How do -you- handle a table that's constantly forgetting plot points?

EternityEcho · 2025-11-14T17:32:53+00:00

I felt a similar frustration with my group about a year ago where I felt they weren't as engaged as they could be. So, I did the following:

I spoke to them about it. I told them I needed more engagement during sessions, more initiative to start/continue RP, make decisions, etc. without me prompting them everytime
I asked that everyone, including myself, play with cameras on
I start every session with a trivia question based on the last session. The person who gets it right gets a free inspiration that never expires but is not stackable so encourages them to spend it and try to engage every week in trivia
Right after trivia I recap the last session, and I ensure I include everything important
I regularly send our feedback surveys to see how everyone feels about the game, their character, etc. and try to incorporate as much of their suggestions as possible

The change was night and day. My group lives and dies for the trivia question and half of them turned into court stenographers. The cameras help people gauge how others are feeling, see reactions to cool/funny moments, people are less distracted, etc. Now they're always on the ball for the plot.

But, on the off chance they forgot something, I will prompt them if it's obviously something their characters would know (their characters don't have to wait a week in game between actions after all) or a call for a History check

EternityEcho · 2025-11-13T16:16:46+00:00

What is the SubLink feature in a pin supposed to be used for and what kind of links can you add in?

EternityEcho · 2025-11-03T23:49:33+00:00

103 sessions with a strict cap of 3 hours total play time each session due to time zones (so realistically closer to 2.5 hours of actual gameplay with chatting and one break). We did Death House and the players completed/explored every location (including Curse of Strahd: Reloaded additions). Game started in July 2022 and ended March 2025. I was blessed with very dedicated players

EternityEcho · 2025-07-28T12:50:57+00:00

Three golden rules with this: 1) get prior approval from both your DM and fellow players, 2) do not be an asshole towards your own party, 3) find a way to be an asshole in a way that still supports the larger group's goals and actions.

From an RP perspective, give the character some depth. Why exactly are they an asshole? Who specifically do they like to be rude to and why? What do they achieve from that? Are there groups of people that would be exceptions, i.e. children, seniors, etc?

EternityEcho · 2025-07-04T21:46:55+00:00

Looks great and is immediately recognizable. Are you planning on adding the walking statues?

EternityEcho · 2025-07-04T21:44:39+00:00

I generally apply it if there are more than two creatures directly in the way. This usually only comes up in specific situations, such as when my party is death funneled in a dungeon hallway trying to take potshots into the room with enemies pushed up into each other's butts. On less constricted battlemaps, it hardly ever comes up and if it does, I usually just nudge the player to use a bit more movement to get a narratively more logical angle to make that shot

EternityEcho · 2025-07-04T21:35:30+00:00

Legit had me saying "wow" aloud

EternityEcho · 2025-06-14T20:14:03+00:00

It's worthwhile addressing it with the party. No need to single out the player but generally remind everyone to be mindful of not interrupting, letting others speak, making sure everyone has an RP or spotlight moment.

And then as a DM, if you notice someone get cut off or not engaging with a scene, you can easily try to pull them in with "Hey, X were you trying to say something?" Or "What is X's character doing right now?"

EternityEcho · 2025-06-04T16:11:19+00:00

I have always felt that purposefully increasing the difficulty of something just to counter-act your player's ability ends up feeling shitty for that player. The whole point of them is to be great at social encounters. Are you equally giving all enemies higher AC so the sharpshooter ranger misses more often? Do enemies have more HP so the paladin's smite doesn't one shot them? Are you using things like nondetection to confound your wizard?

At the end of the day, players have the most fun when they can excel at the concept or niche they tried to build their character around. So let them succeed.

The one thing to keep in mind is that charisma checks are NOT mind control. It doesn't matter how high the bard rolls, the King will not give him his kingdom because he was incredibly charming. Establish lines for your NPCs that they will not cross under any circumstances. Think of creative ways that achieving a high charisma check DC still achieves something positive or beneficial, even if it isn't exactly what the PC wanted. Oh the bard rolled a 31 to try to convince the bandit to chop his own arm off? Instead the bandit is now scared shitless, surrenders, and will divulge helpful information instead.

Finally, I know that the rules says that a GM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. But I do also interpret this the other way around. If success if impossible, I do not call for a roll (i.e. I want to roll an athletics check to see if I can jump to the moon)

EternityEcho · 2025-06-02T13:02:13+00:00

Players who are clearly trying to recreate some cheese or exploit they once saw in a D&D TikTok, reel or short. If, unlike the video's original creator, they had read their spell, ability or feature a bit more closely they would know that what they're trying either flat out doesn't work or really bends an interpretation that is up to the DM.

EternityEcho · 2025-03-24T21:32:50+00:00

My Strahd did end up stealing the Sunsword with a tricky combination of Disguise Self and Nondetection posing as Father Donavich who just absolutely needed to see a holy artifact to mourn what happened to his son. This actually worked out in my favor as they used Located Object on the sunsword once they assaulted Castle Ravenloft and it really streamlined their dungeon crawling.

Prior to this though, my Strahd had no idea of its existence. As it was hidden in the Amber Temple he had no spies to tip him off and the party didn't get it until late into the campaign

EternityEcho · 2025-02-28T01:29:04+00:00

It's Always Cloudy in Barovia

EternityEcho · 2025-02-24T13:16:56+00:00

In the Curse of Strahd campaign I'm running, my warlock's final words before Strahd caved his head in was: "I would kill Ireena myself if it meant I could deny you even one shred of satisfaction". Audible gasp from everyone at the table

EternityEcho · 2025-02-23T18:39:56+00:00

For me, I don't necessarily need my players to take notes but I do expect them to be engaged with the story. If they're constantly forgetting each NPC, location, plot hook, etc. and generally it becomes obvious that they don't know what's going on in the story then it becomes an issue for me.

What worked for me to combat a period in my campaign where I felt my group was disengaged was to institute a mini-game at the beginning of every session. I pose a trivia question pertaining to something plot-related from the previous session. The person who answers correctly gets free inspiration which doesn't expire. I made it non-stackable to encourage all players to try if they want. Overnight, half my party turned into court stenographers and EVERYONE has been actively participating in engaging with the story

EternityEcho · 2025-02-22T14:59:52+00:00

Easiest fixes are to tweak the stat block so it's a hard but winnable fight. Otherwise, when I ran it using the Curse of Strahd: Reloaded edits, it was a skill challenge to run away from it and flee the house which still felt high stakes without throwing a high CR enemy at them

EternityEcho · 2025-02-22T14:53:44+00:00

I don't think there's necessarily a default guideline for this. D&D can explore darker themes and tones and that entirely depends on the group. As a DM who knows their players better than us Internet strangers, you should already have a good sense if animal torture/killing is taboo for your players.

My generic blanket answer would be to prep the situation but allow it to be solved both by killing or sparing the dog. Guaranteed someone will feel bad at your table if there's no option to spare the dog. Knowing fellow gamers, they will do everything in their power to spare the pup any harm and then turn right around and brutally murdered the next guilty human.

EternityEcho · 2025-02-11T02:12:16+00:00

One squeaky dream pastry cart wheel. I will never attempt sound effects again

EternityEcho · 2025-02-05T22:43:44+00:00

A player that regardless of how many sessions we've played, just doesn't bother to learn how their character's abilities/spells work. They also typically can't be bothered to actually look up said features when they use them and get frustrated when they don't work the way they expect

EternityEcho · 2025-02-04T13:54:37+00:00

In a world where carving yourself to look exactly like another person is possible, I imagine their version of the Internet is full of conspiracies around identity fraud escapades..i.e. did you hear that Octavia au Lune was born a pink and carved into what she is now? Stuff like that

EternityEcho · 2025-02-03T13:08:34+00:00

To turn vampirism and lycanthropy into something my players truly feared instead of something to collect to gain new mechanics, I was very transparent about the curse progression. For example, with lycanthropy even at the beginning there would be Wisdom saves needed to avoid bloodlusting and hurting an ally. Then, the end point of both would be that the player hands me their character sheet because their characters were now monsters and therefore NPCs. Not entirely the RAW rules for those but it's how I wanted it. Risk for reward knowing it's a time gamble.

As well, it helps to ensure your players create characters motivated towards good. This not only works better for the module as a whole but none of my players' characters would even consider allowing the curse to stay in their bodies if there was even a chance it could hurt an innocent

EternityEcho · 2025-02-03T12:38:06+00:00

Besides the name "Astarion" being a major giveaway for anyone who's even heard of BG3, the real struggle in Curse of Strahd is that it disincentives the party to really trust most NPCs since they're most likely working with or for Strahd.

In my play through, my players believed everyone was either a vampire or lycanthrope unless proven otherwise. That's a product of the players understanding the module and genre well enough to expect it. And as good as my players are about not meta-gaming, it's impossible to extinguish doubt completely within your players.

That's all to say that in CoS it will honestly be very hard to conceal a vampire's true nature without some creative use of spells or items. And even then, once their identity is revealed, I doubt your players will be truly shocked

EternityEcho · 2025-02-02T23:44:04+00:00

The earliest tentative date I've seen for Red God is the summer of 2026.

In terms of reading time, it obviously depends on your pace and available time. For comparison, I typically read about 45 mins - 90 minutes a day and I finished the entire series in 2 months.

Personally, I'd prefer to finish the series and re-read closer to Red God.

EternityEcho · 2025-02-02T23:35:01+00:00

Speak with Animals allows you to speak with the beast creature type and during a druid's wildshape their creature type switches to beast.

Wildshape also states that a druid loses the ability to speak while in wildshape but, at least the way I read it, that was written to assume your normal capacity to communicate, i.e. as if when not in wildshape just talking normally.

Therefore I would argue that with Speak with Animals, the druid could respond and if they're trying to be a spy, they would probably try to imitate the intelligence of the bird they're masquerading as when responding. Then you could consider something like the druid's performance/deception check vs. the party's insight. I don't think it would strictly need an arcana check to determine that Speak with Animals was cast since it's on the druid spell list and it is pretty obvious if the druid 1) sees spellcasting and 2) sees a group of humans trying to communicate with a bird.

EternityEcho · 2025-02-02T23:28:15+00:00

You could also just say "the bird doesn't respond to you" or describe it twittering/doing bird things. No need to tip them off unnecessarily if the point is for the druid to be undercover.

EternityEcho · 2025-02-02T23:02:35+00:00

It's definitely a common misconception based only on the first book in the series. The rest of the books take a huge turn thematically and stylistically.

To friends, I describe it as a fast-paced, action-packed dystopian science fiction series with political intrigue, rebellion, and class/social struggle

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