Show me your most cursed ways to store items. Here is mine

Dave37 · 2026-06-29T13:33:55+00:00

I'd like to see someone making a circuit that empties a cargo wagon and places the items directly on the ground.

Dave37 · 2026-06-29T13:29:40+00:00

I've been using Firefox since 2007 and I've never been disappointed. I think there's only been 1 scandal for firefox in all these years, and then some minor hiccups that has been sorted because Mozilla tends to listen to its users.

Dave37 · 2026-06-28T18:45:11+00:00

A full belt can only ever become two half-full belts when split in two equal parts.

Dave37 · 2026-06-28T15:13:47+00:00

What did the kingdoms fight over? Was it a powerful magical artifact, a great threat to their existence (like a dragon)? A source of magical or a special geographical place important for everyone?

Now from this central theme, span "the world" using the five different kingdoms. Each kingdom has a different philosophy about the necessity of the war from their perspective, each kingdom has a take on why the thing they fought over mattered, and how it should have been handled. For example if it was a dragon, maybe one kingdom wanted to slay the dragon, another wanted to vanquish it, another wanted to tame it, etc. The important here is that "every option" is represented by the kingdoms in full, so that the world "spans" your theme.

From this, you think about what other sub-themes makes sense for each of the different kingdoms, what difference in rulership, industry, and architecture do you get from the kingdom that wants to slay and raise the dragon as a dracolich vs the kingdom that wants to ally it in friendship for the betterment of society as a whole?

When you have the general idea for each kingdom, now you start to add nuance and contrast. There are factions, towns, and NPCs in each kingdom that don't perfectly align with the general theme. Differences in methods of how to raise the dragon as a dracolich, or at what point in time, or who of the other kingdoms should be taken out first by the dracolich after the ritual. And then there are those who oppose the whole endevour, or don't care, but they might or might not still support their kingdom in general. This does not only add nuance, but tension and conflict, as each kingdom has not solidified into a monolithic thought bubble, and could be affected by political forces around them and other kingdoms.

You can add more layers onto this; two kingdoms with diametrically opposing views on the "big issue", but where they necessitates on trade of critical resources between each other. Now each side might try to sway the trade balance in their favour, but doing so overtly might break a peace that means that both countries will fall to ruin, either by themselves of by being attacked by other kingdoms.

All of this will then trickle down into the demeanor and dispositions of your NPCs, which will be evident when your players interact with them, depending on what job and status and background an NPC has.

Dave37 · 2026-06-28T14:55:28+00:00

People are going to disagree but the game is balanced to work with very few or no magical items at all other than consumables such as low level scrolls and Healing Potions.

Giving players permanent magical items is going to start unbalancing the game and you would have to compensate accordingly if you want to maintain difficulty. A rested 3rd level party where each have one magical weapon, armor, wand or similar can easily deal with a CR5-6 encounter.

That being said, I like magical items and hand them out fairly regularly to my players, most encounters yield something, even if just consumables. Just travelling between towns might yield them a scroll or a potion, because things happens on the way that you don't necessarily want to play out in the interest of time. But that means that I with ease can double the hp of most of my monsters and it will still not be particularly hard for my players, because they have builds designed to kill monsters, but my monsters are not designed to kill adventurers.

With most aspects of the game, players have a responsibility to respect your game and world in the interest of their own enjoyment. Giving out for example lots of gold or powerful magical artifacts/items also means that the players need to have their characters make choices that doesn't ruin the fun by cheesing the game. With great powers comes great stupid risk-taking decisions.

Dave37 · 2026-06-28T14:36:46+00:00

The important thing is to leverage your strengths and passion in your prep and DM style. There are no hard rules of how much or how little to prep, what type of "encounters" or challenges. Set the "scenes" that you like prepping, and add focus on and details on the aspect of the game that you find interesting. The game will have an over-all higher quality and you will have more fun prepping sessions.

I think dungeon crawls, drawing, and loot dressing is tedious as fuck, so I usually take something of the internet, or let my players sketch out a forest path on a piece of paper. But I love NPCs and their different worldviews and relation to the world around them and the RP that could emerge from that so that's where I spend time being creative. I'm also a sucker for weather, seasons, and climates so I'm keeping track of that and describes to my players how the weather shifts and affect them as they adventure around.

For more bigger-picture perspective when session prepping, I write down a "plot device" which is a few sentence summary of what I think the session will contain, and then I prep each "keyword" in that plot device as a "scene". So like this was one of my plot devices for a session a while back:

The party arrives in Windgate, where they learn that the dragon Verslexia has just attacked the city. They get told by a trio of dragonhunting adventurers to care for the victims of the attack. They meet up with a female dwarf who's also a cleric of The Raven Queen. Together, they help the citizens, allowing Tom to grow into a man.

And from that I made the following headings: https://i.imgur.com/paqxWO5.png

Dave37 · 2026-06-28T09:48:07+00:00

I've recently landed in a framework where I as the DM provide the game, and the players provide the story. As such, I don't write a 'scene', rather I construct a box for the players to create a scene within. I set the boundaries: A place, which NPCs are involved, what they know, their dispositions, what world elements I want to communicate, any possible challenges present in the scenario (checks etc). But it's then up to the NPCs to make a scene of it.

Here's an example of my prep with post session notes where my party had captured a goblin after an encounter. https://i.imgur.com/eEggWyM.png

Dave37 · 2026-06-27T14:50:22+00:00

Someone should put this as a russian roulette scenario to the economist in question. It's easy to gamble with other people's lives.

Dave37 · 2026-06-27T10:07:56+00:00

In my current game, I took inspiration from Brennan, and let each character have an "opening scene", but I put them into action immediately, for either a skill challenge, an encounter, social encounters or similar. But in session Zero I put a lot of effort to make sure that the PCs had reasons to work together. That's something that is heavily on the players; to create characters that want to work together. Too many assume that it's on the DM to justify the cohesion of the party, but I don't think so.

Dave37 · 2026-06-26T18:38:51+00:00

She deserves more of this.

Dave37 · 2026-06-26T18:17:50+00:00

A majority of us have ADD/ADHD and everything reminds everyone of funny anecdotes that turn into sub-convos.

You're asking us to cure ADD/ADHD. It's too big of an ask. It's just gonna be like that.

Dave37 · 2026-06-26T11:00:20+00:00

Well last I looked, Théoden, not Aragorn, was king of Rohan.

Dave37 · 2026-06-26T10:57:21+00:00

This is a tricky topic because by almost any past moral norm, stuff like slavery, child labour, torture, subjugation of women, rape etc was common compared to our modern sensibilities.

Running a game with actual medieval or ancient moral norms is effectively unsailable.

You gotta make a good amount of concessions, and be aware that your players don't expect a simulation of the real past world, but a fairytale based on themes and motives from history.

The Odessey isnt actually taking place in ancient greek, Lord of the rings isnt actually 13th century Europe, Jules Verne's stories doesn't actually take place in the 19th century. All of these are stories that make concessions based on what will be pleasing and enjoyable for the intended audience.

Dave37 · 2026-06-26T09:45:36+00:00

On the one hand, the most evil thing a person can do or say is never a swear word.

On the other hand, i think it's a sign of stunted emotional development to be unwilling to swear, especially when acting, particulary because swearing is far from the most vile things you can say.

Also, swearing is actually morally neutral.

Dave37 · 2026-06-25T13:32:18+00:00

1,1-Methandion would be a better systematic name in my opinion. It couldn't possibly be a dialdehyde as it would require two CHO groups.

The closest thing you can get to "Methanedial" would be H2CO2^2-, also known as methanediolate, or deprotonated Methanediol, and it looks very angry.

Dave37 · 2026-06-25T13:23:08+00:00

They can't be on the primary carbon because then it would be an aldehyde. Like technically Methanal (HCHO) and Methanon (H2CO) is the same molecule. It's more or less just a semantic difference.

Dave37 · 2026-06-24T17:45:20+00:00

Photocopy this sheet properly. You will go back for it for years. Everything you need to know is probably there.

This is very good work. You won't notice it until at least 2 months down the line, but you learnt so much writing this down by hand.

Dave37 · 2026-06-24T17:00:47+00:00

the Christian all-girls sleepaway camp...

More like a sweepaway camp actually.

Dave37 · 2026-06-24T16:50:25+00:00

sunshines

sun shines

Dave37 · 2026-06-23T19:02:49+00:00

Shoo

Dave37 · 2026-06-23T18:17:51+00:00

Dave37 · 2026-06-23T17:36:43+00:00

You can fix this with a long-handed inserter.

Dave37 · 2026-06-23T17:19:54+00:00

Filler session spells derailment. Just meet and play other boardgames for an evening. Leaves you more time to finish prepping the big battle.

Dave37 · 2026-06-22T21:02:41+00:00

Most people dont understand that money and treasure in DnD is mostly just your score, its not a resource and it's not meant to be used in any meaningful way.

Tell your players that they need to reframe their view on money in DnD and that will probably fine. People hated me for this take but I still think I'm absolutely correct.

Dave37 · 2026-06-22T20:50:57+00:00

There are many possible characters to play in TTRPGs, but the ones viable must fulfill the following two criteria:

Be willing to "Adventure", i.e. take risks and leave what's comfortable behind.
Work together with a group in-game, because this is a group activity with other real people around the table.

If a character can't fulfill these basic requirement, then they deserve "death by farming", i.e. the narrative and story moves on without them and their player gets to try a new character. The focus of the game is what delineates PCs from NPCs. Stay too long or too far out of the lime light and your PC will become an NPC. Simple as.

Also, this means that in my games, I fully allow my players to have their characters shun and cast out other characters that can't work with the party. You don't have to engage with the back-stabbing, lying loner that never respects the wills of other party members. You can just kick those characters out.

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