#adventures in DMing

[unidentifiedspoon]

bumper sticker that says HONK IF YOU LOVE OVERCOMPLICATED AND EXPOSITION-HEAVY FEYWILD ONESHOT ANTHOLOGIES

[norbezjones]

Dreamation 2025: Day 4 (Sunday, 2/23/25)

(I meant to post this sooner but didn't oops! Here it is now!)

So this weekend, I'm at a local TTRPG convention called Dreamation. I'm attending and running some games. I figured I'd make some blog posts about my experience, day by day! This is for Day 4, Sunday, the last day. I'm writing these with Ellipsus btw!

After getting plenty of sleep, I prepared to run another game of i'm sorry did you say street magic! This game also had 9 people in it, and it was interesting to see the similarities and differences from yesterday's game. Both had cities whose neighborhoods moved & shifted. But this was a sci-fi ship-planet-thing full of robots who went about their programmed duties, unable to see the humans who had awoken from cryosleep.

I did make a few tweaks compared to the day before—mainly, I asked players to focus on making neighborhoods & landmarks primarily during the first round, and to make residents during the second round. This resulted in only two residents being created in the end, and there were much more neighborhoods & landmarks. Definitely something I want to think on as I run this game more.

Here's what the city looked like before the final round:

In the final round, the player decided that the city-changing event was that the ship reached its final destination. That was something I never would have thought of—that's why I like this game so much. People's creativity really blooms here, and together, they make something they couldn't hav made alone.

I was supposed to have a Pathfinder game after this, in the afternoon. I've never played Pathfinder before. Unfortunately, not enough people showed up to play, so I suppose my first Pathfinder experience will have to wait. They did give me a voucher for a online game store as an apology, so that was nice at least.

And that was basically my time at Dreamation! Kind of anticlimatic ending, but hey, the rest of the weekend was great, so that makes up for it. I had a great time, and I definitely want to come back next year! Maybe I'll run some more games, too!

Thanks for reading my blogs about this experience!

[margh0sts]

[six-improbable-things]

Map WIP - Feywild Manor - Ground Floor

This is a (very) early WIP of a map for the manor in the oneshot I'm running for my sister and a few friends. It's very loosely based on this one by Forgotten Adventures. This is only the ground floor, but there is also going to be a 2nd floor, plus the Goose Roost on top and the Vault of [redacted] somewhere underneath. Plus I'm going to need an exterior/manor grounds view for the party's initial approach. ("Let's do a heist!" she said. "Surely this won't take 5 million years to prep for," she said.) Fun Fact: These screenshots were taken 2 hours apart, and at least 1.5 hours of that time was spent on just getting the fucking flooring to line up properly. The ballroom floor alone took me over an hour for sure. (And you can't even see the tiny details.)

[madiroller]

The best part of being a DM and an artist is you get to design all the NPCs that satisfies that OC itch. Plus you get to practice different face and body shapes

[a-corvid-waltz]

sometimes you’re a normal dm with a homebrew campaign and sometimes you’re making constellations that literally have nothing to do with the plot or the story other than it’s just fun

[flamingspud]

I both love and hate naming dnd characters on the spot because that’s how I end up with characters named:

Thalia (leader of Lethalia)

Digsby Flowergrout

Bustin Jieber

Mawn Shendez

Albatross

etc.

[harldelotl]

Had my first DM session and it went pretty well! Currently ended in a cliffhanger of Seam and Gwen hearing some screams and running from the alley way!

Note, none of the characters have officially met except Gwen and Seam. Luna (the Bard) is sort still running her little market stand).

There was a whole side story of Brad the Doorknob Guy, but I think I’ll talk about that a later date!

[wishingtoflylikeabirdinthesky]

Allow me to tell you the tale of my first time Dming.

I was in grade 10, and my drama teacher had wanted us to trying ttrpgs since he grew up with them. I was one of 3 people who had ever played DND before (one session at a friend's house), so I volunteered to DM.

I spun up characters and a lovely campaign where my characters would sneek up a mountain to fight a dragon.

I thought I planned plenty, since the session was only 5hrs.

But oh dear readers how wrong I was.

The first problem came at a crossroads. I had planned it so that down on path was one encounter and down the other was a different encounter, thinking the party would choose one.

Oh no. The party of 4 split and two members took each path.

So I frantically made a map out of detritus from our snacking and ran both encounters.

My dragon born scared off the attackers on his path, leaving half the party with a lovely walk in the woods and the others one hp from death.

The reunited eventually,.but that causes another problem. I'd run out of things for them to do and theyd passed the door to the dragons cave

In a moment of sheer desperation, I jumped from my seat and ran to where we kept the DND rule book, which our teacher brought in to show us

(all of this took place on a Saturday at the school)

I flipped to the monsters section and began to improvise the remaining *2 hours* of the campaign

It worked, but I swore off Dming till I had played more then 1 sessions

[goopgooping]

DMing is a ton of fun, and one of my favorite activities, but GOD is it mentally straining sometimes. I have sessions that everyone enjoys where no matter what I’m going to see the flaws in and berate myself over. feels bad

[arothin]

I need to start posting about my adventures as a pathfinder DM because I need more people to revel with me in how much fear I instill in both players and characters for what I have in store for them.

[greyfate]

When the Players Guess who the secret villain is but don't have the proof to oust them from the royal court.

[six-improbable-things]

[Izzy don't read this.] I'm still SO obsessed with my favorite stupid NPC concept I've ever made. She's based on this post, and she's a tiny Leonino (Kobold Press's version of a winged cat, similar to a Tressym) who is absolutely convinced that she's a sphinx.

When the party meets her, she's going to be sitting on a table with 5 healing potions in front of her, one for each member of the party. She's going to ask them extremely stupid/silly riddles, and for every one they get wrong, she's going to knock a healing potion off of the table, smashing it.

She's probably the silliest, stupidest, most brilliant NPC I've ever come up with, and I love her SO much.

This oneshot is 90% incredibly silly/stupid encounters though, and I'm very much here for it. I'm gonna use a modified version of the goblin door trap, and a sleepy, sneezy dandylion is going to make an appearance... It's going to be very fun. (I hope, anyways. This is my sister's first time playing dnd.)

[useless-prophet]

[finefiddleheaded]

When you have a dramatic player killing moment and one of your players points out that backstabbing wizard only has one attack per turn... and the pc she's trying to kill has a periapt of wound closure.

Like a Looney Tunes skit, the pc is now stabilizing every round, because the wizard can only ever slash 2/3 death saves necessary to actually kill her.