him again. Now, every morning, his rotting corpse appears next to her when she wakes. The party will meet her re-burying him yet again.

The hags are purely there to inflict suffering; that's it. Just pure evil. They have also made a deal with a group of goblins in the area. The hags provided the goblins with magic items to make it easier for them to raid the farms. The hags know that this will provoke a response and have all the goblins killed, so even more suffering. The party will run into the cursed farmers while hunting the goblins and searching for their base (which is hard to find, because the hags are helping them).

I'm looking for a few more to seed around. Any ideas?

Despite the Manticore being an iconic mythological creature, I haven't come across many adventures that explore its lore or build an interesting story around it.

Sure, there are dungeons here and there with two or three Manticores thrown in as ordinary monsters, but I haven't found many adventures where the creature itself is at the center of the story, with an interesting personality, a compelling motive, or a memorable plot.

I wanted to write my own Manticore-centered adventure, but it seems my muse has abandoned me!

So, I'd love to hear your ideas:

1. If you were a Manticore living in the Forgotten Realms, how would you live?

What kind of evil schemes would you pursue? Would you terrorize a region, manipulate settlements, establish a lair, demand tribute, hunt for something specific, or have a more unusual ambition? What kind of threat would you pose?

2. Suppose a group of adventurers interfered with your plans and ruined everything. How would you get your revenge?

Would you hunt them down, target their allies, set elaborate traps, ruin their reputation, or devise something far more sinister? I'd especially love ideas that go beyond a straightforward rematch.

I'm open to brainstorming, unusual interpretations of Manticore mythology, Forgotten Realms lore, adventure hooks, and any published adventures or sources I might have missed.

Thanks in advance for your ideas! I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Do you tell your players the actions a creature is taking or just describe what happens.

For example would you ever say:

The goblin uses his action and shoots his bow from behind the safety of the tree and then uses its bonus action to disengage and dart among the trees.

ETA: Or even say the goblin uses Nimble Escape to….

Edit 2: So far the answers are more diverse than I anticipated. It’s giving me a lot to think about on both sides.

Hello everyone! I'm a Dungeon Master who plays D&D 5.5e.

I've been playing D&D for a long time and have experienced a variety of adventures, but I'm having trouble deciding which adventure to run next.

Here are the adventures I've already played or run:

• Lost Mine of Phandelver
• Curse of Strahd
• Storm King's Thunder
• Tomb of Annihilation
• Essentials Kit
• Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden
• Candlekeep Mysteries
• Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus
• Chains of Asmodeus
• Tales from the Yawning Portal
• Dragon Delves

I'd love to hear your recommendations for long-form campaigns other than the ones listed above.

I'd also really appreciate it if you could explain why you recommend them.

Thanks in advance!

So I’m making a Halloween one shot for my party, and I’ve decided on a plot where they investigate grave-robbing incidents and what not; until the conclusion of the campaign is them finding the criminal who’s been doing the grave-robbing and figure out this guy was making a Frankenstein type monster (it’s basically just a flesh golem) with the body parts. (That’s a very simple summary of it all)

I really wanna make this somewhat memorable and interactive, I just need help with making the investigation part of the one-shot interesting and not boring. I usually make props for my games as well so if anyone has any interactive props I could make as well that fit the investigation theme, that would be helpful too!

Hello Everyone!

Trying to get some perspective on how other GMs try to improve their skills...

After every session I ask my players for a Wish (what they wish would have gone differently), a Rose (which of the other players did something they liked) and a Star (what I did they liked the most in the session). Then I sit down with my session recap and their answers and try to work out how I'm doing as a GM. (Yes, I'm that kind of nerd.)

It has grown into a sort of GM profile. Everything in it sits in one of seven areas:

• Prep: how ready I was. The world, the scenes, the notes and props I had at hand.
• Narrative: the storytelling itself. NPCs, descriptions, and whether the plot holds together.
• Pacing: the rhythm of the night. Scene changes, dead air, whether the session flowed or dragged.
• Improv: what I did when the players went somewhere I hadn't prepared (so, always).
• Rules: my rulings. Were they clear, were they fair?
• Spotlight: whether every player got their moment, or the loud ones ate the session.
• Table dynamics: safety, tone, and how well we talked to each other as a group.

For each session, in each area, I note:

• what worked, and why it worked
• what didn't, with a possible fix
• one thing to try next time

Across the whole campaign:

• whether each area is improving, steady or slipping
• the strengths that keep showing up, session after session
• the problems that keep coming back, and whether they are new, stuck or getting better
• whether I actually tried the tips from earlier sessions, and whether they landed (this one is humbling)
• for each player, what works for them and what they've asked for or gone quiet about
• the one to three things to focus on next session

Now the important question:

What would you add?

Is there an area I'm missing, something about your own games you wish you could see? And is anything on this list useless to you?

Thanks!

Edit: a few people read the list below as a questionnaire for players. It isn't one. My players answer three questions (Wish, Rose, Star) and that's all. Everything else is what I work out on my own afterwards, from their answers and my session recap.

I am getting to run my first true political intrigue game. The world will react to them and I have already (and successfully might I add) consequences to some of their actions. The players control the pace of leveling through dungeons as there wont be a way outside of that away from completing large story beats. It was discussed in session 0 and they like the idea. There are also treasure dungeons . Anyway to get onto the meat of this.

2 of my players have been given a job to go rescue someone that has been long since missing (about 240+ years) and were given nothing but a name (by my design) so they will have fun figuring things out. I know everything I need to about this character. The circumstances that lead her into the spot she is currently in ect ect. I have everything I need planned in terms of encounters, traps....you get the idea. The current plan is for them to walk through the front door of the place as most of them actually have invites to the party and a couple dont but they will be trying to earn that. So here is my dilemma...I dont know how to run a party function. I have everything else preped but I dont know how to do that. I feel silly asking...but I figured why not give it a shot.

I'm getting ready to run a new campaign and one of my players wants to be a member of a cult, an amnesiac who was indoctrinated by them at a young age. Incidentally I've planned for the secret final boss to be a society/cult pulling the strings in the background. Currently unsure of the logistics however, it seems like a good idea but wondering if anyone thought it would be possible/feasible to write the cult as the main villain and have the player break free from them without breaking too much of the mystery or side-lining the other players. TLDR; is it a workable idea?

Hey everyone,

I have a Question regarding White Dragons. I have a lvl 13 party of 5 players (Paladin, Rogue-Barbarian, Cleric-Barbarian, Bloodhunter-Cleric) with 2 Players having a flying speed.

In the last session they managed to surprise a White Dragon with an Ambush right outside her Lair and brought it to half health before it fled the encounter.

The Dragon itself is an Adult White Dragon bordering to be an Ancient One. However these Dragons only have an Intelligence of 8 and Wisdom of 12.

With more intelligent dragons I could have them set up ambushes on the Mountain Range. My question however is, could a White Dragon also do those?

For example hiding in icy Rivers until the party comes close enough, just to burst forth, use a breath attack and maybe a few wing Attacks before fleeing again.

Or hiding in a blizzard for a few surprise attacks.

Are these Dragons intelligent enough for that?
If not, what would such a Dragon do instead?

I ran my first Session of D&D (not ever, but im still fairly inexperienced) last month for a new group and I need some inspiration for what to do from here, I don't have much time to manage between now and the 2nd session so any and all advice is appreciated. I usually plan a bunch of encounters that are basic enough to be reskinned or modular with a fuzzy idea of an overarching narrative.

4 very players with little to no knowledge started at Lvl 1 & levelling up to 2 at the start of next session.

Background: The village the players start in is a peasants republic that is protected by a silver dragon from monsters and local lords. The dragon hasnt been seen for a while and some unwanted creatures have been venturing a little too close for comfort.

They started off on patrol for the village and find a load of bodies marked with a red hand symbol around a dead paladin positioned as if protecting what turned out to be a dragon egg, they inspected the scene. The bodies with a red hand painted on the tunic (not the paladin) got back up and attacked them (zombies). After combat, they took the egg back to the village.

On the way they chased down a burning runaway carriage and rescued everyone inside.

(Dragon egg plot) The village elder told them to check on the dragons lair in hopes to return the egg.

They then fought some wolves in a cave, did the classic LOTR riddle door thing, climbed an icy cliff, fought some dudes with the red hand symbol and finally reached the dragon’s lair…

Except the dragon was gone and there was a necromancer’s laboratory in its place.

There was evidence of the necromancer having instructions to harness the eggs not to experiment with them. He didnt do as he was told and now the players have the only surviving egg, The necromancer left a note on a map that the paladins would most likely have headed to the local temple. The players bit the hook and went towards the temple after the necromancer, on the way out they noticed the bodies of the red had guys had disappeared. ‌

We left it there and the players are going to pick the game up after a long rest en route to the temple. I might have the zombies of the guys attack their camp or something but where do you think I should go from here for my 2nd session... aghhh lol no idea.. my creative juices have ran dry.

Im interested in the funnel concept but not super clear on how it works. Say my 4 players each have 3-4 characters. Are all their characters sort of "there" and around and they play who fits in the moment? do they start with character 1 and run it till he dies then move to 2? Wouldnt they just arrange them in order of most liked?

Obviously we all know the Christian idea of hell: Fire and brimstone, being tortured by devils with pitchforks for all eternity. But personally, I’m more the fan of depictions of Hell where it’s less about outright torture (in the broadest definition of the term) and more about it being minor inconveniences and annoyances that add up overtime.

Examples would be the Twilight Zone episode where the main guy gets anything he wants when he wants it, stuck in an eternal loop of boredom. Or the Adventure Time episode where Finn and Jake are trapped in a long line that just will not move. Or in HFIL by TeamFourStar where hell is a cul-de-sac with annoying neighbors and the only movies to watch are bad sequels (and no butter for the popcorn!)

So I’ve been brainstorming some ways of giving a DnD flair to those kinds of punishments, both in a lore-accurate way to the Nine Hells of Baator but also in more of a slightly meta way with DM methods that most players HATE (railroading, DMPC glory hogs, impossible checks, etc)

So I am DMing for the first time and one of my players got their character captured by guards protecting an illegal slave trading organization and I dont know where I should imprison the character. I dont know whether putting him in the official prison would work since the Mayor is extremely against slavery and another PC is in the Prison of the slave trading organization freeing slave and I dont want them to discover the on freeing the slaves

There's a quest for my party, which is to kill a red dragon to appease a Patron. They found a divine artifact that could help nerf the dragon's ability and I told the party so, via NPCs. But they decided to leave the artifact hidden because they're afraid to lose it during the battle.

Problem is, I don't know how to manage the encounter now. I could make up an excuse to nerf the dragon anyway, but it seems boring and could take away from the hype of going against a massive boss. The artifact excuse worked because the whole party worked a lot to get it, so the debuff effect would've been a reward for their efforts.

They're also all very excited to "probably die lmao" and I don't want to railroad them.

I guess I can make them just fail the quest, but I need fun ideas to what happens next.

They're level 9, which is not a low level but definitely not enough to kill a dragon, especially with no other equipment.

I'm about to start a campaign with two players, both first-timers, and I was planning to give them a sidekick to fill whatever void needs filling. Turns out there are a couple voids! I just learned that one player is going to be a rogue and the other a ranger. No healer, no dedicated fighter to soak up some damage. Just a rogue who's probably gonna hide after their attacks, and a ranger who will then be the only visible target on the battlefield. The players are my mom and my wife, and I'm not too keen on accidentally killing either, so I really wanna get this right. Even with the Healing Surge rule variant, I worry they need a dedicated healer, but they clearly also need someone in the fray in addition to the rogue. I've never run sidekicks before; would giving them a healer and an attacker or defender be too much? What would you do?

I’m planning out a dialogue for my future session and I’m feeling like I may be either getting to dm bullshittery or may not make any sense and want either input or other perspectives on other avenues I may be missing.

For some quickly abridged context been running a 2year campaign now and in the next 2 or so sessions my players should be getting to meeting the bbeg in the flesh (for the second time but they weren’t the bbeg when the campaign was starting but it’s progressed to them being the parties bbeg and the main drive for conflict

I’m making a legendary magical item that was kept within a lead box the party hadn’t been able to unlock when first getting it at the start of the campaign due to most part early campaign levels and magical and mechanical means since first getting it and it has been long since forgotten and will be serving as a massive deus ex machina for me. In total the magical item would be capable of allowing its attuned user (the bbeg) the ability to scry, modify memories, and act as a way to paralyze or momentarily capture the party to allow for a bbeg dialogue and reveal that since the moment the campaign started they hadn’t actually been a random hap-penance of random encounter and joining up as fledgling adventurers party but were psyops’d by the bbeg and his own plans to orchestrate a rag tag group of nobodies to work in his own plotting and interest without ever having personally aided him or known him save for one passing interaction so many sessions ago.

After said dialogue the bbeg will be leaving through means of a temporary portal and a boss fight to engage. The boss being an eidolon and statue as a minion of a necromancer affiliate of the bbeg the party was sent out to kill and the whole reason they’ll be able to meet the bbeg again in the flesh due to a quest given to them to slay said necromancer due to sightings of undead however they also leave in tow with the bbeg but the bbeg removes the parties restrains just as the fight happens as they are all but amused by their adventures. Aside from the dm railroad/bs moment of taking narrative control the main thing I worry about is ruining the vibe and narrative suspense I have planned for them to feel and make the mood go from delving through a dungeon to all our carefull planning and prep is ruined and now we have to suffer a boss fight as our “reward”

I worry it could lead come off as dm bullshit or Mayhap’s even mean spirited and am open to input, feedback and changes that could be made. After said