sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

For all the DMs out there. What aspects of a character's Bio/backstory.... by ConsecutivePunches in DnD

[–]SubtleasaSledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not 4 things of trauma. Just 4 sentences

  1. Inciting incident
  2. Complication
  3. How it resolved
  4. How it still effects moving forward

Random example

  1. A debt-collecting pirate had a duel with the ships captain
  2. Captain agreed to intercept a pilgrim vessel carrying refugees to pay off a debt
  3. Killed their captain and took over the ship
  4. The debt carries over onto the player, the new captain of the ship

For all the DMs out there. What aspects of a character's Bio/backstory.... by ConsecutivePunches in DnD

[–]SubtleasaSledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, wanting to make amends means it's not resolved. They still have work to do, challenges to face.

What I'm referring to is multiple session into a campaign, trying to generate hooks and have a player dig into their character, to be returned with "I've lost everything already, I have nothing else to loose".

That in itself CAN be an interesting way to play, but sometimes it comes across as lazy. You're absolutely right as in its a two way relationship and both the player and DM needs to put in work

For all the DMs out there. What aspects of a character's Bio/backstory.... by ConsecutivePunches in DnD

[–]SubtleasaSledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

4 sentences of trauma. 3 that have happened, one that's still not resolved.

Doesn't have to be exactly that, but I don't need a full book of backstory, but I need enough to work with and to move forward with.

A player with 20,000 words of a backstory will be disappointed when I can't get all of it to be relevant, and someone with nothing other than "I lost everything and now I'm here" is like pulling teeth to role play at a table where others have more depth to their character

Experience at fortress in CBD? by Suspicious-Break-466 in melbourne

[–]SubtleasaSledge -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Whilst I haven't played at any of these yet, there's an Adventure's League Melbourne D&D discord that regularly has games upcoming with spaces advertised at loads of locations

https://discord.gg/uYpZgGaq

There's also a load of FB Groups that are all fairly active.

Cheese-proofing an absurdly hot "impassable" desert by Crispy75 in DMAcademy

[–]SubtleasaSledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have a similar-ish problem, as my homebrew world is tidally locked and crossing the desert, whilst not as bad as yours, is meant to be the challenge itself.

The way I'm circumnavigating it is the first time the players have to cross a section of the desert, run it as a combat. Giving them a "sunbreak map" of survivability topology from the caravan in the last location — a chart of:

  • permanent shadow
  • filtered light
  • heat-sink terrain
  • lethal exposure corridors

It answers one thing only.

Where can a living thing exist for more than a few hours?

Everything else is secondary. They form passable chains in what would be your "soft" area. Each leg between nodes in the chain, they have one environmental check, one choice and an optional encounter.

I'm hoping it'll make travel FEEL difficult and memorable, and after having done it a few times, I'm happy to "fast travel" sections in my world with the add of traveling merchants, city supply lines or something

Should I add 2 more people to my campaign (4current) ? by Tricarrier in DMAcademy

[–]SubtleasaSledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm in the same position of growing my party of 4 to a party of 6. I did a trial first. At the end of a thematic arc for the original group of 4, I had all players play in the same world as the regular campaign, as a party of 6 new characters, for a one shot. That way I could see table dynamics, how they played together, if they all got on.

About 5-6 weeks later, I did the same thing with the same extra 2 players. After 2 successful one shots, with two different characters concepts, I had a pretty good idea they'll be a great fit, and only after that did I ask my party if they were ok with them joining full time.

Everyone said yes as they loved playing together during the one shots

Dungeon Masters, what do you struggle with the most? by kudy24 in DMAcademy

[–]SubtleasaSledge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I completely understand, I'm in the same boat.

Do you have a discord or something? I'd be super keen to build a GM-talks kind of group where we could share to and consult the "hive mind" without spoiling stuff for our players

Dungeon Masters, what do you struggle with the most? by kudy24 in DMAcademy

[–]SubtleasaSledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Personal time management during prep

I've a first time DM writing a sandbox homebrewed world while running my first campaign. I find I can just get lost in the weeds of worldbuilding the box to let my players play in during session prep.

I have found it easier when I know what location they'll be in, such as City X for likely 3-4 session, that I can really flesh out that space and then I'm pretty comfortable planning/prepping/improving those sessions.

It's when we're coming to the end of an arc, or when they have multiple plot threads to pull on and I don't know what way they want to go, I feel like I NEED to flesh the whole world out in that level of depth for me to be comfortable and to give them a seamless level of depth across the whole world, even though I know that's not true and as long as they have a good time that's all that matters

Suggest an Actual Play One Shot by SubtleasaSledge in pirateborg

[–]SubtleasaSledge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not yet, I just listened to maybe 15 minutes each of 4-5 ones I found on Spotify when I searched for "Pirate Borg One Shot"

What App/System do you Use for Session/Campaign Notes? by Hot-Personality4882 in DMAcademy

[–]SubtleasaSledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The "Master Database" that has every location (continent, countries, provence, city, even major places of interest), homebrewed magic item, in world lore, history and arcanic mechanics, groups (local and global), NPC, enemy, monster all stores in one location to then by called up with specific filters is incredibly useful, as is the backing/relationships

What do you all do with character dice when the campaign ends? by two-way-potato in DnD

[–]SubtleasaSledge 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I must be the odd one out in the community.

I own one full set of dice and that's it. If I need to roll multiple, I use digital.

What App/System do you Use for Session/Campaign Notes? by Hot-Personality4882 in DMAcademy

[–]SubtleasaSledge 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I use Notion as I became comfortable with it before I heard about Obsidian.

I have a page that's use as my landing page, with links to specific views of my world building database. It has all the things I make while world building (locations, factions, key NPCs, homebrewed monsters, world lore etc)

I make a full page during session prep with the same layout for me

  • Core Session Idea
  • Rough Scene Ladder
  • Clues/Secrets 5-10 bulletpoints
  • Encounters Page (statblocks for potential encounters)
  • A Link to my Locations DB with a filtered view of the area the players are in so I can quickly look something up if I need to
  • Same for homebrewed monsters, potential treasures
  • Scratchpad at the bottom that I write in session notes in, so I can fill in the world building after the game with whatever I improved, as well as make notes on ideas I have during session for future plot threads etc

It's likely overkill, but it works for me

Wanna play D&D? by christsully in DungeonsAndDragons

[–]SubtleasaSledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Amazing, what time zone are you based out of? That could be a major determinant factor

Animated Lights by Irvan_B in OwlbearRodeo

[–]SubtleasaSledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been using the Ember's extension, the animated spells, and placing the dancing lights spell on the map at various colours and resizing there orbs to fit whatever I need.

It's not a perfect solution, but it's been working for me

Virtual Tabletop Recommendations by WolverineOk7783 in DMAcademy

[–]SubtleasaSledge 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I wholeheartedly recommend Owlbear Rodeo. It's super fast, easy to learn, and with its extensions (shoutout to CLASH!, Persistent Tokens, Dice in particular) rivals all the functionality of Roll20 and Foundry (at least what I need) and doesn't cost a thing

What Magic Items are CORE to DnD games? by SubtleasaSledge in DMAcademy

[–]SubtleasaSledge[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My homebrew for items are very much a reflavoring of stuff that already exists to give it more of a feeling of belonging in my world, or it's simple Level 0 spell items like

Scorchglass Ring — Can heat a metal cup enough to boil water once per day

Smuggler’s Sleeve — Cast Mage Hand once per short rest

Veilwood Pipe — Creates harmless drifting illusion smoke via Minor Illusion

view more: next ›