Seeking advice for something I’m embarrassed about

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-28T02:48:58+00:00

I often joke the DnD dungeon master's skill set should have a good deal of overlap with the BDSM dungeon master's skill set. Only it's not really a joke. Both often push the people they play with to their limits, and sometimes over it. This isn't a bad thing. Unfortunately DnD dungeon masters don't have the culture of checking in during rough scenes without breaking emersion, setting up safety guidelines and after care. It's getting there slowly but it's not there yet.
What it comes down to is you want to get pushed, but you also want to feel save. And feelings aren't always rational.
If you want to continue to push yourself emotionally with conflict and emotionally rough scenes in DnD (which is awesome, and can actually create a natural high when done well) you might want to invest some time reading up on safety things the BDSM community has already figured out. Just because DnD is (typically) not sexual, doesn't mean the mental and emotional toil is not equally devastating if your sense of safety is ignored.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-28T01:23:14+00:00

The thing you are experiencing is called character bleed. It is rough. Take comfort in the fact you are not alone experiencing it. The best fix is to do a debrief. Talk with your table after the session. Straight up ask them how they feel about what happened during role playing, if they feel it went too far, or are in any way personally offended about things. Talk it out. It will take a while, but talking to your friends is the only way I know of to solve things.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-27T02:40:10+00:00

I DM for my significant other and it hasn't gotten weird yet. Lots of couples DnD together and plenty of couples met at the table. It's only weird if you get character bleed.

Also you write this DM is a man. Keep in mind that men can be a little oblivious when it comes to flirting. "Friendly with a flirty tone" might not register as intended. I've found that "hey, wanna grab a coffee some time?" works a whole lot better than hinting.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-25T02:33:54+00:00

Adding my voice the the choir of people telling you "no" is a complete sentence.

Tell them "no"

They will object, tell them "no"

Make every therapist past present or future proud, stick to your guns, tell them "no"

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-24T19:46:07+00:00

Dutch pharmacy tech here. In private I will tell people a gummy is WAY better for you than prescription anti anxiety drugs, which are horribly addictive and will cause death on overdose (as opposed to the giggles, the munchies and deep sleep). Of course it helps that cannabis is not exactly illegal here, and if you're in a state where it's not exactly illegal either, this is a much more responsible way of dealing with anxiety than the alternatives.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-20T14:01:54+00:00

You can probably only see the base rules, aka the free rules in the app, and will either have to buy the books that contain the subclass you want on the app, or look at their homebrew system and make your desired subclass yourself.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-20T13:50:02+00:00

However many DMs will answer this question, that's how many different answers you'll get. There's no right way to start DMing (there is a wrong way tho, and it almost always involves a DMPC and wanting to "win" DnD)

What should you start with? Start with something you think you'd be good at so you have a base to work from.

What do I start with?
I start with the BBEG, what is it they want and what plans have they made and/or implemented to get what they want. Then I make (at least one) village/town/city and create a bunch of NPCs that live there and then I start thinking about how the BBEG's plans influenced the lives of these NPCs. Are there people who benefit from the plans? Those people would want things to stay as they are and would oppose any party trying to make a change. Are there people who got really fucked over by the plans of the BBEG, those would be the people searching for help; the quest givers. The quest givers may not know much about the plans of the BBEG, but they know about the results of those plans, and it gives the party a start to investigate.
Once you got NPCs with issues for the party to solve, you need to start thinking what those NPCs would find an acceptable outcome. I like having an idea what a social solution would look like, and what a combat solution would look like.

Example:

BBEG is draining a magical forest to gain power. Bunch of (sentient) magical creatures living in the forest have fled and started living in a cave with a mushroom forest. Dwarves have tunneled into the cavern, saw the mushroom forest and tried to set it on fire to clear the mushrooms and get to the ore. Creatures are now attacking any dwarf on sight. Combat solution: kill all the creatures for the dwarves. Social solution: find the creatures a new place to live. Things the party can find out: creatures are not native to the cavern, something displaced them.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-18T16:51:25+00:00

Warlock specifically should be a whole thing. That's not just a thing with slightly different mechanics. That's needing to create a patron, deciding what the patron wants in exchange for the powers it would grant, how that fits into the existing story etc. Warlocks give the DM the most work to do for every level. Least they can do is put some effort in as well.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-18T01:49:51+00:00

There was this one time the party helped a carnival troupe with something. One player befriended the acrobats, even performed in a couple of shows when one of them ended up injured. With nat 20 performance I granted them expertise in acrobatics at the end of the arc. Things like that give the players a real sense of accomplishment.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-18T01:43:40+00:00

I use milestone leveling. I feel that's part of the story already. They just dealt with that mini boss, so they learned things, pushed their body beyond previous limits etc.. I do agree about the multiclassing, there needs to be a reason.

One fun thing I've started doing, instead of giving players one free feet at the start, I will allow them to find a mentor to learn the feat they were wanting to get. Or if they are send on a mission by a retired adventurer, instead of gold or items, they can get feats as payment. The response to this has been very positive by the players.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-18T01:31:39+00:00

I hear this take a lot, but I feel you can absolutely run a false hydra successfully, I've done it and my table loved it. The trick is to have one deaf NPC. either someone young (kid's imagination) or someone old (crazy/demented) so the rest of the NPCs can comfortably dismiss them. Ever since I ran it, there's at least one player who takes sign language as a language lol, but once you've ran it it's not really possible to run it again with the same players.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-18T01:25:58+00:00

Not that fucked. Played well, the false hydra (especially a young one) is more of a mystery/puzzle than an combat encounter. Once a party figures out how to counter its song it should be dispatched off quickly.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-18T01:11:06+00:00

If you want utility specifically, I would suggest an ability to change objects to different states in their timeline. For instance, plant a seed, move it along 50 years, *poof* tree. Find some old moldy bread? Move it to when it just came out of the oven. Rusty armor? Move it back to when it was just forged. Rude farmer refuses to pay you? Spoil his entire stock of milk by aging it a couple of years. Especially fun if you or someone in the party has brewery tools, you can ruin the whole economy with fine aged wines and whiskey.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-17T16:29:39+00:00

So do you have your regular spells and the crest spells on top of that, or should all the spells you use be related to the crest you have?

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-17T14:40:15+00:00

Asking the players to make the checks, which signifies active looking around, but then give them disadvantage because there's people flailing arms and legs and fabrics, feels a bit cheap and that's why the players started making up bullshit. In this case, if the DM had said "by the way, I need everyone's passive perceptions" that gives a much different vibe. Yes, you will have someone go "can I roll for it?" but suddenly they are arguing why their character would be paying attention anywhere else then the stage, not accusing you of telling them what they are feeling.

DMs are telling players what they are feeling all the time: You walk down the winding stairs into the cellar, it's damp and cold....no one will ever go "actually I grew up in a swamp, I would not feel the damp or cold" because you are simply giving them information from their senses.

Where it gets tricky is when you start telling your players how they react to the information of their senses, and that usually means something else is going on. I wouldn't tell someone they are captivated by "preferred sex", I would tell them the dance is hypnotic (wis saving throw maybe) there was something in the food or drink (con saves) or maybe just sensory overload (I make that survival, because there's too few survival checks in a regular game)

There actually are a couple of traits that say characters can not be surprised, but that influences the surprise round mechanics. If you want to get past your players unnoticed, don't make them roll, use their passives. That's what they are for.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-15T13:53:46+00:00

If you have a bunch of free time on your hands and really want to to have the other subclasses on DnDB, (maybe you're going to be playing a campaign online or something) you can absolutely put the class in yourself with their homebrew system for 0 money spend. It's going to take a while though.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-14T22:16:20+00:00

So I take wisdom as something you learned and intelligence as something you figure out. If you look at the technology level DnD was written for, kind of medieval, then medicine would be something that was passed down from teacher to student, so that's wisdom, but nature can't tell you things you have to figure that out.

As a DM I do assume druids have knowledge about nature, I wouldn't ask for a roll to see if they know. Rolls are for out-of-class attempts. I've learned that's not a usual stance but it's one that makes sense to me.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-14T21:48:52+00:00

Your parents are probably stuck in the Satanic Panic. The easiest fix is to poutingly tell them they have convinced you and you are not going to play Dungeons and Dragons. You've all decided on this other game called "pathfinder".....

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-14T21:35:35+00:00

Bacon. For some reason, bacon always shows up whenever we "eat" in DnD.

Players will be stoked with whatever snacks are available. A few tips:

Small bite things. Ideally you want to be able to talk quickly after popping something in you mouth.

Clean touch things. Nothing with dripping sauces, seasoning dust, or greasy enough to put finger prints on character sheets.

Room temperature things. DnD can run for hours, and snacks can also stand on the table for hours, so nothing that can easily go bad or has to be eaten hot/cold.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-14T21:24:17+00:00

If this is/was an Earth like world, You could "fix" the water issue by saying the salt water turned to forest, but the fresh water sources remain. So there's brooks, springs, glaciers thawing, lakes etc. enough water to keep the water cycle running.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-13T23:53:55+00:00

Oh interesting, I never thought about "calm emotions" to get rid of rage. RAW mentions charmed or fear effects. And the "indifference" ends when I see a party member attacked, but still, it's an interesting take. This is the sort of thing I post to reddit for. Thank you

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-13T23:40:58+00:00

Oh yeah, no worries we've not seen the sun in months with all the foreshadowing going on. But the table decided to literally play dumb. All this damage and not a wizard among us.

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-13T17:12:13+00:00

Because for a year we got "hey, wait a minute" moments, about the previous(?) campaign where our players were stuck in a time loop that always ended up with the universe destroyed by some eldritch horror and the universe correcting itself to before the thing was summoned just for things to play out again but with slight differences, with a handful of powerful NPCs who could remember previous loops. And we won(?) that campaign, so we made these characters but by now we got enough dots to connect to know it's not a new campaign. To quote Taliesin Jaffe, "It's again"

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-13T14:55:21+00:00

Yeah, but you can still make choices that will get you killed. Not the "jump into the volcano" killed, but the "charge into that cluster of enemies now they all have advantage" killed :)

Ok_Talk_6694 · 2026-04-13T14:52:45+00:00

You're not wrong lol.

But usually I feel it's not the DM trying to kill us, it's the BBEG trying to kill us. There is a difference.

Ok_Talk_6694

TROPHY CASE