I had just started a new campaign. Three players, one of them I've known for a long time. The other two were new, people my friend knew.

On session 2, one of them decided to arrive almost 45 minutes late. No message letting us know. He just arrived late and then asked "what time were we supposed to start?". On top of that, he barely knew his character or the basic rules for that extent.

Same session, the other new guy arrives high as a kite, barely able to talk (I wish I was exaggerating) and drooling. Literally drooling. Absent half of the time (no wonder), and making racist jokes. At some point he said Khenitra (a town's name, see picture attached) sounded like n****r. Yes, he is American.

So I called it off. Following this subreddit's motto, "no D&D is better than bad D&D". Oh well, onwards.

Bonus content: the map I had prepared for the session. Desert town taken over by the undead. One of the characters got eaten by the ghouls.

EDIT: Thanks kind strangers for the award and all the well wishes and compliments. I didn't expect this to blow off.

A couple of clarifications because people seem to be getting a bit confused:

1. I never knew the two other players before we started playing. My friend barely knew them for a short time before that. They probably qualify as acquaintances at best.
2. I live in Saigon, so the community here is *very* small. Hard to find players.
3. This is the second custom campaign that I have to cancel in a year's time. I'm going to hang my DM screen for a while. I really don't do online because I love building terrain and painting minis. I'm too old school for that :).

Been trying to find a "bff" group for years. Even the best groups I found fizzled out after a campaign ended. Most people seem to want a content creator to run games for them, and not a friend they want to share an experience with.

I figured you know what, fine. I'm gonna sell myself. I started running paid games and now I actually feel like I'm finally actually getting something back for my work and effort.

10/10, would recommend for underappreciated DMs

I have been playing for 8 years at conventions and stuff. Heard and seen a lot over the years.

I think the most incredulous thing I heard was a player say "DM, I want to make a dungeon and run it" and I said "yeah sure let me know when you’re ready and we'll make a day for it. What level were you thinking?"

And he said "oh, I meant I wanted to make one in-game. I'm a level 10 Wizard and I want to use my downtime to make a dungeon, and traps, and buy monsters, and watch the other players go through it."

I told him "I'm not gonna make a dungeon for your character where I build a one-shot for your Wizard and then let him pull all the levers behind the curtian. You are describing being a DM for a one-shot. If you want, we can make it in-universe, but it is something you are going to do, not me."

He never ran the dungeon.

Stopped playing with him a few months later lol.

I'm a relatively new DM preparing a long-term 2014 5e campaign.

One of my players asked if they could use Silvery Barbs. My initial answer was:

"It's currently banned. But if you really want to use it, then enemies will also be able to use it."

The player responded that this would be unfair because the DM controls multiple enemies and has access to far more resources than the players.

This confused me a bit.

My reasoning was:

If the spell exists in the world, why would only the players be able to use it?

If a spell is considered fair when players use it, shouldn't it also be fair when NPCs use it?

I

f everyone agrees the spell feels miserable when used against them, isn't that an argument for banning it in the first place?

For context, I'm not talking about giving Silvery Barbs to every goblin, bandit, and random mage. I simply meant that enemy spellcasters could potentially have access to the spell if the players do.

Was my response unreasonable?

How do other DMs handle Silvery Barbs at their tables?

This sounds mean, but HEAR ME OUT. Also, typing this on mobile, so sorry for formatting.

TL;DR: a coworker was telling me about a character they want to play that planned on scolding any other player for typical DND stuff, so I decided I don't want to play DND with them at all.

I was talking with a coworker about DND, and they were talking about being interested. I've been a DM before and have been thinking of trying to form a campaign again, so I was like, "oh, yeah, tell me about what you're thinking!" I figured it would give me an idea in case I do a one shot to get back into DMing and decide to invite them as part of it.

So, they immediately go into a rant about playing a Christian holy character, and I was a little on the fence there, but I said that ok, that would depend on the DM, but I could find a way to squeeze that in.

They then proceed to talk about how they'd get huffy whenever the other players went into a tavern and go on about how good Christians shouldn't drink (which...okay then) and how they'd expect everyone to follow the rules of their God. They even had a rant ready for when another player "inevitably" told them to knock it off.

So, I never told them I plan to start a one shot, and like hell I'd invite them to play at my table. For starters, I like campaigns where there are multiple Gods conflicting each other (my last one was kind of a war between Gods in a way). Second, I'm atheist, and while I'm open to having a Christian player, they were planning on absolutely no other personality and dragging other players down with them.

I never told them that I was assessing if I should invite them to play with me, mind you! They had no idea that's what was going on.

Anyone have any similar stories? Or think I'm being too harsh about it? I know I wouldn't enjoy them at my table, and I doubt they'd enjoy playing said character in any story I can DM.

Edit to add:

I'm bad about replying to comments, and there are so many now, so here's a few things to add.

They're very Christian, like, wears a cross necklace when necklaces aren't technically allowed Christian (catching hazard in our work setting). I'm not the best at telling if people are joking, or having to directly ask (did have to ask this person before if they were joking about something), so I'm not completely sure if it was a joke, or if they were absolutely serious, but the fact they had a rant immediately ready makes me believe they were being completely serious.

Also, I have DMed one shots before at a college event where we weren't allowed to refuse players if the table wasn't at capacity unless we had a really good reason, which is why I wasn't sure, I guess. I had a player at one of those events that, due to the way he acted at my table, got banned from future one shot events. He was brand new, never played, and chose to change up his sheet, adding dice to attacks because "my character would be stronger" (he decided that this character was actually a character from his favorite game isekai'ed into my one shot), got mad when I told him no because I let another player make an adjustment (said player, experienced, asked to change one spell so it would do a different damage type, but the same amount of damage). The problematic player also decided that he didn't like the way intimidation checks worked, so, when intimidating an NPC, proceeded to decide the best way was to WALK UP BEHIND MY DM SCREEN and get in MY face to make the NPC scared of him. Another player went off on him, and the event organizer came up to me after it was over and informed me that while it was great that I kept cool, the player was out of line and banned, but yeah. My sense of "who should be allowed at my table" is skewed because of that lol.

Pretty much the title. I made a shop called "Temu's Traveling Treasures," staffed solely by a little fellow named Temu, wearing bright orange robes. Instead of products, his store just had catalogs of different products you could buy from him, all about 90% less than what you'd expect to pay for them normally (potion of healing for 5gp, Broom of Flying for 40gp). You pay, then come back the next day to pick up your products. The reason for the delay is that he "stores his inventory in less expensive parts of town to save on overhead and reduce prices."

After purchasing any item, the players roll a straight d20 for each item. On a natural 20, it's exactly the item they purchased. On anything else, it gets a...quirk that the DM reveals at the relevant moment. Here are some examples of products my players bought, what they rolled, and what the quirks are:

1. Broom of Flying: Rolled an 18. It can only fly 30 ft high, and only for 1 hour a day (the player hasn't figure the second part out yet).
2. Returning Dagger (for throwing): Rolled a 3. Only returns if your attack roll was an 18-20.
3. Greater Healing Potions: Rolled a 7. Still heals 4d4+4, but could do anything from giving you the poison condition to reducing your STR to 5 for 1 hour.
4. +2 Longsword: Rolled a 17. If he uses it more than 5 times in a day, it'll break.
5. Bag of Holding: Rolled a 1. Haven't decided what to do with this yet but am SO excited to.

This was a SUPER fun little encounter that my players loved. They new things wouldn't great, but still pretty much immediately feel into the "It's only 5gp, why not?" trap and bought over 20 items.

Omg this is so much fun!! I stumbled into dnd after learning more about the voice actors in the game Dispatch, they were so good and just started watching critical role campaign 1..

That was 6-7 months ago. I recently finished watching the first campaign and during this whole time I was watching videos from dnd creators, learning about the rules, world building, what to do, what not to do, what changed in 2024.. luckily I have some friends who were very interested in trying (1 had actually attempted at running a dnd session with his family but to no success) and we set a date.

I was so anxious and maybe over-prepared a little bit but.. EVERYONE HAD FUN AND Session 2 is scheduled in soon!

Can't believe i am discovering this game now in my 30s. I had always thought dnd was a weird imaginary game and never took a look. Wish someone just sat me down and gave me a 2 minute summary (or that i had more curiousity earlier)

Dndbeyond was great help.

I spent about $350~ aud (i know, i got carried away but i am fortunate to be able to splurge on some things) on books, miniatures, battle maps and plenty of time reading the phb, dmg and mm. No regrets and was definitely risky if nobody enjoyed session 1 (i could have gotten away with just the phb and dice) but it enhanced the experience.

Just wanted to share my happiness and maybe inspire others who want to try DM'ing, give it a go with some preparation!

So I bought the Dragon’s of Stormwreck Isle starter set because I’ve been getting interested in DnD and I wanted to host it with my friends for the first time (5 including me). I’ve done a ton of prep, watched DM guides and taken notes on the story and game mechanics. I’ve never played before, and neither have 3 of the others so we’re all learning along the way and having fun. I don’t know if this is the right move, but I asked them all for a copy of their character sheet so I could help them out/keep track of what they have. The other guy though, is my issue.

He’s played DnD before and seems sort of weird about the whole thing? He won’t say anything about his character, keeps saying “You’re not ready” for his gameplay/“I’ll go easier on you since you’re new to this” and seems like he knows something I don’t. And obviously he hasn’t given me his character sheet. Everyone else has completed characters, has made art/lore for them, and we haven’t started yet because of his refusal.

Everyone else loves this guy and so do I, but he’s been really weird about DnD in particular and I’m debating if I should just not let him play. Please help.

Update: Holy moly I wasn’t expecting this much advice thanks y’all. 😭 I got another player to back me up on this and when we confronted the dude, he kinda just seemed to lose all interest in the campaign since he couldn’t use his character. Still dunno what the heck it was, the most he led on was that it was a rogue that he’s been using for a couple campaigns by now. At least everyone else is still on board with it. 😅

Also for anyone curious about the character creation, I did 1 on 1’s with each of them so we could make their characters together. This bunch is very creative and oc oriented(?), so I know they will have the most fun if their character is as close to their imagination as possible (I’m just there to do all the number stuff/tell them what’s reasonable for this low-leveled campaign).

The plan is that the first session is for introductions, small looting opportunities, and a minor fight so that they get a feel for how combat/roleplay works.

If there is any advice people want to give me for these ideas, feel free to let me know!

My DM absolutely broke me this session.

My characters (a bard) parents were killed for their musical instruments. She has mudered the killers, and is now seeking answers as to why they were killed in the first place. We had an awesome combat round where my character finally locates her mother's lyre. A voice echoed out after touching the lyre and my dm had a recording ready. I was so excited to hear the lore. As soon as I heard the voice my face and heart just fell.

It was my long distance best friend (who I NEVER get to see) playing my characters mother. I couldn't contain myself when she started saying how much my I (my character) means to her and she's sorry she didn't get to tell me more about our life story. She ended with "Never forget, we love you so so much" and I was a ball of tears and snot on the floor.

I love my DM 🥹❤️

The title explains the post, I'm genuinely curious as a budding DM on how these things can be misinterpreted. In my case I was running a game of Strahd, and a Player casted detect Good and Evil. In the rules, it basically lets you sense the presence of aberrations, celestials, elementals, the fey, fiends, or the undead within 30 feet of you, as well as where they're located.

Upon telling them they sensed something inside of a house and where, they asked whether or not they were "Good or Evil", and if so, how much. I explained it to the player, but they legit got defensive over it. Turns out they've been using it wrong for years. I can only wonder how many plots were spoiled because of that.

Anyway, what's yours? Mine is pretty tame, but I think it's the first case of many. I hope that by seeing misinterpretations I could both learn more about spells/spellcasting in general, and how to deal with these kinds of things moving forwards.

It is often said that kenkus only know words that they have heard, and are limited to those words. that of course makes for some very funny scenes where people are only using words they are basically given. However, unless you are a freshly born or transformed kenku, that frankly isn’t what it would act like.

Do you know what other species has this learned mimic vocabulary? Humans. For the vast majority of humankind, we have only known words that have been uttered in our presence. Other than written word, that’s how we learn to speak. Kenkus aren’t unique in the ability to learn new words. That’s literally every species. Their uniqueness comes specifically from their perfect mimicry.

All that to say, you aren’t having fun correctly so I have come to shame you and tell you how to have fun.

All three players have come back with just great reasons why their character actually didn’t grow up here… Not sure what I was expecting, really.

This has to be one of my biggest DND pet peeves. A characters AC is a combined total that represents many factors, not just how evasive you are.

I once had a high AC build fighter. War forged decked out in heavy armor and a tower shield, and yet any time my DM "missed" an attack, he would say that shot went wide, or I dodged out of the way. The power fantasy can come from being a walking tank who doesn't dodge attacks, but takes them head on and remains unfazed.

If your player wears armor or bears a shield, use it in the miss description.

"The bandit fires his longbow but you raise your shield and catch it in the nick of time"

"The goblin runs up and slams her scimitar into your back, it rattles up the plate and chain but doesn't break through to skin"

"You try and dodge the thrown dagger but are slightly too slow, thankfully it lodges into your leather chest piece without piercing all the way through"

Miss ≠ "Miss"

EDIT: To be clear this purely applies to descriptions. If you're trying to be time conscious simply saying the attack missed and moving on is fine. I'm talking purely about armor and shields not being accounted for in descriptions

EDIT 2: At no point in here am I advocating for every single attack/miss to be fully described in detail

So early in my campaign, my players were introduced to “Pickle Paul”, a gnome gherkin vendor who drives a cart selling pickles.

He approached them in camp one night and sold them a pickle for 1 silver piece each. They each bought one and upon eating it, realised that the pickle gave them the benefit of a long rest.

For months they’ve been saying “man, I wish I had a pickle” whenever they needed a good heal and well, tonight it happened!

Sitting around the fire, they heard the theme tune of their favourite pickle salesman. He told them he had 100 pickles on his cart but this time they were 5 gold each. They negotiated him down to 350 gold for ALL of his pickles and split them up, 20 pickles each.

One of my players immediately ate one, just to discover that it is not magical in any way. They’d spent 350gp on 100 bog standard pickles.

DM’s: get them hooked on the good stuff, then over charge them further down the line haha.

I run one shots within a community where people sign up to play 5.5 mostly. Very often the 5 players are strangers. Every now and then they know each other from having played together before or people bring their friends.

I have a very dark sense of humor. I showed a friend a shirt I wanted to wear to my next table. The shirt says "Dungeon Mommy. Roll for Mercy". Her reaction was that it was a very tasteless shirt.

For context I'm a 5'2 cisgender, very femme presenting woman. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it but now I'm second guessing myself.

ETA: I've laughed like a maniac with all the comments. Thanks so so so so much. I will 100% save it for one of my regular tables and not any randos.

Also, no minors whatsoever are part of my tables and we play at bars. So no chance of kiddos being around.

Loved the person that got a "Tear of my players" mug, not my type of thing but similar humor too in the sense that it can go either way.

I spent all week 3d printing scenery and monsters for an upcoming dungeon, then hand painting/airbrushing them. I had a grand reveal all planned. I had the dungeon hidden under a cloth ready for its grand reveal.

Then one guy tried convincing the party that they shouldn't go in, that they needed to go off and do this side garbage first.

I literally stopped the game and just flat out said "guys, I have NOTHING else planned here. I've spent all week on building this, prepping this and getting ready and if you go and wander off to do this side stuff we will have to end it here, because I'm not ready, and frankly I'm a little annoyed. Can we please just do the dungeon as planned?"

Thankfully they got the very unsubtle hint. You ever just flat out make the party do what you had planned rather than wander off?

This happened in the first 10 minutes of my first time DMing—ever. One of the players declared he was grappling a barmaid, and it was clear from his tone what kind of scene he was trying to create.

In the moment, I shrugged it off as stupid and immature. I had the barmaid smash a jug of beer over his head, knocking him prone so she could escape. We moved on. But after the session, I couldn’t shake the feeling of discomfort. And I’m a guy—I could only imagine how the women at the table felt.

I messaged the player afterward, telling him never to try anything like that again in my games. He brushed it off as a joke but said he wouldn’t do it again. I thought that was the end of it. It wasn’t.

The next session, I noticed the women barely looked at him. Their responses to him—both in and out of character—were cold and distant. The group quietly fell apart after session two.

That was 10 years ago. Looking back, I realize I could have handled it better. I could have said, No, you don’t. I could have had his character arrested. I could have made it clear that this wasn’t acceptable at my table. But more than anything, I should have had a Session 0—a conversation before the game even started where I laid out that this kind of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated.

So whether you’re a DM or a player, especially a new one: Have a Session 0. Set boundaries with eachother. Make it clear what’s off-limits and what is not. You never know when one bad moment might poison the whole experience for your players.

I've been running a 5.5e campaign, we're currently level 17 and everything's been going fine until recently. One of my players is a rogue bard multiclass and I let him switch from a valor bard to a sword bard. The problem is that it is impossible to challenge him and I'm fearing he's starting to become too powerful compaeed to the other players.

He has the defensive duelist feat and so combined with Defensive Duelist he is able to attack and use sword bard's defensive flourish, parry as a reaction and get an average of 29AC per round, and due to 5.5 letting bards exchange spell slots for bardic dice he can consitently do this every round. This combined with the fact that he's a rogue with the evasion property means that simply throwing dex saves at him isn't really a solution and he's now stupidly tanky.

I'm not sure what to do, I've considered talking to him about swapping out Defensive Duelist for another one but I'm not sure if this is the right approach.

Edit: Thanks for the advice everyone, I've realised that this isn't really an issue at all and I've been massively overthinking it.

Ray of Frost. You can make ice cream. You hear me? You can make ice cream using only the Player's Handbook. There's a coldmonger on the street corner with a jar of milk, a jar of honey, and some sliced fruits. He puts them into a copper bowl and casts a spell that covers the bowl with frost. He pulls out a spoon and mixes and scrapes at it for a minute. Then he hands you an ice cream cone. Why isn't this a bigger deal? Why haven't I seen anyone use this in their campaign?

My players were insisting that an empty room had something else in it. With a high perception check (18), I informed them that the room was indeed empty.

They didn't buy it, so another player insisted on perceiving as well and rolled a critical success.

I described what they saw: "Your body slowly becomes rigid as your muscles freeze into place. You realize you cannot move. The world around you collapses and shifts down around your feet, flattening. You can see forever, to the edge of the world. You see 4 gargantuan humanoids, looking down on you in a circle around you.

One of them speaks. It says, 'I got a natural 20. What do I see?' Suddenly the world around snaps back around you. You try to remember what you saw, but the memories fade immediately."

I recently convinced my family to play DnD with me. I played as a kid in the 80s, but never was DM. I remember the games going quickly over a 30 minute school lunch.

I bought the Mines of Phandelver starter kit and the 5.5 DM guide and 5.5 Players Handbook. When I asked if the family wanted to play my son really wanted to start right away. I had already skimmed the scenerio and agreed. (For background I have 5 kids, 12, 14, 16, 19, and 21. The two oldest aren't around enough to play, but my wife joined us. Also, my son (14) has ADHD).

I remember character creation was one of the fun parts so we started there. Instead of minutes to select a race and roll the stats it took hours to make the characters. It was a debacle. The next session we started the campaign and I wasn't prepared for all of the off-script actions and had to search for how to handle each one. Also, everyone was new to tabletop roll play and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to fight, cast spells, heal, etc. All we ended up accomplishing was joining the caravan and fighting the first set of goblins. After that I spent days prepping for the next session; planning the events, making maps and figurines, reading the books and tabbing them for reference. I was ready! We played and everyone enjoyed it, but it was still slow.

Now no one is really interested in playing, and even if I get them to play and it goes well I don't think they will really engage and enjoy it. I think the kids are used to constant action like Fortnight or having immersion provided like in Minecraft. The whole RPG thing is too slow and abstract. I still want to play and I am looking for any advice or support. Is there a way to speed-play to help hold their attention better? Is there a way to play with just my son who is still kind of interested? Thanks.

Hey all, I'm the DM for my group and I've been working on creating a secret language for my players to decode. In-game it's a dead language that has been banned by the immortal king, so reviving the language will prove to be extra difficult but satisfying for the players. The message also reveals some high-stakes effects of magical items already introduced. Would love some feedback if anyone gets the chance. I'm curious if anyone is able to crack it.

FYI my party has already received a number of clues to aid in the translation, I'm mostly curious if those who have a hobby of deciphering codes can crack it.

Bonus points if you're able to identify the novel my campaign is based off of.

I have the following scenario play out repeatedly almost every session with player B and I don’t really know what to do to get her to stop.

Player A: I’d like to try …..

DM: Roll a (insert relevant skill) check.

Player A: I got a 5

DM: “You don’t see anything/you try to unlock the door but it proves too challenging for you/etc”

Player B who wasn’t asked to roll and didn’t say they were doing anything: “I got a 19”.

Player B does this almost every time I ask any other player to roll a skill check.

Without being asked to roll a skill check and without saying or describing what her character is doing she will roll a d20 and tell me how well she rolled.

A lot of times it’s fine but there are some situations where it’s just not feasible to have another player roll after the first player fails.

Is this something that I need to address? If so, how?