#we use roll20 so all the campaigns have names

[thequeenofmyownscreen]

Yesterday night was our last session of my first D&D campaign ever

Last night we drank merrily, saying goodbye (for now) to the 4 adventurers in my first D&D campaign ever, for which I was the DM (1st time ever also). I feel very happy and a little sad also, so I thought I could write it all up here - mostly for me, and for you reading if that interests you.

It was more of a Wrap-up session, we didn't play per se, but I wanted to recap the last scenes, and give the floor to my players to ask some questions and discuss what we've been doing. It was a good idea, I think, it went great, we had time to reminisce and remember the beginnings, the roads not taken and the what-ifs, the monsters and the battles they were traumatized by, and what their characters would do now.

Flashbacks and sneak peeks and more thoughts under the cut

When I started to watch Critical Role, I had no idea what D&D was. All I heard were mentions of it in media (tv shows, mostly). It intrigued me more and more, and I started to look at the rules, and the books published, etc. And then one day on an impulse, I bought the Starter Set : Lost Mine of Phandelver, and sent a message to my sister and some friends, asking if they were interested to see what it was about with me.

In April 2021, with my sister and 3 friends, 4 players in total, we created their characters, and we started truly playing in May 2021. At first, we played only once a month, in person, because Roll20 is awesome for battles but not much for anything else (personal opinion). Plus we were going out again after the pandemic, it felt nice. Then in June 2022, one of my friends and players decided to leave, and we recruited another friend at the same time, so I still had 4 players to manage through and through. They were all pretty much novices like me (only 1 had played before), and so we all learned together during the years. In multiple ways ! small but important things like : who's taking care of the scheduling, who's time is it to host and what food & drink will we bring, who has many dice and can lend them, how can we figure the characters without buying expensive minis (we ended up using fèves, which is a very French thing I will explain now : at the beginning of the year, you gather your friends or colleagues or family or whatever to eat the galette des rois, literally cake of the kings, and whether you make it or bought it, there is always inside 1 very small porcelain figurine, and the person finding it gets to be King/Queen for the day. Yeah it's the same country who decapitated the last king, don't ask. Anyway sometimes people collect the small porcelain figurines, and then their grandchildren sell the collection, and we ended up with a lot for practically nothing.).

In late 2022 and throughout 2023, we decided to try and play more, and managed - with a few exceptions - to play twice a month, which we found was a good rhythm : for me, to not have too much prep work, and for my players, to not forget everything that happened last time. In the meantime, another friend of mine with whom I am having lunch at work with very regularly, got used to hear me talking about "the shit my players did last night" and was very interested in following this as a story ; she asked questions, and gave me a space to think, and even ended giving advice and suggestions ! I'm naming her my unofficial co-DM now. It was nice to have someone know all the twists and the structure of the story, and to exchange ideas and jokes.

One thing I was very happy to do, and was very happy when my players talked about it saying I did a good job : PROPS ! The adventure as written has a few examples of message of hiring mercenaries, strange letters sent by a mysterious figure, etc etc. For one, I took time to write in ink (in my teenage years I was obsessed by calligraphy and I still have a quill), and for another I passed the paper in coffee and tea and then dried it to give it an ancient look. Props like this costs nothing but it's awesome.

During 2022 and 2023, 2 of my players had moved far away, but we managed to set up remote video calls for them, while us 3 others gathered 'round the table, and we even had an elaborate if precarious system to film the map during battles (pictured down). And yes for the final dungeon, I printed the map in extra-large, and ended using the wall to show the progress in exploring !

I won't recap all of the story, it doesn't matter in the end, everyone who's ever played knows that you can do an adventure 30 times and it will end up in 30 different stories. What's interesting was that the Lost Mine of Phandelver is described as "a perfect campaign to start playing" : that I agree with ; but that doesn't mean it does not need work. Thankfully the Internet is awesome, and since it's the most played adventure of 5E, a LOT of people have advices, do nots and dos, stories of their own campaigns, useful links and tools, etc. 1st lesson : if it exists already, use that shit. Use it like the world is ending tomorrow. At the start, I was doing this on my own volition, and prepping way too much, while being scared to change things. Then I was inspired reading reddits posts (yes, it happens), and seeing videos, and I started adding more details of my own - or stuff I borrowed from others Internet strangers. The paradox was that I was getting more comfortable while prepping less, because... I got the hang of it, I think it's what happened !

I still have some frustrations, some I shared last night with my players : easier-than-expected batles for my players (the 1st was a conscious act of mercy, and the battle ended way too quickly of course ; the 2nd was I forgot an important detail of the villain's weapon and could not use it, but in the end she had other stuff and the battle was still epic). 2nd lesson : listen to Matt Mercer when he says that as a DM, you really want to use the nuclear option in your opponent’s arsenal on the opening round. If you don't, you will have regrets. My other big frustration is about the player that decided to leave ; we just didn't understand the game on the same-level, but it makes me a little sad that she left before it could click for her, and we could truly talk about it. Especially since last night, I was overjoyed listening to my players talk each about their "epiphany" of how the game works, and how they got comfortable after feeling this truth, and seeing how "you don't win at D&D, the fun is everything else", and I was like yesssssss YOU you get it. 3d lesson : communication ! (it feels like there's still room for improvement, but we have a nice flow going).

All and all, it was an amazing experience, 10/10, will do it again ; and we will ! we agreed we will come back years from now to Faerûn ! and I'll be back as a DM ! and we'll do another written campaign continuing from level 5 (I know there's written options out there). In the meantime though, my sister is leaving our group just for this year, but we're going to keep playing at 4. And this time, I'll be a player !! One of my former players, the amazing @greetingsprogramms will be our DM : she already did 2 one-shots throughout the 2 years, and she did a fantastic job. We're going where a lot of fantasy people have not gone before : spaaaaaaace !

[demonac]

Hey, so there's some crap going on about D&D and the OGL scandal.

If you have not been following along, the OGL (Open Gaming License) is a legal thing where, about 20 years ago, WotC (the company who owns Dungeons and Dragons, now a subsidiary of Hasbro) promised that anyone could use a bunch of their content (spells, classes, etc), by adhering to some pretty basic, loose terms, and nobody would come after you for calling that content "D&D" whatever [gross oversimplification].

Well now, Hasbro/WotC feels D&D is "undermonetized" (according to their CEO who doesn't know or care about RPGs, and their head of digital, who IS a gamer, but doesn't play TTRPGs and wants to make D&D more like the various video games he's worked on), SO they are trying to "de-authorize" the old OGL and replace it with a new one that takes away all the security 3rd party creators thought they had, and gives WotC powers to cancel content... mostly so they can kill off other virtual tabletops (like Fantasy Grounds, roll20, etc) and charge big monthly fees/microtransactions for their new admittedly cool-looking service.

Anyhow, a lot of people argue that even the old (non-trash) OGL wasn't really necessary for 99% of creators between Free-Use and the fact that you can't copyright game rules, and even with their army of lawyers, they might not win court cases trying to go after content created before the new evil license goes live, but with big corporations and algorithmic enforcement, I don't trust that being right is a good enough defense (and you'd be a FOOL to trust them when they promise "we won't go after X and Y" after they tried to pull this crap in the first place).

Will this affect TDDC? Probably not - in fact, I never claimed to be using the OGL for any of my stuff, even if its existence was a comforting indication of what USED to be WotC's philosophy. But since I happen to be starting a whole new series right at this moment, this is the time to strip out mentions of WotC's copyrighted names, just in case. I was actually already leaning that direction for Warforged (calling them Mechs/Mechanicals) and Dragonborn (Drakks), but I'm going to go a step further, and get strict about not using those terms, nor the name "Dungeons and Dragons/D&D". So when I use the initials TDDC going forward, I'm referring to "Tales From Demonac's Deathfin Campaign". But the official title in the videos (and when I say those dreaded words: "Next Time") it's going to be Tales From My RPG Campaign". Hopefully the change won't be too annoying, trust me, it bothers me much more to stop saying Kua-Toa/KTs (too similar to Kuo-Toa, which IS one of the "product identity" terms they have identified and guard jealously). It's easy to refer to them as Deluvians and Illud most of the time, though I'm still waffling on what term (if any, but there sure OUGHT to be one) to use for their shared heritage. I'd go Children of Baal, but that makes the Sons of Baal monitors really sound like dumbasses...

Anyway, that's the update; I'm still working on the first episode of SoS (and despite my "tight 15 minute" guideline, it's probably going to be closer to 20min); I hope to get some little music reveal videos for the PCs in collaboration with my music person, Cool Boy Shane, so stay tuned for those.

If you're one of my Patrons, though, I posted the cold open - the first few seconds of Sea of Secrets, to grab viewers' attention, so you can check it out here. It will answer ZERO of your questions: https://www.patreon.com/posts/77653972

[nicsnort]

The Storm Chasers

(Art by Daf Campos on ArtStation)

Years ago, I had this commissioned towards the end of my D&D group's 3-year-long campaign. It was my first real D&D campaign that I joined randomly after being invited by another player a couple of months after the game started. The game itself was online over Discord voice chat and Roll20. The player who invited me eventually had to drop a month or so later for personal reasons, but the four players who remained and the DM became good friends. We are still playing today with me running an even longer 3+-year campaign.

There were struggles during the game with railroading and encounter balance issues, but I mostly look back fondly on those times. I had a lot of fun, and there were some pretty awesome moments - we killed two gods and screwed over a couple of others (it was an epic level campaign). I was reminiscing the other day with my group and thought I'd share this art with everyone. Maybe I'll write up a few stories from the game sometime. I still have my character's journal...

Below is the individual character art and a bit about each character.

Name: Kael Modan Race: High Elf Age: 78 Class: Divination Wizard 23/Knowledge Cleric 1

Background: Kael Modan was born on the Lunafray Isles, the isolated and hidden home of the Elves. While his father was a famous bard, Kael was more intellectual in his approach to magic and gained the sole apprenticeship under the acclaimed archwizard Egon. One day, while working on an ancient magical cube, Egon vanished. Being the only one capable of rescuing his master (in his eyes), Kael set off, leaving the comfort of the Isles for the first time in his life.

Despite being raised to accept the superiority of elves, Kael eventually began traveling with some short-lived races and found himself enjoying their company even as they were wrapped up in a conspiracy of god versus god that might lead to the end of the world. Over time, Kael let down his walls and fell in love with the bombastic warrior Wylla. Once their journey was complete, he founded the world's first magical college outside of the Lunafray Isles to train the next generation of wizards to stop the gods if they ever tried to end the world again. As the only wizard with the Wish spell, he will be the most powerful wizard across the planes until his eventual death.

(This one is mine!) Name: Wylla Darkhorn Race: Levistus Tiefling Age: 26 Class: Champion Fighter 14/Swashbuckler Rogue 10

Background: Wylla Darkhorn was born as the noble tiefling Levisatra Tardelt of the Cablan Empire. As the eldest daughter of a wizarding noble family, she was expected to become an accomplished wizard. Unfortunately, she did not have a single mote of magic about her. So, her parents found another use for her - joining the Cablan Army as a show of their continued dedication to the Empire. As a soldier, Wylla rooted out traitors and those trying to spread dissent among the people, thinking she was a hero...before she realized that she was wrong and that the Empire were evil oppressors. Faking her death, she fled north and eventually found a group of adventurers going on a grand adventure.

That adventure was far greater than anything Wylla could have imagined. Each of her new friends had strong magical powers but Wylla remained mundane - though perhaps her strength without magic showed her the most powerful of them all. Her dedication and willingness to give her life for the sake of others drew the attention of Liana, the goddess of death, who chose Wylla as her champion. Wylla eventually fell in love with Kael, and when their adventure ended, she began a school of warriors specialized in working with magic users to fight against extraplanar threats.

Name: Fitzgerald VonNix Race: Half high-elf Age: 24 Class: Hexblade Warlock 21/Homebrew Fighter 3

Background: Fitz was found abandoned in the woods by his adopted fathers. He was raised as the son of the noble VonNix line of the Northern Kingdom, who had no natural son of his own, and as the unofficial son of his father's knight and lover, Jarrow. One night, Fitz heard a commotion from his father's room to find his father dead. He picked up the bloodied axe by his side and felt an immediate connection with it as it promised him power - but for the guards rushing in, it framed him as the murderer.

On the run, Fitz fled south and joined up with a few people for safety. Though safe was the last thing these people were as he and his new companions were immediately wrapped up in a plot of an ancient evil god. During the course of his adventures, Fitz fell in love with the sweet cleric Kaleigh. Eventually, they learned that his mother was a Valkyrie, and he had a brother from that same mother - General Jarvis Terringbelly, presumed heir to King Alduin. Yet, when his adventure ended, Fitz did not feel the call of greatness in politics or nobility; instead, he opened a tavern...and woebetide any adventures who try to strong-arm him into a discount or get into a fight.

Name: Kaleigh O'Dwyer Race: Human Age: 25 Class: Tempest Cleric 24

Background: Kaleigh was born on a humble island midway between the Southern continent with the Cablan Empire and the Free Lands. She had a normal childhood living in a small fishing village on the island. Then, one day, everything changed when the Empire attacked. Her mother ran with her to the temple of Pavia, the goddess of the Sun and Life, which sat on a smaller island off the coast of theirs. There was only room on the small boat for the children forcing the parents to stay behind and be captured while the children escaped to safety - the Cabalans turned back by Pavia's holy power.

Kaleigh stayed in the temple for years, learning and growing under the priest's tutelage. Then, one day, she felt it was time to leave, see the world, and spread Pavia's message. She joined a group of adventurers guided by Pavia's light and was embroiled in the end of an ancient divine scandal that was leading to the end of the world. During the course of her travels, she continued to grow in her faith, eventually becoming the chosen champion and first saint of Pavia. When the adventure ended, she retired with her love, Fitz, but is always on call if her goddess needs her again.

[lunarbard]

It may just be the online communities I end up following, but I see a lot of complaints around modern D&D about XP and a favoritism for milestones / "level advancement without XP" (which, in fairness, is somewhat fostered by the adventures built around 5e).

The secret to XP in modern D&D is that, by the book ("XP for combat, and maybe quests") it sucks. But, done right, it's fantastic, because it's some perfect little positive reinforcement for your players.

Assign XP rewards to the actions you want to encourage in your game.

I ran a short-lived (for other reasons) sandbox campaign last year where I told the players up front that I would reward XP for recovering treasure, completing contracts/quests, and slaying named foes (we were in Roll20, so I could display the names of such foes for the players to see).

For a group that had spent three years just diving into whatever looked like a combat without a second thought, they became significantly more cautious & calculated on where, when, & why they fought. When they'd find a tough named foe, they'd buy every advantage they could before engaging them, excited for the mass of XP they would earn. The main problem was I forgot to assign XP to heroic actions (like saving innocent people), so it turned to a far more mercenary/cut throat game than I had originally hoped.

I fixed that in my Toldren campaign by rewarding XP for:

helping/rescuing people

significant exploits (mainly completing objectives, regardless of which side of the screen they came from)

making it through an encounter regardless of method. Talking your way out of a dangerous encounter earns XP, as does using a monster's weakness to escape (such as abusing a giant worm's fear of sound to drive it away from eating them).

The party still chooses to fight some foes- such as hunting down a couple of werecorvids who had been skirmishing with them over several days - but they give proper consideration to their approach & purpose. Then when the party saves people, or talks a potential enemy into allying with them, they get a mechanical treat to match the diegetic reward they've earned themselves.

That all said, XP can have its issues, particularly as how it scales in 5th edition. I love XP as a tool, but it would be a far more useful tool in my campaign if it was linear and predictable - say 100 x current level XP to level up - I could pretty easily eyeball how much XP certain actions should resolve. But since XP is built around CR, the math's been (theoretically) done on the backend. The obfuscation works well to hide the proportional XP stagnation in Tier 2, but it makes it difficult to employ XP in better ways. I've just taken the XP difference between levels & recorded 1/10th and 1/100th in my notebook to determine XP rewards, but ideally that wouldn't be necessary.

[meltykarasu]

Failures In Worldbuilding

Rather than my usual post I’d like to celebrate a little; I run a little tabletop group online and we recently completed our third campaign with myself as DM/GM — this one taking place in the Star Wars universe and acting as a strange mix of The Mandalorian-inspired bounty hunting coupled with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead-ing through the background of the Star Wars films (a device I liberally cribbed from the very funny Tag and Bink comics they did in the early-to-mid-2000’s). We grappled with friends and foes and the esoteric systems of West End Games’s d6 system and the honestly janky Roll20 sheet I had to edit myself after a style update busted the fanmade one we were using.

Starting in a couple weeks, we’re going to be playing Dungeons & Dragons again in a setting I’ve been building for some time. I’m not going to discuss it a ton because, well, some of my players do follow this blog, and I’d rather not tip my hand before the first session. I’d rather talk about my earlier settings right now. 

The second campaign I did was a contemporary setting inspired heavily by Sailor Moon and Persona 4 and etc, etc. Admittedly, I think that Dungeons and Dragons was a poor choice for this and if I had to do it again I would find something more rules-lite, like FATE Accelerated. I think that the plot setup, however, made me really flex my muscles in world and especially character building, because the PCs were stuck in the same town for the entire thing and ran into the same characters repeatedly, including one of my favorite villains: a talking skeleton named Commandant Bones, who once introduced himself by declaring, “Prepare for trouble! And make it single! Because it’s just me.”

I think that my first campaign, though, is what I want to talk about, because a lot of my ambitions for it and the failures to meet them are part of what led me back to D&D after spending fourteen or so months immersed in Star Wars. (The other part, by the way, was Berserk, The Witcher, and D&D: Honor Among Thieves getting me back into fantasy as a genre.)

Long story short, I had neat worldbuilding ideas going into the first campaign and I want to talk about how a couple of them failed to manifest properly. None of these are going into my new setting as a result of the differing focus/foundational worldbuilding, so if you ARE one of my players, feel free to read this through.

Idea One: Couriers

Do you know what Death Stranding and Fallout: New Vegas have in common? No, it’s not the inexplicable celebrity cameos, although we can all love Matthew Perry saying “What in the goddamn?” No, it’s couriers. In both you play as couriers thrust into something greater after a delivery gone wrong, which is an idea I really liked as a plot setup. 

So I had this idea that the couriers were the adventurers of the setting, and that the players were couriers, and there were these isolated settlements they were meant to travel to, but I think that I jumped the gun too soon on giving the players a vehicle. They never really got to experience trekking through the wilds of the very imaginatively named Home Continent (I also have an issue with naming things, but we don’t need to get into that right now.)

I also never gave them the option to have another courier job beyond the initial plot one. I think this would have allowed them to grow a cash base and run a business (very Acquisitions Incorporated, whose book does have rules on business forming that I would use if I were to run this style of game). I think it would have been better for that. Players like having ownership over A Thing they they get to fill out and make stronger.

Third, and maybe most importantly, they never encountered another courier. I think that this, too, would have helped make this job feel more important. During this latest Star Wars campaign, I had them run into other bounty hunters — big names like Boba Fett and Bossk, along with original small names like Wolfram Aphra and Molly Ringworld. They had professional, preexisting notions and relationships with these characters, which makes the profession feel alive — important if you want to convey that this is an important job that more than just your PCs do.

Idea Two: Barter

I also had the idea that things were primarily barter-based: you did not get paid in coins, but in things: items or favors. This immediately fell out of the worldbuilding a couple sessions in when I realized that I had not told the players and the wizard attempted to pay for an inn room with gold pieces. Yikes! 

Basically: reinforce these fundamental ideas if they do not mesh with what is established in materials like rulebooks, etc. This should be a bullet point on your lore doc or something you state in session zero.

Idea Three: The Silos

I’m going to admit that I’ve never seen the show, but I read the premise of Turn A Gundam and knew I wanted it to be part of this campaign: the idea that fantastical advanced technology had been buried, and the world turned ever on until someone discovered it and caused an arms race of unearthing progressively more destructive technology. 

I just don’t think I communicated this enough! I had all these grand story ideas but I think that they weren’t well-exposited or depicted. We didn’t even go to an excavation site! How foolish of me!

Going Forward

James Cameron and Stan Winston, on the DVD commentary for Aliens, discussed how everything that they’d done for that film had, in effect, become R&D for The Abyss and Terminator 2 — everything you do is research and development for your next project. I think that this is an important mentality to have in the creation of art. 

After I had what I perceived as a failure of a campaign, where it felt like maybe a third of my ideas for the setting and plot went anywhere, I sat down and I experimented. I set an entire campaign in and around a single town. I think this worked well because there were locations there that kept getting revisited — the school, the local shrine, the main characters’ houses, their usual haunts. They formed a more effective bond with the setting and NPCs because they couldn’t gallivant around the world on an airship. 

On the opposite end, I let my players roam relatively free in our Star Wars campaign. They had open choices on where to take the story, what they wanted to do each week (generally from a short list of adventures). Revisiting the bar after a hard job or dropping by the Merchant after a firefight to restock or taking the ship in for repairs and upgrades meant more when it was a choice the players made.

I still had things go wrong (which, hopefully, my players did not notice too much) but I think that my skills are much more sharpened for another crack at this. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

[randoimago]

You're a Dungeon Master right? Can you tell us about your D&D games?

Sure!! I'll probably put it under the Read More thing just because I'll probably get pretty lengthy with it!

My first ever campaign I DMed was for a group that I played my first ever D&D game with but the DM's we had ended up being complete assholes (we tried a few different and they were all bad) so I decided I would DM instead because finding someone to be the DM is difficult >.<

I called that game Tales of Mythia. Basically the plot is that there's a lake called Mythia that is able to grant a single wish. The players all have their own reasons for using that wish and decided it'd be easier to team up to find the lake. The thing is, the lake changes locations constantly. But when the players found the Lake, a person that betrayed them in the past had used the Lake's powers for something.

That campaign ended before it could be finished due to some player conflicts.

(the other games I mention are down below)

I tried to do a new campaign with the same setting as the original one but different antagonists and such that ended up becoming like a Zombie Apocalypse type thing but that ended because of player conflicts / scheduling issues.

The third game I did was called Against the Current (was with a new group of players minus one from the old group and a good friend of one of my friends) which was supposed to go one direction of sailing between islands and finding out what was going on with something called a Hell Gate (which I took inspo from Oblivion with it). Instead the players decided to completely go against that and go to the mainland to find one of the player's family (which is fair, but I had planned that to happen much later). So the most powerful magical school ended up being taken over by demons and devils, allowing them to have a Deck of Many Things that the school held.

I ended up having to call it quits on that game because I was getting so burnt out with having to rewrite my whole ass story >.<

The current game is set using the Taldorei campaign guide (not Taldorei Reborn as the game started before the book came out). Which the whole thing was doing a Red Herring of the players thinking that Vecna is going to be brought back from the dead. But the true bad guy, which was just met, is a Dragon from the plane of Pandemonium that wants to just turn the Material Plane into complete madness. I called it Remnants of Calamity.

The current game has been on hiatus for a while for mine and another player's mental health. We're both ready to get back to it, but waiting on some scheduling stuff to be solidified before we do.

I have some other stuff that I'm working on and I've done several oneshots as well (I've run just the Death House portion of Curse of Strahd several times, kind of want to just run that module but it's very unforgiving and I don't like killing player characters)

[sreegs]

I’ve been GMing Cyberpunk games for about 4 years now with a regular group of people with others cycling in and out. My first campaign took 3 years to complete (lol) with about 50 sessions at about 3 hours each, though there were a number of side quests I made up along the way. That started off as a Cyberpunk 2020 + Homebrew rules, but 2/3rd of the way through we switched over to RED and converted everything since it was much faster session play.

That campaign was a slog, but it was a lot of fun. It started out very local (PCs were a group of friends in Northside who foiled a robbery on their favorite hangout) and blew up into an adventure that crossed state lines into Nevada, and eventually ended up in orbit with a climactic battle against the big baddie. It was worth it for the experience of just completing a grand campaign from start to finish. I started out with lots and lots of prep and by the end, I got my system down.

Though I short-circuited the plot a bit to save on time, I ended up being able to tell the full arc. It was a satisfyingly cyberpunk story: shadowy org of rich people using drugs to disperse nanites into people to control their behavior. This, of course, was unraveled bit by bit by the players. Started with “hey what’s this weird new street drug” and ended up in space. Bog standard, right?

Anyhow, I’m excited about my new campaign. Start from scratch, Cyberpunk RED, year 2045. We’re only two sessions in, but I’m trying something very different. I found that what I enjoyed most about Cyberpunk was the character arcs, rather than some big plot. This campaign is very different. I have no grand story to tell. Instead, it takes place almost entirely within a high-rise, all-in-one megabuilding in Night City. A place called “The Sydney” that promises to cater to your every need without having step out of the building. Apartments, retail, restaurants, etc. All under one very, very tall roof. Like V’s apartment in the Cyberpunk 2077 game.

Of course, the promise of luxury living in a cyberpunk dystopia is never going to be fulfilled. The building is a microcosm for the city at large: class divide amongst the lower and upper floors. Gangs fighting for turf from one floor to the other. Schemers and schemes abound.

I’m a heavy map maker. I think I really enjoy mapping more than anything, because I often find myself unable to start writing a story until I see the space in which it takes place. So what’s great about such a large recurring setting is that, I can re-use existing maps multiple times, the players become familiar with the map, and I can have empty floor plan templates to take out the groundwork of every new map. I’m using Foundry VTT hosted on the Forge. I used to do Roll20, but I found Foundry to be a much better virtual tabletop.

Here’s a screenshot of (some) of the players’ floor. My players are on Tumblr so I can’t spoil much in my posts. Here, three PCs (the tokens without names, top right) are standing outside their elevator in the central shaft that runs up the whole building. Some residents are hanging out near the edge of the terrace. There are apartments along the left and top edge of the screenshot.

I write every session as a one-off, with the goal of letting my players fill out their characters story the way they want. They’re usually simple stories. My first session was about the players’ floor experiencing power outages, it turned into an investigation to figure out who kept tripping the breaker, and it was a crypto scheme that they decided to break up with the help of a cyberpsycho.

The next session is soon, and the inspiration for the story struck me from just regular, daily life I experience living in my own apartment building IRL. It’s an interesting setting and I’m excited to see where it goes.

[yourplayersaidwhat]

My wood elf cleric/warlock named Talis is blind and is also hiding from the party that he's a wereraven. It will be a full moon tonight and we're still a day away from town. Also we play online via Discord and Roll20, and I have had the worst dice luck this campaign.

Me, in a private channel with the DM: "I wanna use Ka'ala (my raven familiar) as a distraction, then roll off the back of the cart, hide, turn into a raven and take off."

DM: "Roll a Charisma check for Ka'ala."

"18."

"The party seems distracted. Roll stealth with advantage."

"14?"

Basically all but two party members noticed. Kirin, the changeling bard currently appearing as a Minotaur, stops the cart and goes around to check on Talis.

Me: "I'm gonna do what I planned on doing but the raven is going to fly into Kirin's face, shriek at him, and take off."

By this point the other two party members noticed and our winged tiefling barbarian tried to follow, but the raven has a ten foot faster flight speed.

DM: "So your cleric has just seemingly disappeared. What do you do?"

The party was so confused and eventually decided "might as well get to town and look for Talis after."

And that was where we left off for the week.

[jacqcrisis]

omg second surprise dnd mutual this week 👀👀 tell me about ur characters plssss

Okay, so I have several I've played and I like a lot so I'm gunna put this under a read more

my first dnd character was for 3.5e, and his name was Deklan and he was a half-elf ranger who honestly did not want to be an adventurer, but who dreamed of being a carpenter. He was very good at shoot and talk, and had a very tired, over-all-of-this personality when not rolling charisma and spent a lot of time carving ducks. 

Next was was Mehlz, a bronze Dragonborn cleric for 5e. She was neutral good, believed in helping and healing those in need, was naive and kind of gullible as she was raised in a Temple of Bahamut as an orphan and oh God I have so much character work for her and so much worldbuilding for the insular Dragonborn nation she came from that I actually am going to re-use it somehow. Anyways, she was very good at hit thing with hammer and shoot lightning and the only character figurine i ever made off roll20 like 6 years ago

i love her so much. My favorite thing about her gamewise is that she had the Tavern Brawler feat and used that liberally to proficiently throw her best friend and fellow party member as an improvised weapon. Said bff was a sentient red panda who was also a monk.

There was Virga for a modified Curse of Strahd campaign that took place in the real world so we were forced to be human. He was a terrible French Catholic priest who was extra as hell, a warlock for the Raven Queen, sarcastic and mean, and his preferred mode of fighting was smacking people with his silver tipped cane. He became a wereraven, had a Charisma score 22, and was the cause of one party member dying due to a critical failure which I felt SO BAD FOR. I genuinely liked playing as the Bird Man and his bitchy attitude and his ending was finally getting a date with the other wereraven dude he got cockblocked from flirting with twice previously.

Right now, we have Isaria, another half-elf and they are a circle of spores druid. They are very quiet, shy, have rather poor people skills (which is a first for me to make Charisma a dumb stat), and are often very blunt when talking to someone and in their actions. Their goal is to find a way to prolong life using necromancy after the traumatic death of most of their home village due to a famine and often slips away from the party to experiment with various poisons and potions and undead. They are honestly a druid for all the wrong reasons and I'm digging them so far. They are also the shortest character I’ve ever made.

Special mention to my Star Wars ttrpg character who was my all time favorite and a character I want to reuse elsewhere. Dekle' was a cyborg Zabrak space pirate with a Southern accent, a giant metal phrik-coated arm, and a penchant for robots and punching things really really good. In session three, she took a grenade to the face from a guy running into her on a speeder, in which her response was to punch the guy off the speeder, eat the explosion like a champ, and then steal the vehicle. She was a brick shithouse who dished out bullshit damage because it turns out the Star Wars ttrpg just has a lot of perks specifically for hand to hand combat and why the fuck would I be a jedi when I could be a walking tank? Her and her ward (a fellow party member and a force sensitive Twi'lek teenager who used force lightning and a wrist rocket) were the cause of many DM headaches for the dumb shit we did, up to and including jumping onto a TIE-fighter and punching in the windshield to pull the pilot out, nuking a room of stormtroopers, and beating in Darth Vader's face.

My favorite exchange EVER was when the game was starting out, and the jedi who joined up with Dekle' and her ward Ro'ena had noticed that Ro was force sensitive and used force lightning untrained. So she pulls Dekle' aside and asks point blank if Dekle' had ever notice anything off about Ro in the seven or so years she's been raising the Twi'lek. To which Dekle' responded 'who? the living taser?' before looking over at Ro for a second or two and then shrugging and continuing 'no, I ain't noticed nothing weird about her. why?' Just a defining moment for one dumbass butch space pirate.

And also special mention to a character I only played in three sessions of a Fallout game a friend was testing out. His name was Anders, he was a ghoul, and he was a lucky charismatic crackshot who broke the game so bad, I was jokingly banned from further playtests after he oneshot a dude in power armor with his shitty revolver. He's an OC I still think about because he's a trashfire, just an absolute garbage boy, no redeeming qualities, would sell you for one corn chip, 10/10 I love him very much.

[nostalgiachan]

Aw ye, time for more OC redraws, this time featuring: Pretty Keyboard Lady Accidental Alcoholic My First D&D Character (aka WHY DID NO ONE ROLL A HEALER OH GOD) and The Angriest Boy

Character lore below the cut! 

#21: Selene Lumiere Coueri/Selene Amour Idea: The elegant goth keyboardist Story: D.A.R.K.

Oh my God with that name though, especially with a character whose hometown's in West Virginia. Yet another member with a HIM reference name, this one to bassist Mikko Paananen aka Mige Amour.

Selene is the keyboardist of the band, and as elegant and composed as they come. Both she and the band refer to her as the designated hot chick, though I was careful to point out she's an intellectual and spends most of her non-music time reading. She also only apparently needs glasses when she's performing.

#22: Mige Enkeli Idea: Hard-partying, laid-back drummer Story: D.A.R.K.

Oh, hey, one of the people I named after Finnish men is actually a Finnish man. I don't know if he's the most flattering portrayal of a Finnish man, but I knew fuck-all about Finland at the time. Like Selene, Mige's name comes from, well, Mige the bassist; meanwhile his last name's the Finnish word for angel.

Mige had attended a private school in West Virginia for a few years (which was based on the college prep school I'd attended which was a horrible, shitty place, but it attracted some international students so it gave me an excuse to have a Finnish dude in WV...because I guess I didn't think of exchange programs) and had kept in touch with the friends he'd made there after he returned to Finland. One of them mentioned that his younger sister, Selene, was putting together a band, and Mige was compelled to return to the States and join as their drummer. And it worked out pretty well for him.

Except for the fact that apparently I wrote the man as a chainsmoker and a constant drinker. He's still a nice, chill sort of guy, but Adult Nost is like, "Oh no, I think I wanted 'guy with some vices' but I overshot the mark into 'alcoholic' instead."

I do have one intentional alcoholic, but we'll get to him later probably

#23: Sydan (II) Idea: WHY DID NO ONE ROLL A HEALER? Story: Gamers' Club D&D 3.5e game

Ah, my first tabletop character. For the last two-and-a-half years of high school, I was in the Gamers' Club, a tabletop/TCG/LARP club. We started a D&D 3.5e game and I specifically rolled a character based on what we needed in the party - for some godforsaken reason, nobody rolled a healer, so I made an elven Cleric of Pelor the sun god. That game fuckin' ballooned to, like, 10 characters and our club pres made the terrible decision to split the party about a year in, which took forever to resolve, and some weeks we wouldn't even play because people wanted to play Magic: The Gathering instead, and then one of the players started a villain campaign for the freshmen, so yeah, that shit never concluded before most of us graduated. We tried to set up play-by-post over AIM in the days before Roll20, but we got through one game before it fell apart.

But to tell the story in as much of a nutshell as I can: Sydan was a 106-year old elf who had been adopted by a cleric in a small village, wherein lived Lewar the halfling rogue, Twinkles McGee the half-elf druid, Fred the half-orc barbarian, Monk the Monk (human, I think), and Chaos the human mage. One day, the village was obliterated by a lich and his undead army; our intrepid heroes managed to get some villagers to the undercroft of the church, but everyone else was killed and zombified, including Sydan's adopted father. So, when the coast was clear, the squad led the survivors to the nearest town, Sydan wrangled some shelter and employment for the villagers because she was the only one capable of speaking, I guess (more specifically, I was one of the four players who actually roleplayed), and they set out to figure out just how the hell to take the lich down.

This is about the clearest part of the story I remember beyond brief moments like a dwarven bard managing to castrate a hydra with a spear; Sydan giving the later half-elf ranger a phobia of celestial summons because he failed a perception check as they were falling out of the sky and she summoned a celestial griffin to save them both; asking if Sydan could use Monk's ability to turn his skin to diamonds as a catalyst for resurrection spells (No); and our DM having to deus ex me a bunch of diamonds because a squad of party members managed to get themselves killed almost to a man during a fight.

As for Sydan herself, I'd intended for her main goal to be putting her undead father to rest and avenging the village, but as I said, we never managed to get there. I played her as a nice, polite, helpful young woman who was a dutiful cleric, but had her little quirks like being obsessed with rapiers and having an occasional spiteful streak. But BOY OH BOY, it's hard to roleplay with that many goddamn people at once, only four of whom tended to pay attention.

#24: Enosin "Sin" Alexander Idea: Former loyal soldier of the dictatorship turned rebel, secretly a living weapon, SECRETLY secretly a DOOMSDAY weapon Story: Year Zero (based on the Nine Inch Nails album of the same name)

Ah, yes, my first attempt at mature storytelling. Good gravy. Like "Experimentals", this story actually has seven chapters posted on my dA. If you really want to read it, go for it. Most of it is cliché and dull, but boy oh boy does Act VI get uncomfortably misogynistic. Full disclosure.

The story flips POVs in a few chapters, but our main character is Enosin "Sin" Alexander, a captain of Lord Gerardis (aka G) of the dystopian city of Lacryma and colleague of captains Hime and Luris. While overall, he's loyal, he questions his lord's plans for the impoverished Outer City, wondering why he won't share the wealth of the affluent, yet tightly controlled, Inner City. But that becomes the least of his concerns when G is informed of a strange find at a planned city expansion site; a mysterious glowing tree with a human figure embedded in it. As soon as G retrieves the tree man, he tells Sin to wait in his quarters in the White Tower, the seat of the government, until he calls for him.

A week passes, and Sin doesn't hear from G, so he takes matters into his own hands and goes to G's lodgings; there, he finds that not only has the room been trashed, but there's some documents he hasn't seen before lying around detailing both the tree man, now named Absolution, who apparently has the power to create life from nothing, and a project to build a weapon in the shape of a man that G had started 27 years ago. Said weapon was then raised as a normal human and had joined the Lacryma Army: it was Sin.

G was intending to use Sin as a weapon to obliterate other cities, people and all, then have Absolution rebuild those cities however G saw fit, thereby conquering the world. Well, Sin didn't take kindly to this. He took to this so unkindly, in fact, that he made straight for the White Tower labs with the intent of killing Absolution and G, hacking up every guard that stopped him along the way (because why wouldn't he use a sword instead of a gun?).

While he managed to stab Absolution in the chest, G found him before he could finish the job and proceeded to beat the absolute Christ out of him before leaving him for dead on the lab floor and sweeping Absolution away to who-knows where.

Meanwhile, two young Outer City rebels who had broken into the White Tower to steal intel and parts for a superweapon of their own, Alucard and Rez, found the dying Sin and brought him back to their hideout. They believed that if he could be persuaded to join them, he'd be a great asset to their cause of overthrowing G; of course, their leader, Taris, made sure to inform him that if he didn't accept, they'd kill him. Sin, convalescing in their base and boiling with rage, accepted...and as soon as he was left alone, he started to have a freakout because he could now hear the voice of the weapon speaking to him and it wouldn't shut up until he carved a capital G into his hand.

Chronologically, Act VI was the last completed work to happen, wherein his former compatriot Luris happened to have found him at the base (which was a problem because if she knew, then G almost certainly knew). Sin had never liked Luris because her specialty was seduction and assassination, and because she'd apparently started to even murderfuck Inner City citizens just to keep her skills sharp. Luris tried to convince him that she'd abandoned G, and that she'd always been in love with Sin, but he knew better. He played along until the clothes started coming off, got her on his bed, and then whipped out the knife he apparently kept under his pillow and stabbed her to death.

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

I know Teen Nost was going for "The weapon was making him slowly lose his mind and become this angry, monstrous thing," but much like accidentally making Mige an alcoholic, I accidentally made Sin a misogynist.

As for what was supposed to be the rest of the story, since Sin now knew G was definitely coming for the rebels, they'd need to get their superweapon up and mobile immediately. The rebels would fight their way to the Inner City,  and return to the White Tower, where G and Absolution were waiting. Absolution would pull a little coup of his own against G, because Absolution had no interest in G's world domination plan. Instead, he was much more interested in Sin's inner weapon, the Great Destroyer. He wanted to activate Sin to kill absolutely everything so he could create a world for just the two of them.

They have a fight, Enosin wins, Enosin Man~

More specifically, the Great Destroyer would be activated, but Sin would manage to contain the damage to the Inner City, he'd fight and destroy Absolution, and then he'd probably fuck off to wander the Earth while the survivors picked up the pieces.

This is one of those stories that I come back to from time to time just because I feel like there is still a worthy outline here, and Adult Nost might have the chops to make something a little more interesting with it.

[talesfromatabletop]

Session 0: Two tieflings, two elves and a goliath walk into a bar...

Firstly I want to shout-out to our DM. I was fortunate enough to be chosen from actual dozens of applicants on roll20 to join this campaign, and our session 0 started with a talk to go over our expectations. This...isn't something I've ever really been part of before. Technically in the 2-person-turned-3-person campaign a couple years ago, but not to the extent we covered in this session. We were all able to voice our opinions on how campaigns should be run and what we wanted to accomplish, and it was so incredibly comforting to realize that we were all expecting the same experience and wanted to further that experience for the sake of fun and the group. Thank you so much, DM, for making sure we went through this process!

Our in-character story begins in the city of Neverwinter, where a dwarf has been looking for adventurers/laborers to help him with a job. Though details are absent, he's enticing people to hear him out by promising a dinner on his tab. Naturally this is enough to garner SOME interest.

Entrer:

[Me] Tetholt, a tiefling ranger who wants to cook and eat everything in his quest to make the perfect adventurer's cookbook

Lionel, a younger tiefling bard who has been, so far, a nifty lil dude

Clive, the elf cleric that's only just left his home and family behind to adventure and it SHOWS

Itheindar, an elf wizard that is definitely an elf and a wizard

And finally Agrok the goliath barbarian, who has a bad habit of staring off and zoning out

Tetholt was the first to arrive and greet their potential employer, having no knowledge of who else might arrive. I got the joy of rolling to determine the specials of the night (a lovely lamb dish and a fruity cocktail, which we all agreed OOC sounded like...weirdly tasty at the moment???). Next was Clive, followed by Lionel, Agrok, and Itheindar. While the first three of us walked up and greeted the dwarf, Agrok instead talked to our employer's human companion and Itheindar...went to a different nearby table to listen in to our conversations instead.

Does this say a lot about his character? Yes. Do I know exactly what it's saying? No, but it's a damn vibe, tho.

The job was explained as a simple escort job - take Rockseeker's (dwarf's last name) mining gear to a different town, and get a second job there if we're willing to stick around. It's during this little conversation that Itheindar eventually joins us to ask further questions, and we all gradually notice that Agrok is zoned out af.

Finally we catch the goliath's attention - turns out he was distracted because Rockseeker was *so short*. We're. Here. For. This. Goliath.

Like, legit - his player mentioned he'd be less awkward as he got more practice, but we collectively stan this awkward goliath man. Go Agrok, tall king!

After agreeing to the job, Rockseeker peaces out and tells us dinner and drinks are on him, as are rooms at the establishment if we need 'em. Drinking, arm wrestling and shenanigans ensue - Clive wrestled Agrok and won, Tetholt wrestled Itheindar's mage hand and won, then lost against Itheindar himself, and then he volunteered Lionel to wrestle Agrok...which resulted in the younger tiefling getting nearly YEETED from his seat by sheer force of barbarian arm-power.

As we, the players, talked about our characters, we joked about abandoning the module to make a food truck...because THREE of our five characters have a food/cooking-themed element. Between this and joking about music and drunken dancing, we stumbled straight into our party name on SESSION ZERO.

That's some kind of record, right?

Regardless, it's currently Tuesday. Session 1 is tomorrow and all of my nerves and anxiety from last Tuesday have disappeared, leaving me excited to see how we all do together.

Without further ado, please enjoy the adventures of our party: "Dinner and a Show"

[staggeringsmite]

ooh, top 5 moments you've had/witnessed as a DM? (please use this an excuse to hype yourself up if you want!!)

my players make dm’ing beyond worth it, so i really have to give credit to them for the joy of what they bring to a lot of these scenes <3 (also this is all wandering isles bc it’s been my most narratively satisfying and invested dm experience) Buckle Up it’s a long one!!!

bonus: i’m very proud of my individual character moments! throughout the campaign we’ve had about four of these (the intro session scenes, two dream sequences for every pc, and a set of individual trial scenes). we’re a pretty big party so it’s hard to narrow it down, but i just love writing and running those longer narrative moments bc i think it’s a v interesting insight into each character and gives them each a separate moment to shine <3

5. “promise you’ll come back to her” / burning of contingency letters

i put these moments together perhaps to cheat a little bit, but also because they deserve it. xarus, the party’s barbarian whose family was abandoned by his mother at a young age pulls theresa, a forge knitting cleric about to board the airship he is a quartermaster of in order to find a cure for her sick wife. he asks theresa to promise him one thing, that no matter what she will come back to her wife. along the way they write contingency letters to their loved ones in and outside of the party as their adventures grow more and more dangerous, and eventually, exhausted and worn, theresa and xarus find each other in the den of a safehouse to talk. recognizing each other’s willingness to self-sacrifice, their conversation ends with them burning the contingency letters they’ve written, committing to life. these scenes come together because it shows how far they have come together, and the theresa and xarus relationship will always be a highlight of the wandering isles to witness. sometimes the players do all the best work for you, and it’s so wonderful to sit back and watch <3

4. miles is missing

damien returns to the university he works at after an unprecedented amount time away to check on his office before he heads back out on another adventure with the party. while there he moves to put a sticky note (canonically a magical item in the wandering isles universe) on his rival colleague’s (and gay lover/roommate of 20 years) door only to find it entirely emptied without a trace. despite their bickering, miles and damien are very close, and miles would never pack up his things and go without telling damien.

this was a more subtle cliff-hanger for the session, but it was made so much fun as a dm because the players were excited and joking the whole session about miles’ second appearance (and only since the very first session) so his sudden disappearance was made much more severe based on everyone’s anticipation of meeting and having a light-hearted interaction with him.

3. the infamous sex rave

sometimes things go very right as a dm and sometimes things spiral out of control when a pc mislabels a situation which becomes a running joke of the campaign. either way i love being stubborn in my defense of “it isn’t a sex rave!!” whenever they bring it up (and immediately playing an npc who also calls it a sex rave). basically the players had a heist encounter in which they were hired to break a group of pirate prisoner’s out of a secret underground information center (where magical artifacts were also being held and studied, and there was pertinent information stored for the party to take a swipe at). the group split and one subset of party members were forced to hide from guards on the outskirts of a large, gladiatorial style ring within the compound, in which prisoners were competitively battling in order to test the abilities of certain unknown artifacts for the entertainment of anonymous nobles in masquerade getup. based on the magical lighting effects, the strangely dressed noble onlookers, and the,,,, Fighting Noises being some of the only things the pc’s perceived from the level of the auditorium they hid at, it was unfortunately misnomer’ed the “weird sex rave” and has only been referred to it as that ever since.

2. mother abel’s goodbye

hmmm am i making players cry again? yeah maybe. mother abel was an elder cleric of nosa crossing, the starting city of the campaign. she’d lived through its settlement, destruction, rebuilding, and given her all not only to the city but also to the jilted creed (a secret society dedicated to disrupting geline, a large and dangerously powerful island-state which is one of the campaign’s greatest evils). in the last use of her strength she took on a role as a conduit for a powerful plane shift ritual to transport the residents of the city to safety in the feywild as nosa crossing began to be overrun by potent wild magics in the prime material plane. as a low-level cleric, the spell took its toll on her, and as the party arrived in the feywild via a similar ritual to find the inhabitants, they were led to her side. theresa, a native of nosa crossing now reunited with her wife yodean, went to abel’s side with yodean. as yodean sat on the foot of the bed, theresa kneeled as though praying to hold abel’s hand cleric to cleric, confessing her gratitude but admitting that she cannot give as freely as mother abel did, that she and yodean deserve to live for themselves as much as they choose everyday to live for other people. with her final words in a soft, weak message, mother abel comforted theresa in her decision. the scene as a whole was so wonderfully sad, and the best dm moment of something so raw as telling aj, theresa’s player, that while there was no way to confirm it in any real capacity, something in theresa felt that perhaps mother abel held out a little while longer to make sure she was safe one last time and make sure she’d truly gotten everyone home.

1. rosa’s betrayal / lian’s resurrection

enough of that sad shit let’s get mean babey!! aslkjglfk i will be riding the high of this session for an eternity, but it’s quite a lot to break down. rosa rucksaw is the captain of the crew the party rescues in the heist sequence, who eventually reveals herself to in fact be xarus’ mom who fully left to assume a new identity and is Pretty Horrible as a person. at the safehouse, the party is asked by the people they were hired if they would be willing to take the crew to a longer term safehouse island, and the decision is left to xarus. not wanting to be like his mom, xarus agrees to endure a little more time with them in order to them this service out of convenience and kindness. a few hours from their destination, rosa finds xarus on the deck and honestly? kinda begins to admit some amount of guilt for all the shit she did,,,, literally seconds before she reveals that when her and her crew were caught by geline, she struck a deal in order to keep them alive, saying to her biological son “out on the cloudsea your crew is your family, and son, believe me, i’d do anything for my family” before her crew on the deck anchored the ship to an invisible gelinish war vessel and we snapped to roll20 for combat. the look of horror and betrayal on everyone’s face as her monologue hit those final lines, ugh and the fact that no one was super suspicious made it even better!! sometimes it Really Works, and this was one of those times!

flash forward in the battle, and an npc (it’s miles, the gay lover from a few numbers ago) being held hostage by the gelinish vessel is killed, as he is resurrected by two party members (damien and theresa) damien reaches for his soul, as theresa, who multi-classed into divination wizard after a pc named lian died (with failed attempts from theresa and xarus to hold her back) feels another presence in the grey, misty beyond. lian died in session four, and when i said her name to reference jack’s character everyone lost it mostly out of confusion before i began to narrate lian feeling restless in the afterlife, eventually reaching out and forming a celestial warlock pact with miles through his connection to damien and being called upon by her goddess sune as theresa reached out, offering lian the chance to go back. theresa returning to that moment with both her clerical and divinatory abilities, with the blessing of sune, lian emerging on the battlefield, now a vengeance paladin instead of life cleric, with a flaming sword and celestial wings at her back was such an incredible highlight to set up and run,, i just, <333 very proud of myself (and very thankful jack was on board for her coming back) for this moment

thank you so so much!! this was a long ramble, but i hope it was somewhat interesting to people not in the wandering isles <33

send a top 5 or 10?

[roll20]

Tome Of Tips: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition OGL Character Sheet

Dust off your reading spectacles--the Tome of Tips has returned.

Today’s entry is a little different than past chapters. Today, we’re going to be talking about a game system--namely, Dungeons & Dragons: 5th Edition. Maybe you’ve heard of it! 5th Edition is the most popular system on Roll20 by far, and it’s played in a variety of ways. 

And there’s no wrong way to play. Whatever your flavor of D&D is, we think it’s awesome because it’s yours.  What we’re here to do today is tell you about some features of the D&D 5E character sheet that you might not know about--features that could help you better play the game your way. Are you getting the most out of your games? Do you know everything Roll20 has to offer your 5th Edition playgroup? Read on to find out!

Use the Dungeons & Dragons: 5th Edition Character Sheet to…

Click the bubble icon on abilities and spells to send their description to the chat

We’ll start with a simple one that just might save you and your playgroup a bundle of time.

Did you know you can click the word bubble icon next to abilities and spells to send their descriptions to the chat? Save your DM the trouble of paging through the compendium in a separate tab and share the details of your spell’s effect with the party with just a single click. 

Here are some details about spell descriptions you might not know: In the D&D 5E sheet, there are actually two types of spell outputs. Spellcards don’t roll damage or show the Difficulty Class (or DC) needed to save from that spell. Attacks roll damage and display DCs, but they don’t show any description--at least not by default. To change that, just jump into the settings menu for a spell by clicking the cog here. 

Scroll down the settings and toggle the INCLUDE SPELL DESCRIPTION IN ATTACK field to On.

Presto! Further, if you’d like to change the description of the spell--to shorten it, add in some signature details about your character’s spellcasting, or what-have-you--the text box just below this field in the Settings menu is, in fact, editable.

The results, in chat:

Add various modifiers to an item for easy-to-build Magic Items and more

The MODS field on items is often overlooked, but it could save a shrewd DM some time when crafting magic items on-the-fly. 

MODS is a text field that accepts various AC or magic bonuses that will then figure into that item’s calculations automatically. For example, you could give a chestplate AC +1 to make sure that any character equipped with that item gets a +1 bonus to their armor class. 

The MODS field, then, is perfect for creating magic items quickly. You can set a modification for: -Armor Class -Attacks (For Items that have an Item Type including the word “weapon”) -Attack Modifier -Damage (and Damage Type) -Secondary Damage (and Secondary Damage Type) -Range

-Spells (Including spell attack and spell DC) 

-Stats 

-Saving Throws

-Skills

Don’t forget the space in between (for example, Ac +1, not Ac+1)!

Keep track of items, ammo, and consumables in your inventory 

Keeping track of depleting resources in Roll20 is easy--so easy, in fact, that it happens more or less automatically. Drag-and-drop an item (like arrows) from the compendium to a character’s inventory and a resource-tracker will populate automatically. 

Then, just make sure the USE AS A RESOURCE checkbox is selected on the item’s settings. From there, a player will just need to manually deplete the number next to the item to keep track of its use. 

As this number goes down, the number in your inventory will go down, too.  But there’s a way to automate that process as well! The 5th Edition OGL by Roll20 Companion API Script helps keep track of those resources automatically. It ties resources into attacks and abilities so that a player doesn’t have to manually deplete their inventory. Like all APIs, it requires a Pro account to use. For more information on this API script, check out our Zendesk article here. 

The Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Character Sheet is powerful and versatile. These are just some of the ways it can make running a game of 5E in Roll20 even easier. There are dozens of tricks and tips to uncover and discover. But the most important thing about your game is just that: It’s yours. Use what works for you! 

That’s all for this installment of the Tome of Tips. Got a topic you’d like to see us dive into in a future entry? Let us know in the comments or over on Twitter, and as always: Thanks for playing with us. 

As a reminder, we’re matching donations to Code2040, “a nonprofit activating, connecting and mobilizing the largest racial equity community in tech to dismantle the structural barriers that prevent the full participation and leadership of Black and Latinx technologists in the innovation economy.” Learn more and donate through our Tiltify campaign here: http://roll20.io/Tiltify-Code2040

[tradeway2]

Session 1 10 Jul 2021

We start a little later than usual today as our illustrious DM has been working hard to provide a game from scratch for us this week!

We were asked to provide him with a name, race, sub-race, and a class if we wanted to. We were not asked to draw up character sheets or determine stats and so on, and it’s been driving us (all now at least somewhat seasoned D&D players) up the wall. Matthew hops on to the chat after Joe drops the link to the game, to ask us not to open our character sheets if we sign in early. Duncan tells us he has emphasised this casual torture by having not even read the rules for his class; he likes to live on the edge.

When we sign in, we are greeted with this calming landing page (we know it's calming, because Matthew tells us it is):

Ah. Well that’s alright then.

We are told this campaign could last ten minutes or the rest of our lives; Matthew is hoping for somewhere in the middle. We have some technical issues - as is to be expected. Roll20 is a steep learning curve. One might even call it a wall.

We’re told that this entire fiasco is based off a spoof tv show that Matthew saw late at night once and thought it would be fun to base a one-shot on. Then it got out of hand, and now has the potential to become a full campaign. Here's hoping! Without further ado, we dive in…

Cora (Ishara) stands beside a crossroads. There is a sundial at its centre; she sees the shadow pass over its face. An elven merchant passes, cart laden with water jugs. She waves, but her face is a picture of fury. The sundial's shadow disappears - it is midday. Another elven merchant passes, this one with a cart of food. She also waves, but she is in floods of tears. The sundial shows that dusk is approaching. A third elven merchant passes, with a cart full of empty glass jars. She laughs hysterically as she passes by, waving as she goes.

Night falls and the moon rises. A fourth merchant approaches, but this one does not wave. Her face is blank as she walks toward Cora - she drops a bunch of snapdragons at Cora's feet and continues walking. Cora picks the flowers up and admires them; half the bunch withers and dies, and the other half grows to twice its size. She drops them to the ground; as the new roots touch it, the earth collapses beneath her -

She awakens, to see Leslie:

He tells her he doesn’t know who she is, but she shouldn’t be sleeping here.

We all awake now, in what appears to be the ruins of a battlefield.

We are all zombies.

Huh.

We see each other as friends; in fact the word 'zombie' in Friend means 'friend'. We know this, because as it turns out, we all speak Friend.

But not Common. Hmm.

Leslie tells us his name and asks why we’re sleeping here?

We roll History checks to see if we remember anything; that will be hard for Marcus who has -3 INT.

Pilfer remembers his name, and something about a boat, and nothing else. No idea where he is or why, or who his new friends are. Ren knows that this is definitely his lute. He takes it. Will he remember how to play it?

Hilda remembers nothing about how she got here, but she remembers fighting in a war. A big one. It was important; significant to her. Marcus remembers little more than Ren. That’s definitely his rucksack, though. Milo knows something is missing but he can’t figure out what. Cora remembers her dream. There was a risk that she wouldn’t. She’s told it didn’t feel like her dream, even though she was dreaming it.

We heard voice from behind a wall saying, “Friends? Friends!” Leslie rolls his eyes.

Cora goes to the wall to see if she can lend aid to the owner of the voice. It is coming from very close to Hilda. Should she do something about it? Where are we?

Hilda rolls a nat 20 for her Perception check. (Fun new house rule: if we are using a skill or tool and roll a nat20, we gain Proficiency - ooo!)

It is carnage around us. A huge fight has happened here. Imagine the biggest battle from the LotR movies - what we see laid out before us makes that look like a boundary dispute between neighbours.

Does Ren feel peckish when he looks at the bodies? It looks like food, but food has this habit of moving around; once it stops doing that, it’s bad food. We are all aware of this; what we're looking at is No Longer Food.

There are old fires and signs of burns on the ground. Amongst all this we hear the bewildered, friendly voice again asking for help. It’s coming from the remains of a building that has been destroyed by fire or magic or something of that ilk.

Hilda goes to investigate, and Pilfer goes to look as well. It turns out Matthew meant to put us on a different map, but we have been looking at the crossroads this whole time. Whoops! We switch to the map. Technical issues, please stand by…

(Matthew, direct quote: “JOE! Make it better, help!”

Joe helps, and makes it better. We continue… )

Ren has a go at tuning his lute. He makes a Performance check. an 8! We are all suitably distracted.

The voice calls again. “Friends?”

Where is this voice, and whose is it?

Leslie introduces himself again, rather pointedly probably, and we all introduce ourselves this time. Leslie seems particularly enamoured by Milo. The voice asks us what are we going to call him?

Pilfer suggests Bingo; Bingo likes that so that’s his name now. Pilfer asks how long he’s been here? He heard us get up and before that it was dark, but before that it was quite bright. Before that it was dark, and before that it was bright. Before that there was a lot of angry people, and there was a lot of food, and now the food’s all gone. He tried to leave, but he couldn’t.

Pilfer - formerly a drow elf - is dismayed to discover that it is daytime. He panics until he finds his parasol.

Ren gets a nat20 - he now has proficiency in Investigation! (There is a limit to the number of these bonuses we can receive, we are warned.) He and Marcus and Hilda all see Bingo's problem. Pilfer, however, has got lost in Bingo’s eyes again. He’s a good looking fella.

“Would that we had met before the rot set in!”

Milo gets distracted when some food shouts at him from over the bridge - it then pegs it away. Milo wants to follow, but we are all Slow (-10feet). The food disappears into the trees. He is disappointed, and hungry. He sits on a bit of broken bridge and sulks; Leslie joins him. He offers to help him look for some more food.

Bingo is pinned in place with a spear through his sternum - he’s upright, and the spear is piercing him from above. Can we pull it out? Or him out? Marcus has a go at pulling him by the hands - and manages to get Bingo off the spear with a 19 STR check. Bingo is very pleased. Ren asks if he wants the spear back; Bingo says it’s not his. Ren takes it instead, and adds it to his inventory. He has two now.

Bingo says he’s going to find the horde.

Us, politely confused: "The what?"

The horde! It’s the best! We should totally join him.

Leslie pats Milo on the back and tells him not to be disheartened. We’ll find some food. We suspend our disbelief while Matthew puts some food on the map that we didn’t notice sneaking up on us…

Ren rolls another nat20, getting proficiency with Perception. Thanks to Milo’s alertness, the food doesn’t get the drop on him either. Pilfer’s stomach rumbles, and we roll initiative. (Marcus gets five XP for helping Bingo off the spear!)

Noticing that we appear to have noticed them, the food closest to us appears to be carrying a stick. Uh oh… Food uses tools, this is the thing we learn first. The first food seems reluctant to move towards us, so it holds an action.

Cora is up first. She shambles 20 feet, and uses her action to dash twenty more feet and gets right up to some food and zombie-groans in its ear.

Milo remembers different food, food that you have to sneak up on, so he has a go at that. He rolls a Bad stealth check, and uses all fifteen of his feet, loudly announcing what he is doing to Leslie as he goes.

A food bonks Cora on the head with a stick for 15 to hit, which does, for 2 bludgeoning damage. Another food advances towards us - he’s wobbling his arm and pointing to the food that bonked Cora on the head.

Marcus shamble-dashes toward Cora, upsetting the food that she’s in melee with. Another food tries to hit him, but misses. Marcus consoles it.

Pilfer moves forward. Can he throw a dagger? Yes he can. He hucks his knife at a food. 21 to hit! Right in the shanks. 3 piercing damage! He did not get the food in the shanks; he got it in the neck.

He feels a weird urge to snack. All the other foods look very unnerved at this development. The food isn’t quite dead, but clutching its neck with blood pouring through its fingers and making an agonized squealing noise.

Pilfer: “... Is he okay?”

Hilda waddles up to another food, the one that lurched forward at us. She gives it a smash with her greatclub for 13 to hit.

Matthew kicks himself out of the game. We won!

Moving on…

Hilda’s attack hits, for 9 bludgeoning damage. She destroys the food. Can she still eat it? As a bonus action she eats some of the food, before it spoils. (Matthew moves the token to get it out of the way. Hilda, aggrieved: “I was eating that!”)

Ren’s turn. He swings the lute around, remembering that a lute is a useful thing to have; he can’t remember what to do with it so he swings it back out of the way and gets his spear instead. He stabs at the food in front of him. He spears it successfully and goes to town before it spoils. “Yum yum.” He says grace, which sounds like a beautiful prayer to us, and like hideous gurgling to the food.

Another food rushes at Hilda, seeing the thing she just done. It natty 20s her, but the damage is only 4.

Cora swings her mace at the food in front of her, to get to the juicy filling. 11 to hit, which does, and 3 bludgeoning damage. She’s tenderised it good; that’ll melt in the mouth, that will. Fall right off the bone.

Milo has heard all this going on; he goes back up and throws a javelin at the food attacking Hilda. He crit-fails. Whoops! He gears up and swings, and throws the javelin in completely the wrong direction. He looks at Leslie, who shrugs.

"I'd have thrown that over there, if I were you."

Leslie moves up, and old Bingo’s gonna get in the game as well. (Matthew forgot to roll initiative for them on the first round. He puts them in the turn order; better odds for us, yeah!)

Cora’s food tries to hit her again, but misses. There must be delicious sauce in its eyes.

Marcus batters the food in front of him with a slam attack, not realising there’s a quarterstaff on his back that he could use. He hits and kills the food, and goes to town. It turns out that that was Pilfer’s food; he retrieves his dagger and stops for a little nibble. A fistful of the insidey-bits is a great snack-on-the-go. He has enough movement to flank another food, so he does that, and makes a slam attack against it. He has prepared another meal!

Hilda’s turn, and the meals around her are in full swing; she uses both her action and her bonus action to snack on two different foods.

(Ed, OOC: “Is it bad that this game is making me hungry?”)

Ren too decides to feast on the 'horrible visceral tapas' that surrounds him. (We are adjusting swiftly to our new circumstance.)

Cora has another go at the pudding with a slam attack, hits the wrong button, finds the right one, and hits that for 13 damage which makes contact. 8 bludgeoning! She has prepared the heck out of that meal by swinging at the head and taking it clean off.

We are out of initiative! Pilfer waves a bit of meat at Bingo and invites him to join us. Milo seasons his own meal with the spices in his bag and even washes his hands, remembering that that’s important to do before eating. Pilfer empties his waterskin and fills it with blood. If he shakes it every now and again it’ll be fine.

It turns out that our meal doesn’t seem appetising for very long, and we quickly realise that our food has spoiled.

We roll Perception checks, at Disadvantage because we’re eating. Leslie doesn’t seem interested in the food.

Pilfer asks him what’s up, why isn’t he chowing down with the rest of us? He’s eating his own meal, he hints. Ren would love to Investigate Leslie. There seem to be bits of plant coming out of wounds or open sores on his body; he catches Ren looking and explains that although he’s a Friend, he eats it a bit differently. Over a period of time. We aren’t really talking to the person-suit, we’re talking to the plant inside the body. He uses the food to get around a bit more easily. And he can eat it even though it’s gone grey. The word he uses is 'compost'.

But, he assures us, we are all Friends here.

Fair dos. So, to the horde then?

Bingo looks really excited at this. Do we know where the horde is, he asks us?

"... We don’t even know what the horde is."

If we want to know who and what we are, Leslie might know someone who knows someone…?

There is a gnawing in the back of our heads (not worms); maybe we might want to know more about ourselves than just our names. (Which - it's odd that we even know our names. That's certainly more than Bingo knew.) Hilda thinks we might not want to know; we might upset ourselves.

We can follow Bingo to the horde. Or we could go with Leslie and take Bingo with us, and do horde stuff later? We’re full now, and all the food has gone bad, so we may as well follow Leslie. We get 15 XP for eating all that food.

We walk through the battlefield and the heaps of spoiled food. Occasionally we hear shouting in the distance:

Random friend: “Friend? Friend!”

Bingo, shouting back: “I’m called Bingo!”

New Bingo: “Oh, wow! Can I be called Bingo?”

Bingo Prime: “Sure!”

(Ed returns from the kitchen with snacks, very confused to arrive back in the middle of this.)

We shuffle along with Leslie. There are a lot of Bingos about, after a while. It starts to get dark. Ren remembers he has a tail. Leslie turns to us and says he once inhabited a food with a tail. It wasn’t a grippy one, but it was quite furry. He doesn’t know what you’d call it, but it was quite entertaining to see the looks on the other foods' faces.

Leslie doesn’t like to travel overnight, so we sit down in a little sitting around circle. His eyes aren’t good in the dark. Do we feel tired…? We don’t need to sleep, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t. Every so often we hear the little Bingo exchange in the distance. (We’re going to regret this.)

We roll INT checks at Disadvantage - Marcus rolls a 16. Maybe it’s a faded memory, but he is pretty certain he remembers going to sleep in a similar situation, and one person stayed awake. He suggests to the others that one of us should stay awake; most of them don't seem to follow his train of thought. He remains awake and so does Milo; Ren paces in circles until he gets bored.

Those of the group that try to sleep, give it a go. They don’t dream exactly. Those that stay awake still get the benefits of a long rest. Yay!

(We break for tea and cigarettes and whatnot.)

Bingo lies down, seeing some of us do that, and asks what we’re doing. Those of us that stay awake roll Perception checks.

While Matthew’s computer reboots, he tells Cora about her dream.

She stands in a familiar room; the bookshelves around her are laden with ancient texts. She notices that there is no door. She starts to feel anxious. Music sounds, from a hearth that wasn't there a moment ago. There is a music box open on the stone floor. She kneels down and closes the lid, and finds herself standing in a field. Her anxiety fades to contentment as she stands in the short, but lush, green grass. About a hundred feet away, a large black stag with eyes of fire begins to charge her. She begins to float, and the stag passes harmlessly beneath her. She flies over the treetops. Behind her she sees a triangle of ravens flying in her wake. She lands, surrounded by friends and safe, and the ravens continue on.

Marcus and Milo stayed awake; Marcus was distracted, wondering what the twinkly in the sky lights do and if anyone will ever walk on the surface of one, that kind of thing. Milo sees figures that appear to be advancing towards us. Uh oh!

Is it friends or food? Milo thinks it’s almost definitely food. It did not introduce itself as Bingo. Milo alerts us all that our delivery has arrived, and we roll initiative.

Cora goes first. She nobbles one with her mace and a nat 20 for 7 bludgeoning damage. She sees some sauce come out.

Marcus Slams another one; he makes a dent in it. (He still hasn’t realised he has a quarterstaff.)

A guard attacks Hilda with a spear. Hilda, sounding mildly inconvenienced: “Nooo!” 13 hits. Things are getting a little more real. She takes 6 piercing damage and is quite poorly.

Milo wants to know if this food is human sized; it is. He shambles into one and does a slam at it, and has a go at chomping off a couple of crunchy fingers. 18 hits. Milo, extremely pleased: “Delicious!” 8 chomping damage, and he comes away with some delicious bits of food. If this guy was planning on using his spear two handed, he may have to re-think his strategy.

Leslie’s turn. He makes it quite a way out to his chosen food, but his attack misses. The food next to Cora has a go at clobbering her with a 9 - which misses.

Pilfer’s turn, and he zips down toward another food to whale on it. He rolls a dirty 20 and slams him good, also doing max damage.

Hilda's turn! 15 with her club just misses, and she’s very annoyed about it. As a bonus action she wants to still try and have a chomp, but nothing happens.

The food fighting with Marcus fails to hit him, as does the one with Leslie. Milo’s food natty 20s him for 13 damage, and he’s down. Oh no! He rolls a good CON save and pops back with 1 HP.

Another food attacks Bingo and another attacks Pilfer but misses. Ren shambles across to help our good friend Bingo by poking the food with his spear, hitting for 4.

Bingo does a slam on the food as well, but misses. Marcus misses his attack; he is marinading it in its sauce, he says. Squeezing it like a mango to check for ripeness.

Cora rolls an 18 with her mace, and 3 bludgeoning. The food looks nearly ready. She falls upon it and has a chew. (Matthew: “Gross. I like it.”)

15 hits Marcus for 7 spikin’ in the tummy. No worries; he's got four more spikin' in the tummy left. Milo’s next slam hits, doing 6 points of munching damage, eating it to the point of perfection. It runs around screaming with a little halfling zombi- friend, attached to it first; Milo sets about feasting when it lies down and stops moving.

Leslie does an attack, and prepares another meal as Matthew plays D&D by himself. Pilfer has another attack - a 15 just misses. “Curse you!”

Hilda has another go with her great club for a 17, and 10 bludgeoning damage. Her food went from raw to almost perfect in one hit. It’s still moving about a bit, but in a much more ‘ready to be food’ fashion.

Ren’s food swings at him and misses. Ren, put out: “The food's just playing with me. It's supposed to be the other way around, right?”

Pilfer’s food fumbles at him and hits, and he’s none too pleased about it. He takes two HP damage when his food pokes him. “How dare it! I’m getting pre-eating indigestion, somehow.”

Ren does another poke with his spear. “Stop moving around! It makes it harder to bite you!” Six misses, unfortunately.

Hilda’s food attacks her for 14, which hits for 5 damage and she’s down. She rolls a CON save, but fails. She is at 0HP. She will be rolling undeath saves, oh no!

Bingo slams his food and misses. Marcus prepares his food with a crunch, and begins chomping.

Cora would like to kneecap her food so it can’t escape. The kneecaps are one of the best bits. 7 damage to the food (not Marcus!) and begins to chomp as well.

Milo’s meal is going down a treat, but he notices that Hilda appears to be lying down even though her food is standing up. Is her food trying to eat her? He’s not having this; Friends are not Food! He slings his javelin at Hilda’s food. The javelin hits, and he gives it a good dressing down. “Rude!”

We don’t understand it, but the remaining food is very distressed. If we could understand the food, we'd hear it saying, “Oh my God, they’re using tools!”

Leslie dashes at full pelt, but doesn’t get far. He looks puffed out; or he would if there was breath in his body.

Pilfer slams his food for a nat20. “YES! YES! What’s that mean, do I roll damage twice? Yes! YES! Look at all that damage. Yes! I bludgeon him to the floor, I eat him.”

Hilda rolls an undeath save: a 17, yay!

The last guard takes his turn. Looking around him he realises he’s in trouble, so he legs it. Wait - Ren is still struggling with a live one, and the guard isn’t going to abandon his mate. He runs up to Ren and gives him a bit of a poke - 12 just hits him. He takes 4 points of being stabbed. However -

It is now his turn. The food that he’s stabbed looks closer to edible than the newly arrived food. He stirs his spear around in it for 23, and 6 piercing damage. His food is well prepped and looking delicious.

Bingo hasn’t had much luck prying open the last one, so he has a go at Ren’s new arrival but misses. It’s been a long day.

While Marcus is shovelling stuff into his mouth, he notices that Hilda is down. Upon seeing her, his rotting brain supplies “…food?” But he remembers that’s not right. He shuffles over and pokes her with a Medicine check of 9; he can’t figure out why she’s lying down. Yelling “Get up!” doesn’t seem to do anything.

Cora shambles over to the two of them with a handful of brain pudding, and attempts to feed it to Hilda. She rolls a Medicine check - another 9. On the plus side, it’s not like she can choke her to death.

Milo has just eaten a whole hand, so he comes over for a poke at Hilda as well. He snaps off a finger from his food and tries to poke it into her mouth. It works! He’s very pleased. This feels familiar to him.

Leslie pats still-unconscious Hilda on the head. In broad Gloucestershire accent: “There there.”

Pilfer proceeds to his second course. A dirty 20 for 6 bludgeoning, hitting it so hard on the top of the head that its neck disappears into its chest. The guard returns in kind - 9 to hit, which misses.

the guard looks worried as he looks around. “… Fuck.” We, of course, do not understand him.

Ren gets confused and tries to stab his food with his lute, but misses. Bingo misses again. It’s a wonder he’s survived this long.

Marcus natty 20s the last food, for 11 HP. "That's as many hit points as I have on a good day!"

DM: "That's as many hit points as he started with."

While we wait for Hilda to wake up, we can search for loot! Or lute! Who knows!

We leave it there, and Matthew will tell us what treasures we find on our respective food. Pilfer makes a prawn cocktail with gizzards.

[keplercryptids]

how I organize my DM notes using OneNote

a few people said they were interested in seeing how i organize my notes for the games that i run, and let’s be honest, that’s all i need to make a huge informative post. (to my players, you can look! i’ve crossed out info you shouldn’t have lol)

i use OneNote, which i *think* you can use for free online even if you don’t have microsoft. could be wrong on that though. anyway, details and screenshots are under the cut!

here are the sections i split everything into:

[ID: a menu bar showing different tabs that say Players, NPCs, World, Calendar, Sessions.]

“Players” is the least completed session for my online game because my players have uploaded their character sheets to Roll20 so I got lazy about copying that info over. but normally, this section is split into different pages for each of my players, and will have the player’s contact info, as well as their character sheet, etc. but really, the only important part of the character sheet, for my purposes, is their backstory and passive perception and insight modifiers. I will also note their relationships with NPCs here (as you’ll see in the NPC section), and keep track of their renown with various factions (i do a homebrew renown-tracking thingy to keep track of friends and enemies of the party).

next is NPCs!

[ID: a screenshot of a particular NPC’s page, Z’ress Matyl. A lot of it has been blacked out lol.]

I used to keep track of EVERY SINGLE NPC this way but it got overwhelming fast, so I only put notable NPCs here (either famous ones, ones that i expect will be around a bit, or ones my PCs will fight/fight with). i use this section to quickly remind myself who the NPC is, their class/race/alignment, what they look like, their personality and a short backstory if applicable. you can also see the little table where i keep track of relationships, and that’s how I track PC relationships too. if relevant, i keep the NPC’s statblock here as well. once i’ve created more NPCs for this campaign, i’ll organize the pages into subpages by family/faction, but i’m not quite there yet with this one!

now onto World!

[ID: a screenshot of the World tab, which includes sections titled: Sirona history, Pantheon, Dal Z’har, Iesma Empire, and World notes along with a lot of town names for each of the areas. The main text on the screen is about a small town called Sweetvale.]

as the name suggests, i keep most worldbuilding info here, including detailed info about the towns and cities the PCs visit or have been to. some towns (like Sweetvale!) have more detail than others. i also keep larger world info in this section: world history/conflicts, the pantheon and origin stories of the gods (i have a homebrewed pantheon so that’s why it’s necessary), and overarching themes and shit that are relevant to the campaign. this is also a place where i’d keep maps for my own reference if i were more organized. “World Notes” is where i furiously type ideas as they pop into my head, to later develop. i wish i could show you that section, it’s buckwild and has a lot of exclamation points, but it’s very spoilery.

onto the calendar!

[ID: the calendar tab, showing pages for the months Gelus, Tabeo, Imber, Flos, Lux, Sol, Ardor, Messis, Folium, Stella, Nox and Hiberius, all in 52 AC. The main text on the screen shows the days of the month in a table with notes of what happened on each day. The days of the week are Moonday, Treeday, Waterday, Thunderday, Fireday, Starday and Sunday.]

as you can see, i use a homebrewed calendar because of course i do. full disclosure: i stole most of those week day names from another DM because i love them. but basically the calendar for this world is a 12-month year, 28 day-month, 7 day-week, so it’s kept similar to our IRL calendar. this is where i keep my primary notes of what happens in each session. they’re brief, because 1) i have a pretty good memory for the hijinks the party gets up to, and 2) i put a lot of detail into the plans for each session so i feel like i can go more minimalist here. the most important things i note for each session are: where the party went, if they met any NPCs, the fights they had and if they obtained any special or magical items. i also use the calendar to keep track of full moons, world events and holidays in the world.

next up is Sessions!

[ID: The Sessions tab, showing a page titled “Adventures” with links to three adventures listed. On the side panel, there are sections called Adventures, Current Adventure, Campaign Notes, session ideas and Tech shit.]

“Adventures” is where I keep all the notes for past adventures (See below). I link to each paragraph (a feature of OneNote) so i can easily click and get to what i need to see. the “Current Adventure” page is where i keep notes for, you guessed it, the current session, just to minimize how much i need to scroll, and at the end of the session i cut/paste everything that we got to into the Adventures section. Campaign notes and session ideas are, again, where i furiously type notes that make no sense and need to be edited and expanded upon, haha. And Tech shit is where I put the order of stuff i need to plug in for my online sessions. i’m kind of a dummy.

below is an example of my session prep notes:

[ID: a screenshot of text showing detailed notes of Adventure 1.]

this is just to give you an idea of how detailed my notes are. they are typically this detailed, if not more so. but i know lots of DMs will basically type out a hook and a resolution and leave the middle blank for notes. it’s really up to you and how you best prep and run sessions. i err on the side of over-preparing because it’s who i am, and when i try to go into a session with less preparation, i feel overwhelmed lol. i occasionally add a few notes here and there as we play in this section, but as i said, keep most of my notes to the Calendar section.

you can also see above how i list NPCs that i expect my players to only briefly interact with. Name, age, appearance, a few notes about personality/motivation, and that’s it. OneNote is cool because you can search for specific words and phrases and it’ll search the whole notebook, so i can easily find these NPCs again if i need to. (note: normally my notes wouldn’t be this....structured? as in, they’ll be less linear than this typically, but this was for the first session where i knew which PCs i’d be introducing first, etc. don’t want you to think i’m a big old wet blanket DM.)

and that’s it! hopefully this is useful for some of you, or at least gives you ideas for how you might organize your game moving forward. IMO the most useful sections are the World, Calendar and Session sections: they’re what i reference and add to the most. let me know if you have any questions!

[mihidecet]

How to D&D 2: Tools

Welcome back! I do hope the previous post was enough to give all of you a general idea of what d&d is all about! 

Today we're gonna have a short and sweet look into what we need when playing. This should allow me to introduce some core concepts about the game itself too ahah

Once again, any questions or need for clarifications are absolutely and 100% valid. My dms and asks are always open <3

What can be usually found on the table when you're playing d&d?

First of all, and in my opinion the most important, your character sheet. The character sheet is basically an overview of who your character is, what they can do and how they can interact with the world. 

It contains all of the information you need to know to easily play (usually) and it's usually between 1 and 3 sheets of paper.

There are pdfs you can find online, usually editable on your computer. But if you plan on printing it - which depends on personal preferences - it's usually better to fill all the informations in in pencil, because most of them you'll be erasing and writing again many times. 

(You can also make your own with things you want/need, or write it down all by hand)

Then, you will need dice. 

Usually it's physical dices, but there are also online dice rollers that work perfectly fine. And I mean if you're playing online it might also be a built in thing in a website - I use roll20 for the campaigns I'm in, for dice rolling and combat. 

But physical dices don't usually cost much if you want a cheap plastic set to use just to have fun. I have about 14 sets because a friend found on Amazon a packet of 8 sets for 5€ and decided it would make for a great Secret Santa gift, and the remaining ones I got as presents by my old DM over the course of a couple of years. There are so many dices you can find anywhere, it's usually a lot of fun getting new ones ahahah

If you've already read the previous post, you know that dices are used to check whether your character will be able to do what they want to. 

So, when do we use dices? In combat, they're used for mostly everything you do. Out of combat, it depends. If you're trying to sneak around a guard, the DM will have you make a stealth check (meaning you throw a dice and add a number that will be on your character sheet, which represents your character's stealth "modifier"). But if you're asking a guard for directions, there is no need for a check. Now, if you are trying to convince a guard to let you pass, because the guard doesn't want you to, that would be a persuasion check. 

We'll go a bit more in depth about checks in later posts.

Now, and this is not mandatory but it would surely make your DM very happy: a notebook. 

While playing, you're going to do a lot of things. Meet a lot of people, have encounters, get missions, get rewards. 

It's in your personal best interest to keep track of what happens, or at least one person should do it. 

They don't need to be super detailed, but if your campaign involves like, solving a mystery, you're gonna want to remember things ahahha

It is also very fun to like, read back your notes and think up theories - or at least it's fun to me? I'm a nerd like that.

While D&D can be run mostly the way your DM wants to, it is always handy to have close by a rulebook. 

There are A LOT of rulebooks for d&d 5e (editions are re-writing of how the game works, as the game itself develops and more elements are added or changed).

The main one is the Player Handbook, which is every player's main text. There, you can find everything I am and will be writing about, plus a lot more. If you want to do some alone reading, that would be the place to start. 

Then there's the Dungeon Master's Guide, whose name is pretty self-explanatory. While in the handbook you can find everything you need to play, the DM's guide goes a bit more in depth regarding what a DM should know, plus a lot of tools to build your own campaign. 

Then, there are a lot more books that expand the world, the lore, and add more character options. 

Dwo main ones that come to mind are Xantar's guide to Everything, which adds more subclasses options and lore; the Monster Manual, which is an infinite list of potential enemies, all with their stat blocks (meaning, a smaller and more concise version of a character sheet). 

But there are tons and tons more! 

((And you can usually find them online, and if you enjoy the game you can always buy physical copies at a later date)).

Now, the final, and most important ingredients that you need for a d&d games are: snacks (this is a joke but also not, say hydrated if you plan to play for a long period of time) and a group of good friends! 

Role-playing is meant to be fun, so while frustration is natural when things don't go the way you want to, it's important to make sure everyone is having fun (yes, even your DM)! 

You've all got this, you're going to do amazing, and even if you make mistakes, no, you didn't! There are no mistakes in d&d, especially if you can laugh about it! ;)