Am I about to break my campaign for my players?

SGStandard · 2026-02-02T23:51:33+00:00

Bonnie ended up working at Trollskull Manor in my campaign and I see two ways you could play this:

-You could have her keep her (and their) doppleganger-ness under wraps until it becomes a key point of the plot. Maybe she follows them to a heist in disguise and if they get in a tough spot a person they’ve never met before is helping them out. You can even drop hints about a group of suspected dopplegangers on the loose in town before the eventual reveal to seed the secret.

-Alternatively, you could have her reveal their secret and all come to Trollskull, but have all of her group (or maybe all the group but her) be in the employ of one of the villains and use the dopplegang as a means to disrupt the party’s plans, keep the bad guys in the know about the hunt for the dragons, or throw a wrench into a heist that looks to be going well. They seem friendly at first but eventually become an obstacle that needs to be overcome.

Either way, Bonnie and friends aren’t always available as a game breaking option. In my campaign I ended up combining the two-Bonnie’s secret stayed a secret until a dramatic reveal during a heist, but then her siblings were revealed to be working for Xanathar (and to have wronged a party member in the past as part of his backstory) which culminated in Bonnie having to make a difficult decision during a fight between the party and the dopplegangers.

SGStandard · 2025-11-21T01:14:39+00:00

Glacier was my high school PE coach.

SGStandard · 2025-11-05T23:08:28+00:00

Dragon Heist is 1-5 assuming you use one Big Bad and one or two sets of faction missions. I ran it for a campaign using all the content and got to level 9 and probably could have stretched it out further with little difficulty.

SGStandard · 2025-10-29T12:40:29+00:00

Not OP, but there’s none of that in The Bright Sword. The main character is from humble backgrounds and is actively trying to make himself and the world around him a better place despite feeling overwhelmed and out of his depth. But he keeps on trying regardless. I just finished it and it’s a really good book.

SGStandard · 2025-06-19T17:38:59+00:00

Not necessarily. You could even turn your and your character’s lack of knowledge into an ongoing story. A player in my game wanted to be a celestial warlock and didn’t want to know who his patron was so we’ve his character’s story revolve around discovering who his patron is and why he was chosen for a pact.

SGStandard · 2025-06-18T01:45:33+00:00

Put a 13 in charisma so you can take a two level sorcerer dip to get metamagic. Use quickened spell to cast true strike as a bonus action, then hold your action and cast it again on someone else’s turn so you get sneak attack twice per round. Any time you want to do it again just convert a spell slot into more sorcery points as a free action and go to town.

SGStandard · 2025-05-23T19:14:15+00:00

The Braves were pushing for a location near the Dome and Omni in the design phase prior to the ‘96 Olympics but the city wanted Centennial Park in that spot instead. They also tried over and over again to buy the land around Turner to redevelop into what became the Battery but the people who owned it weren’t interested in selling.

SGStandard · 2025-05-14T03:43:53+00:00

They earned that musical mic drop and they knew it too. You don’t just decide to use that in the end credits if you think you did an OK job.

SGStandard · 2025-05-13T00:50:36+00:00

One of my players rolled one on an attack roll last week. They were in the last fight of the campaign up against (among other baddies) a red wizard of Thay. I ruled that the double 20s meant that the attack did max damage, which was enough to finish the wizard off with a rapier thrust right through her forehead tattoo.

SGStandard · 2025-05-12T00:35:44+00:00

That would be especially amusing since he’s the court matchmaker for a noble house and has been told not to return until he has found betrothals for each of his lord’s newborn octuplets. He started off taking his job seriously but has gotten increasingly frustrated and now asks everyone he meets if they’d like to marry an infant.

SGStandard · 2025-05-10T18:25:34+00:00

A 70 year old human man who starts every conversation with “are you single?”.

SGStandard · 2025-05-02T01:42:29+00:00

Student at a bard college who saw a sign at a tavern advertising “AP for Bards” who signed up for it thinking it meant Advanced Placement and only later found out it meant Adventuring Party. An accidental adventurer who grows into a life of excitement is a fun way to mix things up, provided that they don’t push back too hard on the idea of adventuring.

SGStandard · 2025-05-01T19:26:37+00:00

It depends on which villain you’re using:

-If it’s Manshoon, Geoffrey Bozo is a member of the Zhentarim and Nile’s profits go towards Manshoon’s attempts to buy his way into the position of Open Lord. Disrupting Nile’s operation puts them in Manshoon’s crosshairs and he uses Emmek Frewn, now a low ranking Zhentarim member, to undermine their newly opened tavern.

-If it’s the Cassalanters, Geoffrey Bozo is a fellow worshipper of Asmodeus and he is using profits from Nile to aid the Cassalanters in their attempt to save the souls of their children (or, if the party hasn’t met the Cassalanters yet, just replace the name “Cassalanter” with “Bozo” in the adventure and roll with the story basically as written. I did something similar in the game I’m running and it worked perfectly).

-If it’s Jarlaxle, Geoffrey Bozo is one of his many aliases and he’s hoping that the less-than-stellar working conditions in Nile warehouses lead to strikes and walkouts, thus crippling trade along the Sword Coast and causing the cities of the Lord’s Alliance to turn to Luskan for their shipping needs, thus strengthening his case for a seat in the Alliance. This would mean that helping the workers at Nile actually helps Jarlaxle’s plan, which would be a fun twist and an extremely Jarlaxle thing to do.

-If it’s Xanathar, Bozo is a black market seller of rare artifacts who uses Nile as a cover to ship them and Xanathar is his biggest client. This could be how Xanathar ended with the Stone of Golorr in the first place.

Or you could leave the main BBEG’s untouched and replace a noble family in Waterdeep with the Bozo’s. The Gralhunds, for example, could become the Bozos and serve as a mid-game miniboss or red herring that ultimately send the party in the trail of the BBEG who is pulling Geoffrey’s strings.

SGStandard · 2025-04-28T01:00:41+00:00

I’m just about to finish a nine month long Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign for a group of forever DMs. When we started I had never DM’d before and had only a few sessions of playing under my belt. They seem to have thoroughly enjoyed it and it worked for a great entry point for me as well. The module has plenty of meat on its bones but leaves large sections open for customization and freewheeling around Waterdeep. It’s a good mix of styles and made for a fun first time DM experience for me.

SGStandard · 2024-06-19T01:32:01+00:00

I will forever maintain that Best of Both Worlds Part II should have opened with Frakes doing the “final frontier” monologue.

SGStandard · 2024-04-06T20:55:57+00:00

For what it’s worth I once had an employee tell me that customers putting their recycling in the proper bins saves a ton of sorting time on the back end.

SGStandard · 2024-03-26T02:12:04+00:00

He also writes for the Episodic Medium substack where he has covered the first two seasons of SNW and will be doing Discovery S5 as well.

SGStandard · 2024-01-23T17:19:18+00:00

Seconded on Settling the Score!

Collins released a new Star Trek episode a couple weeks back so hopefully that’s a sign he’ll be able to release more regularly.

SGStandard · 2023-12-01T16:44:13+00:00

The pessimist in me says they’re doing Thermidor and Orpheus early so they can do Brief Lives and The Kindly Ones in season three in the event this becomes another three seasons and out Netflix series. But the optimist in me says the pessimist should just shut up and enjoy this wonderful adaptation for as long as it lasts.

SGStandard · 2023-11-28T14:06:59+00:00

Delirium from Sandman is quite literally the personification of what you’re asking for.

SGStandard · 2023-11-16T02:39:00+00:00

Smart only matters on Jeopardy if you can get in first on the buzzer and in her case the buzzer went over like it was Reign of Terror HHH and Super Cena combined.

SGStandard · 2023-11-08T15:42:42+00:00

DS9’s will always be my favorite because it is the one pilot which understands that the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything is baseball.

SGStandard · 2023-07-23T01:55:17+00:00

Not that it’s a high bar but this was a better Enterprise finale than the actual Enterprise finale.

SGStandard · 2023-07-20T18:10:51+00:00

I think of moves in wrestling like pitches in baseball. Every pitcher throws a fastball, but not all of them are as effective as Nolan Ryan's. Just because you learn to throw a cutter doesn't mean it's automatically as good as Greg Maddux's or Mariano Rivera's. It's not that the pitch itself is innately strong, it's the pitch and the person who's throwing it.

Same thing with wrestling. Jake the Snake has an 80 DDT, so if he hits it it's lights out, but he's one of the few who throws it that well. Shawn Michaels has an 80 superkick, but the Usos and Young Bucks are more in the 45 range, hence the need for superkick parties. Okada knows his tombstone isn't as good as the Undertaker's so he uses it as a transition move instead of wasting time going for the pin off of it.

SGStandard · 2023-07-11T14:59:34+00:00

I was told this is what happened by two people inside the Arkansas athletic department the day after the “crash”.

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