## Thread Rules

​

* New to Reddit? Check the Reddit 101 guide.

​

* If your account is less than 5 hours old, the /r/DnD spam dragon will eat your comment.

​

* If you are new to the subreddit, **please check the Subreddit Wiki**, especially the Resource Guides section, the FAQ, and the Glossary of Terms. Many newcomers to the game and to r/DnD can find answers there. Note that these links may not work on mobile apps, so you may need to briefly browse the subreddit directly through Reddit.com.

​

* **Specify an edition for ALL questions**. Editions must be specified in square brackets ([5e], [Any], [meta], etc.). If you don't know what edition you are playing, use [?] and people will do their best to help out. AutoModerator will automatically remind you if you forget.

​

* **If you have multiple questions unrelated to each other, post multiple comments** so that the discussions are easier to follow, and so that you will get better answers.

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.

Hello! I like to make miniature scenes, and am super proud of this one. I carved the lute and staff from basswood, the daggers are coffee stirring sticks. I used an old earring for the sword that I added detailing to and used fabric scraps for the pack and quiver. The fire comes out so it can turn on and off.

Thanks for taking a peak at my little hobby! I’m going to try to sell this and others at a local craft show in November, but this one might get priced ridiculously high so it comes back home with me… hahaha.

Dragon punchy boy that I drew a few months ago Not much backstory behind this guy none at all really lol. I think I was just going through subclasses to draw and the one with the dragons always gonna stand out. I put him on a mini stand which is fun but I’ll prolly put more effort into the stand next time I do one of these.
I’m happy with how the dragons and upper body look but I’m whatever about the rest.
Uuuh if you’ve got any ideas for him or some name suggestions let me know below,
Thanks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

If you have ran a campaign for six months and your players are above level 5, let them acquire griffons! I tried that in my weekly game and it was a great experience. Being able to fly around the kingdom gave my players so much freedom, and some of them really connected with their pets and crafted special armor and Horseshoes of Speed for them, which enhanced their roleplay and character customization options. They still can't feasibly take them into dungeons, so it doesn't really matter for game balancing when we are dungeon crawling, which is the juice of the gameplay challenge of D&D.

In my case, my PCs became high ranking agents of the Zhentarim a received their griffons as a perk when they were level 7, but in a different party you could allow a druid to befriend a group of wild griffons, or a barbarian to save a group of captured griffons from being sent to the City of Brass where they will be forced to pull flying chariots, or a bard to save a bunch of griffons forced to perform in a circus. If you are in Waterdeep, griffons are already quite easy to obtain, so the Lord's Alliance could give them as reward. Up to you! I'm certain your players will be excited with the freedom it will allow them, and I don't think it can do any harm to a game! And let me know if you already did something like that and how it went down in your campaign.

(Reposting because I got heated and failed the Chill Check horribly. Sorry about that.)

"Don't blame me! My character just does whatever she wants half the time!" Said our Druid after she openly and maliciously tried to abandon our party in an ambush that got our Artificer and Rogue kidnapped by mage cultists.

I didn't PK her right then and there because I played a Lawful Good Fighter, a PSI Warrior to be specific. I was determined to stay the goodiest-goodie-good a goodie-good can be and I was not about to break character.

After ignoring her many pleas for us to come up with a plan, because we either rescue our friends now or they get carted away to parts unknown, we barely saved them in time with the Wizard surprising the cultists with a carpet bomb of fireballs (our Wizard has a dark sense of humor and yelled at the cultists to "Get Nagasaki'd!!") and me smashing the backwheels while the cultists were spooked. Our Druid, despite being mad at us for refusing to listen to her, did participate by turning into a bear and maul the cultists while the Wizard and I freed the Artificer and Rogue and let them get their payback.

We won with a fabulously one-sided fade ran in our favor, but the damage was done and everyone above game was not happy with the Druid. I don't know how our Druid managed to do worse than say "It's what my character would do!" But she did.

As the title says.

I'll be running games soon, and i'd need some advices for that. The reason is because all the the good apps are only in english (and we are not english-speaking native). And whule i have no issue woth the language of Tolkien, translating every single text and converting feet to meters would a tedious task to add to an already tedious one (being the DM).

So what are your tricks to keep tracks of everything easily with no electronics ? And i mean as well as the initiative, concentration, players state, the monsters' stats sheet that could not be planned from the beginning (like if my Players decide to do something else than planned). I have the Monster Book but it's pretty massive and not convenient...

Thanks :)

Hey, guys.

I am sorry if this isn't the right place for this. I am just so overwhelmingly upset about something that happened yesterday.

I have this character I've been playing across multiple campaigns for a very long time (over a year, and he was my very first D&D character).

And even though I play him in multiple settings, I always made sure the campaigns and their timelines would fit together, so it didn't feel unreasonable for him to be where he was. To me, they were all parts of the same story.

I was always extremely careful with him, knowing he would always choose to flee rather than fight, because I wanted him to live no matter what.

And then yesterday I played a lower-level version of him, at a point in his life I had never played before. This was supposed to take place before the other campaigns, so everything I had already played with him was still in his future.

And then, because a friend made a horrible decision, our group had a TPK. It was one of those decisions followed by: "That's what my character would do."

We had talked our way into a cult gathering and were still undercover. Then he drew his swords while we were surrounded. We shouldn't have fought, but he started it. There was nothing my character could do to escape, and we all died.

I am angry, more upset than I should be, probably. It is just a game, after all. But... he was a character who embodied everything I wish I could be sometimes. I loved thinking of him in different scenarios, playing him in any campaign.

But now, to me, it doesn't make sense anymore. He died. Across all those campaigns, in my head. I know, I'm overreacting. I am just venting, really. Sorry if none of this makes sense.

Hey everyone - this one is from years ago, but it still makes me laugh and brings back fond memories at times...

I was running my own homebrew world (started back in 2015) and had Lost Mine of Phandelver lined up, with Ghosts of Saltmarsh ready as the follow-up, but my party had other plans. After finishing Phandelver, they walked right past both story hooks for Saltmarsh, found a boat that wasn't theirs, and pointed it at the one spot on my map that was literally just a name: Dreadparish Isle (which was my placeholder for the Saltmarsh content that they completely ignored storywise)

So there I was, building an island on the fly while they argued about who had to row with skill checks and all. I remember them arriving there and I tried one last time to get them on board with the first mansion investigation story hook while placing a few other story seeds of my own that wer ejust there to flesh out the world. But all they were focused on was exploring more of the island thanks to my hooks.

The funny part is that the island never went away. It stayed in the world, it got a harbour, a council of captains and a whole history, and it keeps growing every time I come back to it (it even ended up in a book I'm writing currently, a fantasy novel set in that same world, but that's a story for another day).

So I'm curious on your journeys and experiences that came from them - what's the furthest your group ever went off your map? Did you improvise your way through it, and did the place they found end up sticking around long after the session or even campaign?

Cheers.

TL;DR: I'm DMing Curse of Strahd for four close friends who are still fairly inexperienced as am I. Mismatched play styles, a player who struggles with failure, and a couple whose behavior at the table breaks immersion have me burned out. I don't blame anyone, and I'm open to the idea that my DMing is part of it. I want to talk to everyone without drama, encourage role-play, and enjoy the game again.

Hi everyone, I need advice. I'm DMing Curse of Strahd for four friends. We've played 4 sessions, and after two of them I wanted to quit. This isn't about blaming anyone. I know my DMing style is part of the problem, and I'm open to hearing that. I think I'm fairly flexible with rules, but what feels flexible to me may not feel that way to them. I don't want to punish anyone or force my preferred game on them, but I also want to have fun, or else why am I doing this? Generally I enjoy playing with them, but the last session was especially bad and that’s what pushed me to write this post.

These are my best friends of about 12 years, and the friendship matters more than the campaign so I don’t want to make a mistake and for all of it to turn into big drama.

The table (everyone has roughly 10-20 sessions behind them, except for me and Z, who has more and has DMed a bit):

Z (my girlfriend): human warlock, very roleplay-focused
P: aasimar paladin, loves combat, light on roleplay
O: kalashtar artificer
M (O's partner): gnome ranger, his first campaign

What I'm seeing:

Player engagement. I'm struggling to get the table invested in the game itself. A lot of the time it feels like they just want to move to the next step, talk to the next NPC, and move on again, with little emotion or play in it. It feels empty to me. Part of that may be on me: I don't feel connected to my NPCs in Curse of Strahd, and I don't know how to fix that. Also I get discouraged when I try to role-play NPC and I don’t get much role-play out of them.

P in particular is hard to read. He enjoys combat and used to roleplay a bit, but last session, which had no combat, he didn't take part at all (even though I tried to include him and Z tried to involve him into a scene). He was tired after work, but it was frustrating to me and Z. I don't know how to draw him in when there's no fight. Maybe part of that is that they don’t feel connected to their characters.

O and failure. She's had bad luck with dice since session 0 (rolled stats, low HP at level-up) and she gets discouraged easily. When things go wrong not only with the dice but also in the story, she loses motivation, withdraws, or gets annoyed. It leads to very tense situations in which I feel very uncomfortable. It reached a point in which I dread her important rolls because I don’t want tension at the table or even an argument. In addition to that she argues the rules quite often and doesn’t take the no very well.

Also she told me her character feels flat and she doesn't know how to roleplay her. I suspect it's because she built the character around an optimized build rather than a personality or story, which is fine (I like optimizing too), but now she's stuck. How do I help her without being pushy?

I warned everyone that Curse of Strahd is brutal and that deaths are likely. Failure is part of D&D and of storytelling generally, so I don't know how to help her with it without softening the game.

M and O. M is doing great for a first-timer. He made a simple character with a clear backstory and stayed in character when the group pressured him, which impressed me. But he struggles to watch O get frustrated. Meaning well, he tries to fix it with things like "it's just a game" or "it'll get better," which tends to make it worse, because she often just needs space. He also sometimes breaks character to help her character, even though they barely know each other in the story. That breaks the scene for everyone, especially Z, who takes roleplay seriously.

Meta gaming: Due to the above they meta game like crazy and I don’t have anything against light meta gaming (it sometimes sucks to realize that you had an ability you could’ve used and your character would’ve probably known about it but you, a player forgot. So having someone remind you that you could do that I think is OK) It really breaks the immersion and kills any role play that could have been played and it pains me sometimes and really frustrates Z. Us both try to stop them but we don’t want to come of as too high strung or as metagaming police. How do I deal with them metagaming?

Z's character. Being morally gray, she sometimes goes against the party or splits off, and the others can resent it. I've talked to her about it. Others also sometimes say a flat "no" instead of "yes, and," which stalls the story. How do I talk to them about being more open to cooperation without betrayal of their characters values?

Table behavior. O and M sometimes do PDA that clashes with the scene (O sitting on M's lap, pouting about a failed spell while the party crosses a dark forest). We often play at their place, so I don't know how to raise it without overstepping.

Roleplay prompts. Z told me I don't encourage roleplay well. I never cut players off mid-conversation, but when there's a window for roleplay I tend to say it bluntly: "You're traveling for four hours. Do you want to talk to each other or move on?" I know there are better ways. But I’d appreciate some tips on how to encourage role-play in those slower moments in the game.

Rules. I try to say yes, but I have limits (like a ritual needing 100gp of diamonds nobody has). Since only I know the rules well, my rulings can feel arbitrary. Should I be more relaxed or how do I communicate better that rules matter to me?

Feeling underappreciated. I put a lot into this: printing paper minis to save money, drawing maps, prepping modding a lot of the module so it plays better. I know others may do more, but reactions are often a lukewarm "oh, cool," and sometimes I feel taken for granted. How do I tell them without coming across needy? Or maybe I ask too much and should just suck it up?

My plan: I'm afraid an open group discussion would turn into everyone listing what others do wrong. Instead I want to talk to each person one-on-one, like I did with Z: ask for feedback on my DMing, help anyone who wants it flesh out their character, share my feedback, and ask what they want from the game (even though we did all that in session 0). I'd tell everyone I'm doing this with each of them. But at the same time I don't want to act like the group therapist. Is that a good plan? How do I deal with talking to them?

I also consider doing a second session 0 to express my concerns and listen to feedback but also I don’t want to miss a game session because as probably all of you know scheduling is a nightmare.

I’m aware this is a lot and maybe the problem is expectations of mine and everyone’s else’s. If you’ve read to this point thank you and I appreciate all tips and guidance you may have regarding one or more of stuff I mentioned.