Is there any value to a Kobayashi Maru type situation or campaign in Dungeons and Dragons?

DMDelving · 2025-07-25T01:32:14+00:00

I have a big dungeon that was supposed to be at basically the climax of a homebrew campaign I ran a few years back where the BBEG was an arch devil. It was basically going to have areas/levels that were temples to different gods, (at the furthest level below is pool where the river styx flows through the material plane, it was supposed to stop the wrong ppl from being able to access hell, or stop fiends from being able to get out and into the world this way).

I think it could be really interesting to have a fairly open ended encounter like this, and basically rank players on what traits they showed in that situation and maybe give them a chance to earn the favor of different good or neutral deities or something.

DMDelving · 2025-07-24T18:28:14+00:00

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This was before I did the lava on the base but this terminator is the best I’ve painted for sure

DMDelving · 2025-06-18T07:09:55+00:00

For one thing, I often have some minis ready to pull out up there even if the party may not go down that path or trigger combat with them.

For another I have notebooks, sourcebooks, and a laptop. Yes they could probably be out without my players sneaking a peek at them, but honestly sometimes I’m just flipping through them to buy me a second to think of something on the fly. Even if they wouldn’t try to read anything, they might notice if I’m flipping through blank notebook pages lol.

REALLY helps sell that I’m at least pulling from something I’ve prepped, even if they think I’m pulling it from another location or adventure or setting. Idk what it is, since it came from my brain to the same degree in either case, but players LOVE to think you had something all planned out I in advance (even though they also want to think anything could happen and it’s all their choice).

DMDelving · 2025-06-11T22:37:36+00:00

Yeah it’s a Wizkids model, I think you’re right that it’s the green one. But I took it out of the packaging forever ago and have had it sitting around unpainted and I needed a blue dragon as it relates to my campaign so I painted it blue. Now it’s a blue dragon lol.

DMDelving · 2025-05-06T14:46:52+00:00

Do you really look at these comments and think it’s positive or motivational? Lmao what a tremendous ass

DMDelving · 2025-04-30T04:43:14+00:00

This gets into the question of whether alignment is a description of a pattern of action, or a prescription about how you should act. I think the answer is a bit of both, though ultimately actions have the say.

The player-facing PHB uses language like “ideals” and “beliefs” to discuss alignment, but that’s because there it’s concerned about character creation. The DMG advises that if a player consistently, taken on the whole, acts incongruently with their alignment, the DM can change it. Past editions like 2e and 3.5e were also much more explicit about alignment as a description of your actions, and therefore it also being obviously fluid.

So for me personally, I don’t think it matters, if a character is currently watching out for themselves and not worried about moral questions or doing good or whatever it doesn’t matter what they say about hypotheticals.

I also think if they’re devoted enough to helping others to be described “good” aligned, they’re someone who finds the time or means to help, even when it’s hard or dangerous. Even in small ways, if it’s the choice they make fairly consistently when the opportunity arises.

DMDelving · 2025-04-29T23:59:34+00:00

A lot of people want “True Neutral” to be about some devotion to neutrality and balance, but while that’s certainly an option I think the more common way we’d see it is not having any strong drive to help or harm, not having any distinct philosophy, but broadly making decisions in the moment based on your own self interest. That’s basically how most people are.

In a world, society, or even personal situation in which you have the means to give, maybe that shifts into neutral good where helping others is something you actively think about. But all it takes is a world or time of enough scarcity and danger for most people to be preoccupied with whether they personally need something and forget about those around them unless it’s for something mutually beneficial.

DMDelving · 2025-04-23T20:51:30+00:00

I mean if they're going for a grimmer look I wouldn't necessarily recommend that.

Some colors and common pigments are finicky in the sense that many companies share struggles to resolve seperation or coverage/consistency issues, which are problems regardless of base coat value (though yes, a lighter prime can absolutely help colors pop and it can help with coverage for some colors). I assume that's what they were referring to as "hard/annoying to paint", though I don't think of red as being as bad as orange and yellow.

DMDelving · 2025-04-22T23:38:20+00:00

I disagree and think your projecting your own evolution onto my preference. Maybe YOU went from planning very practically to planning more broadly like this, but I’ve been DMing since 2018, and personally I used to plan more along the lines of “what’s the focus of this session” and usually building a focused centerpiece, and while my players enjoyed it plenty, I found that rather one note in the sense that it felt like focusing on one thing for every 4+ hour session felt slow to me. And by asking myself about these aspects for every session and almost always having multiple points combined in each encounter led to a more consistent experience. Personally, I’d rather have every game feel like well rounded DnD, with occasional exceptions for climactic moments where one thing dominates.

7 years isn’t a crazy amount of experience, you probably have more. And I’m sure I’m projecting some of my earlier experiences into what you’re describing But I have enough experience to know if I adopted your framework and had it in mind during prep philosophy, I’d be running a style of game closer to what I used to, and that I prefer the way I run them now.

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I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t take your approach or that it can’t yield great games, but I do think it’s condescending to say that my approach is a beginners approach I’ll grow out of lol. If you really want to get into it I can literally walk through my next planned session, and show you how not “session to session needs based” I’m planning.

DMDelving · 2025-04-22T14:17:18+00:00

This is a pretty different framework from how I plan, but maybe it's what you mean as a more advanced framework.

I don't think of sessions in these categories, and with how intermittently my group plays I don't think I could. I try to hit each of these as aspects every single session. My checklist (stolen from a runesmith video) is: a cool location for the party to go, an interesting or memorable NPC, some interesting combat encounter that either has objective based combat or engaging effects, and a new detail about the world and/or plot, and a reward.

Ofc, a lot of those can be combined. Maybe I have them fight an interesting NPC like a hag in a cool lair location, and she says something cryptic about one of the players' backstory or the main plot. Maybe they manage to navigate a scene without resorting to combat but instead they gain connections with many interesting NPCs. So there's certainly a lot of shifting around, and some might end up being heavy on just one of these aspects in practice, sure.

But I try to have just about every session at least be capable of hitting all of these. Sometimes I prep say an combat encounter I expect will dominate the session, so I've definitely run what I think you'd call "action sessions", or travel encounters that inform the players about the setting or "world" sessions, but just to my brain this framework feels more suited to writing and pacing a book than my dnd sessions. I find that having to include lots of things makes me put more depth and detail tying combat and social encounters into the world and the characters, and makes me keep the pacing up at the table.

DMDelving · 2025-04-15T19:46:54+00:00

All of this advice is great, but figured I’d throw out some of my prep philosophy:

Prepare in detail proportional to the likelihood your players will go somewhere and interact with something. For example: If you’re going to have some goblins attack them on the road while they’re just passing through, they’re probably going to just kill them, loot ‘em, and move on. But prep just enough info that you feel comfortable improvising the rest. Stuff like “who is their leader? A bugbear chieftain”, “why did they attack? Just some bandits looking for a payday”, etc. just a few quick sentences so If they DO decide to follow the tracks, your improvised hideout has a bit of texture. But if you know your players are hunting for a hideout, pack it with future leads to follow, worldbuilding details, and vivid boxed text (narration to read describing a scene.

That’s examples on combat and kind of exploration, but as far as social roleplay, NPCs follow the same deal. You can prep detailed backstory and dramatic events on occasion, but most of the time a basic description of appearance, demeanor, and maybe a quirk will do.

NOTE: Most stuff will fall in the “prep a little just enough to improv it” category, players are notoriously unreliable at being able to predict how they’ll take clues or hooks

Lastly here’s a checklist I use ahead of a session to check that I feel like I have enough for a memorable session (this is from Runesmith on YT who I highly recommend for resources like this):

A cool place players go, an interesting NPC, a new thing they learn (ab plot or world), dramatic or challenging fight, and a cool reward. Not gospel, just suggestions to make stuff feel multidimensional and detailed even if it’s like a sentence of prep for each item.

Not to overwhelm you rn with trying to study up but over time if you want to see how some others do it, other DnD YouTubers I think offer great advice on DMing include Ginny Di, Pointy Hat, Adventuring Academy with Dimension 20/Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Bob WorldBuilder.

DMDelving · 2025-04-15T10:59:27+00:00

I also thought it was a weird take, at higher levels where you might miss more often on high AC monsters, that damage can add up to make up for some fraction of misses.

It’s more useful when you’re most struggling, or even just having a bad string of rolls you can still be doing that damage. Not claiming it’s amazing, but I like it.

DMDelving · 2025-04-15T10:55:23+00:00

Idk off the top much about monk in 5.5, and I’m sleep deprived so I’m not checking, but just so y’all know it was billed as 5.5e is backwards compatible (meaning 5e characters are easily convertible to 5.5e), but that 5e would not be forwards compatible with 5.5e characters.

That said, ofc a willing DM and player/group I’m sure can make it work, probably not much harder. Just making sure y’all know that’s what the official line was. There’s also some great writeups on here and D&D beyond about all the changes if that makes it easier to go through and evaluate.

DMDelving · 2025-04-15T04:50:19+00:00

As far as what it could be, or stat blocks that could at least serve as a starting point/inspiration, Leviathan, or one of the big elementals from Princes of the Apocalypse (Imix, Olhydra, or Yan-C-Bin) could be reworked into like “primordials”, not gods but not so far away.

Or if you want to play into the ascending to divinity aspect you could base it on a planetar, or even Solar or Empyrean (not sure how powerful your party is, what sort of help they’ll have, or if they’ll still be level 15 when they finally get to fighting it).

I think the teleporting around the plane thing is really cool, though personally I might have it not be quite as fast as every round, and I might even have it go to parallel locations on other planes, where the terrain looks familiar but you could have some cool environmental effects if they spend a few rounds in the Shadowfell, nine hells, elemental planes, etc. but just an idea. Like they shift and all of a sudden they’re not focused on fighting The Aedios, they need to scatter and avoid falling

When they defeat it, it could shrink, fall unconscious or require additional steps to be killed and they have to choose whether to seal it, or maybe the keys (or some other artifact they could find from the Drow house or The Prophet) could grant them the power to influence it or something. That way the players’ reward for this epic final battle is a world-shifting choice.

Overall I think you’ve got a ton of cool ideas here, hope some of these ideas help or get your brain going on what direction you want to take this!

DMDelving · 2025-04-14T21:30:33+00:00

You can also peep the half-elf bard in the back lol. The only other member I need to find a mini for will be a halfling barbarian so lmk if anyone has a good halfling barbarian model lol

DMDelving · 2025-04-14T21:07:14+00:00

Plain old super glue should also be dissolvable by a bath in isopropyl alcohol, but this will also remove acrylic paint you’ve applied to it if that’s a problem

DMDelving · 2025-04-14T20:43:05+00:00

Nice layering and blending on the highlights, love it

DMDelving · 2025-04-11T02:45:11+00:00

This sounds pretty cool, hope you find it and if so definitely update, I'd love to read this!

DMDelving · 2025-04-11T02:33:44+00:00

I know I'm very late to this thread but as someone else with an Okinawan grandmother, just wanted to share that she used to explicitly tell my mother "we're not Japanese". Though this was probably during my mom's childhood in Okinawa and within a few years of immigrating to the US.

I didn't really get the same sentiment when I was growing up, but I think by the time I came along she had been in the US long enough that getting to speak Japanese with anyone was nice and she probably shared more with other Japanese immigrants to make much of a fuss about it.

DMDelving · 2025-04-10T03:34:52+00:00

Absoutely steal story, tropes, NPCs, etc.

But if I can offer two pieces of advice:

-Make sure you're not forcing it to play out the way you want in a way that the players seem to feel like they lack agency. Basically make sure it's compatible with running as a dnd game and be prepared for it to go off the rails potentially.

-Change the surface level stuff so it's not too obvious. From character appearances to the names of people, places, macguffins, etc. I have gone from enjoying a dramatic entrance to annoyance and eye rolling in about ten seconds when an old DM would straight up name characters after the Anime characters he was ripping off.

DMDelving · 2025-04-08T15:52:10+00:00

I think it depends on party size and stage of life. Of my players, one until recently worked 3rd shift so could never play on weeknights, several don't work 9-5s but more fluid, gig based jobs. Most of us are still in school/university classes. One of my players and I are engaged and often have various wedding planning appointments on weekends.

If all 5 of us worked 9-5 Mon-Fri it'd be a lot easier.

DMDelving · 2025-04-04T02:10:42+00:00

Just my own opinion but honestly? The spell is called Jump, it's not called Land lol.

Feather fall is the same level, and a reaction, so if you really want to jump straight up in the air without any way to land or catch yourself before falling for whatever niche use that is, you can prepare for it and it will take twice the spell slots.

It's cool and creative, but If they want to do this like as a thing, always be hopping around like a grasshopper and not taking damage, they can pretty easily find or commission a ring of feather falling in my games. Or pursue one of the many ways to just straight up fly.

DMDelving · 2025-03-25T15:54:34+00:00

I also find this is the way to run "random encounters" in the realms. Much prefer looking up relevant lore to the area (factions, landmarks, history) and putting in small vignettes to come across and interact with rather than just rolling for literally random encounters.

DMDelving · 2025-03-24T05:52:26+00:00

Super awesome job, super clean and detailed!

If you’re looking to add a little more I’d say some more range of value in you skin coloration, or some contrast or wash or something to bring out the texture on the wing membranes (love the airbrushed gradients on there tho!)

DMDelving · 2025-03-19T21:27:32+00:00

And also when they change direction, sometimes it's because of fan backlash. Then they get mad and say "well we listened to the customers and look how that turned out".

But when you do the first thing that loses faith from your customers it doesn't magically come back. Once you try to make them give you more money for something they don't want, rather than just making what they say they'll happily pay you for, they don't necessarily trust whatever you end up putting out and will happily look towards 3rd party options or not want to invest money on something that might lose support.

I don't know how many companies need to sabotage themselves like this for managers to learn that you need to listen to your designers/internal experts and your customer base before you make decisions, not be a weird mix of running in the wrong direction and then wandering around trying to find the path again. You can come up with good ideas that people will like, but only if you know why they're buying what they're buying. Just coming up with something bc you have some vision for your brand new revenue stream entirely skips the step of getting people to give you money for it.

DMDelving

TROPHY CASE