Edit Edit: Go and re-read the myth of Perseus before you comment about it. HE DIDN'T DEFEAT THE MEDUSA THIS WAY. Medusa's petrifying gaze specifically DIDN'T work through a reflection. That's why Perseus used his mirror shield to look at her - he looked at the reflection because looking at the real thing would petrify him. He looked at the reflection and then cut off her head with a sword. Medusa did not get confused and petrified by her own gaze.

Sorry about the rant but if this post gets one more inaccurate comment regarding Greek mythology I'm going to slam my head against a wall.

Original text begins here:

In DnD 5E, basilisk stat block says that if the monster sees it's own reflection, it uses its peteifying gaze against itself.

My party fought some basilisks. The paladin took a steel mirror from the basic adventuring gear section, strapped it to his shield and just stood blocking a hallway. The basilisks mostly died because they started peteifying themselves and were restrained or fully petrified.

Here's some discussions we had:

Since it's a small mirror, I argued that I'll give the basilisks 50% chance each turn to see or not see their reflection. But the players correctly pointed out that when they look at the basilisk, they don't get a chance to avoid it's eyes, they either see them and save against petrification, or they don't see them and get disadvantage on attacks. I myself argued before the fight that there's no cone of vision in DnD, and that if you can see the basilisk you can see it's eyes regardless of which side you look at it from. So it makes sense that they see the mirror regardless of which side they look at the paladin from.

Problem is, this 2gp item is thus capable of destroying a full nest of 12 basilisks.

I'd appreciate some thoughts.

Edit: It seems I found my main issue/plot hole. The statblock of basilisk depicts a solitary creature that is reasonably hostile to its rivals, and thus can be tricked into petrifying itself. But I made my basilisks live in packs. They would be used to seeing other basilisks and not so eager to petrify them. Thus, they shouldn't be petrifying their own reflections either.

With this justification, I will be giving basilisks 25-75% chance of being confused and accidentally using petrifying gaze on themselves, depending on size of the reflection. I don't want to completely remove the iconic way of dealing with them, but it shouldn't be an instant win either.

I also failed to notice it only works in bright light, but that would be solved by one casting of Light cantrip so it's irrelevant.

As you might guess, I love basilisks and plan to use them again in the future. For info, I run them as medium-sized, living in packs and with climbing speed equal to walking speed. Dangerous vermin that calls for removal by tier 2 heroes.

Look I'm not trying to start fights or anything, just looking for alternate perspectives on commonly (or universally?) accepted ideas for DMs to follow.

As with the bits of advice themselves, I'm positive that any answers are based on the specifics of each table themselves.

For me it's "don't ever split the party". AT LEAST on battlemaps, let them split up and wander! It means whoever isn't exploring with the rogue might finally trigger a trap, and I put a lot of thought into those traps dammit! Sure, the DM has to plan for it, but it can lead to fun moments as, maybe the skill monkey isn't around and the Barbarian has to make a history check, etc... It can introduce drama and tension as the split party works in parallel. I wouldn't do it with a table of newbies, but with my current crew, I'd for sure do it.

Bonus points if you've given, received, or otherwise encountered this advice in real life.

I'll start:

You need to buy all the sourcebooks. Every single one. Otherwise you're gonna be a bad DM.

EDIT: Well gang, we've gotten some great feedback here! After reading through some comments, there are clearly some standout pieces of bad TTRPG advice. I'd like to list my favorites, if I may (paraphrased, for brevity).

• Plan for everything.
• Plan nothing, and wing it.
• The players are an enemy to be destroyed.
• You have to use a module!
• You've got to homebrew it if you want to be a good DM.
• Just be like Matt Mercer/ Chris Perkins/ Matt Colville/ etc.
• Let your players do anything and everything they want, otherwise you're railroading.
• Don't let your players wander away from the story or your campaign will never progress.
• Avoid confrontation with your players at all costs.
• Do NOT let those players sass you. You're the Almighty Dungeon Master, dammit!
• Follow all the rules PRECISELY.
• Screw the rules!

Remember kids, if you follow ANY of the advice above you're gonna be a bad DM and your players will hate you. Good luck!

Editing to add: These are some of my dearest and oldest friends, they’ve genuinely been wonderful friends of mine for over a decade. Even if I stopped DMing, I’m sure we would continue together as players while one of them DMed. I love them all and perhaps my post is a little too cranky, it really is more of a me problem I think. My original post is likely painting it all in a worse light cuz I wrote this at night while still upset haha.

Second edit: i think a conversation between us all is a good idea, just a check in after how long we’ve been playing together on what all we want out of combat. Personally though based on advice here, I think the next steps to try should be more regular, smaller combats to get both me and them more comfortable with combat in general, and giving small guidances “are you sure” in response to things that might set them up for failure (maybe behind a dice roll of sorts). Thank you everyone so much for the guidance and advice on all this, super helpful stuff!!

Original post:

This post is a bit ranty, I apologize. I’ll provide full context and then tonight’s example below, but the general issue is that my combat is getting a lot of feedback that my combat is either boring, too high stakes, or too low stakes, and that I play intelligent creatures (like 10+ intelligence) too illogically. I’d love any advice to improve.

We are 2 years in to this game. 1-2 players will go down maybe every other combat, and we’ve never had a PC death. We have a combat maybe every like 5-8 sessions because the player feedback is pretty anti-combat. We meet one or two times per month. The combats are generally kept pretty low stakes (compared to what I enjoy as a player) because if things are not immediately going the players’ way, they will stop looking at their character sheets and start snapping at me until it seems like they’re “winning” again. Tonight is a huge example and I feel like I’ve hit a wall with it, I have to fix this.

TONIGHT’S EXAMPLE:

Tonight we had a combat, with a huge character arc boss battle. The baddies were the Moonrisen werewolf (from a Reddit stat block with lowered HP and stats and removed a few abilities) and then some basic henchmen werewolves with pack tactics added. Party of five, level 8.

They were there to rescue someone that the baddies were holding hostage to manipulate another PC into staying with them. Like feral werewolves that want their sister to come home, so they kidnapped her actual blood brother. Their arrival triggered a trap at the entrance, setting off a magical darkness on the entrance to the room.

1. Prior to combat, the PCs (and players) were made aware they were being watched. As they planned their strategy while in the cave of the pack, the bad guys were responding in one of the PC’s head. They then went in to do their plan.
2. As they approached, the bad guys were in the midst of saying “we are supposed to kill all of them but her, she can be hurt but not killed” regarding one of the PCs.
3. The PC wizard was teleported to the other side of the room by another player. He was teleported to the person was they were rescuing (basically the pack’s only leverage against the PC they want). For the wizard’s action he cast arcane eye so he could see on the other side of the magical darkness and teleport to the other side next turn.
4. All the other players chose to stay inside the magical darkness and wait for the wizard’s return so they could leave with him.

This left the wizard completely alone standing next to the hostage for one full round while everyone else stayed back in the darkness to be ready to leave. The werewolves couldn’t see in the magical darkness (except the boss werewolf), plus having their only leverage threatened since they knew the plan was for the wizard to teleport away with the hostage, AND him being closest to five intelligent werewolves who literally know this is about to happen… I had them attack him (except for the biggest baddie went into the darkness to attack the others since he could see).

The wizard went down, and the bad guy took his second attack for one fail death save. Everyone at the table was immediately so irritated I was getting eye rolls. Later in the same round (like 4 characters later I think), their NPC cleric ally they brought with them healed so wizard is back up. Well, now it’s another bad’s turn… and they’re upset he wants to attack the wizard, who I will remind you is alone and about to teleport away with their only hostage. The players say that 10 intelligence wouldn’t notice mass healing word has their wizard conscious again. So I agree, and he just drags away the hostage 20 feet instead. We ended on this cliffhanger.

I got the feedback that they feel I took their plan from them and that the bad guys behaved illogically by going for the lone character. At the time I disagreed, I felt the violent feral werewolves said “we know your plan and we will kill you” and then they sent the wizard in alone to do that same plan who then waited a round just standing next to the hostage and had no back up. Regardless of the logic I tried to justify it with at the time, I made a bad choice that took away player heroism. Because of this poor decision making, I have upset some of the table and was advised the session was not fun.

I make mistakes like this literally every game, leaving the players unsatisfied and sometimes actually angry. I’m two years in and still get negative feedback every session, and nothing positive. Today I asked one player what their favorite past combat was (trying to get feedback on how I can pivot this combat next session to be more fun for them), and he literally said he has never enjoyed one of my combats. I just cannot get the hang of balanced, fun combat.

MY PLEA FOR HELP:

I’m at the point where I just desperately need help. Hours of YouTube isn’t helping my combat game. Adding high stakes goals other than “survive”, lowering the death stakes, raising the death stakes, everything I do is unfair or boring or “embarrasses” them (by them going down). I just really, really need combat advice. I’m desperate to make this fun for my players, and desperate to get back to enjoying D&D myself. I fear I’m one session away from being done with it. I would love guidance on how to make it high stakes enough to feel exciting but low enough stakes to feel they’re “winning”, and how to keep players interested between their turns, and how to handle intelligent enemies in situations like this. I just need an overhaul 💔

TL;DR I desperately need advice on overhauling my DMing of combat. How do you make NPC decisions in combat, and how do you keep stakes feeling higher than they might actually be, and how do you balance setting players up to feel heroic without giving them infinite plot armor?

It's in almost every GM guide, every YouTube video, and every "how to build better NPCs" thread, and the advice isn't wrong, a want, a fear, and a secret genuinely do more heavy lifting than a random name and a job title. I followed that framework for years, only to realize most of my npcs still blurred together after a session or two.

It took me way longer than I'd like to admit to figure out why because the framework tells you what to put on paper, It tells you who this person is, but it says almost nothing about what happens once you're actually running them.

Turns out there isn't one trap here I found, there are two.

The first one is softening. I'd build a genuinely great secret for an npc, and the moment it was about to come out in a way that might disrupt the pacing of play, make an npc the party liked look incompetent, or complicate a session I'd quietly smooth it over.

This trap never appears during prep. It appears live, mid scene, in the three or four seconds between an npc getting cornered and you deciding what they actually do, without realizing it, I hadn't prepared a person who I could act, I had prepared a description and once the scene demanded a real decision and real ropleplay I instinctively protected the description instead of letting the character respond honestly to what was happening.

To be clear, this isn't about being a harsher DM or making every interaction punish the players.

The second trap is almost the opposite, and it's harder to notice because it hides right before the players are supposed to understand who this person really is. Either the npcs want, fear, and secret stay so deeply buried that the character just reads as blank... or I overcorrect and practically announce their motivation out loud.

Looking back, both failures came from the same place, during prep I'd decided who this person was, their psychology, but I'd never decided how that psychology actually expressed itself through behavior, so, live at the table, I was forced to invent that translation on the spot.

Sometimes I showed nothing, sometimes I showed far too much, and while I managed to run the occasional NPC well, doing it consistently felt impossible. It’s a brutal skill to sustain, especially if, like me, you can easily improvise situational complications, scenes, and environments, but you aren't naturally gifted at character acting or deep roleplay on the fly.

Faced with that constant struggle, I decided to try something different, a few campaigns ago, I finally let myself stop softening things and focusing more on what the psychology would come out as behaviour. A witness lied under pressure, badly, about something completely minor, nothing the party actually needed to solve the case, I could've smoothed it over and moved things along. Instead, I let the lie sit there, raw and obviously wrong.

The party spent the rest of the session distrusting someone who'd actually been honest about everything else, none of it moved the main story forward an inch. Yet, after a long time, they still remember this npc.

Because the "want-fear-secret" framework isn't the finish line, it's just the setup.

What actually makes an npc memorable isn't writing better psychology, It's deciding, before the scene ever happens, how that psychology naturally turns into behavior, and then trusting those behaviors enough to let them cost something, letting them reveal themselves a little at a time instead of explaining them away.

Honestly, even after realizing this, npcs are still the part of GMing I feel least confident about, every time I think I've figured them out, I find another layer I hadn't considered, so, I'd love to hear what approaches have actually worked for you, any habits, techniques, or ways of thinking about npcs that you've found genuinely changed how they feel at the table?

I don't want this to sound like a r/reationship post, but I want to give you all a little background. A little understanding as to why this is so important to me and why I can't not DM a game, despite all my shortcomings.

My wife and I have been together for 16 years, since we were both about 15. She is the single most important thing in my life. Because of Covid, our usual DnD game has been suspended for the foreseeable future. We haven't had a game since February and it is breaking my wife's heart. She works so hard every day in an incredibly stressful job and spends her nights listening to DnD liveplay podcasts. She talks about how badly she wishes she could play again.

Recently, she asked me if I would be willing to DM a game with a small number of our closest friends (who will play remotely). I was sure she was joking. She kept asking and I realized she was serious. I realized that in 16 years, this is the second biggest thing she as ever asked me to do. The first being when she asked ME to marry her. My wife, sweet, smart, and endlessly compassionate, doesn't ask me for anything, ever. This must be important to her.

I agreed. I agreed because I lost my job due to the pandemic and I can, will, and want to do this for her. She deserves to be happy and I want to take as much of the burden of the real world off of her shoulders as I can. Especially because I am not contributing as much as I was when I had a job.

The problem is: I am not a smart person. I am not quick or very clever. That joke, "DnD is all math and improv!" -- I put two math teachers into retirement (not kidding). I made my high school drama teacher cry laughing -- in a very bad way. But my wife, being the amazing person she is, thinks I can do anything. I know better and I am not confident I can run an interesting/fun game. If it matters, I am also dyslexic and it can be embarrassing to talk at length. It fusses with my language center of my head and that doesn't mesh well with a fantasy setting with fantasy names.

I am reading the core books cover-to-cover and am actively researching how to DM. I am devoting a few hours a day to studying online resources. I have audiobooks to listen to while I am doing my chores. I want to do well. I have a little experience with DnD especially and two years with a paper RPG. That, I am discovering, is woefully little enough to take on the task of being a DM.

I feel good about storytelling and NPC creation. I am trying to bring in interesting elements of science and philosophy I know my players would find interesting. I like creative writing and actively enjoy worldbuilding.

I feel terrified of keeping rules in my head, the math involved, and managing a game with three players who will derail any plans I make. I am not quick on my feet.

I apologize. This got long.

tl;dr: dumbass needs help DMing to prove love and commitment to an amazing woman.

Any thoughts? Ideas? Maybe a little reassurances or hard truths?

Thank you so much for reading.

​

EDIT:

I am going to be honest. I posted this just before bed and rolled over five minutes later, feeling self-conscious about spilling my guts out, and thought I deleted this post. When I woke up this morning, my wife rushed into the bedroom to tell me she found this and that I had over 200 replies. I poured a huge cup of coffee, sat down, and read them all.

Not going to lie, I am overwhelmed in the best way. The outpouring of support is more than I could have ever expected. I am blown away by the number of people offering to talk with me personally. That is amazing and so very, very thoughtful. From the bottom of my heart: Thank you, every single one of you who took the time to read this and reply. I want to reply to each and every one of you. With so many replies, I won't be able to. Know that I have read them all!

In response to the advice you all have been so kind to offer:

I did run a series of two-hour-long-ish games with just my wife with a very simple goal. I had her solve a murder mystery, role-play heavy. I hardly prepared at all, with just NPC names and a very general idea, as a test to see if I could think on my feet with each of her decisions. It went very well! At least she says so. As many of you have said, I did fuck up and make mistakes. It was so much easier with just her. I learned a lot in such a short time and it confirmed what many of you have said: She either didn't notice the fuck-ups or didn't care. She got to be a hero and that's all that mattered to her.

In response to relying on other players with rules, etc. One of my players is a DM of her own game. I didn't realize how focused I was on how she might think of me negatively that it didn't occur to me that I might instead lean on her expertise. In speaking with her, I found out she doesn't to any prep work at all, save downing several glasses of wine. The fact that I have basic lore for this world is blowing her mind. That might be what spurred me on to prep more to impress her. Thanks to all of you, I will let that go. It will be a fun game either way.

You all are very right. One player is my wife, the other is her best friend, and the other is our closest friend. They know me and will understand if I flub a word or take time to think. They have all seen me toasted on whiskey at 3am and going off on facts about shipwrecks; I doubt they will concentrate on a mispronounced word or two. Mistakes are going to happen and I can't let the fact that I am a bit (haha, a huge one) of a perfectionist get in the way.

In a similar vein, these are my closest friends. I know what media they have consumed and what they like to see in a story. I am lucky to know that one player wants to be an All Might-like hero, another wants to have a complex character with challenged morals, and another wants to get sauced and socialize. In regards to stealing ideas: I am totally doing that. With players who love both high fantasy and sci-fi epics, I want to be able to give them the best of both worlds. All three of them love stories with deep lore and twists, which I believe I can bring to the table.

I have asked my players what they would like from this game. Hilariously, I received three different replies. My wife wants to roleplay and laugh, another wants a hack and slash, and the third hardly cares. I will try my best to mix it up!

One thing that did surprise me is how many replies told me not to over-prep my games. I didn't realize how that might become a real problem. In one way, I am trying to do that. I am setting it up for a number of options for the players, while also realizing that they might not take any of them. I am trying my very, very best not to railroad them into my preconstructed ideas. Three very creative players at my table is daunting; they will take me by surprise. I am prepared to laugh and make it silly. I really do hope they give me stories to tell about how they circumvented my plans with truly amazing feats of roundabout thinking. I was mainly worried about 'decision fatigue' and bringing down the mood of the game.

Another surprise was how many of you told me not to focus on the books! Thanks to the fact that I have listened to the DnD liveplays with my wife over and over again, I do have an understanding on how the game functions. You were all right: I was putting DMs on a pedestal. Trying my best and allowing lots of flexibility will get me to the goal -- a fun and engaging game.

Many replies said to start small. I hear you 100%!! That is technically the game plan as it stands now. I have a whole 'arc zero' of about two to five games with the expressed purpose of getting to know my players. There is a really simple goal planned: find cave, find the missing heiress, find the mystery of the main story. The next arc is similar; help the refugees find medicine and hunt down a thief. After that, I am hoping it can build into plenty of chances to battle and roleplay.

Yes, my wife found this post. Immediately. She assured me that I am not an idiot and I will always listen to her when she talks with me with that open heart of hers. She also cried from fuzzy feelings. I told her all about how dedicated I am a while back, but seeing it in words made her realize how committed I am. I won't treat this game like a chore, but I will take the goal of making her happy as my greatest motivation.

Extra edit:

My wonderful bride bought me lunch today as a thank you and told me flat-out not to put too much pressure on myself. I will redirect my brain away from all my worries and just allow myself to do the best I can and have as much fun as possible!

What are some common tips you see online that you think are actually bad? And what are signs to look out for to separate the wheat from the chaff?

I’m going to be Running a D&D campaign for a group of women, and I’m a guy. I realize that probably doesn’t fundamentally change how I should DM, and I definitely don’t want to approach it like “women play D&D differently.”

I have been playing since 2015 and forever DMing since around 2018. I have had many different women players in the past, but never a whole table!

Mostly, I’m curious if other DMs or women players have noticed anything that a male DM might not naturally think about when running a game for an all-women table.

I’m planning on doing a Session 0, talking about boundaries/lines, go/no-go topics, figuring out what everyone actually enjoys in D&D, and building the campaign around the players rather than making assumptions.

For anyone who has played in or DMed a similar group: were there any table dynamics, character interactions, NPC portrayals, romance/flirting, safety considerations, or other things you appreciated a DM being thoughtful about?

I’m mostly looking to learn from other people’s experiences and make sure everyone has a really good time!

My last session was just about the worst session I've ever run. The problem arose due to a difference in expectations between me and some players around what happens when they're trying to sneak up on a creature. The way it played out ended up feeling bad for everyone and it turned a super climactic moment into an embarrassment of a session. I'm going to need to make a ruling moving forward, so I would really appreciate some advise from you fellow DMs. I tried to keep this as concise as I could, but it's a bit of a long one, so thanks in advance for reading this wall of text

So, here's the gist of what happened:

• The party found the lair of a huge boss monster, the King of Feathers in from the Tomb of Annihilation module (THE apex predator, a massive, cunning t-rex that can innately cast misty-step). This was part of our weekly game over discord which has been ongoing since August 2020.
• The party had heard of him several times in the previous month and a half (5 sessions over 6 weeks). They heard the King had decimated entire adventuring parties. They even met a survivor of one of those adventuring parties. They even met some kobolds that worshipped him as a god. They encountered him in person twice and knew to flee/hide at the slightest sign of him based on those encounters
• They stumbled upon his lair one morning and found him fast asleep. They decided this was a golden opportunity for a surprise attack. They ended up spending 40mins IRL planning their ambush. They discussed things like who should attack first and take the free crit from the king sleeping, what to do if things went south. They were very detailed and it was awesome. I have a really tactical group of players so they loved every minute of it (they said this ~30min through).
• Very early (a few min) into this planning process, I told them what The King sleeping meant mechanically at our table, which is:
  • He suffers the unconscious condition except he can still sense his surroundings with passive perception. IDK if it's necessarily RAW, but it's based on advice found in XGtE pg 77. We've used this ruling for the 'sleeping' condition for 14 months in this campaign.
  • Therefore, getting hit will wake The King, so only the first attack landed will have the auto-crit bonus from the unconscious condition. From there it'll play out like a normal surprise around
  • Later on, to reward the players for their time investment in the planning, I decided to apply a -5 penalty to the king's PP. I don't normally do it, but there were doing a great job of including everyone's thoughts in their plans so I gave them this reward.
• The party decided they wanted the paladin to try and go first and get the crit, because he could make the most out of it. They wanted him to cast searing smite first, sneak up, and then land an attack with divine smite too.

So this is where I ran into trouble with my players. After 40min of planning, I said that in order to do that, they'd need to roll initiative and stealth, and move into position within initiative order in case The King woke up. I didn't bring it up sooner because I assumed they all knew it would be the logical course of action. But some of my players hated this, because they wanted the paladin to go first. They knew he'd be on the bottom of the initiative order like usual, so they thought he couldn't get the first attack.

I had to remind my paladin that he can't just say "I attack first," because that's what initiative is for. The King might not even be surprised if your stealth is too low, so we need to do stealth and initiative first to see what would happen. After some grumbling, he eventually let it go and rolled initiative and stealth.

So everyone made their rolls and got in place. As expected the paladin got a 3 on initiative. He cast searing smite from far away (a distance I told him would be adequately far so as not to wake the king) and then slowly crept toward the king on a stealth roll of 10. The King's modified PP was 11, so he heard the paladin coming. There were a few rounds of just holding actions for after the pally attacked from the party and him just creeping forwards.

So since the King heard the noise of the pally, and my version of him had an INT of 10 (higher than some of the PCs INT btw) I decided he can think tactically and cunningly too. I decided this weeks before when planning him, and wanted him to be far more intelligent than your typical meat-sack of a Dino. So, he decided to continue pretending to be asleep and chomp the pally when he got close. I had him roll performance vs the party's passive insight to continue pretending to be asleep while he waited. Even with disadvantage, he got a roll of 17, higher than anyone's passive insight.

The paladin had a range of 5ft and the King had a range of 10ft, so The King's held attack went off first. After a whopping 22 damage to the face, the player was furious. He was pissed that all that planning led to a failed sneak attack, and thought me forcing him into initiative doomed their plans. He also thought it was "BS" that the dino would have acted the way it did. After unloading his thoughts, he ragequit and left the call.

The aftermath of this just sucked. We all felt awful. Thankfully, after a few minutes, we managed to regroup and play out the fight anyways, and we had fun with it. Although I couldn't shake what happened, because I just felt like I had really messed up in some way.

So, fellow DMs, I would greatly appreciate your advice. I thought I handled their surprise plans pretty darn close to how the rules say it should have been handled, but I may have made a wrong call. But other than that, clearly this guy didn't find the rules very fun. What do you guys think I should have done differently? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I want to tell my players how I will make these rulings in the future based on your feedback, either by sticking to my guns or changing things up.

Edit: Thanks to everyone who has replied! It really has made me feel a lot better about things. I think I have what I need to move forward with next session, but I am more than happy to hear any additional advice from anyone else.

(For question skip to bottom half)

Context: homebrew campaign

Players are lv4 and managed to save a girl from a vampire who wanted to take the girl back to his master. Vampire died and the players took the girl with them. Bit of travel, they make it to the next town where they're running the rounds, gathering information and go shopping. Two players and the girl split off from the group and go to a magic shop. One of the players sees the shopkeep as an old lady. The other sees a very odd, wide brimmed hat creature running the shop.

Old lady is cordial and shows the party her wares. Party way through the conversation, I decide, why not. And do a bit of role play between girl and hag. Hag sees the girl wants to get stronger, get revenge on the vampires that abused her and wants to repay the players who saved her. (Player who can see, has not mentioned old lady was hag) the conversation continues and the hag says she'll take care of the young girl.

Somewhere in that conversation the players say they'll agree with the bargain, if she gives them a 400 gold discount. The hag agrees and takes the girl. (No horror or Antagonism shown from the hag). The players purchase the items the hag had shown them, but then apparently realize that they dont have enough for the whole lot. (Missing about 100 gold).

The party says they'll return to pay the rest and the hag agrees so long as one of them is marked by her. (An I.O.U. for proprietary purposes). The player who can see hag, offers friends hand for the mark and the party leaves. When they left, the player who could see tells the other about the hag and it sounds like they are making plans to go back, Rob the witch and get the girl back.

----=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-

If it helps, I dont think they really understood the where the conversation was going. And they're already making plans to turn on the hag.

The question is should I let them. Even with their discount, they got a bit of an i.o.u. in the form a small hex on the player. ( so its not unreasonable to believe the hag might already know.)

-I can ignore their plans and let them strike

-Remove both until later

-Or potentially, just make the hag the best thing for the child.

What do you think I should do?

As the title suggests, I'm running LMOP and the party tried to fight venomfang, nearly died before escaping him.

This is the closest they've been to death, so they asked what happens if their characters die.

I explained that they would have to make new characters as that's how the game works. They then suggested that we don't play that way as I'm the DM and I can change the rules.

Now I'm conflicted because I can see where they're coming from but also a 'respawn' feature takes away all the tension of anything in game.

I see a lot of advice on the nitty-gritty of running a campaign, balancing player freedom, and loads of other helpful advice, but more generalized moment-to-moment narration and improv tips seem hard to come by!

I see minor issues like this all the time -- a DM who allows players to succeed so often that they burn out and get bored, or who punishes their player for factors outside of their control, or who struggles to introduce conflict and has players wandering into areas, looking around, and going "hm." and simply walking out -- so my question is this:

What would be your #1 piece of advice for both new and veteran DMs in terms of writing and storytelling? Whether it be bad DM habits that really annoy you as a player, helpful advice for improvising conflict when players do unexpected things, or general tips for moment-to-moment narration, anything is helpful!

Hey gang, I've got a player who is wanting to use enlarge on a flying familiar, have it fly up to however high, then "drop prone", to have it fall onto an enemy, and I'm trying to figure out how to adjudicate it.

I know the rules from xanathars about it falling 500ft in that turn, reducing a creatures fall by its fly speed, the Dex save from tashas to take none, but split the fall damage on a fail, and the half dozen other rules involved, but I'm trying to figure out what a middle ground from "sure, 20d6 halved" and "no" would be.

The player is fine with finding a middle ground, by the way, he also agrees either extreme is not great

We're kind of settling on the limit of telepathy from find familiar to be the "command" limit, and for it to use the familiars action to try to initiate a free fall, to at least limit it to about 10d6 (which is then halved if it's successful, per TCE), so I guess I'm trying to figure out if it's a reasonable compromise, or if there's an alternative you'd suggest.

In my experience playing D&D as a player and DM, this is the first time I’ve knowingly DM’ed for someone like this:

My girlfriend wanted to learn more about D&D, so I offered to have her make a character and try playing the game with me as the DM.

As we talked about what D&D is and how it works, I came across a realization: In a previous conversation, she mentioned that she didn’t have the same kind of imagination that I do. For example, if I think of an apple, I can see an apple when I close my eyes. If she thinks of an apple, she can’t see an apple when she closes her eyes. All she sees is black/darkness.

In preparation for this, I found photos/art/maps/etc. for the world, NPCs, and a few locations to show her for the first session. The first session went well, and she enjoyed it. So, this strategy did help her visualize the game. However, I still want to help her visualize the world, scenes, and encounters similarly to how I visualize them. Unfortunately, it’s unrealistic to have a visual representation for every possible choice or outcome or decision she makes in game. Mostly because I lack drawing/painting skills and can’t afford a bunch of miniatures. I want her to be able to enjoy this game that I love and experience it the way that I do.

So that’s brings me to this Reddit post: I am seeking advice from anyone who has DM’ed for someone like this, plays RPGs as someone like this, or has an idea on how I can help her visualize the game! What helps you visualize D&D or any other RPG?

Thank you in advance!

TLDR; My girlfriend has no imagination which makes D&D a bit harder to play. (The “no imagination” is a ongoing joke that we have between us!)

EDIT: Thank you for all the advice, thoughts, and comments! I told her about the post and the comments and she didn’t know about aphantasia either. She also said that most of what y’all describe is how her mind works, so thanks! We will try some of the ideas that you all had!

new to DMing D&D, but I’ve been running other roleplaying games for a few years now and have played in one of my players own games for a while as a spellcaster, so my knowledge of how magic works in this game is still fairly minimal.

Anyway, this player that normally runs dnd for me and my friends is playing in my game as a Wizard, and he has the 1st level spell “identify”. He seems to abuse it though, as whenever anything slightly magical (and sometimes non-magical) is present, he will always cast identify and ask to know everything about what it is. This seemed fair enough the first few times, as it wasn’t a cantrip, and that is what the spell claims to do (as described in the PHB). But now that his character is level 5, he is demanding to know the properties of almost everything, meaning almost every magical or supernatural object I implement into my game is useless, whether it be a trap, an npc being influenced by magic, or an item they aren’t meant to understand yet. (It’s particularly difficult when the module I am using has various items the players are meant to pick up and not understand until later. Normally this is the player I’d ask for help if I need to check a rule, as the rest of us have never DMed dnd, but at this point I think he realises he’s found a loophole.

Ive noticed that the spell requires a feather and a pearl worth 100gp to cast, but apparently this player can ignore spell components because of a spell book which is an arcane focus or whatever due to being a wizard. So would it be reasonable to require the 100gp pearl from him, the same as I would treat another spellcaster? Or does he have a valid point?

Sorry for long explanation, would love anybody’s insight or expertise :)

i DM for an in person group and recently found out that the players made a separate group chat without me so they could talk about the game and strategies or whatever.

i was fine with it at first but now I’m starting to feel like i’ve been removed from the game, like i’m just supposed to show up, read my notes, run combats, and leave. its not a fun feeling when i spend dozens or even hundreds of hours on prep and writing completely alone.

and i’m nervous to tell them how it makes me feel because i don’t want to start drama, i just want my friends to have fun.

is this a normal thing other DMs have experienced? is this the role that i’m supposed to have?

I’m starting up a new game for a bunch of newbies, which is something I’m really excited about. I’ve done this once before and was delighted with how off the wall and unexpected a lot of their gameplay was when it wasn’t constrained by the decades of game playing that many of us have.

The issue? Clearly some tropes and expectations have crept into the minds of my new players - each and every one of the backstories I’ve been sent so far have revolved around dead families. I was kinda ok with the first and second ones I got, but now I’m sitting at four of four players angry at the world because of, wait for it, their dead families.

These are the first characters that these players have created after we played a one shot together, so I don’t want to stifle their creativity. I remember how raw and vulnerable creating characters was at first so I don’t want to smother their excitement, but man this is a lot.

My question is this: what would you do? Would you text the group chat and declare it a dead family free zone? Would you let it happen and have them meet at Dead Families Anonymous rather than a tavern?

Anyway, thanks for the advice, because I’m stumped.

Usually we all sit around the table, waiting for people to slowly filter in, having idle conversation and stuff. Eventually everyone arrives and things continue for a while but I'm getting anxious to get started, knowing we have limited hours to play in and wanting to get through the session. But I don't know how to get everyone to transition into the session and begin to focus on me without being rude and saying "Everyone shut up. D&D is starting now"

The only advice I've heard for this is to stop talking and wait for the players to notice and stop talking themselves, but that's never worked for me so I don't really know what I should be doing.

So here's the situation. The players did a favor for the ruling body of the town they're in, in return they got a "tax free" delve into a mega dungeon that's under the city. I put that in quotation because I don't actually tax their loot, I just gave them a 30% value boost last session to pretend they weren't taxed this time.

Anyway, next session will start in an office in-where an elderly clerk is trying to figure out why the party thinks this batch of loot isn't taxable and is actively dismissing "we did a favor" as impossible because the clerk was not informed, the favor was a political hit so of course he wouldn't be informed.

So what I'm asking for specifically is dialog for the clerk as he comes up with explanations as to why the party "thinks" they're tax exempt. Things like:

"Oh you're starting a non-profit, those aren't taxed but this loot is."

"This is a donation then? We don't tax those."

​

The encounter will end with "Well I see you're dead set on this, I'll send it further up the chain but don't come crying to me when the city kicks your door in for tax evasion."

Clarification: This is not strictly a D&D problem for me. I noticed I tend to ignore this in other games, sadly. It's an aspect I hope to improve in as a DM/GM.

So recently I noticed that whenever my players in my games talk with authority figures in a disrespectful manner, or harass shopkeepers, etc. I just tend to let them. They are not murderhoboing, mind you - The worst I let them is stealing without consequences, which I know is bad - but they are just talking to them in a way like they were equals when they are not (example: nobles, guards, etc.) or backtalking in a way you wouldn't let people speak to you, nor in-game nor in real life. And I always brush it off with silence or a "Why I Oughta..." like remark and move on.
But it's not really how I want to DM situations like this.

Part of this comes from the fact that I'm mostly a quiet, introverted person in real life and do a lot of conflict avoidance, let others speak before I speak up, etc. Sometimes I actually don't know how to react to a situation like this in a realistic manner.

But another part comes from the fact that I really don't want to deal with the BS they are trying to get themselves into. If - say - they make a remark that would get their characters thrown into the jail for example, then yes, it's their character who is in trouble, but I have to deal with everything else as the DM. Now I have to spend my real-life time and energy coming up with guards and jailers and cellmates, also personalities and stat blocks for most of them. And since I play with a VTT, I also have to get a map of a jail, draw the walls in the engine, etc. Not to mention I just intentionally split the party and deal with that too.
It's just busywork that their cockiness forced upon me. And yes, I do know that if I choose not to deal with the consequences of their actions, like I do now, it's essentially soft-railroading.
 
Another question arises: Is this actually a problem, if my players are having fun with other aspect of my games? (which, from feedback, I know they do)
And the answer is: probably not, but it's a problem for me, and I don't personally feel like it's good. It's certainly not realistic. Also I don't want to "train" my players into thinking they can get away with everything in my games regarding NPCs.
 

 
What do you think fellow DMs? Any tips/advice how you handle situations like these in your own games? Advice from fellow introverted DMs are extra appreciated.
(Not regarding my laziness, because that obviously cannot be helped :) but in the other matters.)

Hey folks!

So I'm running a (somewhat) dark and gritty game inspired by celtic mythology with lots of politics and racial issues. Last session, the Fomorian Barbarian/Druid player decided to retire from the party because it seems like an all-out Human/Fomorian race war is now inevitable and the party is picking the human side. He is returning with a human necromancer wizard.

I was wondering if you have encountered any problems with necromancer PCs before (both in roleplaying and mechanics-wise) or whether you have any tips for DMing such a character.

2nd question: it seems stupid to me that there are so many undead that a necromancer PC cannot make (like the skeleton horse or zombie ogre). Did you make custom rules for accessing those undead?

Hej! Forever DM here. Sorry for my bad grammar, English is not my first language

I’ve been DMing DnD on and off for about 4 years, a
short campaign/ adventure every year or so, or when I find a group willing to play.

I love DMing during the game, roleplaying and combat is lovely. I’ve only ever homebrewed my own worlds and adventures because I find the creative freedom and process very fun. Most part of prepping are so fun, coming up with NPCs, new goals and adventures, places, puzzles and lore

The problem comes in the time between prepping in the days before a session. I feel such immense stress. I think about it all day and night, it makes my day worse cause all I can think about is planing more and I stay awake at night thinking about it. Sometimes I jump out of bed, prep for an hour to relive the stress just so I can sleep

I can’t help but think that I’m not ready and I could be doing more. That my time frame and amount of content is not enough or that I have to much and the session will become to long.

I have put up with this stress for all my DMing time and now that I’m about to start with a new group I’m even more stressed and I feel like it’s warring on my love for DMing and DnD.

Have you guys experiences this before? If so how did you get past it?

Do you have any prepping advice or any words of wisdom?

Title captures most of it.

A player, a level 6 artificer, wants to develop and craft an item that would function almost like a dead-hand switch, triggering if he stops moving for maybe a round or two rounds. After having been hypnotic patterned once or twice, he is motivated to develop a system that would 'snap him out of it' by dealing damage, like a spring-loaded dagger that magically/mechanically triggers under the condition that he has stopped moving for X amount of time, and it would be something he could equip before combat.

Inspiration I found that could arguably translate into such an item were: The Mind Sharpener Infusion, glyphs in general, or the spell contingency.

Are there other places I could look or inspiration I should find? How would you think this could be made to work and be crafted or infused?

I've found myself bouncing off a lot of DnD YouTubers. I like Deficient Master a lot, but he doesn't really make advice videos anymore. I tried watching Pointy Hat a little while ago, but found his content to not really be worthwhile. Recently I've been getting recommended this Mystic Arts DM guy, but after watching some of his videos, I didn't really like him either. Who do you guys watch?

So I'm starting a new campaign soon at lvl 3 and I want my players each to have a magic item to start with. Uncommon is definitely too OP but I was wondering if common is doable? Or should I just not give them a magic item that early in the game?

Edit: Thank you guys so much for all the advice! Im gonna let my players choose items from both common and uncommon. As long as it makes sense for their backstory they can have it. That was its up to them if they would want a more roleplay focused item or not