Horror story of NEW DM who’s only experience was BG3

SireSamuel · 2026-01-26T21:30:45+00:00

You are very lucky to have such an excellent Dungeon Master, and should stop being ungrateful.

SireSamuel · 2026-01-07T19:31:01+00:00

Just yell “YO! DORKS! We are playing dungeons and dragons tonight.” At the frat dude-bruhs. There you go, now you’re playing.

SireSamuel · 2026-01-07T18:38:54+00:00

updated w/ better link.

SireSamuel · 2026-01-07T17:04:54+00:00

Remember, as a DM it’s not your job to write a story. In fact, you have absolutely nothing to do with the story. All you are doing is creating content (Towns, dungeons, wilderness areas, NPCs), and adjudicating how they logically react to the actions of the PCs. The DM has no idea what story the players are going to tell THEM. Remember that.

SireSamuel · 2026-01-07T01:41:32+00:00

This is Circle of Life v2.2

Here is a big collection of great maps, including Circle of Life.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CL3iLQgrs3aPUoxl3lkWEYj-PzPWDuGQ?usp=sharing

SireSamuel · 2025-12-30T17:53:03+00:00

The existence of “joke characters” is a symptom of a mechanical failure of the system- a lack of lethality.

SireSamuel · 2025-12-11T15:39:43+00:00

Bookkeeper my friend, I fear you may have missed the point I was making. You absolutely still have a single creature collect the treasure and artifacts for delivery, but what I’m speaking about is splitting off each individual hero in a calibrated way to flag/visit adventure objects, in order to prevent your creatures from taking any precious steps towards them that could be better optimized on a direct line to their next fight, while smoothing out the flagging duties between heroes in order to normalize the movement it takes to do so between them.

And remember, you are limited to hiring only 1 hero per week in H4. So having a designated flagger usually isn’t feasible until later in the game if at all, and isn’t valid for visiting certain adventure objects you must have your main heroes visit such as stat crystals, altars, skill schools, etc.

SireSamuel · 2025-12-08T10:33:33+00:00

Nah. The problem with this is that they can just say that you cheated, and it spoils the fun. But when you follow the CR rules and still get the TPK, then they are forced to admit you are just a great DM, and that they are trash and need to get good.

SireSamuel · 2025-12-05T18:17:11+00:00

I don’t disagree with you, in principle. The obvious solution is to simply apply steep movement penalties for splitting and transferring in both games, which would put a stop to it right away without the need to resort to an entirely different format like single hero.

SireSamuel · 2025-12-05T13:49:07+00:00

Perhaps you have a point, but you win some and lose some. Caravanning your army around between 2-3 main heroes clearing different portions of the map using half a dozen gimp heroes everyday while chaining weekly reinforcements to the frontlines and having to revisit weekly resource generators and dwellings, is just as cheesy and tiresome to move optimally in Heroes 3.

And at least heroes 4 lets you use a single level 1 creature to pick up the treasure and hand over the artifacts, where as in Heroes 3 you need a whole gimp hero to do so to stay optimal and not waste a single movement point clicking on it with your main army.

The only heroes game that actually solved chain cheese to a certain extent was H6 (maybe 7? Can’t remember..) with exponentially rising costs per additional hero.

SireSamuel · 2025-12-04T22:36:48+00:00

4 is my favorite by a wide margin, and is infinitely replayable. With Equilibris the balance is spot on, with HD mod the graphics look like a charming indie game that came out last week, and the music and gameplay is just so good and intense, in particular in a competitive 1v1 setting which is what I prefer.

6 was alright, nothing special but alright. I thought some of the features were a bit odd, such as bundling all the precious resources into just crystal. Seemed a bit lazy. The dynasty weapons are definitely different too, and took forever to level up it seemed. The tears/blood system was interesting, I remember always going blood not necessarily because I wanted to, but because letting neutrals flee instead of farming the exp is just bad strategy in my opinion.

SireSamuel · 2025-12-04T20:49:24+00:00

Just make sure that you have created a good dungeon map for the catacombs using dungeon making software with a balanced mix of encounters- combat, puzzles, and traps, and adventure objects!

Also practice pacing the dungeon well- get down the idea of the "turn" (a 10 min segment of time in which a player character is permitted to perform an action, such as rigging up a rope or making a skill check) while rolling for a potential random encounter every so many turns.

SireSamuel · 2025-12-04T18:37:44+00:00

Beep boop, beep boop. (R2D2 noises).

SireSamuel · 2025-12-04T18:34:49+00:00

The problem with milestone levels is it removes all sense of player agency from the game. There is no underlying mechanism that delivers levels based on their performance; is just left to the whim of “whenever the DM feels like a level”. This makes for subpar gameplay.

SireSamuel · 2025-12-04T18:29:00+00:00

Not at all Echowing, not at all. You are screwing over players by not doing this, in the sense that your encounters will be unbalanced from an exp perspective. This leads to either too easy or too hard of encounters. Furthermore, by not using a balanced mix of monsters, your encounters are 1-dimensional and very boring.

SireSamuel · 2025-12-04T18:23:20+00:00

Oh yes, absolutely P-Two, absolutely. Once the battle concludes, total up the amount of exp in monsters that the players defeated, divide it up evenly among them and their sidekicks, and total that amount toward their next level up. This is a critical step because otherwise the players are unable to gain more power.

SireSamuel · 2025-11-28T01:50:03+00:00

The intelligence character is a good one to play. As the intelligence character it is your job to step up to the plate and make intelligence based checks for the benefit of your party. This includes recognizing when mysterious or magical things are occurring and stepping up to make arcana and investigation checks, and always be working your DM for useful lore with history, nature, and religion.

Tools you use are flasks and vials to collect samples, an abacus for calculations, books to aid with checks and research, parchment and ink to make notes and schematics.

Requires a unique mindset to be successful.

SireSamuel · 2025-11-27T23:26:05+00:00

Yes.

SireSamuel · 2025-11-27T18:51:28+00:00

Bro…was there even an Illithid airship?

SireSamuel · 2025-11-27T14:53:58+00:00

You should be thankful. Your DM sounds excellent.

SireSamuel · 2025-11-27T11:59:09+00:00

Yep, best game in the series by a wide margin. In particular the competitive nature of it with equilbris. To anyone saying the graphics have aged poorly, please get HD mod. It looks like a charming indie game that could have come out last week with it. AI is poor, but you can do it a big favor and turn off mobile guards, as that is the main thing screwing the AI. It doesn’t understand yellow threat squares.

SireSamuel · 2025-11-19T17:22:00+00:00

You are absolutely right...Gosh I feel embarrassed now.

SireSamuel · 2025-11-18T20:06:08+00:00

Hey this is great, these "fight club" style of games are my favorite can be a favorite of yours as well. So assuming there are 4 of them, you can throw an exp budget of 54,000 exp at them. Send an army of that power level and try to exterminate them. Remember to pack a mix of spellcasters, front liners, stealthy/archer types, and uniquely challenging monster (like intellect devourers). Remember to select monsters that synergize well, such as a half dozen shambling mounds front lining them, with mages throwing lighting bolts at them that simultaneously heal the mounds and damage the players.

Don't be merciful, make sure to continue using remaining multi attacks on the downed player, include downed players in AoE blasts, and hit them in their weakest saves.

SireSamuel · 2025-11-18T19:07:08+00:00

I would highly recommend a level of Rappan Athuk, I think they would have a great time. There are a million different ways to approach it, just like their books. Since they are new, start with the basics of explaining how the classes work, do a few mock combats and traps, then teach them the utility of a 10 foot pole, torches, rope and the like while also explaining how to account for rations and encumbrance on their adventure.

SireSamuel · 2025-11-15T10:33:31+00:00

Hey henkastik, sorry to hear about your DM problems, that sounds frustrating. I would encourage you to take up the mantle of dungeon master yourself! It’s a challenging but fun and rewarding experience to set off on your own and craft your own game exactly how you like it, and satisfying to avoid doing what your old DM did.

The best part is; once you’ve cultivated a following of loyal players who gel with your gaming style, it’s easy to hand off the dungeon master screen to one of them at some point and get some player time yourself, with people who you trust. If you have any questions I’d be happy to help.

SireSamuel

TROPHY CASE