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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!

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?

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

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?

My player is a dragonborn wild magic sorcerer. For context, he LOVES wild magic. He rolls it a lot and I let him because it's funny, even if sometimes it's not RAW. Sometimes it causes trouble — we had a chase fight on magical minecarts, and he got teleported into the abyss from the minecart he was riding. But most of the time it's just harmless fun.

Today my players were fighting a major boss. He was tough so the sorcerer used a lot of re-rolls and rolled a lot of wild magic. First, he rolled that Reincarnate will apply to him automatically if he dies within 1 minute. It was the 3rd round of the fight, me and my players kinda joked about it but I didn't think he would actually die.

On his last turn he rolls a 1. He has to roll for wild magic at the start of his every turn for the next minute. Other players shuddered in horror. Thankfully, the fight was over. But it meant that my sorcerer got to roll for wild magic 10 times.

He rolls for the first time. Fireball. He magically lives and leaves one other player with 1 HP. That player runs away into the other corner of the room. Others' characters watch in shock as the sorcerer's wild magic continues.

Second roll. Nothing interesting. Third roll. Fireball. At this point the sorcerer falls unconscious. We stop the rolls to argue if we should continue. My warlock rightfully points out that, since the sorcerer is down, he can't cast wild magic and that after he is reincarnated or healed he shouldn't roll for it anymore. And he's right, of course. But my sorcerer looks at me with those puppy eyes and asks if maybe he can roll the rest of his wild magic before he goes unconscious. This man just exploded 2 times and he wants to continue to roll, who am I to say no? We decided that it'll be funny and all watched as he rolled wild magic and death saves.

At the start his death saves were okay. Then he rolls another Fireball. He exploded AGAIN. Of course, with that he fails his death saves. The warlock pulled out an extended table for Reincarnate and they rolled for his new race. So, from the ashes as a phoenix he rose, as a kenku. And we continued rolling for wild magic.

At this point, all the other characters, the antagonist included, are huddled in the opposite corner of the room. It turns into a straight-up religious experience — they watch as the now kenku sorcerer starts floating, turns into a plant, dies as a plant (so he is kenku again), casts Mirror Image, turns into a plant AGAIN, floats AGAIN, casts Mirror Image once again and, in the end, embraces sobriety. We end the session with me describing how the walls of the dungeon begin to collapse, which I decided is a natural consequence of bombardment of that scale.

Moral of the story — don't let your sorcerer roll for wild magic 10 times. Or let them IDK it was pretty funny.

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.

Hello all this is my first dnd post and I'm posting for my gf who is also the dm of this story.

Her,me, and a couple of online friends have been running a campaign for a couple of months at this point online and me and my gf believe that one of the players are faking their dice rolls.

Anytime he's asked to roll anything involving his character or his gf's character he never fails a rolls and often says he rolls 20's.

For the last 2 sessions he has rolled nothing but 20's (8 20's in a row).

This makes me and my gf really skeptical of his rolls.

Would it be fair if we make him show us his rolls as they happen?

If a character is ahead of the rest of the party, and I have melee combat enemies, that character is getting swarmed and possibly brought down because I keep enemies on an adversary once they've attacked it unless another character has proven they're more of a threat.

On one hand, I think that's what they should do. Concentrate attacks until the adversary is down.

On the other hand , I'm discouraging heroism.

Kaliyah, the Seeker: Once a trustworthy warlock, Kaliyah's soul was shattered in a catastrophic ritual, splitting her into two separate beings and stripping away every trace of emotion. Devoid of compassion, fear, joy, or remorse, she now wanders the world in an endless search for a way to restore herself to a single existence. Every scholar, sage, mage, and traveler she encounters is questioned, each judged on the worth of their answer. Those who fail to provide a solution, attempt to deceive her, or simply waste her time are slaughtered without hesitation, their lives discarded as meaningless obstacles on her relentless journey.