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Ah, travelers! We don't get many such as you in these parts, not since the Marquis' men took control of the pass. I suppose you're wondering why you can't post images or links on this Fifthday?

Thursdays are Text-post Only Days on /r/DnD. We're disabling picture and link posts for 24 hours to encourage discussion posts.

We originally began this trial about six months ago and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've personally enjoyed a lot of the conversations that have sprung up on these days (and a smarter mod would have bookmarked some of them to use as examples* in this post).

As of now we're planning on keeping the experiment running indefinitely. We're always looking for feedback, so please let us know of your experience. Have you been enamored with a discussion post that arose one Thursday? Have you mourned having to wait one more day to see your comic update? We welcome all takes.

The switch is still happening manually, so it will happen around about midnight Eastern US time. If anyone is aware of a way to automate the process, please message the mods.

Perhaps you could discuss this...we've heard tale of a path through the eastern ridge. If such a trail exists we could circumvent the Marquis' blockade and supply this rebellion. Won't you help us, strangers!?

* The first Thursday after making this post, someone posts the most classic question imaginable. This is what it's all about.

So that post kinda blew up, which I wasn't expecting. I honestly came here to complain, thinking I'd get a comment or two, not this.
Let me preface this by thanking everyone for their feedback, opinions and advice and let me apologize to those who thought this was ragebait. I don't have a whole lot of experience with classic DnD so if my vocab regarding classes and roles is lacking and therefore sounds fake, I apologize.

Now, context to answer frequent questions:

It was the DM's idea to have my character be the secret traitor. After the campaign ended, he gave me only a small insight into the background of the other player's characters and from my understanding each of them had some connection to the 'evil group' I was secretly working for. I believe he was setting up each of us to be able to have some dramatic reveal, but the other players aren't as into reveals and dramatic roleplay as I can get, so it didn't play out the way the DM wanted it to.

To make things clear, when I said that I've been almost two years with this group, I didn't mean this campaign took two years. We've only been playing this one for like a few months. Before this campaign it was actually one of the other players (27 M) playing as the DM and I absolutely love his campaign. In it, I actually never experienced any negative backlash regarding my gender or my character and I was the only woman on team even then.

As to why I still am in this group, or as you say this table, it's because I know those guys in real life. We've met, hung out and even larped together irl. And I've never had issues with them then, they never made me feel unsafe or disliked. They can actually be sweet and fun to hang around with, so really I don't know why it went south with this campaign. Truth is I am incredibly introverted and suck at making lasting friendships. This group is the only way I get frequent interactions with a group of people I know outside of work and school.

To some I've mentioned that my boyfriend (27 M, different guy than the first DM) is also in this group. No, he wasn't being cruel to me just to be cruel, he wasn't even actually mean. With him, I actually took it as jokes, given I was also making fun of his character and our characters were arguing constantly. But I suppose combined with the others poking fun at me and the frequency of it happening just pushed it past my comfort zone.

And now an update!

I spoke to the DM and my boyfriend, separately.

My boyfriend was supportive as he always is, offering suggestions and trying to be helpful. Unfortunately his suggestions only reminded me of the differences in experiences that we have as a man vs a woman. When I told him I was tired of feeling like the butt of the joke, he suggested I make an alliance with a player, who's making a big strong man as their character, have our characters be friends and have their character kick the butt of anyone mean to my character. The levels of pick-me and damsel-in-distress energy would be lethal. I love a trope where a big strong character has a parental, protective relationship with another, but I just know it wouldn't work in this group. Still, he listened, told me my feelings were valid and like many of you, told me to confront the other players and the DM about how I felt.

So I told the DM. I told him that the sexism and fatphobia are a bigger deal to me than I let on. That due to the treatment I recieved I wasn't looking forward to DnD as much as I used to. He apologized and told me to give him a heads-up if there are other topics or jokes I'd like him and the others to avoid in the future. However I do admit some of you are right in him not being the best guy ever. It showed in the way when I mentioned that mentions of SA are a hard no for me. Mostly because instead of saying "Ok, I won't include it" he said "Ok, so can you not handle it just being mentioned as a theme or is it the act itself?" Please, don't shout at me, I know that is a red flag the size of China.

Thanks to your feedback I will be proceeding with more caution and allow myself to be selfish and put my feelings first. I will proceed into session zero, because at the end of the day, I still love playing DnD and I don't want to loose the few friendships I do have. Not to mention that it allows me the escape I desperately need as a struggling college student. I love telling stories, creating characters and roleplaying as said characters with other people.

I thank you all for the compassion and advice you've given me. I have recieved invitations to other tables, which I am utmost greatful for. Unfortunately, being from The Czech Republic, I am not able to accept those invites. Never the less you made me feel seen and heard and I could not be more appreciative for that. Thank you for giving me your time and advice. Maybe I'll even start posting my creations and characters here!

Truly, thank you for hearing me out and giving me the push I needed.

I am currently dm-ing a group of players for Curse of Strahd, spoilers for such

Currently, they are at the scene in which the Donkey-Headed man in the stocks was just decapitated in front of them. The two party members who have seen this are desperate to fix this, this is their plan

1. Cast major illusion so the crowd and the executioner, Izek, won't see them

2. Collect the head and the body of the man, put them together, and cast an array of healing spells to see what works

With the party being separated, the session being minutes from over, and me just honestly not knowing how to handle it, I used it as a good closer.

With this campaign being Strahd, I'm inclined to not have the spells work, with the donkey-headed man already being decapitated, but I am unsure on how to balance narrating how their desperate actions will not bring this man back, without making my players feel as if it is relatively unfair.

How would you go about letting them down in this?

Edit: After reading so many comments, a few really stuck out to me, but there is one specific I love. The commenter "Voice of Aeona" said sending them to The Abbot could be a good plot line, and personally, I love it. To just keep them motivated enough, if they do manage to get the head and body together and cast a healing spell in time, Im going to turn him into a semi-conscious Flesh Gollem. Then Visilli (who is with them atp) will aim them towards The Abbey, saying a sly how he has been there before (not mentioning as Strahd). Thank you for all the wonderful comments, especially the Head of Vecna comment😂. 

I (22 F) have been playing DnD with this group for almost two years now. We just finished a rough campaign where my character, the secret traitor of the group betrayed our group for an evil goverment organization, with the other player's characters ending up getting experimented on by my character, who was a doctor/scientist.
After that was over the same DM (24 M) wanted to dm again, but in the same world and setting (post apocalyptic fictional island riddled with undead and mutants) just with new characters. Now, to give more context in the last campaign I was the only woman, not to mention I made my character be a plus size lady. That earned me a whole lot of sexistic and fatphobic jokes which I tried to laugh along with while lowkey dying inside.
Anyway, since I didn't feel comfortable playing a guy just to fit in, I decided to make a nonbinary character. I already drafted up their design. They're a somewhat femme presenting person with no real focus on sexuality or gender (Again, the setting is post apocalypse, ain't noone tryna look like the Tomb Raider).

So I send my draft to the dm with a picture of the character and just the summary of the class and the fun fact about them being non-binary. His first response is "Bruh" before adding "Why not make things complicated?" I was confused, thinking he didn't like my choice of a class, which ig fair, we still needed a medic and leader, but given that I was the medic last campaign, I didn't want a repeat. So I asked what exactly was complicated and what could be complicated about a non-binary character. I just saw it as a shift in grammar and not just being seen as "The girl" of the group. His response about the issue is "How to reffer to you? How will the others react to you?" Which is annoyingly vague and leaves me wondering if he was reffering to the other players or the NPC's. I gave him my suggestions to how NPC's could call out to my character and then he goes "Right, but then one will go 'That lady' and your character will loose it and go on a rant about misgendering and not identifying as female."

The whole interaction overall left me feeling bitter about the whole thing. I just wanted to step out of my comfort zone in roleplay while also giving myself more of a chance to blend in with the group. But now I'm second guessing everything. I don't want to back down so easily at the first pushback, but I also don't want to make it a whole annoying thing. But at the same time it really sucks that the last message he sent is "Like I told the others, ok, go ahead, but control yourself" which I have no idea how to interpret.

Am I overreacting?

I've been DMing for a while and kept running into the same problem. Either the tool was too basic or I was paying a monthly fee for features I used maybe 20% of. And I never fully trusted cloud tools with years of campaign notes.

So I built something for myself and figured I'd share it.

World Forge is a single .html file. Download it, open it in your browser, done. No account, no subscription, nothing. Everything saves locally and you can export a full backup anytime.

What's in it:

• Characters, factions, locations, religions, creatures, artifacts, conflicts, quests
• A relationship web so you can actually see how your NPCs and factions connect
• Timeline and custom calendar system for tracking your campaign history
• Map section with pins linked to your world entries
• 17 generators for when you need an NPC, town, or plot hook on the fly
• Multiple worlds so you can keep campaigns separate
• Export your full world as Markdown to paste into Notion, Obsidian, or wherever you keep your notes

Built it mainly for long term campaigns where you need to actually remember who knows what and who hates who.

It's on itch.io if anyone wants it. Happy to answer questions.

I'm running a huge homebrew that has a bunch of moving parts. Long story short I have 'stuff' and 'story' quests in all the cities and whatnot. No matter how, whether it be note on the ground, rumors at the bar, or the quest board it all leads to about 10 quests that have a collective 2-3 plot hooks. The quest they choose determines items and/or rewards and it gives the illusion of choice while progressing the story. I'm not a madman so what they choose is what I write about and recently the problem occurred.
They took a long term quest to collect the parts to a staff a prophet asked them to collect, one piece being a branch from a tree that exists in multiple planes at once. Very sacred, very secret. They got in good with the leader of the druids well enough for him to show them the tree. It's a whole thing, coming to this village, promises to the leader to save his children from being the next tree, a demon invasion that the tree prevents. All based around the Ellcrys tree from the sword of Shannara series if anyone is familiar.
All of it was a lie. Never once was it 'I want to trick this guy to get a branch' or 'Play along with the villagers and run away' Months of playing (8-10 sessions once a week) and hours and hours of writing and they finally get a branch and say 'gotcha'. I have the entire demon invasion planned, the entire escape planned and enough written to improvise a number of things if them come up. Major plot points that directly relate to both of their characters main goals and world changing events happening and they only cared about a branch the entire time. They just plan on leaving, and maybe saving/taking the children when they do so.
I'm half venting and half looking for advice at this point. I have plans in place for if the demons succeed and start entering the world, that's not the issue. It's more about preventing this from becoming a normal and repeated thing. First group I've DM'd for but been doing it for a while now. Should players hide stuff from the DM like that or am I overreacting? If they fumble major plot points about their characters main goals like this should i just lead them into it later or let it be a forever dead end now?

We recently wrapped up our final day of games aboard the Event.Cruises D20 Cruise to Bermuda, and it was an incredible experience from start to finish. We shared unforgettable adventures, rolled a lot of dice, and created some amazing memories together with an awesome community of players and GMs.

I had the chance to run two very different groups during the trip. One campaign followed a pirate crew searching for a hidden treasure to fulfill their captain’s dying wish. Their journey eventually led them to a mysterious hidden island filled with vast treasures, ancient dangers, and the discovery of a powerful wish orb that could change the fate of the seas.

The second group found themselves trapped aboard a cursed cruise ship. During the day, every cursed passenger believed it was their very first day setting sail. But when night fell, the passengers transformed into horrifying monsters who remembered every terrible event from the last 100 years aboard the ship. The players had to investigate the mystery during the daylight hours and survive the horrors that emerged each night.

So, I've been playing in this game for a couple of sessions and having plenty of fun. But when I approached the DM about how to proceed with my backstory (simple enough revenge plot), they told me that they weren't planning on incorporating backstories into the game. Now, I wouldn't mind if I knew this before, but we spent quite some time before the game talking back and forth to make it fit the setting and would have made something different or not made the effort if I knew it would not matter.

It has kind of drained my interest in the game since I feel weird playing a character with a dead motivation now.

Any advice on how to regain my lost interest?

Edit: I feel I need to be clear: I don't mind playing a pc with a backstory that doesn't relate to the game. Problem is that it went from building a backstory with the DM explicitly saying "Pc is hunting X for revenge" to "don't bother asking about X, not gonna include that in the game."

Anyone care to share their honest opinions about Hit Point Press Big Book of Big Bads and Creatures Curios?

I'm looking at their new big bads book coming out and I'm interested in their stuff but I can't seem to find any reviews on reddit or YouTube about the material.

I did the Invincible meme with my DnD party, and this was way too funny to draw. I was laughing the entire time while making it.

Don’t ask questions about the catgirl’s gadget. It’s her main weapon and somehow the strongest weapon in the party, but nobody wants to touch it for very obvious reasons. It’s her weapon, after all.

Maybe I’ll do one for my other DnD party too, where I somehow ended up playing 3 characters at the same time. Roleplaying as 3 orcs at once is honestly hilarious. These Invincible memes are just too funny not to draw.