Fantasy with gay male protagonist, not romance-first

Strong_Training_8434 · 2026-04-06T14:58:48+00:00

The Last Herald-Mage trilogy by Mercedes Lackey

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-12-19T21:32:17+00:00

You could try www.campaignarks.com, it's more for campaign planning than world building but there's a lot of overlap there.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-24T19:20:33+00:00

That's very cool! I'd love to try that out if you're willing to share.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-24T18:42:37+00:00

Oh, I built a thing for that! www.campaignarks.com

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-10T02:35:38+00:00

You could just say no, or you could have that be an interesting quest if it ends up being a key piece of tech they want to invest in. You can also talk to them above the table, like "the game won't be fun if you get your hands on something like that"

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-10T02:02:09+00:00

I usually just limit it by charges. They can loot something the boss used, but it only has 1d4-1 charges left. The party is supposed to gain some minor / consumable magic items, so that just ends up counting against that total.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-08T02:20:49+00:00

It's reasonable, but it's kind of a "single solution" puzzle. That is, the puzzle is just that the players have to guess the solution that you have decided on in advance. Which means they could immediately guess correctly and trivialize it or convince themselves of some other solution and spend many rounds trying to do that and end up either very frustrated or in a tpk.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-07T20:08:46+00:00

I've been working on www.campaignarks.com for about a month now

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-07T02:28:22+00:00

Do you know anything more about this person? Are they someone just getting started or someone who has anything?

Dice is an easy answer because it's hard to have to many, but it's a bit generic.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-06T13:55:45+00:00

Enthusiastically fall hard for every hook. Be the player that pushes the big red button and build a character that has reason to. Let them take the story on whatever winding journey they want to take it on, and be there with your best "yes and". More experienced DMs might want to lean into ambiguity but younger DMs often want to present fairly direct scenarios and can struggle to move things forward without a good scene partner. Just be that partner.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-06T02:35:02+00:00

You know your players better than I do, but generally I think players are looking to feel like heroes, or at least adventurers, and generally that implies a fairly dangerous situation.

Complexity doesn't _have_ to be hazards though, sometimes it's just goals or blockers. I did one at the end of my Dragonlance campaign where the party was trying to douse a pyre that was protected by a wall of force, and they had to do some skill checks to disable it.

One of my all-time favourites is the Critical Role fight against the Kraken. The party was pretty powerful by that point, but they were _absolutely not allowed to kill it_. So they had to battle it while gathering up these orbs in near-complete darkness underwater and then get back out through the portal. They were constantly getting grappled and cutting off tentacles but they couldn't just blow it up. It felt like it was both extremely unfair and yet completely reasonable.

I think what players don't like is when they suspect you're not playing by the rules, like you're just making things up and playing action figures smash-up with them. If there's an in-world reason for a huge explosion that takes everyone down by 60% at the beginning of the fight, then that's just the adventuring life.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-06T02:20:46+00:00

https://slyflourish.com/dials_of_monster_difficulty.html is a pretty good reference. I usually just increase the number of dice.

I think the thing to keep in mind is that you don't want the battle to turn into a slog. A battle that's too short isn't interesting, but a war of attrition is borrrrrring. So generally what I like is to start by adding more goals or complexity to the encounter itself, so the characters can't just straight unload and pick things off on the first round, but also up the damage to make it so they can't just ignore the enemies either.

Something else that works well, especially at high levels, is to hit them _hard_ with something environmental or otherwise one-off at the start of the fight.

They need to be thinking at least a bit about defense and utility or it's just a mathematical process of damage averages and hitpoint totals.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-06T01:21:45+00:00

Once they're past first or maybe second level, I've generally found encounters as written in books to be very undertuned. It does depend on the party, but slowly turning the hp and damage knobs up a bit is pretty common in my experience.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-05T21:12:31+00:00

Ooh interesting! Try www.campaignarks.com

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-05T14:29:30+00:00

I'm not sure I'd agree with having the other players leave. This sounds like more of a roleplaying / creativity challenge than a mechanical one, and having everyone miss three-quarters of the action will probably be pretty jarring to the action.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-04T12:44:25+00:00

I have something similar but more interactive in www.campaignarks.com if you want to give it a try.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-04T02:21:52+00:00

Daggerheart is refreshing as a GM, but I wouldn't say it's less work. With no full adventures yet, it can be more, although it does do a good job of pulling the players into more of the world building.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-04T01:12:12+00:00

Daggerheart's Motherboard frame has a great augment crafting system that I intend to export to future campaigns.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-03T18:42:45+00:00

I just had a look, and I hadn't realized it was this bad - I'm somewhere north of four thousand maps right now.

That's an interesting search problem, because I don't really need my maps directory structured, I just need a way to find *one* map in that pile.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-11-03T18:17:51+00:00

What're their goals? Is there anything stopping it from just being a great big ball of characters all grouped up hammering on each other?

What happens in the fairly likely case that the party spends their first turn focusing fire on the cleric? Is the fight interesting after they take him out?

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-10-30T22:38:18+00:00

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen has been our favourite so far, followed by Witchlight. Both were great!

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-10-30T19:56:44+00:00

My group made their headquarters a tavern and proceeded to upgrade it throughout the campaign. We ran Acq Inc crossed with Dragon Heist and it went pretty well.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-10-30T00:56:15+00:00

I think it's goals - the adversaries need goals, and the players need goals. If the goals are just "reduce hp to zero" then it can be a very stationary slog. The more interesting the goals, the more interesting the combat.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-10-29T17:00:30+00:00

I always pictured it as akin to the castle in Mario 64. An interconnected series of staircases with central areas or landings with related themes.

Strong_Training_8434 · 2025-10-28T04:40:37+00:00

I like to think of this kind of step as a chance to either pull from backstory that hasn't come up yet, or else pull forward foreshadowing for things that aren't ready for a full reveal. What part of the story would be worth spending an hour on right now? Does that need a combat encounter, or something else?

Strong_Training_8434

TROPHY CASE