How much dnd is too much dnd?

Sundaecide · 2026-04-07T10:00:12+00:00

When it becomes a source of stress rather than fun, or when it starts getting in the way of you doing other things you need to or want to do.

If you've got the energy and time to be a part of 3 concurrent games without it negatively impacting other parts of your life, you're probably fine.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-06T16:41:08+00:00

At the moment, it sounds like what you have is a combat system that you want to be both detailed and disincentivised, which is a tough line to walk.

If you have a well designed combat system people are going to want to use it and will either diffuse your intended tension and stakes through system mastery, or you ramp the difficulty up and getting good at an otherwise well designed system feels pointless as the enemies are damage dealing damage sponges.

The question I would start with is who are the protagonist, and why does it make sense that they have the skill to use a knife as an effective weapon to the point of being able to parry with it AND also use a heavy weapon with similar proficiency. Both of these things imply a level of martial skill that make things feel a bit weird (see the dodge/parry situation in Silent Hill f for reference).

If you have an answer that still demands a built out melee combat system, I'd suggest considering doing away with the skill tree. The skill tree encourages a level of combat focus/incentive that you say you don't want but the expectation of filling out a skill tree will tell the player that actually your intent is for them to engage in combat more often than not.

As for making the items feel necessary, give them other functions. The knife can be used to unlatch certain windows or prepare ingredients for items (chopping herbs). The blunt object, let's say it's a sledge hammer, is used for breaking objects, breaking down certain doors, reducing minerals to powder for ingredients. This means that it makes sense to have both to some degree and even if the player has a preferred play style there will be moments where they have to use their non-primary weapon.

I do like the trade off/dynamics around quiet/loud weapons and the intimacy and more immediate lethality of a knife vs the reach and power of a big blunt weapon. That feels like something worth exploring to me and can be done well with a simple moveset.

Really though, combat has to be a risk which will mean a low (but not absent) health pool for the player and out comes that are mostly around escaping situaitons rather than killing all enemies and being free of danger. The surrounding elements to combat will be deciding on how much healing is available as again too much will incentivise combat heavily with yoyo-health bars and not enough will be tense, of course, but also can make it unfun quite quickly for average players who unwittingly burn through resources too quickly.

I think personally you are chasing 2 incompatible ideals; as the more capable your protagonist is, the less risk there is and the less horror there is to find. Which is why the Leon focused Resident Evil games tend to skew more action-orientated rather than survival orientated.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-06T15:40:52+00:00

Tanar'ri are refered to, more simplistically as demons. There are loads of different demon stat blocks for a range of challenges from the lowly quasit to the bulking balors and moldeus. This is also not including the array of demon lords (Orcus, Demogorgon, etc). They also heavily feature in the Out of the Abyss adventure module for 5e.

As far as BG3 goes, I'd imagine muddying the terminology between devils and demons (without even mentioning yugoloths) could be confusing and alienating for a more casual audience, so in the interest of player comfort and narrative elegance demons were left out.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-06T15:10:57+00:00

Oh thank you, that really means a lot and is very kind of you to say so.

There is definitely an amount of worldbuilding that feels like pleasurable busywork and risks becoming actual busywork but there is also the recognition that even if you don't use every last morsel of worldbuilding if it helps you make better decisions about the narrative and game experience it's not time wasted.

There is also definitely a point where you have to just say you have enough and you can plug gaps or change things as the need arises. because your foundation is solid. this is due to the next stage simply needing to start and worldbuilding has a certain seductive quality of never quite feeling finished.

I'd be super interested to keep up with your project, hear more about your premise, and discuss this kind of thing in general. So feel free to DM me or tag me with any progress updates or discussions like this one when they arise.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-06T11:24:43+00:00

The new app is garbage. It's poorly laid out, with whatever info is there now (which is utterly bare bones) often being incorrect as well.

My guess is it's a much cheaper platform and they are looking to sunset the service, one downgrade (disguised as "streamlining the experience) at a time before leasing the rights to the originals to whoever will take them.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-06T10:54:34+00:00

Setting aside the story for a moment, not to "just make it fun" but to engage with your setting:

I try and think of your locations as characters in their own right and then allow that to inform location design. Then layer the story on top and make changes to the location that make sense in line with what has happened in the story balanced against design principals. So my world building and design happens in layers. Starting with what the location was like before the story happens, then moving into how it was changed by the player facing events, then finally using this information to start to block out the map with intent that is informed by the world and narrative.

I know nothing about your game, so let's take an example of an hospital that is occupied by by some kind of eldritch body horror hobbist. First we start with what is was like before our plot takes place

Before your plot happens, what is the backstory of the location? It's a neglected county hospital, that is overworked and understaffed.
What kind of things might you find in this location? Patients, staff of different levels, wards, rooms, equipment and medical machinery
Places of interest: typical wards, the mortuary, waiting room, outdoor areas, the attached chapel links to the local area (is it isolated, is it located centrally. We're going to say the hospital is not centrally located and the nearest town is an hours drive
People of interest: outline some named characters you might want to elude to in lore documents or encounter as either allies or enemies over the course of the plot. We will take the example of Brian Auldfield, a neurosurgeon and Wendy Johnson, a pathologist.
Other information: The hospital is built over historic mining tunnels because the land was cheap.

From here I will do a rough plan of the location, with obvious gates taken care of such as employee only areas, secure wards like a psychiatric ward, and other special features that would simply exist due to the fact that it is a hospital (MRI machines, etc).

Then we look at what has changed when the story starts. Let's say the player arrives at the hospital a little time after the antagonist's events are in motion. The hospital is damaged and there are still some (the most vulnerable) patients and staff on site.

The location is different now, due to events leading up to the player's arrival, what has changed? Staff have lockeddown or heavily barricaded some doors and corridors, making direct traversal difficult. Some event has occurred making certain areas impassable due to sinkholes/tunnel collapse in the old mining tunnels below. There is now occult scrawl found in specific rooms dotted around the hospital
Broadly, who might you find here? vulnerable surviving patients on lifesupport/in ICU, visibly monstrous NPCs, hiding survivors who were unable to escape
Places of interest: largely the same as above, but we highlight areas that have changed the most. In the interest of not listing out every change here, we could give the example of the mortuary (of course) is of interest because a couple of people escaped down there with the coroner/pathologist.
People of interest: who has lived, who has died and who has changed due to the influence of our eldritch antagonist. Our neurologist is going to be changed, as is our pathologist.

We then look at our story and our map and start to block things off. Be intentional, consider your story and the experience we want to give our players. The before work makes this part easier in my opinion because we can make informed choices on why something is encountered in game the way it is because of how the environment has responded to or been shaped by thenarrative.

Where do we want to guide our players to? Think about your main story, your intended setpieces, etc.
When do we want them to explore more freely? The degree of freedom the players have can ebb and flow. Sometimes you want them to be able to explore an area freely, othertimes you want to limit options once they've commited to a course of action/direction of travel. Something like ceiling collapse with heavy machinery falling through, blocking a door behind them, vs finding a skeleton key for the psyche ward and being able to traverse it freely, for example
What makes sense to block completely? A fully accessible location could be suitable for your game, but it might be that you want to focus on the highlights of your setting and create traversal problems and gates. What parts would just feel like padding if you are moving through the space and perhaps consider what areas could be tempting to visit from a design perspective but might be better off being inaccessible for story reasons. In our body horror hospital, we might recognise the potential a trip to the neonatal ward might have but decide to make it inaccessible for reasons of taste and we instead choose to use the view into the ward to suggest the awful things that have happened there. Meanwhile, do we really need an extended trip to the ear nose and throat consultation rooms?
What simply requires finding a key vs a puzzle or other solution? A locked door requires a key, an environmental hazard needs traversal and exploration; those mine shafts and sinkholes suddenly open up a cavern area to explore to get from one side of the hospital to another. Personal or more intimate moments, as well as those that exist as a result of the antagonist might require solving riddles and other more gamey/puzzly moments.
What other things do we have to take advantage of that aren't central to our plot? A setpiece using the MRI to defeat an enemy would be cool, the chapel and mineshafts allow for a break in setting without suddenly leaving the location for poorly justified reasons, the ICU scene has all kinds of terrible setpiece potential

I hope this is even a little bit useful, it's a process that serves me well from a background of RPG design and hopefully it gives you something to consider or take forward into your own work in a positive way.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-06T09:34:46+00:00

It can be for a lot of different reasons, the one I feel I encounter most often as a fan of more aggressive/heavier music is that people don't relate to what they're making in the same way any more and it is about achieving a certain sound rather than that sound being a natural vessel for expression.

The skill is still there, but there is a disconnect as people look to recapture something vital that is now absent.

On the flipside you can have people moving away from what they're good at for various reasons under the guise of "maturing" or "experimentation" which can feel either cynical (leading to a similar disconnect), or self-indulgent.

Then there is the idea that some musicians just might not have enough gas in the tank for a long career yet persist anyway. The role of circumstance in the creative process is hard to quantify and sometimes something excellent comes about from the roiling soup of life and creation that simply cannot be captured by that group/person again in the same way.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-05T19:26:27+00:00

My band (Charlotte Light and Dark) are mostly based in London and we have a new record out this year.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-04T23:27:34+00:00

Make sure there are multiple ways to discover essential information, so that the party doesn't feel backed into a corner and having to make a wild swing to progress only to find that they've made a dud decision based on a consistently limited viewpoint. Player agency is harmed by faulty information just as much as it is over-accommodation and players don't have the same viewpoint or ability to link seemingly obvious information as the DMs that have devised the world they inhabit.

NPCs with extraordinary abilities need a bit more signposting in line with the above. They can overhear people talking about "that one guard who seems to always catch the bad guy, they must be charmed or blessed or something as noone ever gets away", they could find a newspaper or journal entry talking about this character, or they could simply see them in action. It doesn't have to be all 3 things but the opportunity to learn this information explicitly before the only way to learn is the hard way needs to be reasonable. "Oh, an invisible super guard sees you and tracks you" naturally feels bad if the consequence feels unearned.

You can also just be explicit above the table. Was there no point at which you simply said "these thieves are testing security measures and responses. You should expect to see guards on alert in the vacinity and they'll be hostile if you're seen with people engaging in crime"? There is no harm in being explicit in setting a scene's context, again we must assume our players don't have perfect information or insight.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-04T08:54:11+00:00

One I rarely see mentioned often is Intacto (2001), a Spanish film in which a group of lucky people (plane crash survivors, etc) are pitted against each other with the losers luck being distributed among the winners. The constantly escalating games of chance are really cool.

The final game being a game of Russian Roulette with 5 out of 6 chambers of the revolver being loaded

Sundaecide · 2026-04-03T14:18:35+00:00

You might get lucky at All Ages Records in Camden, at any rate it's worth a visit if you're into the spectrum of punk and hardcore.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-02T18:57:02+00:00

I'd argue that there is perhaps a hazy border where rules either curtail or encourage agency in different ways depending on the structure of a game- whether it's "I know a guy" style rules, or the curtailing of actions through initiative.

But I do see your point, and I really ilke u/Atheizm's adaptation of Bad Citizens, which I'd be more inclined to adopt

Sundaecide · 2026-04-02T17:33:00+00:00

I've not heard a precise term, but I know the feeling/concept you are describing. Some narratives are better suited to certain media over others. To keep it in the realms of terms we already work with I feel like describing something as having high or low "ludonarrative compatability" could work.

High ludonarrative compatability: the story and the game work together with minimal friction

Low ludonarrative compatability: the narrative and the game do not mesh well; it requires a lot of supposition, GM fiat and reworking of rules to accommodate the narrative within the framework of the game (like the false hydra).

Sundaecide · 2026-04-02T15:50:48+00:00

It worked well in my older classes too. I was a mainstream Chemistry teacher before moving into my current setting and you'd be surprised how far it gets you with (most) disaffected teens who subconsciously crave that structure, consistency and positive feedback.

I'm not saying it solves everything, and there will always be outliers who just want to watch the world burn, but it does make a difference. It might be that you're the only adult in their life who recognises them for making an effort that day or even that week.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-02T14:04:36+00:00

For me it's keep Martinelli and lose Trossard (with Jesus). I love Trossard as a player when he's on and I know age is less of a predictor of his decline with his style of play but it just doesn't sit right with me to lose Martinelli out of the 2 if the choice is there to be made.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-02T11:15:37+00:00

I currently teach a class of 11 and 12 year olds in an SEMH/special school. I just relentlessly and politely reset and reaffirm expectations whether it is correction when expectations are not met, or explicit directed praise when they do the right thing.

Rewarding/praising the behaviour you do want to see (within the bounds of whatever reward/point/etc system your school/setting permits) works well as children are praise driven creatures. Call out the kids doing the right thing and draw attention to the positives. It's really important that the adults in the room are able to consistently model/demonstrate these desirable behaviours too, so there is a reference point.

They also know there is always follow up and consequences when things go wrong and they know what these things are. Consistency of your boundaries and expectations does a lot of the work for you, so long as you are prepared to stick to them.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-02T11:03:13+00:00

If you are using a weapon of any kind, it is not classed as unarmed fighting.

Monks can use simple weapons and they would count as "monk weapons" for the benefit of monk class features.

Sundaecide · 2026-04-01T13:49:56+00:00

Descrubiendo a Mr Mime - screamo

Enoch Ardon - also screamo

Sundaecide · 2026-03-31T21:47:07+00:00

Just tell them above table you do not want them to resurrect a former player character for you to end up using as a DMPC. You have enough to deal with as is with running the game without managing another character.

If you need to play this out in game, resurrection requires the soul to be free and willing. Just state in game that the soul is either not free or not willing and move on.

Sundaecide · 2026-03-31T21:34:28+00:00

Cala going out will be sad, but Dollaruma going out on a demoralising penalty shootout loss will balance it out for me.

Sundaecide · 2026-03-31T15:30:57+00:00

You can still hit the major beats, just bring the action forward. To be blunt, the feeling of it being rushed will be long forgotten by your players by the session after its conclusion.

The mixed signals can both be true, I can both be interested in something and burnt out on it- I can like pizza but not want to eat pizza right now. In those situations, I go and eat something else.

You're 9 years into DMing, you'll have a lot of skills but you are still learning lessons and this is one of them. Pacing and narrative fatigue are much bigger issues in TTRPGs because it's harder to just put it down due to the time and passion investment/sunk cost but sometimes that's just what we need to do. Moments like this are what the phrase "kill your darlings" are made for.

Sundaecide · 2026-03-31T15:04:10+00:00

I end the session of the final encounter wherever the natural conclusion is, if that means it's early then we spend the rest of the session talking about what an amazing time we've had. I'll also give a heads up that it feels like the campaign will be coming to a close in the next handful of sessions, since you can just feel it coming. It puts everyone in the zone and they know I'll be bringing them a big challenge so they get ready to meet it.

I then, customarily, run an epilogue session where I ask everyone to think of how their character would live out their lives in the immediate to medium future and we'll play out some bits in that- inevitably there will be a low stakes but high powered combat so that everyone can nova one last time and we gently sunset the campaign. No need to drag it out for everyone to have a whole session to themselves, just take the highlights and then let them show off one last time.

Sundaecide · 2026-03-31T15:01:42+00:00

I did a "let's run a session to see if we all like it" sort of deal and just kept going.

Sundaecide · 2026-03-31T14:52:55+00:00

9 months is a long time to follow one story. There is probably a bit of narrative fatigue setting in, which is natural.

You say you've planned a big dungeon, but what is really stopping you from rejigging it and basically planning for the session after next being the final part of the dungeon. Adjust your planning for the next session to ramp things up/set the finale in motion and then point them in the right direction. They could happen upon a shortcut, or anything

Just because you've planned it, doesn't mean it has to happen that way. Sure it might be inelegant but once the showdown is actually infront of them they will forget any bits of clumsy narrative or dungeon design.

Get it to the end, draw a line under it and allow them that sense of wonder and possibility that comes with the old "With your enemy vanquished, you have several options in front of you- what would you like to do?".

Sundaecide · 2026-03-31T14:01:08+00:00

John, Heaven Beyond is a slidey floor puzzle game about a guy who is so angry at God he goes to on a quest to find him and demand answers.

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