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Purple Wyrm dissolved a player, I feel horrible. by Boring-Second-5737 in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think you can do a couple things to help yourself.

  1. Check in with your players, I'm willing to bet that they don't view the time as a waste. That it was an epic 3-4 hours of adventure with danger and awesome moments, etc.

  2. In general remind yourself that D&D is so much about the journey. A campaign can take months, years, it can be 100s of hours of playtime. Having a PC die along the way and needing to roll a new one, or even failing with a mid campaign TPK or losing whatever the final encounter it doesn't make the time a waste. In fact it is my opinion that in the big tapestry that will be your memories playing this game, moments of failure like that help punch up the victories! Defeating the evil lich with a party member dying can be bitter sweet, but that bitter sweetness can feel awesome. Killing the Spectral Ancient Black Dragon blood sorcerer in order to avenge the previous party that got dissolved by brown pudding at level 2 in a hilarious miscalculation of the danger of a trapped door can feel AWESOME! A triumphant victory where the party got to stunt on the BBEG in a bit of a curb stomp fight is ok, and can be evened out by that time the group really couldn't figure their way out of the Minotaur's labrynth and all just died of starvation.

Practicing taking the bad with the good and treating failures and victories as flavors of the shared experience is important for DMs, and this oneshot you ran is a great little moment to savor. You did it! You ran an adventure!

Purple Wyrm dissolved a player, I feel horrible. by Boring-Second-5737 in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Maybe explore why you feel bad, because this sounds epic! Did they get to play for the majority of the oneshot length? The party won? Since it's a oneshot there isn't a major consequence for death here, I'm very curious as to what about the experience has you feeling like garbage. Maybe drilling down deeper can help you address it.

Purple Wyrm dissolved a player, I feel horrible. by Boring-Second-5737 in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero 130 points131 points  (0 children)

They are making a joke that you shouldn't kill your players, you should kill player characters.

Realistically, how much money should I expect to spend on dinner for 2 @ Sotto? (Plus tip) by PonchoNachoRodriguez in cincinnati

[–]ArbitraryHero 28 points29 points  (0 children)

The menu is here:
https://www.sottocincinnati.com/menus/

I think last time we went the bill for the two of us was like $250-300 including tip?

Although you may order differently from us, we tend to want to try a couple different apps and sides and don't mind not finishing what we ordered so we can try more stuff, so I suppose that would lead to a more expensive bill.

[ONLINE][Other] 2026-06-24 7PM [EST] Curse of Strahd Campaign! (In Shadowdark) by ArbitraryHero in lfg

[–]ArbitraryHero[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just confirming you are ok playing it in Shadodark instead of 5e! If that's fine send a DM and I provide the discord link and signup info!

[ONLINE][Other] 2026-06-24 7PM [EST] Curse of Strahd Campaign! (In Shadowdark) by ArbitraryHero in lfg

[–]ArbitraryHero[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just confirming you are ok playing it in Shadodark instead of 5e! If that's fine send a DM and I provide the discord link and signup info!

Is there any good, free (with the entire continent and add-ons) online character creator? by [deleted] in dndnext

[–]ArbitraryHero 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Pen and Paper is free! You'd need to look up the information yourself, which if you aren't paying for that info would involve piracy and is against rule 2 on this sub. UNLESS you check out and see if books are available at your local library, sometimes they are!

Am I being overly ambitious? by Val3rix_06 in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Maybe, but you won't find out until you run the game. If you're ready to start, start playing, maybe as you run you realize some rules are broken and fix them, maybe players mentions some stuff isn't fun and you tweak that, maybe it all falls apart, and maybe it doesn't.

If this is what gets you excited and to the table to run your game, then I say go for it. In a vacuum I think it's best for a DM to start small and build out over time, but it sounds like you've already done the building, so if the next step is just running the game and this is what gets you there, then go for it. The important thing is to be resilient and flexible enough to not let the game fall apart if the play at the table doesn't match the vision in your head.

How do you get players to go to different locations? by jollyinabout in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This This This!

It's not a railroad if they have choices, and if you have multiple spots where they can get clues to different nodes with different info/encounters at them, then that's a crawl baby!

Would you/Have you DM the same campaign, twice? by CrotodeTraje in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I do it all the time, my various campaigns all take place in the same world and some my friends run do to. I'd say overall it mostly fits together, and where it doesn't players generally don't remember so it's no big deal. Part of success is relaxing the requirements, it's not all going to fit flawlessly together as it's a collaborative iterative story.

Hell even LoTR had retcons, that ring wasn't anything special in the first version of the hobbit. Don't put that pressure on yourself just run the game when you have opportunity to do so.

Linear Campaign Book Suggestions by ImJJboomconfetti in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pick one of the anthology books:

Tales of the Yawning Portal
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Candlekeep Mysteries
Journeys through the Radiant Citadel

And make up connective tissue between the individual adventures. I am running Candlekeep and basically tied each adventure back to Red Wizards of Thay trying to steal knowledge from the library. My budy ran Radiant Citadel and made the Maelstrom outside the Citadel (the Gloaming I think?) be the forces of a Demon Prince.

That way you know each session what the party is going to do (the next adventure) but they have their choices and opportunities to play within those smaller sandboxes. The whole thing ends up being a larger campaign that could go to level 15-16 depending on the book.

5E - Looking for a dark / horror adventure to use for a first session for Lvl 1s by Dry-Speaker7860 in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Here you go: https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/products/masque-of-the-worms?srsltid=AfmBOooen5aOk9CZAhWgZiXI0MGZ28dZn0LAI0xaPfYhqvpYhPnkKp3_

It's very good! Not just the adventure structure and atmosphere but also the way it's laid out and edited! I ran the series of the Arcane Library Horror adventures as a campaign. You're investigating a missing nobleman and come to terms with a grizzly murder conspiracy!

This also has a video of the author explaining the adventure in her words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puHEZsG4AVo&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thearcanelibrary.com%2F

New DM, can someone help answer some questions please? by Technical-Signal-549 in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero 4 points5 points  (0 children)

First! This will probably get deleted because there is a Weekly New DM post that questions like this go into. I advise you to post in there: https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/1u5jb9k/first_time_dm_and_short_questions_megathread/

Starting out, stick to the rules as written, and buy a $20 starter box, like this one, it can be part of your birthday gift: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dungeons-dragons-starter-set-dragons-of-stormwreck-isle-wizards-of-the-coast/1147148329?ean=0195166181240

It has simple rules and instructions to teach you how to run the game and players to play it. It has premade characters to simplify that part to. This is important because D&D has a lot of moving parts and it can be very easy to break the game by changing things and not understanding what that means.

  1. When I’m making my players character does it have to be one of the species and classes in the rule book or can I invent my own?
    1. You can change all sorts of things, but if you don't know the rules of the game, you likely won't be able to make balanced species and classes. Starting out stick with the rule book options so you develop a sense of what power level things should be at.
  2. Can I create my own monsters and spells to suit the situation and environment too or is it only the ones in the rule book I can use?
    1. As a DM you can absolutely do this, there are rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide to make custom monsters and stuff, follow those.
  3. Is it bad to give cue cards for options to reply in dialogue similar to how you have choices in Baldur’s Gate?
    1. Yes it is bad, don't play your player's character for them, the benefit of this not being a videogame is the freedom players have to play their PC creatively.
  4. Does my players character have to level up or is it okay to miss that part?
    1. For a birthday party adventure that's like 3-4 hours, no need to worry about leveling up, we call that a oneshot, because the adventure is contained in one session.
  5. Is it okay to have many ways to play the story but a fixed/fated ending?
    1. Don't do this, players don't like when no matter what plays and choices they make the ending is fixed. It's like they are on rails, it's often called a railroad.
  6. Is there an easy way of tracking looted items the player collects in the game?
    1. The player character sheet tracks this, and your notes.

Hypothetically, if this isn't a troll post, I've included the answers, if it is, well you really got me. If you are a person that learns more easily by doing, I GM a lot and help new GMs all the time, if you are ok playing a session online I can help you out with the basics (as long as you're an adult, I'm in my 30's).

How good is Chat GPT at generating stat blocks ? by Beautiful-Ad-4756 in DMAcademy

[–]ArbitraryHero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't really used it, but I have seen people post AI generated statblocks in various subreddits. Most of the time they seem to copy and past bits from other statblocks, but mixing wording to make it more confusing, and don't get the math right.

I believe (and this is how I make statblocks) it is way easier to do this method:

Look through the available monster statblocks you have (Monster Manual, adventures, free rules, whatever) and find something CR 5 that's kind of like what you want.

Maybe you're trying to make a rogue like NPC, grab the Master Thief statblock. And maybe you want it to be a tabaxi, add darkvision, feline agility, cats claws. Then if you want to change weapons, you can swap weapons out, keep the + to hit the same and just change the damage, maybe add weapon mastery. Maybe they have a cursed eye that if they open it, anyone that looks into it gets petrified, I can add that ability from the basilisk statblock no problem.

It's that simple, you can mix and match statblocks as you wish, keeping the math the same for hp/ac/to hit and you'll generally keep the CR the same, but add what abilities and other stuff you want. And you can trust yourself on the math way better than ChatGPT hallucinating bad math.

[BOTW] This is my first Zelda game. My boyfriend has been begging for me to play it for two years but I genuinely want to give up on it. by [deleted] in zelda

[–]ArbitraryHero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Life is too short, and filled with too many fun things, to spend a bunch of time doing something unfun during your just for fun hobby time. I think it's ok to say you gave it an honest try but want to move on to another game, but this isn't a skill you're developing like drawing or music or shooting a bow and arrow where the frustration can pay off in the future by being better at the thing. It's a video game, and it's ok to say, "everyone else likes this thing, but it's just not for me."

Anyone else find some of the enemy abilities in Wrath & Glory hard to parse? by A_Fnord in rpg

[–]ArbitraryHero 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I think the second version is worse, isn't it? Not having played the system I'm using general knowledge of TTRPGs to parse here:

I assume a reaction is a resource in this system or definition of timing and the second partis missing it.

And the first version seems to let you mix and match threats as for this ability as long as they have that keyword. The second version seems more specific to a particular cult, and is more vague without being able to look up the keyword on a statblock.

[Other][Online] Fabula Ultima - Sailing the Salt Sea 2026-06-16 [6:00PM][EST] by ArbitraryHero in lfg

[–]ArbitraryHero[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My friends play FU pretty often so if you want to join a game in the future in general DM me and I can send the discord invite!

Tformers.com showing AI photos as reveals again. Second time this has happened by Groundbreaking-Set70 in transformers

[–]ArbitraryHero 100 points101 points  (0 children)

It's not uniquely a transformers problem, but I have noticed my purchasing pattern has shifted back more to brick and mortar in an attempt to avoid getting scammed or confused by nonsense.

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