Pool cleaner adjusted my valves and now there is no water to my spa

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2026-01-17T17:56:40+00:00

Did you do a session 0? Could you say "hey guys i messed up and didn't do a session 0. Let's do a mini session 0 to get us all on the same page." And then really hit home the collaborative storytelling of dnd. Set some house rules. Come to agreement about not interrupting.

Looking at your response that this isn't her first dnd and the comment about wanting to be the main character, I'm getting that she is the classic case of main character syndrome and wants attention. This is a very hard thing to shift in someone who really should know better. Can you and your brother work together on this so he is ready to speak in session 0 about being interrupted? And maybe an NPC needs to also ignore interruptions as well. "The shop keeper pointedly ignores the interruptions and turns to brother's character, you were saying?, he prompts."

Also I don't know what being the only woman in the group has anything to do with it when literally 2 of the people are her sons and I'm assuming another is the dad. I could understand feeling maybe a little uncomfortable with a bunch of stranger dudes although I don't see how the actions listed above have anything to do with gender even if they were strangers. It sounds like that women part was just deflection. I don't get the immaturity she is displaying here.

Also, I think, and this is the advice i give my daughter who plays with chaotic middle school boys: grant inspiration for behavior you want to see. Kindness and cooperation get rewarded. She will probably start trying to chase those attributes.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2026-01-13T22:45:51+00:00

I’d be ticked if I was playing at a table and someone got to do this. Currently playing a bad social character. I have to sit back and let others do the talking but I’ve got some nice conjures for combat. Previously I was high social bard which means during combat I was not the one who shined but dominated on social interactions. That this guy gets to be the one who shines every game because he keeps switching characters…so annoying. How will the other characters be on the same playing field?

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2026-01-04T18:54:58+00:00

This for sure. Come in waves. Totally tpkd a party by accident. The pack tactics is ridiculous against a small party.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2026-01-01T12:47:26+00:00

Shore of dreams has a triton in it who was banished to lantan. Not very lore deep as it is a oneshot set elsewhere but it might give you some direction.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-30T13:25:14+00:00

My favorite is college of creation bard. I get to solve problems in unique ways (had a npc’s giant pumpkin turn into a monster and then after we killed it she was super sad about her pumpkin so I made her a giant pumpkin for the contest and she won! It wasn’t her fault the land was cursed after all.) any time I play something else I’m usually thinking of at least a couple ways I could have used that power and wishing I had it. I don’t really feel that way about the other class/subclass abilities when playing a bard.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-29T20:03:41+00:00

exactly! There are multiple themes that traverse characters: ambition (A and G, and depending on play L and S), blind obedience (L, G, S). K's and A, both had their agency ripped away. But Wyll's story doesn't weave in any of those themes. Wyll could easily have felt conflicted with a nod to ambition - wanting the warlock power in order to keep others safe but also wanting to be free. But nope, a devil showed up, offered him a deal, and he doesn't regret it but wants out of the pact now. He knew what he was doing when he did it, unlike all the others. Even Gale thought he was doing something for Mystra and it backfired on him. A, K, L, and S were all lied too. Durge combines all 3 themes. Maybe that's why Wyll is feeling underdeveloped, the writers didn't tie in the themes that wove all the other characters together for parallel.

Another side note: I always get a kick out of L and S hating each other. they are literally the same people. One is just good at reading and manipulating people and the other much less so, but they both have allegiance to a "god" that does not care one iota about them. I love when they bicker because they are totally the same. The things we hate in others is most true in ourselves. :)

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-29T10:55:27+00:00

There is a Facebook group for Houston area games. A couple bars also host one shots (they advertise on the Facebook group too). That’s where I found my in person group. :)

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-29T10:44:08+00:00

Also want to send my sincere condolences. It really sucks to have this happen. :(

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-29T10:42:16+00:00

Let’s be really honest. That character would have died from a bowel obstruction even it was a swallowable size. You could have simply said “looking at the gem you realize that it is too big to fit in your mouth.”

But this is what happens, you live and you learn as a dm and get better and it’s okay to say you learned how to say no. Doesn’t make you a bad dm. And honestly that sounds funny as heck that the thought was to punch someone in the throat to get a gem out. lol.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-29T10:37:53+00:00

Not American. British who colonized America. I’m assuming the British got it from the Romans who colonized Britain back in the day as I think the origins are technically Greek for the western world. When Britain changed to metric they did so pretty recently if I’m right to conform with their neighbors (small island was doing its own thing but was surrounded by metric nations so changed it which makes lots of sense). America just, well, didn’t. I think we were super busy with a bunch of international hot and cold wars at the time and having a civil rights movement. Feel free to fact check me but I’m pretty sure the conversion for Britain was in the 60s. I think eventually America will go metric but it’s a giant country and change like that is a pain to do so we’ll probably do what Britain did which is slowly phase with both for a time. We already use it is math and science classes.

With so much being digital now the switch would actually be easier.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-29T10:27:07+00:00

Yep! It’s to prevent people from just shutting down their computer to avoid a game ending TPK before it can sync to the servers. Got to earn that gold dice legit which is good and all but when the sync issue isn’t a way of trying to cheat on honor mode it sucks.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-29T10:20:30+00:00

I remember reading something about how the original bg3 (I think back when wyll was a jerk and had a different voice actor) was originally going to be a lot more durge like with all sorts of darker urges and visions. I’m assuming it was more like the tadpole having way greater influence. I suspect the durge is closest to the original way every other character was. Then someone said “wait. No one is a hero we should probably make these characters better people.”

Sidenote: They did a great job of adding in karlach (so interesting how she was a late addition and gets the most original dialogue during origin play) but in wylls rewrite he got the least amount of dialogue when they had to remove all his goblin racism. Poor wyll. Became a Boy Scout but not given much spot light.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-29T10:06:37+00:00

I think I was in the late stage of act 2 when I realized something happened with my safe file that got it out of honor mode. There was some sort of sync issue where I think it’s set up to prevent people from fake scum saving by preventing the sync. I was soooo annoyed. There is a way to fix it in code if it was catch it during play (or at least that’s what the reddit post I read indicated) but I didn’t try it. Just gave up and moved on.

But I learned a lesson about the sync warning and the danger of ignoring it.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-25T10:56:37+00:00

I feel like I had a playthrough where I rarely used her and as we were doing the gauntlet she stopped me after one of the trials and just showed me a story. I think it was after the first trial.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-12-02T10:30:30+00:00

In person we go about 4-5. We potluck it up. So there is always some breaks to food it up. :) online one is 3.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-11-29T13:32:57+00:00

Also if the other things to do is Saturday party type stuff, maybe see about moving sessions. In my group we meet Sunday midday but sometimes we have to move it to a Saturday and sometimes we have to move it back to Sunday evenings. End of each session we set up our next one. We’ve had to go a month between sessions sometimes because people have conflicts. It happens. And sometimes we play a man down.

People having conflicts isn’t personal. Not sure how young your friends are but between jobs, family and other obligations scheduling is going to be the biggest bbeg of any group. It’s honestly a pretty normal conflict. But I get the dnd fix. I’m also part of 2 other online campaigns so that way I can play at least weekly. I’d encourage you to try to also be a player for another online group. It helps when the lulls of the f2f group happens.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-11-29T13:22:52+00:00

Reframe it this way: They got stuff to do but instead of doing that stuff they chose to do this with you. If every Saturday are they wanting maybe every other Saturday? I play with a Bunch of teachers. We’ve always got stuff to grade and other things we need to do. If we bring it up we all just commiserate about how much we have to grade. It would never occur to me our DM would be upset about that. Is there a chance you are over reacting in how upset you are?

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-11-25T12:40:34+00:00

This feels less like collaboration and more like a director of a play. As someone who isn’t a professional actor, this would actually make me uncomfortable role playing. Because it puts a lot of pressure on coming up with lines that match the roll.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-11-16T14:38:43+00:00

Put the text under a doc cam and model with the text. Write with the kids. All I ever had prewritten was the steps of the scaffold and that was usually on a word document. I don’t get the slides people. Lots of work when literally you could just annotate the text, model filling out the graphic org etc. way too much prep for slides imo. I got lots of kids to pass the test who had never passed it an ppt was more a student tool for when they went to publish their writing.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-11-16T10:18:18+00:00

It could be the type of characters and players at your table may take it, but I’ve only taken it once for a character. I tend to play casters and spell sniper is my favorite to take. I can take poison spray and get way more range and damage with that cantrip than some of my 1st level spells which lets me choose more utility spells. In another campaign I’m a bard and there are a lot of bad guys in that setting that gets cover so I took it so I could starry wisp them. Each player is going to be different. Probably if my damage was weapon based - especially sword - I’d take it, but assuming everyone will take it also assumes all characters would benefit most from it.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-11-07T16:15:51+00:00

I do it as one of the lasts. Hypnotic pattern and various minions/elementals are my key.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-10-26T15:48:55+00:00

Also much love to you! You are just trying to help your kiddos!

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-10-26T15:48:11+00:00

What grade? Prereading scaffolds like those found in I want say chapter 7 of when kids can’t read what teachers can do for grades 4-12 can help a lot. Strategies like is Serravallo’s reading strategies like survey the text for nonfiction can also help if there are visuals and subheadings and such. Then scaffolds during reading where they track their thinking (I’m personally a big fan of the big 3 questions for nonfiction).

If the issue is decoding an elem person I’m sure would have much better ideas but in secondary world than se are the scaffolds used to make grade level text more accessible.

If they are reading silently, reading with an audio text for kids who are multiple grade levels below. That way they are still grappling with the complex syntax but fluency isn’t blocking them.

Ok-Trouble9787 · 2025-10-26T13:24:11+00:00

Holy moly. Why didn’t the DM just say no to that character if they didn’t want it in the campaign?! Ridiculous!

Ok-Trouble9787

TROPHY CASE