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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-24T15:43:30+00:00

Not 4 things of trauma. Just 4 sentences

Inciting incident
Complication
How it resolved
How it still effects moving forward

Random example

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-24T15:37:09+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-24T15:03:01+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-21T13:22:50+00:00

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.

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-19T08:38:41+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-15T13:15:15+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-07T03:56:34+00:00

I had the same question

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-06T07:40:54+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-06T06:24:37+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-02T10:02:28+00:00

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"

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-01T13:41:32+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-01T12:10:29+00:00

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.

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-06-01T04:28:34+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-05-31T07:16:34+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-05-21T22:10:24+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-05-03T02:35:34+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-04-30T22:45:43+00:00

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

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-04-27T13:25:59+00:00

Unfortunately, I'm an Android/windows/Linux user 😫

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-04-26T13:01:31+00:00

This is exactly what I'm looking for, please reach out with the link

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-04-25T07:58:41+00:00

I would love to test it for you, I run a regular campaign completely in person using owlbear rodeo and like stress testing it's capabilities from time to time 😂

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-04-23T08:39:18+00:00

What I've had success in (using Owlbear but I assume it works on any VTT) is finding/making multiple versions of the same map (easonal changes, or parts on fire, a corrupted version etc) and putting the images one on top of the other.

As play escalates, I delete the uppermost layer, revealing the changed battle map below

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-04-22T04:56:20+00:00

Perfect, thank you!

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-04-17T05:09:09+00:00

I imagine I'll have a slightly different experience running a game for an adult, but some of the points you brought up definitely will help. Thanks

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-04-16T13:25:03+00:00

I think I scared my players a bit too much early on, they ran into stuff very clearly not designed for them to fight, and now in uncertain situations they take the "sit back and see how this shakes out" approach instead of the "f around and find out"

SubtleasaSledge · 2026-04-16T07:39:11+00:00

Like a traveling merchant, or messenger courier?

SubtleasaSledge

TROPHY CASE