Hi everyone,

maybe a common problem/question, but how do you get your players to not interrupt the whole game for a discussion, whenever something contradicts a fact they found/heard before?

As examples:

- rebel tells them the tribal elder are evil and starving the villages, elder tells them that the villages are starving because the rebels stole the food supplies. Players start a massive discussion about retconning the story, despite my insistence that I changed nothing

- ancient text shows a different version of history. Players treat it as me making a mistake and, again, start a 15 minute discussion about it

- the classic "But it worked last time" discussion. Players not accepting that the circumstances changed, so their toolkit needs to be refitted for that challenge

- Evidence they found doesn't fit their idea of how the events played out. More discussions about how "that can't be correct"

I tried having them make an INT- Role, to go "You remember, that...". This shuts down some discussions, but sometimes I don't even get that far. Insisting "I meant what I said. (so not a blooper)" also only works sometimes.

I like that they actually watch out for the details of the campaign, but its tiring to have to justify every lie an NPC tells them, every contradiction in the plot and every change of circumstance.

Basically the title.

In your D&D world, are there natural illnesses that end in death?

Maybe there are for those who can't afford the material Temple services and almost certainly not for the super wealthy. What about for those in between?

I have this massive problem where I (the DM) struggle to believe in my villain's ideology. Because deep down I know that they are illogical and irrational. And so whenever my players argue with the villain about why what theyre doing is wrong, I struggle to side with the villain.

Right now I am running a cult that wants to destroy the current universe to form a new perfect one. Its mostly followed by people who believe that life, as we know it, is inherently unfair and a new universe is the solution. They think they are doing a good thing. As you can tell, theres a lot of problems with this logic and when the players point it out to the leader, I struggle to argue with them or side with my villain.

Hi, my suspicion is I am not thinking about this like a mature DM and I would love some feedback.

My PCs were given a quest to rescue an NPC. They pass through a dungeon, mini-bosses, mobs, traps etc getting some substantial gold on the way. Final fight is against the NPC, who is possessed. Defeating the NPC releases a ghostly entity, which the players then also fight and defeat. The ghost drops powerful loot and the dungeon puzzle contains even more loot. Then the party stripped the clothes, items and weapons off the NPC they were sent to rescue. They stabilize the NPC but do not restore the NPC to consciousness. I had intended for the NPC to potentially join the party (the PCs didn't know this), but based on the dynamic they set, this seems ridiculous now.

I dunno, I guess I liked the NPC and put some thought into them. I guess I feel disappointed?

Would love to hear some of your thoughts. I'm guessing I just need thicker skin. The plot has not been derailed.

I love humble wizards, and some of my players are experienced DMs with an excellent grasp of the spells and abilities available to Wizards.

It’s always fun to roll out a living castle flanked by angels with ghost servants sitting in a pocket dimension at the bottom of an abyssal ocean. BUT I want to go the other way. Think Merlin in Sword in the Stone, or Dr. Who, or maybe Gandalf; someone who IS extremely powerful, but only those who know, know.

What small gesture/action/sentence can I roleplay that new players will miss, but experienced players will catch as indicating an all-powerful wizard?

And yes, I know about the canaries. Those are actually a great example of what I’m looking for.

I got tired of doing Hobbits I mean Tolkien flavored Halflings so i changed them to be Canadian. Like Canadian people they are extremely kinda, polite, friendly, and they play a fantasy version of field hockey. Also like Canadians they commit war crimes if needed.

Their most feared soldiers are the Goose riders. The Hoose Riders are Halflings flying over the battlefield on Giant Geese blanketing the battlefield in poisonous gas. They can also release the war geese, a massive flock of highly aggressive geese that can explode into a fireball upon their death. Their secret weapon is the Goose Hydra.

This feels like it will be a fun change to Halfling culture for my world. They are still kind, polite, and friendly, but they are ready to throw down and fight dirty.

Any suggestions for the Worldtree Checklist.... I mean Worldtree Conventions?

Any suggestions on how to improve this concept?

Edit: Dire moose mobile battlion or artillery units. The dire moose could pull a massive trebuchet......

I made an NPC who was meant to be a mid boss. He was a graduate student who clearly was battling cancer. I had a short interaction between him and a librarian talking about how he's doing better because he has new medicine, and he offered my players reese's and Starburst. AND THATS IT.

My players immediately said, "fuck that guy, he's evil." A literal quote from one of my players, "no one with that much cancer can be that trustworthy". Meant as a joke obviously. Off color, sure, but acceptable at our table.

And he was. I wanted a minor villain who was somewhat forced to do evil things to survive. He was stealing the blood of kidnapped students underground to sustain himself turning himself into a lich. "Something Something american Healthcare system is evil so why not do evil things to survive if that's your only option?" Kinda vibes

What did I do wrong lmao

Edit: this is a semi serious game. I like to make jokes and have joke characters, so my players may assume all of my npcs are jokes? Idk.

Edit 2: going to bed. I'll try to respond tomorrow if yall have any additional advice :)

I want to hint to my players that the ruler they've been helping is prepping her army to march to war. What are some ways I can suggest this without stating it outright? I want to get progressively more obvious, so if they're preceptive they'll realize it quickly, but eventually there'll be no way to miss it.

Some thoughts I had so far:

Blacksmiths working through the night

People complaining about food prices/ shortages as supplies are requisitioned.

More frequent guard patrols as the military expands.

Street corner recruiter/ enlistment poster.

What other things can I add? Especially anything that might point towards the fact that this is an invasion force rather than just for defense (what they might be lead to believe if they bring up what they've noticed to the ruler).

PCs in my campaigns lose the Common, but they can choose another language for consolation. As a result, anytime they visit a settlement, they must have the necessary language to communicate with locals. Typically only 1 PC has the language needed, which means each settlement has a different party face. The bard can't dominate every social encounter, because only the barbarian can talk to dwarves

If the whole party lacks the needed language, and they want a more consistent solution than magic or charades, they'll need to search for a translator. When looking for one, I'll roll behind the screen to determine who they find. Here's the chart:

1: An undercover thieves guild member, waiting for the perfect opportunity to trick the party into being the victim of an armed robbery. He'll try to use the parties inability to understand the surrounding langage as a way of luring them into danger

2: Translator who doesn't actually know both his languages that well, causing frequent miscommunications. A DC 14 insight check will reveal the translation error however

3: A translator who will frequently take important info for ransom, demanding a bonus payment before he'll translate it for you

4-6: A translator who takes pride in his work, doing exactly whats asked of him as long as the party doesn't mistreat him

The die I roll depends on the development of that civilization. A kingdom uses d6, a settlement uses d4, an outpost gets an automatic 1 (meaning its dangerous to search for a translator unless the party catches onto the thieves plan beforehand). Highly intelligent NPCs, or ones with massive plot relevance, will always share at least 1 language with the party

I like removing Common because it eliminates the problem where the charisma-caster handles every interaction, limiting the roleplay potential of martial classes. Granted charasma-casters are still massively better at it, but it means every character will have their moments for negotiation. It also solves the problem where every standard language (besides goblin, orc, and giant) is practically useless; since members of the more intelligent races will unilaterally have the common language too

EDIT: I set the expectation during character creation that the PCs all make sure to share a language. Usually its elvish

Chronic worldbuilder here. Here's an appreciation post for that stupid thing you spent nine hours digging through Wikipedia articles for, that your players will literally never ask about, and that you love anyway. I want to hear it all!

I got randomly curious to ask fellow DMs here as I prepare my own campaign. How much racism exists in your world and how do you handle it?

I don't know if this is a common problem, or if it's unique to my players (mostly just one player), but I'm having trouble justifying the lack of modern knowledge in my setting.

Example, a PC at my table had a medical background. There was a minor storyline about a contagious illness spreading through the slums, and he was asked to help with treating it. The problem I kept running into was that the player (who is a licensed EMT) kept assuming that modern medical practices were established in this settimg, and getting upset when the NPCs didn't know about things like germ theory or inoculation. Everyone left the table frustrated that night.

Brothers, how do I do a better job of helping players understand why these dark-age peasants don't now how or why to sanitize a knife before amputating a limb?

I’ve been trying to make a new homebrew setting but one issue I’m running into is the existence of necromancy spells capable of resurrection. Revivify isn’t a huge issue because it’s very limited on time, but how do you prevent, say, a monarch or other ruler of a nation from being practically immortal until they die of old age because they’d just be able to hire a spellcaster to revive them using higher level spells whenever they are assassinated or die through other means?

So as stated above. The player got the name of an entity who long ago transcended time and space. They have been the go to contact ever since he got the spell. The Player is a divination wizard so he only uses the spell when he has a high enough portent to pass the insanity DC check. I don’t mind the player doing it. I am just unsure how the entity would respond to these repeated contact attempts.

It is not just pertinent questions to the game either. It is also questions like “can we be friends?” And ”were you ever in love”. Again this is fine, and actually good RP for the character. It is just that I imagine this omnipotent being would eventually tire of this and want to dissuade the player from over use.

Any creative thoughts on how the entity should discourage the PC?

Edit: Wow this took off a lot more than I expected. Thanks all for the awesome ideas!

For the record not trying to shut down this behavior. Just trying to have some fun/interesting consequences.

Generally speaking it is a pretty lighthearted campaign with a few dark moments sprinkled here and there. I really enjoy subverting the players expectations more often playing to humor:

Recently the wizard was looking for ivory for spell components. He found a fine arts shop no problem. But now talk to the Loxadon shop owner named Babar about that 1500 gp ivory statue you need…

The party gnome was constantly trying to use his ability to communicate with small animals but then would ALWAYS roll super low on animal handling. So the party is forced to leave their horses because the woods got too thick. He manages to talk to a squirrel and nails a nat 20 animal handling asking him to “not let anything happen to the horses”. They finish their mission and return a few days later. The barbarian complaining the whole way about how the horses are probably dead. As they near where they left the horses they note how eerily quiet the woods is. I talk about the leaves and twigs cracking underfoot, but they look down and see not twigs, but small animal bones. Ranger identifies them as chipmunks. Then the bones get more frequent and larger. Foxes, raccoons, finally a bear. The barbarian just KNOWS at this point the horses are dead. But then they see the horses in the distance, and they move forward carefully. As they near the horses they see that the animals have a thousand yard stare in their eyes like they have seen some shit. It is at that point the party looks up and sees all the branches on the nearby trees lined with hundreds of squirrels. Very plump but still agile and staring with their tiny black eyes. Luckily he succeeded a second time on an animal handling check, and that is how they now have an army of carnivorous squirrels guarding their local forest…

My players are traveling all across the planet so it will be a point of interest or even a puzzle/skill check to understand a villager makings reference to time. Like literally “quarter past a hair” could be a real unit of time for goblins since their grows and falls out every 24 hours or something.

The planet orbits perpendicular to the sun. As in, the North Pole points directly at the sun at all times. This means the North Pole is constant blistering heat, the equator is an eternal sunset/twilight, and the South Pole is endless night and freezing cold.

However, I’m trying to think of a logical or even magical way creatures would tell time, even vaguely, and wonder if you have any ideas. My current idea which I think works pretty well is that the planet has two moons, and one of them orbits the earth once every 24 hours.

People also sleep 8 hours a day (not all at the same time) which may seem strange but this hints at the twist that this planet used to be earth but it got knocked off orbit by a certain something millions of years ago.

So one of the kingdoms in my world is ruled by a tyrant king who is very anti magic. I want to ban arcane magic in this kingdom- it's located high in the mountains so that it's physically cut off from the rest of the world. The kingdom will have many resources from the mountains that other countries will want to trade for, so I'm thinking they will have very strict imigration/customs control. The kingdom will be fairly old, and the king will have this prejudice against magic that has been passed down through his family, so these laws have been in place for a while.

Obviously anyone who is seen casting arcane magic in the kingdom will be arrested/punished/banished- I'm thinking maybe some divine magic will be accepted with very limited and difficult to earn licenses.

I'm mainly wondering if I should somehow have physical restrictions to magic set in place. Like, does the whole kingdom make anyone entering/living in the kingdom who has natural born magic (sorcerers for example) wear a bracelet of somekind that has antimagic properties, like getting a wristband when entering a club? Or maybe the wristband has an alarm system for when it detects magic?

Or do I maybe create an elite anti magic task force that seeks out any illegal magic, and all innately magical citizens and visitors are highly documented and tracked? And maybe there is a small reward for catching illegal magic, plus a very big punishment for anyone using/dealing with illegal magic?

Any ideas?

The PC's are in a city for the first time in a while, pockets full of treasure ready for the spending. One of them asked a passerby where the blacksmith was and was told it's right next to the whitesmith. I meant it just as a joke but now they're excited to visit it. The session ended before their shopping adventure since we try to do that all at once.

What would you make a whitesmith? I was thinking maybe someone who makes magic items, but if anyone has any ideas please feel free to make suggestions

Edit: Thanks everyone, I've learned that a whitesmith is a real profession that works with lighter metals. Thanks to everyone who learned me something today

Double edit: "Wightsmith" is a good idea too. Thanks for the suggestion

Edit the Third: Yes, I've also learned about redsmithing and brownsmithing. There's a wide variety of smithing to include. The Rainbow Guild of Smiths may be a thing I'm going to include

I keep seeing posts, and having players that wasn’t to run character races that are so bizarre. I try to make the setting a typical high fantasy world with elves, dwarves, orcs and goblins; but my players want to play pikachu, or these anime characters. Am I just old and crotchety that this sounds ridiculous to me? I’ve spent years building a world that has a certain feel and cosmology to it, and even after I explain the setting to them, they want to run races that I never intended to have exist in this creation. What’s the deal? What’s the appeal of trying to break the verisimilitude? There simply aren’t flying dog creatures or rabbit people, or any other anthropomorphic races. I’ve even had to bend my world history to include dragonborn. And don’t be surprised that when you play a Tiefling that people aren’t going to trust you. You look like a demon for Christ sake! What do you expect?

How do you handle when players want to run characters that just don’t vibe with the feel of your campaign?

EDIT: This was a rant. Not how I handle my players at table. I’ve clearly posted the gaming style, that PHB characters are what’s expected, that it is played with a sense of seriousness so that PCs can grow into heroes. We have a session zero. And yet, I’m regularly faced with these requests. Mostly from those who’ve never played and only have YouTube for a reference.

I simply am frustrated that so many, predominantly new, players want to use exotic, non traditional races. Do they get to play pikachu or whatever crazy thing they dream up, much to my chagrin, yes. I allow it. I run at a public library. I’m not out to quash individuality. I am just frustrated with continually dealing with these, as I see them, bizarre requests, and am curious as to when or why this all of a sudden became the norm.

And when I suggest that the world is not designed for these races, or certain races receive certain treatment because of the societal norms that I enveloped into my world, I often am cussed out as I’ve mentioned. Which is what led to this rant.

If you knew Miles the salmon king of Olken. go no further.

Long story short My players are involved in a palace intrigue arc. One of the NPCs they need to get more info on is secretly involved in the illegal flying carpet races. This is going to very much have the "early 2000's street race movie" vibes. So i need car jargon for a "30 second rug" (racing event later will be about 5 round)

Working on a scene where they get in and get a tour of a garage/loom and the hip young kid goes all out on impressive sounding carpet jargon.

Alternates for stuff like turbo charge, horsepower, spoilers, and of course Nitro.

suggestions?

EDIT:
Thanks everyone! I had no idea there was so much that went into rugs. Learned a ton today I wasn't expecting which is always a great thing.

This was prompted by a thread in r/dndnext about playing in a human only campaign. Now me personally when I create a serious game for my players, I usually restrict the players races to a list or just exclude certain books races entirely. I do this cause the races in those books don’t fit my ideas/plans for the world, like warforged or Minotaurs. Now I play with a set group and so far this hasn’t raised any issues. But was wondering what other DMs do for their worlds, and if this is a common thing done or if I’m an outlier?

As the title alludes I don’t have any “lore” at least not really. My group has been playing for the last 10 years with different campaigns that exist in the same world.

Recently they have asked to see my “notes” and asked how I planned for future events with keeping continuity in mind. However, the problem is I haven’t been keeping track of any of the lore or logging any major events. Pretty much every session is a complete improvisation on my part. I’m not gods gift to DMing I just let my players do most of the talking and I just facilitate the storytelling. It’s gotten so bad that I have begun telling me players that my “orange notebook” is blank and I can’t show them because I have nothing.

What am I supposed to do, or say in order to help my players realize that there isn’t anything. I want to give them something because I don’t think they would believe me that everything has been complete improvisation. Any advice would be super helpful.

It's hard to put into words, but I see especially in modern play with 5e that players are very entrepreneurial, meaning for example that they want to do things like harvest creature parts for money, or use their skills to make a living, start shops, etc. Which is fine, even interesting. But I know from what little medieval history I have learned over the years that this is a completely different frame of mind than people who lived at that time, and I'm just curious if any other DM's have tricks and techniques that they use to shift players into a more medieval kind of mindset.

I'm not saying it has to be historically accurate or anything, it's just weird to me that a player might look at something unique that you put into the game .. something you've put in to create a sense of wonder, awe, etc, .. and the first words out of players mouths are that they are going to try to turn it into a commercial product, as if they have the option of selling it on the medieval equivalent of Amazon or something and shipping it around the world.

I'm not trying to over-analyze it, it's a fantasy game, of course, but I would like to bring in a little more of a medieval feel to it for this younger generation, in a world where many have been brought up with so much freedom and opportunity they can't even understand a world in which you couldn't wear certain colors because they were reserved for royalty, couldn't own certain kind of structures for housing pigeons because they were reserved for nobility, etc.

Not really sure where I'm going with this question, but there it is ...

I'm looking to make a NPC that the party will befriend, with the intention of killing them off in the future as a narrative beat. However, I usually find it hard to predict what NPCs the party will take a liking too.

How do I create a NPC that the characters will like (they will be a halfling).

In my campaign I have two major NPC-s whose death should move the plot forward. What if I dont give a choice to save them? If I give and they succeed than my story will lose some of it's big turning point.

So through some shenanigans a second moon will appear in the sky of my world. How do you guys think an event such as this would affect the world and nature in specific?