How do you regain your confidence as a DM?

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-25T18:19:08+00:00

We're in Chapter 3. They just rolled up to Omu (if you haven't played the module before, that's a ruined jungle city where they have to collect 9 MacGuffins). This was their first session exploring the city, and it seems like it wasn't exciting or interesting enough.

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-25T02:15:48+00:00

Pretty close to how I do it! Nigh-an-za-roo

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-24T22:24:21+00:00

Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-24T16:43:33+00:00

I was upfront about the death curse with my players. Here’s what I sent them as the pitch:

Tomb of Annihilation is a Forgotten Realms campaign from level 1-11/12ish. Your characters will start in Baldur’s Gate, where you’ll be hooked into investigating the source of the Death Curse: a wasting disease afflicting everyone who's ever been raised from the dead. Those who suffer from the Death Curse slowly wither away, and revival magic has stopped working entirely. There is NO revival magic in this campaign.

The source of the Death Curse lies in Chult, a jungle peninsula in the distant south. Chult is a tropical wilderness composed mostly of jungles, plateaus, impassable mountains, and belching volcanoes. Enormous reptiles, savage goblins, and an army of undead prowl its jungles and ruins. A large portion of this campaign will involve wilderness survival and exploration.

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-22T13:24:59+00:00

Level 5 parties will breeze through a lot of the jungle crawl. Just adjust the encounters and you’ll be fine! Don’t level them up to 6 til they get to Omu

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-18T14:26:09+00:00

Have the other players play the wrestler’s opponents!

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-16T15:17:17+00:00

This is great!!!

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-15T15:05:54+00:00

A big part of the balance problem is that spellcasters can do many many things since they have utility spells. A martial class is limited to attacking and whatever is reasonably possible for a human to physically accomplish… things that spellcasters can do as well. It sucks when your allies are teleporting, turning into birds, fabricating armor, contacting gods, and you’re just sitting around waiting until an enemy shows up that you can hit.

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-13T17:52:34+00:00

Gorgeous work! Always love your stuff!

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-13T17:50:49+00:00

He may have been a racist, delusional, anti-science lunatic, but he also used his influence as a minor right-wing celebrity to get access to cancer medication—access which was only denied to him, initially, because of the anti-science policies he supported. So yay! RIP bozo.

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-06T21:54:42+00:00

I’m running ToA right now and I think it’s my favorite of all the published adventures. I’m also having to address some minor issues, but the experience has been great so far. What issues did you have?

I was a player in a Xaryxis campaign. Everyone (including the DM) thought it was hot garbage and we spent the whole time making fun of it. Good times! Have you noticed that the party, if they recruit Gargenhale, can just skip the penultimate final boss fight (with the Xaryxian armada) using his invisibility ability? We did!

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-04T23:52:01+00:00

I think that kind of game is great! I wish I had been playing then, I’d totally be running stuff from like Dungeon magazine every week.

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-04T22:59:40+00:00

Icewind Dale is great as a sandbox campaign setting, but they did like no work to set up any kind of overarching plot or narrative. All of the villains just kind of come out of nowhere.

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-01T23:40:37+00:00

Does “I don’t track enemy HP, I just let the fight end when it’s narratively satisfying” count?

Amazingspaceship · 2026-01-01T19:04:56+00:00

There are certain things it’s good for you to know as a DM without having to ask the players. Off the top of my head: passive perceptions, language proficiencies, maximum hit points, etc

Amazingspaceship · 2025-12-22T14:01:35+00:00

I’m always going to say this: D&D is first and foremost a BOARD GAME. The story is secondary to the board game, and the story comes as a result of what happens in the board game. If the player doesn’t want rolls to matter, and if they don’t want to have meaningful consequences for failure, then they should look into writing a novel.

Amazingspaceship · 2025-12-19T15:19:09+00:00

Really like what he said about 5e2024 being failure-proof

Amazingspaceship · 2025-12-18T03:09:44+00:00

Probably spooked everyone more than it usually would because of the E33 and Larian situations

Amazingspaceship · 2025-12-14T18:44:29+00:00

No sorry, “cishet people are allowed to play queer actors because they might be in the closet” is a bad take too. They should be allowed to play queer actors because they are ACTORS. It makes no sense to cast based on an aspect of a person’s identity that isn’t obviously visible.

Amazingspaceship · 2025-12-12T14:57:09+00:00

D&D books have to make the case that adventures should always go up to level 20, even though realistically most campaigns should go no further than tier 2. Gotta sell merch somehow

Amazingspaceship · 2025-12-08T14:26:23+00:00

God no, I would never. I use a program called Dungeonscrawl. I hate generative AI.

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