One of my players is an Artificer, and they’ve decided that their long-term character goal is have passive income to fund increasingly expensive magic-item crafting.

Their first idea was becoming a landlord. The party saves a town, they buy damaged or cheap property there, repair it, rent it out, and then collect passive income while the party is off adventuring.

But apparently that was only the beginning.

Some of the other ideas they’ve floated:

• A village they went to was recently almost destroyed by a dragon. The artificer offered the villagers reconstruction loans to rebuild their homes and businesses. The goal is the loans eventually get paid back with interest.
• Buying businesses in places the party regularly visits and hiring NPCs to run them while they’re gone.
• Financing merchants or caravans in exchange for a percentage of the profits.
• Buying land around settlements they expect to become more valuable after the party makes the area safer. This is a big one! They want to do this one in combo with their other ideas.
• Investing in mines, lumber operations, farms, etc. to secure cheaper raw materials for their own crafting.
• Eventually establishing some kind of bank or moneylending company where NPCs can deposit money or take out loans.
• Offering towns development money after disasters, wars, monster attacks, etc., and then making money off the recovery.
• Buying warehouses and charging merchants for storage.
• Funding new taverns or shops in recovering settlements in exchange for partial ownership.
• Creating an adventurer insurance scheme where people pay regularly and receive compensation if they lose equipment, get injured, die, etc.

I like these ideas in theory, because it gives them something to care about besides adventuring and creates a ton of potential plot hooks. At the same time, I don’t really want every session to become Fantasy Accounting Simulator, or for passive income to completely trivialize the normal D&D economy.

How would you handle this mechanically?

Would you just abstract investments into downtime rolls and periodic income? Actually track individual properties, businesses, and loans? Put risks on them like defaults, destroyed property, corrupt managers, bad harvests, monster attacks, economic downturns, etc.?

In June this year, one of our friends wanted to do a one shot for her birthday. Our friend group consists of an old school 1/2nd Ed. And our friend who agreed to DM for the one shot. Ultimately, 6 players and our DM. None of us had played 5E, with most of having never played before. As such, I expected a certain level of growing pains, as people learned the game, rules, checks, etc.

Fast forward to now, and we have done about 8 sessions. I expressed interest in DMing and our DM was happy to let me try. I worked really hard on our side mission-created terrain, got minis for bosses, painted them up, looked at maps, drew maps, came up with treasure to help with the greater world (Curse of Strahd), all with my DM’s approval.

Our group had an annoying habit of not being prepared for their turn, and taking an hour to decide how to open the door, so to speak. I built a room with the intent to give them something to help them survive the boss encounter. Rogue decides he wants to step through the portal. I caution that will trigger something if he does it. I ask multiple times if anyone wants to do something else. Rogue insists, they step through, lose the treasure options. I quickly rethink how to get the items to them, and it works out…mostly.

We didn’t get to the big boss but should next week. I am exhausted and frustrated. All of the players do not know their character sheets, and continuously ask me what dice to roll, what modifiers to add, if they can do multiple actions (with no bonus action abilities), don’t know what their specific spells or cantrips do, and then ask me. I have to stop and google because I also don’t know. I get that they are new, but we have done this for about 80 hours now, and we go usually every other week. We are all working adults, etc. but I feel like writing out your spells, or typing them (whatever) wouldn’t take super long.

I feel like a taskmaster. In a previous session, we sat in the same position for TWO HOURS while people argued about the best way to get a woman away from the bad guy and sort out if there were enemies in a village. In order to combat that, I added a five minute sand timer, with the notification that if the sand ran out with no decision made, they would face a consequence (wraiths attacked, or they received damage from the environment).

To one of my player’s credit, he asked if he should learn his character sheet before next session, and said he would “do his homework” there, and recognized it wasn’t realistic for me to have everyone of their spells and modifications memorized.

So I guess: was I expecting too much? Did I over prep? Anyone have any advice? I’ll finish what I started but it doesn’t make me excited for this week’s session or playing DnD.

TLDR: first time DM who put a lot of work into this world and game, with reasonably new players (80 hours in) who don’t know their character sheets, expect me to know their sheets, creating frustration. Running last night’s game has sapped my excitement for playing. Advice requested.

What is one thing you say no to?

We're not talking about saying no to unsolicited PVP, saying no to unwanted NSFW stuff, saying no to OP homebrew.

We're talking about the smaller nos, the ones that is less about rules or good player etiquette, but rather, lack of preference, lack of experience, or you don't just want it in your game.

This question came up in my mind when I joined a homebrew campaign a few weeks ago and the DM told me that he doesn't want to implement player character backstories, not because of animosity but because he struggles to do it. I respected his decision because he was willing to admit fault, he knows his comfort zone.

For myself, I personally don't do downtime activities, unless the party asks for it specifically but even then I'll keep it short and simple, I just don't find it that interesting and I see it as filler.

So my characters are in a mission to rescue a kid from an orphenage run by a Hag. They are invited as guest for as long as they aren't breaking the rules, and one of the rule was "You are not to set a foot on the second floor."

So obviously they immediatly went to the second floor and used some clever tactics not to break the rules ( winged boots, fly spell, etc... )
Until one PC decided that the rule didn't matter and just started walking willy nilly on the floor.

It happened at the end of last session so I have tome to come up with something interesting. Would you have some interesting and thematic ideas on what curses might be inflicted upon them ?

( Funfact the character is already cursed because he ate some of the hag's food. The curse they got is now they have a set of teeths in their mouth that eats whatever they try to consume, so they get very little nurisment and are slowely dying of hunger. That's the kind of twist I want but it's hard to come up with one right now )

In a lot of campaigns, there’s a general consensus that the characters aren’t going to die. it’s a casual campaign, so PC death isn’t really something you want to deal with. however, I think that severely undercuts a big part of the game: survivability.

if you make everyone immortal, then health and defense have no purpose. why would you waste resources making yourself tanky when you’re just as likely to die as the wizard? why increase health when you could just up your damage output?

I know having roles like taking hits is still valuable, and constitution is still helpful sometimes, but I think that the AC/HP focused builds themselves are what suffer.

The traditional reason to become a lich is to gain power. What are some stupid, petty reasons one might become a lich?

Examples: * Refused to give fancy pocket watch to nephew; nephew said “I’ll get it when you die,” wizard refuses to die just so nephew won’t get the watch. * Did it on a dare, didn’t think it would work, is now super bored and lonely. * Two academic wizards in a petty feud over interpretation of an ancient text, keep publishing competing articles in academic journals, refuse to die before they win. * Promised daughter on her deathbed to take care of the baby dragon she found, became a lich to fulfill vow, dragon is now an ancient dragon, lich treats it like a puppy. * Told someone “I’ll see you in hell before I admit you’re right,” found out they were right, refused to die.

Hi, I am DMing for the first time and decided to play with my family and introduce them to DnD, my sister is insisting on being a duck piloting a warforged and I have absolutely no idea how to make that work, we are playing Stormwreck Isle to introduce everyone and I want to make sure they enjoy it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

First time DM here. About five *sessions in.

None of my players have disrespected my authority. Some have had crazy solutions/ideas that wouldn’t make sense, and I told them that it wasn’t allowed. They listened to me and started thinking of new solutions.

One of them got his Armor Class too high, so I gave him a little bit tougher battle. The players all got really excited when he started taking some actual damage, and he was ecstatic when he won.

Why aren’t we getting in fights. Every post I’ve seen on this subreddit has been about problematic games, and I was excited to get in tons of world shattering fights with my friends.

What am I doing wrong?

My 2.5 years long campaign is at its end. My PCs are literally outside BBEG throne room. And that's when 2 PCs requested we end the campaign here and now

Everyone at the table is shocked. The others are trying to persuade the 2 to push through to the end but they're reluctant

I don't get it. We are THIS close to the end! As DM, I am upset because this is my story too and I want it to have its grand finale. Why do they not want this critical final session?

UPDATE: I asked them if they could explain why. Both PCs said they didn't truly plan on the campaign ending like that. They made some in-game decisions they regretted, and the ending (which felt abrupt to them) was emotionally overwhelming so they needed time to process everything. They acknowledged that I did mention the end was coming, but it was still too fast for them

The table discussed on what to do, and we agreed that we(including the 2) shall complete the campaign at the end of Apr, and have a short epilogue session in the near future to iron out any unresolved plot lines

Edit: We asked them, maybe a little forcefully because we were just that exasperated. They were noticably uncomfortable so we backed off. We still haven't gotten an answer and I don't want to harass them for one

Edit 2: We are all close to each other outside of the game. This isn't due to a personality conflict as far as I can tell

Edit 3: They both made this request together at the table

Edit 4: They are close to the game. They've even drew fanart and wrote mini fanfics of it

Edit 5: There is no next campaign. This is THE ending of all endings. I've made it clear to them for months leading up to this. It is the end because I am the only DM among them. We've homebrewed so heavily it might as well be its own system. I asked them before if anyone would want to dm after I've stopped but no one would. Hence, the game ends after this. I have too many irl commitments

Edit 6: I see many comments suggesting they might fear failure and... I can believe it. The BBEG has announced earlier that he'd go after their friends and family once the PCs were dead. In fact, he tricked the PCs here to confront him at his lair. By attacking him, they've given BBEG the justification to claim the PCs' nation has hostile intents, and thus, give him emergency powers to invade their land. The only solution is to kill BBEG here and now. If they fail, everyone they love would die

Edit 7: The PCs are no stranger to near-deaths. We have lost 2 PCs along the way. The party has fought Mindflayers, elder dragons, a weakened Tarrasque and so on. The BBEG isn't more dangerous than any of the previous bosses, he's just more vile and stubborn and cunning, hence that's why he's the BBEG

Edit 8: To everyone awaiting an answer... believe me, I am the DM, I want- No, I NEED an answer. However, I fear further pressuring them would only cause them to be more distant. I shall give them a few days before asking again. I promise I'll give an update once I know what's going on

My first time DMing. It was a a great learning experience.

What I planned:

- Party had to abandon ship for unknown reason.
- Party washed up on a pair of deserted islands.
- 1.5 hours of exploring and roleplay on the islands.
- Set up some puzzles for them to solve with visual and verbal hints.
- Maybe they build a raft to go to the other island or try to swim to the other island.
- 1.5 hours in, a pirate ship would appear and it would trigger combat
- Party should be able to overcome the pirates in about one hour.
- The final half hour would be them exploring the pirate ship.

What actually happened.

First Session:

- One character managed to ride a shark to the other island.
- Found a treasure chest full of gold.
- They aggroed the animals on the islands.
- Spent more than half of the first session fighting the animals.
- One character almost died after getting bitten by a shark.
- End off session by allowing them to take a long rest.

Second Session:

- Players woke up from long rest
- Half of them almost fought each other over the gold they found.
- The other half explored the two islands.
- Found a Bag of Holding on a dead body that washed ashore.
- One party member healed a shark they fought in the last session turning the shark friendly.
- I finally made the pirate ship appear.
- Party attacked the pirates before they set foot ashore triggering combat.
- Rest of session was combat.
- Had to end session mid-combat due to time constraints

Third Session:

- Continue combat where we left off
- Another character almost died.
- 1/2 to 2/3 of the session was that combat.
- Party finally finished off the pirates.
- Spent some more time exploring the islands even though I kept on hinting about the ship.
- Even though there were 3 row boats for five of them, 3 of them tried to sit in one rowboat. Failed.
- Party member rolled very well, earlier mentioned healed Shark is basically a friendly puppy now.
- Party member asked if they could keep the shark as a pet. I told them we'll roll for it later.
- FINALLY made it onto the ship.
- One final enemy on the ship.
- Managed to persuade enemy to stand down. He's friendly now I guess.
- Found and old woman who the pirates kept caged as a cook/cleaner.
- Old woman proceeded to start cooking them a meal.
- Pirate-turned-ally tried to help old woman cook.
- Finally explored the Captain's Quarters.
- Had to end the session there due to time.

What I planned for one session took them three sessions to complete.

They did so many things I did not expect them to do.

They ignored the, what was obvious to me, visual and verbal hints in how to solve the puzzles I set up.

They solved puzzles in ways I did not expect them to be solved.

Instead of having just one NPC join the party, I guess we now have two NPCs and one pet shark.

Lesson learned. Nothing ever goes as planned.

Good news is I don't need to do any prep for a few of weeks.

Edit:

I have to add this is in;

One of my players appears to be a compulsive hoarder. Player will keep practically anything the player finds no matter how worthless I try to describe those items to be.

I've seen dozens of tables where the DM will ask some variation of "how do you slay it?" when a PC drops a bad guy to 0hp. Those moments tend to be the ones where I see players get excited, because they get to express something about their character in a generally cool or fun way. So after 6 years of forever DMing for 3 different groups, I decided to test out some new ways to incorporate opportunities for players to express how their character does a thing.

My attempts have been pretty hit or miss, with the exception of asking characters how they dodge/block/or tank a hit. It has been a ton of fun as a DM listening to the players describe how their high AC paladin doesn't flinch after taking 6 hits to the plate, or how the monk effortlessly moves out of the way when the boss swings and misses with their club. I usually limit the question to when multiple attacks miss the character's AC (for expediency and novelty), and the feedback so far has been great.

Does anyone else have things you do at your tables to encourage character expression?

I’m the DM for a party of 5*, one rarely shows up. Two of my players said all of my campaigns have no story or anything but combat, when I try even though I’m not an expressive person. It really got on my nerves how no one cares about the work I put into things from minis to encounters to world history, two(including the one that rarely shows) of the party members don’t have any meaningful backstory, the other two insulted me, it made me feel horrible as I’ve been DMing for two and a half years at this point, spent hundreds of dollars, and the fifth player is king, cares and gets me Christmas gifts, so I feel like I’m letting him down.

Hey everyone! I’m a new DM and I recently started running a D&D campaign for a group of friends. Everything has been going pretty well so far but I’ve noticed a weird habit that my players have developed. They are eating my NPCs.

So far they’ve eaten 3 of them and I think they’re planning to eat at least 2 more. I’ve never DMed a campaign before and I’ve only been a player in one other campaign. I’m just wondering if this is normal? Has anyone else had to deal with this kind of situation before?

Edit: The players are elf, half-elf, half-orc, and an aasimar. The eaten NPCs were 2 dragonborn and 1 human.

Edit 2: I did not expect this post to blow up like it did :))) I'm reading through all the comments and taking notes. Thank you so much for the ideas and suggestions! We’ll definitely try the idea of eating something spicy in real life if this situation happens again. I’m also going to look into diseases/curses/wendigo/madness tables, and some of the other consequences you all recommended, and I’ll implement the ones that fit the overall story.

Has a player suggested or recommended a character that you don’t allow? What was the character? Why did you reject it?

TLDR: a player has some character ideas that I’m uncomfortable with as the dm and wanna know if I just shouldn’t dm if it’s an issue for me or if it’s alright to request they choose something a bit more simple. So, it’s my first time playing d&d and i’m jumping into dming. I’ve got a campaign planned and so far have three players, one of which has had… interesting ideas for their character. First, they wanted to be Freddy Fazbear. Then changed it to just a bear named Frederick. Now they’ve gone and jumped into an entire different body of water saying they want to be a vampire based off the folklore from the movie Sinners.

When they asked about freddy, I told them something along the lines of “bro, I ain’t comfortable with that right now, I can’t even begin to grasp how exactly Freddy Fazbear could be a playable character in d&d and how that’d work” and they then requested to just be a bear named frederick. I told them that the issue is that it’s a bear. They said they’ll just make a bear named frederick as in the gay slang to describe a certain body type in men. I said that was fine.

Now they want a sinners vampire. I really just want a campaign with characters that everyone can understand well enough without having to dig online about folklore or how a goddamn animatronic would go about his life in a D&D campaign. It also just doesn’t make sense to me seeing as the campaign is isekai themed and they’ve all been trucked into the campaign and the main goal is to get back to where they came from.

Sorry for the long post and rant-ish quality to it, just a bit frustrated. I just wanna know if it’s alright to request more simple characters or if I should just not dm if it’s an issue for me. Thanks for reading.

I have a weird problem with a player in my game. They require every thing in a dnd world to be a parallel of a real life country, culture, race, religion, etc.

It’s just feels weird that I’ll work on something for my homebrew world just for them to go “oh so this must be Germany”. What bothers me most about it is that if I just live along or say something like “yeah sure if you want” they then try to almost weaponize it in game. Ill have something happen and they will complain that it “goes against the real world culture” and try and rules lawyer out of it.

It’s also a bit uncomfy when they decided that my elves are Chinese cause they have a large empire in the eastern part of my world and have gunn powder. And now that it’s being revealed that the empire is borderline facist and a little evil they think I’m racist.

It’s just a weird situation all around and I’m not sure how to handle it. They’re a fun player in other regards and don’t have many friends or social activities beyond dnd. Also their cousin is one of my favorite players in the same game.

I don’t want to kick them out but also not sure how to explain yet again that it’s a made up fantasy world and any connections to the real world are solely because I’m not that creative and there’s only so many ideas out there.

I want to DM for the first time, and I thought I should start with a one-shot. Where can I find some free plots? I remember I once saw someone mention a website but I dismissed it because I thought it isn't relevant to me.

Edit: I think the website was called "DM guild"? I'm not sure

Edit #2: GUYS HOW DO I EDIT THE TITLE

To try and keep this short, I'm running a campaign that's still in its early sessions, the main plot hasn't been revealed yet as it's quite a slow burn. All the PCs have quite clearly goals they want to accomplish. The land they have been dropped in is part of a bigger world but they aren't able to explore that wider world due to a fog (think Barovia) they have access to a map of the whole world and saw a place they believe to be related to one of the PCs goals and therefore want to travel there. They don't know that they aren't able to travel out of the district they're in so they've started planning how they're going to go about their journey. I don't want them to all get excited about a journey, plan ahead and then get the boarder and realise it's all for nothing, so should I just tell them their journey is pointless?

EDIT:

There are a lot of comments and I can't reply to everyone but I'll just relay a few points I didn't add to my post:

1. This is not my own world, it's the 3rd party "Crooked Moon" adventure by Legends of Avantris. They wrote in the fog, the flow burn story, and created the entire world.
2. The fog appeared as of the party landing in this district, therefore it's not a well known thing that you can't leave as it's only been a few days since it arrived. This is why it's not something they know exists
3. In terms of the story, right now they're in quite an open world point in the campaign, living in a village, where an NPC they have been travelling with said "go explore the village and see if you can help out and villagers in need, and in return I will see if can help you all achieve your goals"
4. I gave them the map because they asked for the it. Anyone saying "why would you give them a map they can't explore", it's exactly the same as if you were playing Icewinddale, got given a map of the sword coast and decided you were going to to Baldurs Gate, the place they want to go is completely unrelated to the campaigns plot.
5. The fog naturally clears after the campaign ends, after that, then they would be able to explore where they want, but by that point they won't have any reason to go there.

If I find questions I've missed I'll add them in an edit.

In Quentin Tarantino’s films the brand Red Apple Cigarettes keeps showing up in his movies despite them all taking place in separate universes / timelines. Do you have a character / faction / item that you keep putting in your campaigns even if the campaigns themselves differ wildly from each other?

Mine is the Graystone Mining Company. They’re usually up to some nefarious mining practice. In one campaign they were opening portals to hell to mine a rare red metal called Nine Hell’s Adamantine. I’ve probably put them in 7 campaigns.

What’s yours?

I have 3 players (one ranger and two paladins, all level 5). I recently analyzed all of their player profiles and discovered something about their HP. One of the paladins (+1 CON) has 54 maximum health, and the ranger (+2 CON) has 56. I started to suspect them when I saw that the other paladin's (+2 CON) health was 46. This other paladin always used his average health increase (6+ CON) and rolled the dice only once to increase his health. Regarding the other two, who have very high health, I never had visual confirmation of their health increase. They simply rolled the dice while I checked their notes and told me the result, or they simply added it to their profile without telling me.
The chance of you being able to increase 43 maximum life with 4d10+4 is 0.04% (the paladin with 54hp), and the chance of increasing 44 maximum life with 4d10+8 is 0.35% (Ranger with 56hp). How do I tell them that these results are unrealistic and that they should change this? NOTE: none of them have the Tough feat.