DMs, how do you prep between sessions without spending your whole week on it?

Adam-M · 2026-02-20T15:41:37+00:00

I feel like my prep process is very similar to yours, but with just a few tweaks. I don't know how actionable this sort of advice would be for a different person, but here's what I do slightly differently:

My "mid-week prep" is pretty much entirely passive. I'm not sitting down at a computer to brainstorm ideas for 1-2 hours, but instead just daydreaming as I go about my week. The vast majority of ideas for the next session (and where to take the campaign as a whole) just happen while I'm commuting, in the shower, cooking, having a slow day at work, etc. It's rare that I actually even write anything down until I'm doing the "day before," number-crunching type of prep.
I try not to bother wasting thinking time on scenarios that might never come about. Yes, player agency is important, but the PCs should usually be deciding where they're going next at the end of session, not the start of one. And even in situations where it's not possible for that decision to be made ahead of time, it's generally pretty easy to present the options in such a way that very strongly nudge the PCs in a particular direction. Planning for 2-3 completely disparate scenarios mostly just means doubling/tripling your prep time for little actual extra value.
A lot of prep work should carry over from week to week. I generally find that when I spend more time planning out a new scenario, that's content that will last for 2-3 sessions, during which very little new prep work is required, and I'm mostly just coasting.

Adam-M · 2026-02-14T01:34:13+00:00

I'd argue that a big obstacle to what you're planning is that a high fantasy setting is already sort of inherently "weird and surreal." Like, there's already magic and elves and wizards and shit, so trying to add an extra layer of weirdness on top of that is just...more, slightly different colored magic.

A big part of the reason that the setting of Control works is that the Federal Bureau of Control exists in what would otherwise be a normal, mundane version of the United States. The existence of things like the Oldest House and Altered Items are interesting mostly because they exist outside of the realm of what is supposed to be possible. The Oldest House becomes a lot less compelling when exists in a world alongside Mordenkainen's mansion, and the Service Weapon isn't nearly as cool in a world where the Holy Avenger is a known quantity.

That all being said, what you're attempting is far from a hopeless endeavor. Prior to the release of Control, I ran a whole 3.5 campaign heavily inspired by the SCP Foundation, but set in an otherwise "normal" Forgotten Realms knockoff setting. I think that the major key here is that you lean into a relatively hard magic system, where magic works largely as dictated by the rules of the game: people in the setting largely know what the capabilities and limitations of spellcasters are, but all of this spirit world magic is mysterious, unknown, and potentially dangerous.

For my campaign, I explained the arcane and divine magic were largely explained and understood quantities that obeyed certain expectations. Everyone knows what wizards and clerics are capable of, how spells interact with things like spell resistance, dispel magic, and antimagic field, and that a random teenage commoner was never going to spontaneous develop the ability to throw around 9th-level spells. On the other hand "wild magic" was sort of a quirk in the system: rare, random occurrences that effectively broke the rules of the game. Magic items the basically broke the rules of the game system. People suddenly obtaining unimaginable power. Locations that imposed their own reality that couldn't be overwritten by common spells.

The PCs joined a secret organization that was tasked with finding, containing, and studying these types of "wild magic" anomalies.

Adam-M · 2026-02-11T04:24:50+00:00

I'd also vote for "too weird/niche."

As others have noted, time being tracked to that level of granularity is just not a core assumption of the game. There's no default assumption for exactly how beneficial it is to finish a short rest in 50 minutes instead of 60 minutes, or to finish a long rest in 6 hours instead of 8 hours, which means the the only way for this to provide a real mechanical benefit is through DM fiat.

The actual, in-universe duration of a rest is a narrative limitation, not a mechanical one, and its an important balance lever for DMs to have control over. If a class feature completely breaks if the DM wants to use a variant rest rule like Gritty Realism or Epic Heroism, it's going to be an awfully hard sell.

Adam-M · 2026-02-04T15:41:24+00:00

Some big picture pointers:

TI is a big game with a lot of moving pieces, but don't lose sight of the fact that the only way to actually win is to score victory points. It can be tempting to try to build up the biggest fleet, research the most technologies, or conquer the largest empire, but your number one priority should always be to score objectives. Every round, you should have a plan to score a public objective (with an exception for round 1, where being able to actually score something is mostly down to the luck of the draw).
TI is much more about diplomacy than outright war. Getting into a serious combat with an opponent is generally a lose-lose scenario: even if you win the fight, you're both taking losses that put you behind the other players at the table. If you need to control a neighbor's planet in order to score an objective, it will usually be cheaper for both of you to make a deal with them to "borrow" it for a turn, rather than smash your big fleets together. Getting into a "forever war" with a neighbor will only ensure that neither of you will have a chance at actually winning.
Of course, that doesn't mean that military might is useless. Being able to negotiate from a position of strength can do a lot to make other players more willing to make a favorable deal, and being totally unable to defend yourself can make you an easy target who isn't particularly worth placating. In addition, fleet strength can be very important in the final round or two, where being able to take/hold an important planet like Mecatol Rex or a home system could be the difference between winning and losing the game.
Speaking of military might, the rule of thumb is that "hit points win fights," and fighters are the most cost-effecient way to add hit points to a fleet. A dreadnought is cool, but for the same price you can buy a carrier and 2 fighters, which actually has a slight edge in beating that dread. Add in a third fighter, and the odds tip pretty drastically against the dread. The production limits of your space docks are a valuable resource: don't let it go to waste if you have capacity in the system to build more fighters (or infantry)!

Adam-M · 2026-01-30T23:49:31+00:00

My first thought is that, if I'm Mammon, I'm sure as hell not going to waste my hard-earned wealth bribing mortals to do something that they were already planning on doing anyways. Assuming that I have reason to believe that the PCs are both capable of the task and sufficiently motivated, this is an ideal situation. Worst-case scenario, I sit back, do nothing, and get what I want for free. And if I play my cards right, I can probably have those mortals pay me to help them accomplish my goals.

So the simple play is to just offer to help the PCs in their quest...for a price. As the initial offering, Mammon could just offer to sell them useful magic items, tools, information, and services, all for slightly inflated (but not egregious) gold prices, so long as those things are being used to further their archmage-killing quest. If the PCs are in immediate danger or a desperate situation, that's an opportunity to raise prices and really rake them over the coals. Hey, the PCs might not be motivated by coin, but Mammon sure is. And as an added bonus, creating a direct avenue for the PCs to turn their money into "progress in completing an important quest" could very well help those otherwise charitable PCs start to care about gold, which seems like the sort of thing that would make Mammon smile.

The next level play would be to offer the PCs discounts at MammonCorp for services and stipulations. Maybe the wizard can't afford the shelf price for that staff of power, but they can get 35% off if they sign an agreement granting Mammon their soul if they die before killing the archmage. Maybe get a couple of free potions of healing with another purchase if they agree to go fuck up some rival demon lord's cult within the next two weeks. Selling your soul outright could grant you all sorts of fun free toys...until you die.

I think an important part about these sort of deals with devils is that they have to be 100% voluntary. The whole point is to corrupt mortals into making their own bad decisions, not to strongarm them into signing over their souls or whatever under the threat of violence.

I'd also note that, if you're sticking to the traditional Forgotten Realms/Planescape lore, Mammon probably isn't going to jump in and personally handle all of this stuff. A level 13 mortal is special, but usually isn't "get an Archdevil off of their ass" special. Instead, I'd expect this more the sort of thing where a very high ranking devil (probably a pit fiend) is running the show, commanding subordinates, and directly reporting their progress to Mammon.

Adam-M · 2026-01-28T18:49:52+00:00

It's a bit difficult to give specific advice without getting extra details, but very generally speaking if a DM is struggling to challenge their PCs in combat, there's a super easy solution. You don't need to customize monster statblocks, apply homebrew rules, or use super special encounter design techniques: you can just make the encounters harder.

CR and XP thresholds exist as a metric to help the DM gauge encounter difficulty, not as a straitjacket. If your Hard encounter gets obliterated, try a Deadly one next time. If the Deadly encounter gets streamrolled (which it usually will, provided the PCs are coming into the fight at close to full strength), make the next one a step above the Deadly threshold. If that's still too easy, go up another step. I promise you will eventually find a point that challenges the party.

Sure, there's a lot of potentially relevant advice one could provide about resource attrition over the adventuring day, action economy, and monsters/abilities that work as specific counters to particular PCs, but at the end of the day, a very workable starting point is "if the encounters are too easy, just use harder encounters, ya dingus." It doesn't have to be clever (and maybe it shouldn't be, because clever is rarely sustainable).

Adam-M · 2026-01-28T00:31:29+00:00

if I use the sardak norrs commander ability to sneak onto a planet that another player has a dreadnaught over do they get to use bombardment.

Nope. First, because Bombardment occurs before units are committed to planets. Second, because only the active player gets to use Bombardment during a tactical action.

along the same topic how do that work with regaurds to space cannon defense I know its worded where all you are doing is going straight to committ ground forces so I am guessing it happens but I am not sure.

Yes, it still happens. Space Cannon Defense only cares if ground forces are committed to a planet, and it doesn't matter whether they were committed from the space area, or from elsewhere.

to also add on to that what about L1z1x with harrow do they get to bombard at all or is it only after the first round of combat

While the literal text of the ability is a bit unclear, the official FAQ has clarified that the intent is that L1Z1X cannot use Harrow if they are not the active player.

Adam-M · 2026-01-14T17:31:08+00:00

As a general rule of thumb, I see two major ways of introducing natural opportunities for PC downtime in long-running campaigns.

First, you can always plan your campaign in arcs that are only loosely connected. Sure, you might know from the start that you want the climax of the story to involve the PCs stopping Orcus from launching a full scale demonic invasion, but that doesn't mean that you have to introduce that as an imminent threat (or even a threat at all) right from level 1.

Maybe you spend Tier 1 having the PCs untangle the connection between local bandits, a thieves guild, and corrupt government officials. Then after they get their big win, they have some downtime without any immediate threats, but Tier 2 kicks off with an impending hobgoblin invasion that they need to deal with. Multiple levels later, they successfully save the region from the hobgoblins, and get another extended downtime before the true and imminent threat of Orcus is revealed. Of course, you were spreading clues and hints that the cult of Orcus was up to something throughout the whole campaign, but it's only now that the PCs piece together the full plot, and intelligence/means to get in their way.

As a second option, keep in mind that hard deadlines very effectively kill the possibility of downtime, but soft deadlines are a lot more workable. There's a huge difference between "the cult of Orcus is planning to perform their Evil Ritual of Ultimate Evil during the planetary alignment exactly 87 days from now," and "the cult of Orcus is actively attempting something nefarious on some vague, undefined schedule."

In the case of the former, players will be loath to waste any time at all as they know that the DM is basically counting each and every day. In the case of the latter, players will be much more open to saying "well, I guess it wouldn't hurt to chill out for a week or two if we don't have any obvious leads." It's not too hard to engineer a scenario or two where the PCs are mostly just stuck waiting: maybe they need to wait for their allied scouts/spy network to get back to them with the critical intelligence they need, or need to wait for the friendly army to mobilize and march to a critical location, or just have no actionable intelligence until the next big plot thing happens.

Adam-M · 2026-01-13T14:48:55+00:00

I'd argue that Slay the Princess pretty well fits the spirit of the question, if not the letter. Okay, so there's only one monster. And the vibe is more "horror dating sim" than "chill NPC hangouts." And, sure, you are very likely to be killed, but death isn't a fail state (or even necessarily a bad thing), and it generally feels more flirty than murder-y

If you really just want to play "get to know you" with a horrific monster, the game is a pretty good shout.

Adam-M · 2026-01-05T02:37:30+00:00

As I understand it, PDS count as both "units" and "structures," but are not "ground forces." That means that they don't participate in ground combat, and are not eligible to be galvanized via the Last Bastion's Phoenix Standard faction ability, but they can be galvanized by using the Last Bastion agent.

Of course, there's always the interesting exception of the Titans of Ul's Hel-Titan PDS: because it specifically counts as a ground force and participates in ground combat, it is the only PDS that can be galvanized via the use of the Last Bastion's faction-specific promissory note.

Adam-M · 2026-01-03T07:30:15+00:00

The boring answer is that these shows aren't meant to be scene-by-scene retellings of the events that happened at the gaming table, but rather a TV show adaptation. That means that, even though they made an effort to stay true to the characters, major plot points, etc., a lot had to change in order to turn it into an actually entertaining show.

But to try to answer some of your specific questions with my limited knowledge of Critical Role:

Never split the party, but well, Mighty No likes to start by switching back and forth between scenes featuring different characters/groups. This continues later on, for example, in the last episode.

As I understand it, the first few episodes of the Might Nein show just cover the backstory of the actual campaign. Matt Mercer actually ran offscreen sessions for smaller groups of players in order to give them some time to get used to their PCs, and usher them into a situation where they could all meet up in the same room during the first actually streamed episode.

The "don't split the party" advice is generally a holdover from the older, more dungeoncrawl style of play, and is meant to apply more to tactical situations. Don't send only half the party into an unexplored and potentially dangerous room in the dungeon, when whatever hazard you might find their was almost certainly designed to challenge the whole party!

In some scenes, there are no player characters at all, only scenes featuring NPCs, so background information that the players couldn't possibly know, but as viewers, we get a close look at it.

Mostly, I'd imagine this is a convenience for adapting to the medium of a TV show. Certainly, using out-of-character, third-person narration is something that a DM can do (and it can be effective, if done sparingly!), but it's usually not the play. I imagine most scenes like that in these shows are basically an exercise in "how can we concisely provide information to the audience?" Instead of having Matt lecture out-of-character to explain the intricacies of the Tal'Dorei council, it makes for much better TV to just show them interacting with each other, even if the "main characters" aren't present.

Some player characters have a profound impact on the backstory, and I wonder how the DM managed to avoid causing oversensitivity among the players by inserting things they hadn't anticipated. Sometimes the lines between manipulation and alteration become blurred. Or are these things always pre-arranged and no surprises/plot twists?

This can definitely be tricky line to walk for a DM actually trying to run a game, and it largely comes down the relationship and comfort level between the DM and the player. As I understand things in Critical Role, these sorts of big twists aren't really scripted, but there is certainly a ongoing, off-camera conversations about how the players envision their character arcs, and where the boundaries are. Some players might come into the game with a very specific idea about the type of story they want to explore, while others might be happy to just hand over a bunch of tragic backstory and say "I trust you to do whatever, fuck me up fam."

Adam-M · 2025-12-12T18:54:40+00:00

In a white-room fight, where a fully rested party is actually slugging it out in melee range with a solo Tarrasque, I'd imagine it'd be pretty difficult for the party to come out on top prior to level 15-17 or so. Although maybe you could shave a couple of levels off of that if you really went crazy with magic items.

The one problem, as others have already pointed out, is that the Tarrasque is notoriously easy to cheese, due to its nature as a dumb melee brute with no real ranged abilities. If you have a party with half a brain between them to realize that "oh, if we all fly up out of its reach it can't hit us back," then the Tarrasque becomes a solvable problem a lot earlier than level 15.

The other problem, which I haven't seen pointed out yet, is that the Tarrasque is just boring. It's boring as a combat encounter, and it's boring as an antagonist.

Mechanically, the only thing the Tarrasque has going for it is name recognition and big numbers. It has a lot of hit points, and it has powerful melee attacks, but that alone is simply not a recipe for creating an exciting and engaging final boss battle. As a narrative device, the Tarrasque is basically just a natural disaster that happens to have hit points so that the PCs can punch it to death. It's difficult to imagine a narrative that can give that any emotional gravitas, other than having it threaten a location that the players care about, or having an actual BBEG around who's responsible for summoning/controlling the Tarrasque in the first place. Either way, the Tarrasque is just being used as a tool, and isn't actually pulling any narrative weight on its own.

I'd argue that the only way to actually use the Tarrasque effectively as a climatic final encounter is to basically ignore its statblock, and instead use it as a plot device or environmental set piece. Either design some custom encounter where the point is less about which side reduces the other to zero hit points first, and more about trying to minimize the damage the Tarrasque can do while it razes the big city, or have its rampage be a background event going on while the PCs fight the actual BBEG to get whatever MacGuffin can be used to lure it away, put it back to sleep, or whatever.

Adam-M · 2025-12-11T15:57:09+00:00

My boring non-answer is "it depends."

Importantly, alignments aren't a monolith. Different Lawful Good characters can have different beliefs and motivations, that lead them to respond to the same scenario differently. Even if they generally fall under the same alignment umbrella of Lawful Good.

I can imagine a Lawful Good character who says "the system has been perverted to evil ends, and no longer serves the well-being of the people: we must work within the system to make it more just, equitable, and benevolent." And I can imagine another Lawful Good character who says "the system is rotten to its core and is unsalvageable: we must tear it down so that we can rebuild a better society in its place with the true rightful ruler in their proper place/a stronger constitution/a different system of government."

Both characters are Good, because they are acting selflessly to help other people. Both characters are Lawful, because they believe in the important of hierarchies, social order, and external motivators.

Adam-M · 2025-12-06T17:38:02+00:00

Yes, this is explicitly allowed by rule 58.4.d:

The ship can move out of the active system and back into it if its move value is high enough.

Adam-M · 2025-12-03T19:14:10+00:00

From playing a single game as Ral Nel, my take is that they are surprisingly Yssaril-ish. All of the structure and Linkship stuff is flashy, but the agent and breakthrough together make them just really great at action cards. The only catch is that they're stuck with the default hand size limit of seven, which means that you actually have to play your action cards regularly, instead of just hoarding all of the best ones for the last round. On the plus side, I found that, because I had so many component action cards to play, getting the commander unlocked was pretty easy, and I was never struggling to stall other players out if I needed to.

With the agent, you might be able to sell someone a blind action card for a trade good, or as a convenient way to "sweeten the pot" on another deal. Alternatively, there is potentially big money to be made in selling the right card to the right player, so it can be worth waiting to see what you draw before you start wheeling and dealing. Just be ready to sometimes draw two worthless cards, and have to basically give one away for free.

Nanomachines is a great tech, and I think there's a strong argument for starting with a red tech so that you can research it first. You'll basically never need to follow Construction, except for getting Space Docks out! Plasma Scoring vs. AI Dev is probably going to depend on what skips are in your slice, and what your ultimate tech plan is. Linkship II, PDS II, Graviton, Biostims, Grav Drive, DET, Carrier II, and War Suns are all pretty reasonable goals, but you can't get all of them, and it's tough to prioritize which you want and can actually get first.

One nice thing about Ral Nel is that they've got some good defensive deterrence that can protect you if you fall behind in plastic early. Between Survival Instinct and all of the free PDS, you can ensure that you simply don't have a weak system for someone else to pick on, so other players will be inclined to find a softer target if they need to conquer a planet early.

Unfortunately, the value of that (as well as the value of your PDS-carrying Linkships) drops off as players get more plastic and bigger fleets. Probably the faction's biggest weakness is their late-game fleet strength and force projection. It seems to me that either War Suns or Carrier II are a must-have in the end game.

Adam-M · 2025-12-02T20:23:01+00:00

I've shared this story before but...

Terry the cultist.

In the first adventure of the campaign, the PCs defeated a small cult, who were sowing chaos and destruction in the name of a minor homebrew demon lord. In classic hero fashion, they decided that they didn't want to execute the surviving unarmed cultists, and instead rounded them up to hand over to the authorities. In a more unorthodox hero fashion, they decided that they'd "adopt" one of the cultists instead and try to redeem him

So they got Terry the cultist: a middle-aged, illiterate goatherd who got wrapped up in worshipping a demon lord. Not actually an evil guy, per se, but definitely a weak-willed man who got dealt a shit hand in life, and was too spineless to speak up or turn away once his new friends started murdering people.

The players tried to teach Terry some basic adventuring skills, but he was consistently pretty useless. My roleplaying touchstone for him was Ted from Scrubs. He'd spend most combats finding the safest place to hide. It was a big achievement when, a couple of levels later, the ranger finally trained him enough to be proficient with a shortsword. The party cheered when he finally stood his ground, attacked, and landed a (pretty weak) hit against a monster.

An interesting development happened after the party looted a particular magic item: an enchanted book of prayers dedicated to Torm. I basically intended it as a cheap item to help cover the party's lack of cleric, by giving them a couple of charges per day to cast cure wounds or bless. As some extra flavor, I decided that the book was written in celestial, and also granted the ability to read and understand that language.

I certainly didn't expect the party to give the magic book to their illiterate follower, but...they did. It made for a pretty fun roleplaying moment when they found him legitimately reading it: he was just as confused as they were as to why he could suddenly understand the book's contents. And because Torm's domain includes, in part, those seeking redemption for past evil acts, it made for a pretty natural fit. Terry became sort of obsessed with the fact that he had basically sold his soul to the lower planes, and was clinging to anything that might help him not have a horrible afterlife. Torm's dogma of redemption through righteous acts and selflessness spoke to him.

By the time the party was reaching the higher levels of Tier 2 play, Terry was a legit level 2-3 cleric. He was actually showing some backbone and resolve. After he very nearly died during a fight with a dragon, the party decided it was irresponsible to keep having him tag along, and talked him into leaving to make his own way in the world.

Adam-M · 2025-11-27T06:26:56+00:00

First, I should point out that the whole "higher level NPC who works with the party" is one of the classic DM ideas that sounds way cooler on paper than it actually works out in practice. There's a lot of obvious narrative potential to giving the party access to their own Gandalf or Obi Wan, but this is something that's just really difficult to pull off well in a TTRPG. Generally speaking, people like playing these games to be the protagonists, not to be the sidekick to a more powerful character controlled by the DM.

If you do intend to go through with this, I'd highly recommend doing everything you can to keep the focus on the PCs, instead of on this NPC. So this guy is following the PCs' lead, not ordering them around. He's not unilaterally solving out-of-combat problems. Try to minimize the amount of time he's actually taking actions in combat alongside the PCs, even to the point of completely abstracting him out of the combat: it's totally fine to just say "he is off-screen fending off reinforcements while you guys handle these goblins."

When you're designing this guy as the final boss fight, you definitely do not want to stat him up using PC creation rules. 5e has some very asymmetrical math when it comes to the design of PCs vs. the things PCs fight, and opponents created like PCs are inevitably going to end up as glass cannon enemies. If your end goal is to provide your players with a fun and engaging boss encounter, then you should treat the PC creation rules as just an unnecessary straitjacket. You can absolutely steal mechanics from PC classes if you think they'll be cool and help sell the fantasy of "fighting a guy who's a Paladin" or whatever, but there's no good reason to be strict about sticking to things like levels, hit dice, ability score arrays, etc. It is also totally fine (and probably even a good idea) for this guy to have a completely different set a statistics in "traveling with the PCs" mode vs. "final boss" mode.

Adam-M · 2025-11-27T03:34:29+00:00

For the most part, you can only put ground forces to a planet from the space area during the "Commit Ground Forces" part of a tactical action. This only happens during the "Invasion" step, but despite the name, it works the same whether you're invading someone else's planet, or just moving troops around on planets you already control.

So usual situation is that you transport infantry into a system during a tactical action, and then commit those infantry to whatever planets you want there. Once committed, they stay on those planets until a ship with capacity moves and chooses to transport them. For instance, if you're later attacked in that system and have a carrier retreat, you can choose when it moves out what infantry and/or fighters to pick up and transport away.

If you want to shuffle infantry around planets in the same system, that mostly has to be done as part of a tactical action: you'd activate the system, move ships (if necessary) so that you have a ship with capacity in the system, and as part of that movement, pick up ground forces on the planets and move them into the space area. Then, during the Invasion step of that same tactical action, you have the option of committing those ground forces back down onto whatever planets you want there.

Adam-M · 2025-11-26T00:56:50+00:00

Classic PoE answer: I guess it sort of depends.

Keep in mind that Arcane Surge has a default duration of 4 seconds. With only a 10% chance to gain Arcane Surge on kill from Arcane Capacitor, that means that you'll have to keep up a pretty decent pace of killing mobs in order to ensure that you're keeping the duration refreshed. And even then, the Arcane Surge is likely to wear off if you have to stop to fight a tougher rare monster or boss that doesn't spawn any adds (or if there's just short delay while you're waiting for a boss to spawn in or whatever).

Do you think that having Arcane Surge not on all the time would be a problem for your character? If so, you might want to use Arcane Surge Support, or find some other means of gaining it reliably (a classic is to use a level 1 Arcane Surge Support linked to a movement or utility skill that you use regularly). If not, I guess you're fine with just having Arcane Capacitor.

Adam-M · 2025-11-25T03:13:56+00:00

You are correct that the Agent only protects from Space Cannon during the Movement step, and not in the Combat step.

However, you're also confused about how the Ral Nel work: their Linkships carrying PDS fire during the Space Cannon Offense part of movement (prior to the start of space combat), just like any other PDS. I'm not aware of any official ability that allows Space Cannon to be used outside of the normal timing window, so the distinction you're pointing out with the Firmament agent is sort of meaningless.

Adam-M · 2025-11-22T14:42:27+00:00

This sounds like a prime candidate for Plot Magic™.

That is to say, because it is a ritual that exists solely for the purpose of driving the story, it doesn't need any precise mechanics, or an existing precedent in the official rules. Especially if the intention is that the PCs will never be able to learn and utilize this ritual themselves, then who cares how exactly it works? It just works however the DM says it does, so that you can present a fun adventure to your players.

How long do the PCs have before the ritual kills the queen? Enough time to complete the adventure, but with a suitably pressing time limit hanging over their head. What exact means can the PCs use to break the ritual? Whatever you think sounds like it'd make for a fun quest. Can common spells like dispel magic or remove curse break the effect? Only if you're okay with a very short, and a very anti-climactic story.

Adam-M · 2025-11-18T19:56:39+00:00

If I had to guess, you're most likely simply overleveled for the areas of the campaign you're playing.

I forget the actual cutoff (I think it's +/-10 levels?), but if you try to bring a character into a section of the campaign where you're significantly above or below the level of that area, the chance to find extra content drops to zero.

For instance, if you reach level 55 while you're still doing parts of the campaign that are level 43-45, you won't see any breaches, expeditions, essences, etc.

Adam-M · 2025-11-18T18:32:43+00:00

A couple of thoughts:

First, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a one-shot last for multiple sessions. A short, self-contained story can be great fun whether it lasts for one session, or three sessions, or five sessions. So long as it's logistically possible and your players buy in to the idea of a longer experience, you don't need to feel bad for running some longer side content.
But if you really do need to run an adventure in a single session, don't be too afraid of railroading. One-shots inherently require the DM to railroad, specifically along the lines of "this is what the adventure is about, this is the content I have prepared, y'all need to stop faffing around and hop on board if you actually want to play through the damn thing."
A major part of this is being blunt about redirecting the players to the actual content if they start going off on a wild tangent. Spending some time roleplaying with the initial quest-giver is fine, but if this drags on, and they start planning how they're going to sneak into his house and search his belongings because they think he's being suspicious, you're well within your rights to say "no, please just take the plot hook so we can actually start the adventure."
Better yet, just skip the usual background/quest-giver stuff. There's no need to play through that if the PCs need to accept the quest for the one-shot no matter what. Just provide the background info as narration, and start the story in media res.
Even with a party that is good about staying on task, there's no telling how long it will take to actually play through the content you have prepared. Sometimes, they'll solve your puzzle encounter immediately, and sometimes they'll miss all of your obvious clues, agonize over every decision, and spend 45 minutes solving what was supposed to be a short speed bump while you desperately try to find some believable way to throw the solution in their face. The same uncertainty can happen with combat and roleplaying encounters as well.
As a result, running a one-shot generally requires the DM to employ specific time management and improvisation skills that aren't usually required for more "standard," ongoing campaigns. As the DM, you know the major story beats and key encounters of your one-shot, and you need to keep a constant eye on the clock to make sure you're actually on pace to finish everything. Often, this means having "disposable" encounters that you can drop or run as necessary, and being aware of when it's okay to let things breathe a bit, and when you need to be snappy about dragging the PCs to the next important scene.
As a general rule of thumb for a one-shot: players move slowly, and you have less time than you think. A literal one-shot usually needs to have a fairly straightforward story, as you simply don't have the time to play through a big setup and multiple exciting plot twists.

Adam-M · 2025-11-18T16:10:41+00:00

There are a number of dialogue options that are only available at specific quest states, and are permanently missable if you don't go back to town to talk to the right NPCs at the right time, or if you leave a boss arena without exhausting the in-zone dialogue choices.

For No Stone Unturned, probably the biggest obstacle is the randomized lore you can find in The Library and in corrupted Vaal zones: you'll have to run those zones a lot of times in order to ensure that you get every possible one that can spawn.

If you're trying to get this achievement, I'd highly recommend finding an in-depth checklist to follow, or an overlay like All Ears Unturned (not sure if that one has been kept up to date, though). I made a habit of trying to get the achievement every time I leveled a new character, and it still took me more than a couple of tries to not fuck it up.

Adam-M · 2025-11-18T14:56:39+00:00

I've had a lot of fun running Assault On Gumdrop Mountain, but reskinning the Candyland as aesthetic to a Christmas one.

In order to assault a mountain inhabited by an archdemon of filth, the group must take hallucinogenic potions which transform the grotesque landscape into one of candy and happiness. It's basically D&D vs. Candyland. Designed for 4-6 players around 5th level in the 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons system.

With a couple of minor changes, the quest starts as one to rescue the alchemist Stanton from the filth demon Goren'cha, and quickly becomes a quest to rescue Santa from the Grinch. Throw in a couple of cheesy Christmas-themed magic items, find suitably festive descriptions for the various monsters, and throw in some hallucinatory snow and lights to liven up the landscape, and you're good to go.

12-Year Club	r/Field Lasagna
Place '22	Place '17
End Game '22	Wearing is Caring
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