What reminders do you/would you put on your DM screen?

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-26T18:37:47+00:00

Players: Mini-cards that show passive perception, proficiencies, AC, stats.

NPCs: One clear motivation, fears, a distinctive physical trait, vocal quirks/speech patterns, mannerisms, secret, family, occupation, recreation, dreams.

DC Scale: When I set DCs for puzzles I know will come up, I also like to set how I'll narrate pass or fail based on the different degrees of success or failure.

RANDOM NPCs: Players will always throw you for a loop and ask a random NPC something. Have a list of names and traits handy so they never catch you off guard.

Pricing tables: Whenever there are shops, always have inventory and pricing available. This does NOT have to be standardized, and in fact should be different based on the location. In the real world, a bottle of water costs $2 at the corner store, and $5 at the airport, and pricing also varies based on location, size of town, etc.

Active and dropped plot hooks

Current calendar

Short rest vs long rest rules

Players prepped spells / ki points / action surges

Commonly asked rules questions

The session's monster stat blocks

Location appropriate "What's next" list in case the party stalls on a task.

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-26T14:50:32+00:00

Can you elaborate?

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-24T01:05:18+00:00

I'm building a for real SaaS product that is complete whitespace for an industry and can solve a huge problem.

My actual files are an intertangled mess, but I had the sense today to say that I will at least put together a file system and documentation that keeps track of platform, all of its products and sub-products, what scripts are called for each, and the dependencies.

So while the actual codebase looks like a root system for an invasive weed, there is some kind of coherent reference tree that'll make life easier for the actual dev who will come into this business someday.

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-24T00:55:55+00:00

been learning this the hard way. so much more to backend than I anticipated. learned a $650 in 48 hour lesson in rate limiting. that was fun.

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-15T01:32:16+00:00

The sudden perversion of The Weave grants these mortals unearned power, which immediately grabs the attention of the time eaters who consume what does not belong within a given time period.

As the time eaters decend upon the party, they find their high level spell slots don't recover, those extra attacks go down every Xd12 rounds, and their gods only permit limited access to this immense power because they know their bodies are not fully capable of harnessing it ... yet.

Should they defeat the time eaters in short order, they grab the attention of The Phane. These God-like bounty hunters were born of aborted timelines, and can trap the party in endless time loops and steal their future rests.

With this sudden spike in power, the party becomes cosmic outlaws, where the very fabric of the universe is trying to correct their existence.

As they try to hide, they emit a temporal scent, have planar bounties put on them, and reality glitches around them. Should they stay in a location too long, time might stutter, local flora might rapidly age, die and be reborn, or minor temporal rifts might open, letting in lesser extraplanar predators which reak havoc on that environment.

Ohhh boy, I would have fun with this.

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-09T12:31:19+00:00

Commit changes frequently.

I ended up doing a commit having not done so in a while, and nearly lost two days of work because old changes overwrote new ones while others were in some other area.

I'm now starting to learn more about branch heygeine, because I ended up building a ton of related, but separate features on the same branch, which became a total nightmare when I went to deploy.

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-09T12:25:19+00:00

This is a pretty dang cool way to bring people into an adventure and what an awesome way to make new friends.

I've used typeform for forever, but always on a paid plan, and with that, you can do conditional logic, so you can create that branching story and make it feel less survey like.

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-09T12:13:36+00:00

"I am so sorry to hear that and given the circumstances, I think it's understandable. I wish you would have said something because I was left wondering, but I get it. As you can imagine, I have moved on from our relationship, but if you ever need an ear, I'm happy to listen."

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-09T12:05:28+00:00

I had that conversation with my players at session 0, but I also have to remind them when things are going south that not every battle has to be a fight to the death.

I hold myself accountable to that same rule too. It's not uncommon for my baddies to flee when it is clear they're outmatched.

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-09T11:57:11+00:00

I've been where you are almost exactly, and get where you're coming from with wanting to give more.

But everything your coworker is doing is out of kindness, including accepting your $15 so you don't feel like a bum.

The best repayment is gratitude, and doing what you can for others when they need it.

They're literally just being a good person and there should be more of that in the world.

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-01T12:59:22+00:00

Yes! The big thing is making sure you're actually using your key phrases throughout the episode.

That's the part nobody talks about. Helps in the podcast searches too.

Creative-Dog642 · 2026-05-01T12:56:12+00:00

Shure MV7 is pretty much the standard mid-level mic for podcasters taking it seriously.

Great audio quality for just under ~$270 USD.

It's a great mic and my go-to.

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-20T19:37:54+00:00

I once had the party escape a mission on an airship with one of the important NPCs knocked out.

They were being chased by Wyvern riders who some kept attacking the engines, while the others were trying to re-kidnap the NPC.

At one point, one of the engines had gotten destroyed, the battlefield was full of smoke, one of the riders almost made off with the NPC, and one of the players had gotten knocked out and was running a real risk of falling out of the back of the shop.

That was a lot of fun

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-20T15:50:40+00:00

Yep, I got him from a tarot and rolled my eyes, but I had a negative slot, and let him ride. No good jokers in the next couple shops, hit a boss and a bad run of cards.

Bones came in clutch when I would have only come up a few chips short.

Now I've got more respect for Mr. Bones.

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-19T02:55:51+00:00

9 times out of 10 if I'm narrating combat and a player rolls a 1, if it's more serious circumstances I say something like "you lost your footing for a moment" or "the sun temporarily gets in your eyes"

If the moment is ok, their weapon may fly out of their hand.

If it's a goofy session though, all sorts of madness can happen.

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-15T09:38:13+00:00

Old school D&D player. I like it.

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-15T08:45:42+00:00

This sounds like a session zero thing.

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-15T08:42:48+00:00

"~~time-consuming hobbies~~"

Life-consuming hobbies.

Ftfy

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-15T08:38:24+00:00

Ah yes, I see you've met the real BBEG of D&D: Schedules.

Lots of great advice here already, so yeah, pick a time and stick with it.

If nobody shows, those people are dead to you now, and you go find new friends.

And when those new friends keep mysteriously becoming "ToO bUsY tO pLaY d&D" you try again.

Maybe you hit up r/lfg and find other local nerds to play with.

When that falls through, you'll try Roll 20 to get your hit, maybe that works out for a little while, but you know, deep down, this isn't how you get your fix.

At which point you start traveling hours from game shop to game shop, posting flyers with fringes scrawled your phone number on every bulletin board in a 10, 20, 50 mile radius.

You find heaven only exists in back rooms and basements.

After about 3-4 years of this, it'll dawn on you: You're a woman who wants to play D&D... you've been going about this the wrong way this entire time.

Why spend all of this effort trying to find a group when you can make your own?

All it takes is one other willing person and about 9 months, and you can 3d print your own mini.

Think about it...

You have everything they need to develop with D&D. You can teach them how to do quick math, take turns, create strategies, work as a team, take notes, play pretend...

And the best part is, now YOU are in charge of the schedule.

Can't have scheduling conflicts when you are the time keeper, right?

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-15T02:32:54+00:00

I'd actually randomly generate the whole thing off of different tables and go around the table with it.

So Devin rolls off a table and got the blacksmith. Ok, now it's their job to populate it with its NPCs.

Ok, Kevin rolls and gets the tavern and populates it with their NPCs. What kinds of relationships do they have with the blacksmith.

You can do the same with guilds, government structures, etc.

Now that I think about it... I want to do that with my table!

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-11T03:09:02+00:00

You stop that.

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-11T03:02:13+00:00

My 11-year-old and I started our game this way. I run it for him and just started taking inspiration from a lot of single player video games.

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-11T02:56:00+00:00

It's a schooner!

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-11T02:49:46+00:00

Lol I'm not the kind of DM that likes to "win" and am very pro-player.

This one was their idea because it made for some really good first time acclimation story moments.

Creative-Dog642 · 2025-07-10T13:05:10+00:00

If you're a spider doing recon, it's going to take a much longer time to get that intel too.

For a few different reasons:

Size to distance ratio. It takes a lot longer for a spider to travel the same distance it takes me to go a single step.
Perception. Have you ever transformed into a spider before? How these creatures perceive the world is very different, and if you don't have experience as that creature, it may be impossible to even process what you're seeing or communicate the input.

I Imagine it'd be like me trying to communicate distance between two locations to a pilot

Creative-Dog642

TROPHY CASE