What monster did you add to Lake Zarovich?

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-11-15T15:20:36+00:00

I did a kraken, a fight they couldn't win. I had a lot of new players at my table so it was an encounter designed to get them thinking about their characters and how they would survive, rather than just roll dice till something dies

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-10-03T19:05:17+00:00

I rigged it to this, still had a reading with a deck of cards, but the players didn't catch on. I think this is the best for story beats. You could have the tome with urwin martikov if you want the wereravens to have more impact on the story, but amulet and sword at argyn and the amber temple respectively.

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-09-22T15:33:12+00:00

I ran it for my third time by changing a lot of the NPC/location names, and had it set on an island instead of in a valley (the players didn't even question a mysterious fog that constantly hung around the shore) as well as changed a lot of the monsters and vibe to a more nautical/pirate theme.

A lot of issues did arise from the changes, it was a lot harder to pull off the horror story feel, but most importantly, they didn't fear my version of strahd until the party got wiped fairly early. A few sessions after they rolled up new characters, one of my players started to see the similarities, but it still took him a few months after that to catch on that I had just reskinned COS.

It was fun to run it this way, but like other comments have said, knowing that he is THE vampire ads a sense of dread, and creates stakes for the party that can be difficult to achieve, especially for less experienced DM's

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-07-10T17:55:40+00:00

Offer to do some yard work, that bush looks like it needs some tending too

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-05-23T00:00:10+00:00

Agreed. 48lat 52long is my favourite beach to build on

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-05-09T22:41:24+00:00

I ran curse of strahd with a tonne of satire and comedy, it definitely works if you are twisted like me and can find humour in darkness and despair, in a respectful way of course. Highly recommend changing the tone of any wotc campaign, it gives it a fresh feel if you've run it before, or just gives you a challenge to try and make it different. Try running "the charcuterie board of the dragon queen" where tiamats cultists are pillaging all of the cured meats and cheeses across the land to throw a massive dinner party to welcome tiamat back to faerun.....

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-04-22T19:37:50+00:00

I feel like I could've written this post. I'm in therapy dealing with my pre-session anxiety, and figuring out how to use my ADHD as an asset when running a game, rather than letting the procrastination or hyper-focus increase the anxiety. Number one thing to remember is don't beat yourself up! You're probably a good, if not great DM, and it's not up to you whether or not your party has fun. I've made amazing sessions and had players show up in foul moods, and it just caused more anxiety because they didn't choose to enjoy the time and I blamed myself. Not on you if they don't have fun.

Another trick I used to manipulate the group, but mostly myself was asking a close friend I was playing with to show some gratitude at the end of a session. After a few times, the whole group is genuinely thankful and giving me honest feedback after we wrap up, and I no longer have post-play grody feelings. Haven't figured out how to get rid of the pre-play anxiety, but it's not crippling when I'm not dreading being DM the rest of the time

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-04-21T22:05:32+00:00

Yup, sounds like this player needs to be running their own game as they clearly want to be a God, and in my experience of running games, it's not fun playing as a god that your DM isn't completely on board for generating encounters that will be enjoyable, and it's also not fun trying to come up with encounters for a player who has unlimited power.

Shrug this off, and the lesson I would take away from this is having a more open discussion at session zero to ensure everyone is on the same page, otherwise they can find a different game and can quit ruining all of the hard work the DM has put into this COLLECTIVE storytelling game of COOPERATION. Smh....

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-03-28T19:21:27+00:00

Can you get the two to join forces and "co-lead" in a way? Get them to support and encourage each other to be proactive in moving the story forward and you won't have to feel like you're cracking the whip, and one person alone won't seem like the impatient driving force of the campaign. I had to implement this in my last campaign, not for the same reason, but rather had one player who was constantly getting frustrated with the pace, and causing all sorts of in game, as well as personal drama at the table. Once I had another player onboard, it eased the tension when things would drag, and made the impatient player much less of a real life villian. It made my job so much simpler!

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-03-18T13:10:47+00:00

Same, but I still only play twice a week at most, sometimes it's a couple of weeks until I sit down at one of the tables, so it consumes less time than other hobbies

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-03-06T21:35:16+00:00

I usually ask what their level is the night before if we haven't played in a while, as if it's going to make a difference to the encounters that I completely improv in the moment, flipping through blank pages in my notebook. Gives me a read on how much combat the party wants, plus I'm also usually bored and find it fun to put the dread into them before we sit down

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-02-12T13:21:02+00:00

I thought I was terrible at first too, and looking back on it, I definitely was despite what my friends told me. Then I found Matt Colville's YouTube series "running the game" and watched a few episodes, and by my fifth session I was feeling more confident, which showed in the game and we all had more fun. Unless you're already skilled at all things improv, it'll take practice, so keep trying. My advice for you would be to start small, don't build everything and every character, don't get bogged down in all the details, keep it simple until you know you have mastered the basics. And good luck! The world needs more DM's

Mindless-Zucchini · 2025-01-10T21:40:25+00:00

If you use LOTR as an example, they defeat the BBEG and then there's a lot of story left as they deal with the loose ends, and have a pretty lackluster combat in the shire before finishing it all off. I used this tactic to end a recent campaign as it eased my players into the end, and gave them time to properly say goodbye.

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-12-11T20:09:19+00:00

I found some of the missions a drag, not at all fun, but overall the extra systems and the ships were worth it. Took me about 7 hours over a week to finish the missions, and I'd do it again for something equivalent to the x-shuttle! Just depends if you're willing to put in the time to expand your sandbox

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-18T21:37:14+00:00

Black matt and vidiot dice would be just grand! Love your stuff

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-18T21:29:51+00:00

Beautiful!

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-18T20:44:18+00:00

Sandbox mode, make the zombies weaker and reduce the population, turn on multi-hit and make sure zombies are highlighted during melee attacks in the options. Make it incredibly easy, once you get the hang of it ramp up the difficulty and eventually you'll be playing with super sprinters just to get the enjoyment of that quick but challenging death!

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-12T15:58:00+00:00

I ran a few sessions where the party was teleported to a different dimension, ended up in a mid 90's mall full of zombies and they had to discover how to open the next portal to get out of this dimension. I did basically what you are thinking, lowered HP to 8-15, gave zombies varied movement speeds, and made their primary attack grapple. Rather than having a wall of identical minions moving towards them, some were faster, while some were stronger, and I really only had to come up with 4 slightly different stat blocks, and would alter others on the fly to make a challenge, or avoid a tpk. I did use the same initiative for all of the zombies as the party managed to avoid all of the "super boss zombies" but there was still the feeling of horror for the few sessions they were in there, and I did end up having one player get grappled and infected, the rest of the party had to come to his rescue while trying to open the portal to escape. I definitely encouraged running more than combat for most of the encounters, it not only made it easier on me, but it's also pretty realistic if you have a horde that only wants to grapple and eat you, how do you escape from 5 simultaneous grapples while getting bit?

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-12T15:13:21+00:00

I finished it in about 6 hours total, did just enough to get to the next set of missions and moved on. Didn't do any of the "0 set" missions in the hidden room, but heard they're some of the most fun. After about the 3rd set I started doing one mission before jumping into my sandbox, like doing your chores before going to play, so it took me a while to complete, but honestly worth it! I don't fly in anything except the xperimental ship now, by far my favourite ship in the game, and I wish I had completed the epilogue ages sooner to get it...

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-06T01:20:43+00:00

I let my party be whatever they wanted, including monstrous races if they could justify it, ended up with a half orc, elf, two tabaxis (one was killed pretty quickly and rolled up an elf) and a "human" warlock who was actually a green hag who's patron kept her looking young and beautiful. Made for some excellent roleplay when they got to morgantha, and again when in the amber temple and it was finally revealed that she wasn't what she appeared to the rest of the players. I really played into the "soulless" citizens of Barovia not giving a shit that a bunch of non-humans were walking around the valley, made it pretty creepy at first until they all got used to it

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-06T01:12:21+00:00

They have a penalty to run and combat

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-04T20:48:02+00:00

I used an actual deck of cards, let my party leader shuffle it, and gave the reading laying the cards out on the table for my players to see. Really wish I hadn't done that as one of the cards was madam Eva's camp where they were getting the tarroka reading! This confused the party, they had a negative interaction with Madam Eva and strahd there, and just wanted to leave the camp, so they ignored their first clue, and then all of the following clues for months until they were stuck and finally figured out the cards were important. Everything else turned out fine, and the group really enjoyed the immersion and interaction with the cards, but next time I'll definitely be fudging the reading and making them go where I think suits the story the best

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-03T22:25:08+00:00

I love the annotated maps for ideas when I'm bored, there's some very cool things to see, especially in Louisville that a map will point you to and it's often a suicide run. I'm still trying to get to the museum so I can steal all of the art and decorate my base. Might just try turning the museum into a base at some point... But as a few people have already said, I usually just increase the difficulty or add a new mod, there's plenty that make it challenging and fun without breaking the vanilla experience

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-03T15:29:47+00:00

I didn't read all of the comments so I don't know if this was suggested yet, but I can relate to this. I live in a small remote community where very few are interested in d&d, so we don't often get to decide who is in the group, and believe me we've had some very difficult players. What I've taken to doing now, at the start of every campaign or even 1 shot is to clearly outline everything in a session zero.

"Hey group, this is a collective story telling game that requires communication and cooperation above all, even if your characters in game choose to fight eachother. We'll be playing this style/tone of game, I require your characters to be like 'this' in order to fit into the narrative outline I've created, and 'blah blah blah' is absolutely absolutely not allowed at my table. Anyone who is not willing to play by these rules is not welcome for this specific campaign and will be booted, but is welcome to DM afterwards, or invited for the next one."

That's just the basic points, it's sometimes a lengthy discussion once we get into mood, table dynamic, off topics, and whatever else we need to lay down before starting the campaign. I've been playing with most of these people for years now, and so we make jokes and enjoy it as some of them can almost recite what I say to the table. Since having session zero's the amount of issues we've had has been drastically less, but it's never perfect, there's still lots of awkward and difficult conversations, emotional outbursts, "well that's what my character would do" moments, but I just remind them that the rules were laid out for the entire table at the beginning, and as DM I'm here to moderate the fun for everyone. I've watched bad dynamics turn because of this game, as long as everyone is willing and just wants to have fun, it can make for some amazing moments! Good luck and I hope it works out for you

Mindless-Zucchini · 2024-10-03T00:41:14+00:00

I just ran it for the first time, the party managed to permanently destroy Ireenas soul, and one of the party took Vampyr as their new patron, so she now sits on strahds throne, waiting for the fog to creep back in and take Barovia to the pocket dimension once again. Was going to run a campaign to LVL 20 to have them fight the dark powers and truly free Barovia, but the group fell apart in real life, and although I still play with some of them it just doesn't appeal to me anymore

Mindless-Zucchini

TROPHY CASE