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We at /r/DnD are excited to host Mike Shea of SlyFlourish.com! He'll be discussing his upcoming Kickstarter, his vast history as a freelancer in the TTRPG space, and anything else! Save all your questions and join us on Tuesday, July 7!

From Mike:

Hello!

I'm Mike Shea, writer for SlyFlourish.com and author of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and other books. A few years back I also released the Lazy GM's Resource Document into the Creative Commons to share what I've learned and gathered from other GMs into the world.

I've been playing RPGs since the mid-80s and writing about RPGs since 2008. I've been freelancing for various RPG companies for the past 15 years or so including Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, MCDM, Arcane Library, Pelgrane Press, and many others.

The Kickstarter for my latest book, Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster, is going on now! This is the latest of the Lazy GM books, expanding each of the eight steps of Lazy GM prep and taking a new focus on campaign planning, adventure types, and an expansive lazy GM toolkit. I hope you'll check it out.

I'm excited to be here to talk to you all about RPGs!

Hey everyone,

I've been working on designing interactive puzzles for my modular dungeon, and I wanted to share the final look with you all! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The Kickstarter campaign is currently live for anyone interested in checking out the full dungeon.
Kickstarter campaign link

Last night in our year long running campaign I had a first permanent death of a player character. There had been a death before but I allowed the player to make a pact with Tharizdun in which he came back to life with 1 level in warlock.

The current player however did not even want people to use revivify so he was okay with the character dying. The situation around it however, I heard after the session annoyed him.

To give a clear picture. I have a party of LVL7 players who are in the heart of Chult. They went into a temple that was plagued with Dinosaurs. I told them with my NPC guide character as such, that there was a great treasure to be found but the place was overrun.

They went into anyway. They fought in total 2 T-Rex, 4 velociraptors, 2 pterafolk. I’ll spare you the details but one of the Monk Tabaxi characters rolled a Nat1 when trying to jump over a ledge, fell face first in front of a T-Rex, did fall damage, the T-Rex did his multiattack and stomped the character in 2 rounds when he could not run away and other characters weren’t close to help. I then allowed a final epic action (I allow this for PC deaths) and while swallowing the Tabaxi used his claws to rip open the T-Rex.

So straight after the whole table just basically started making different kind of jokes about the character dying. Everyone was laughing and having fun, but it did took away from the severity of the situation. I noticed the player becoming a bit more silent while contemplating what happened.

Eventually they managed to get the treasure out of the temple, took the dead character with them and gave him a warriors funeral, putting his body on a canoe, setting it on fire and letting it drift along the river while each said nice things about the character and honestly it was a very heartfelt and nice moment.

After the session I asked my player if he was okay, he already had a backup character that we introduced at the end of the session and he was excited about playing the new one. But he did say that in the moment he didn’t felt taken serious with all the jokes and that what would have been a very sad and heavy moment got ruined basically up until the funeral which made things right a bit.

So basically, I am curious what could I have done better in the moment. Was I too loose with allowing all the joking, is this just to be expected of DnD, do I need to set more clear boundaries. Thanks for all your insights.

TLDR: Player character died, jokes by other players ruined the moment for him, got remedied later at the funeral, do I as DM set more clear boundaries in such moments?

Every day, I see multiple new posts of people asking for character or DMing advice. And every time, the top comment is some variation of "You can do whatever you want!"

I know I can do whatever I want. If I knew what I wanted, I wouldn't be asking a forum of internet strangers for advice.

Just give me how YOU would do it, so I can look at some options and use one as a jumping-off point to figure out my own solution. But don't tell me the world is my oyster when I can't figure out where to dive for pearls. Point me in a direction, otherwise you might as well not waste either of our times.

Last year, while I was running a campaign, something happened - something I'd rather not go into detail about - that made me feel like the time I invested in the game wasn't being appreciated.

I realized that, for some of my players, it didn't really matter whether they showed up to the table or not. They couldn't set aside even a few minutes of their time to engage with the campaign, while I, as the DM, spent a little time every day of the week preparing each session and trying to create the best experience possible for everyone.

That realization completely drained my motivation to run games. Little by little, I lost all enthusiasm, and I haven't played RPGs since.

We are playing in a long running campaign with a player named "Alex" who plays the character "Stone".

From the beginning, Stone has been very resistant to the call to adventure. Circumstances forced our party together, but while we have all found reason to continue, Stone has made it clear that they just want to go home.

Stone has never grown to like or trust the party. Worst of all, Stone seems disengaged with any aspects of the story that don't actively involve them.

Each of our characters has tried to form a bond with Stone. But they are either indifferent to our characters or (in the case of a couple of characters) actively distrustful of us.

For complicated backstory reasons, Stone particularly doesn't trust the main NPC that our party works with. Because this NPC delivers key info and plot hooks, this distrust gives Stone an excuse to argue with our characters and to have less trust in us. While this created interesting tension in the very beginning (when we were literally just starting out as a party), it got old fast.

It's now been revealed that the NPC was never at fault (so there is no reason for Stone to not trust him), but Stone is still holding that grudge.

It means that we have the same conversations over and over... "We shouldn't trust NPC because he betrayed me in my backstory", "But we now know that isn't true", "Well, I still don't trust him".

But when we are out of the game, Alex does show actual enthusiasm for the story and other characters. So I think that they just *enjoy* playing a character who really doesn't want to be adventuring and who doesn't really like the rest of the party.

Again, the DM has really tried and has given Stone reason to adventure and has tried to resolve the distrust between the NPC and Stone. But Alex is set on playing Stone as an edgy, reluctant hero...

It sucks the fun and joy out of the game... So what can we do as players?

finally finished drawing this bug guy! as said it's a thri-kreen entomancer character. honestly had so much fun working closely with the player to bring their specific homebrew ideas to life, especially balancing all those extra limbs and the jars. the big centipede on the arm was a super cool and unique addition during the sketch feedback phase but it fits perfectly. love the end result, what do yall think?

Goblin merchant 🧪

One of the countless goblin merchants haunting bustling roads and crowded city gates, this crafty peddler is always where coin changes hands.

With a pack stuffed full of dubious wares, suspicious bargains, and the occasional genuine treasure, he thrives on the endless flow of travelers. Wherever adventurers gather, opportunistic goblins like him are never far behind, ready to strike a deal.

Hey all I'm very new to dnd and trying to find tavern style music and bard songs and such thats all related to dnd that has and to be very clear , absolutely nothing to do with ai. Im absolutely exhausted trying to research, and google and source check every song i find and any help would be extremely appreciated