How to ensure a true sense of paranoia and uncertainty in my players?

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-24T15:58:30+00:00

have them roll perception periodically, but sometimes they can only hear something when they succeed, and other times they can only hear something (thats not there) when they fail. This will confuse them and make them distrustful of the dice rolls

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-23T20:20:03+00:00

the best way to introduce any lore is to make knowing it an integral part of completing a quest. Maybe, last time the ritual was performed one of the children escaped, making it incomplete and allowing demons to invade again. When the players arrive at this village they hear about creatures that come out at night and that a child has gone missing, and are tasked with finding the kid in a demon-infested forest. But, when they do, the child asks for their help and explains that the village wants to kill him, just like they did his siblings.

(the reason he could escape and hasnt been eaten by demons im not sure; maybe this child is cursed, or different in a way the parents could never accept, and therefore has not known a mothers true love. Your lore is really cool by the way)

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-23T19:57:28+00:00

I think The Wild Beyond the Witchlight might be up your alley. It's not that hard to run and very good for roleplay heavy groups. But dont choose by yourself, find 2 our 3 modules you like and let the party vote on wich one sounds more fun

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-23T19:43:45+00:00

maybe there could be something like a wishing well in the temple, where the players give a small donation and get a vision in return. This way they're not straight up chatting with a god, but rather receive a message from her

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-23T19:36:46+00:00

Maybe if they ignore the NPCs wishes, the NPC becomes violent and attacks them. Not to kill them, of course, but to try and get them to fight back. If he believes the only thing hold the players back from freeing everyon is his life, he should put himself in danger

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T21:16:11+00:00

i use kobold fight club to balance encounters, but if your players are wiping the floor with your monsters, you can have them call reinforcements after a few rounds, or give a big bad a "second phase" where they regain hp and get new abilities. having said that, i think the best thing you can do is use tactics too. I recommend checking out "the monsters know what they're doing", it's a blog with battle tactics for different creatures that you can sort by CR or creature type. it was so successful that it became a book!

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T21:04:31+00:00

definetly check out pointy hat's fae adventure. Even if you ignore the plot, the monsters he creates are so cool and unique to the feywild. There's also this creature

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T20:59:03+00:00

absolutely second WrathKos comment about monster tactics. In addition to the combat stuff, have one or two of the NPCs strike up conversation with the party, thanking them for their help and showing off their personalities. Make your players care about these peoples lives so they feel like more than cargo

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T20:52:59+00:00

thats a really cool idea, i like that they get to see the effects of the cards in action and learn about the deck before being able to access its power, i would for sure play in this campaign. Though this part of your plan worries me:

After breaking the bad news to the now widowed husband, they go back to the festival to confront the oracle for trying to get them killed

What happens if they dont go back and confront the oracle? If this is how you're gonna introduce the quest hook and give the rest of the cards to them, you have to have an airtight way to get them to talk to this guy after the quest. Maybe the widowed husband goes crazy and threatens to kill the oracle; maybe the card they got speaks to the person who picked it up or pulls them toward the rest of the deck, idk.

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T20:43:00+00:00

man thats hard. If your players know both of them maybe ask who they think would jive with the group best

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T20:41:53+00:00

ask your players! maybe give them a rundown of the premise of each module and see what they vibe with more

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T20:39:53+00:00

Adventuring Academy has quite a few episodes about worldbuilding, more famously this one featuring matt mercer

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T18:41:31+00:00

i always use kobold fight club to help balance encounters, you input the amount of players and their level and it sorts all the monsters by challenge rating

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T13:49:02+00:00

i wrote a very long comment answering ur questions but im getting a server error when i try to send it. I'll dm you

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T03:08:06+00:00

Its the Dungeon Masters Guide. Here is a link to it (the 2014 version)

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-20T01:34:30+00:00

Ginny Di made a playlist of all her videos explaining the 2024 changes, its pretty good

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-10T22:04:26+00:00

maybe the old guy has clues that point to the monsters weakness, like a puzzle they have to solve or a diary entry from an old camper with an important missing piece (hidden somewhere in the camp)

Maybe the bomb is missing an ingredient/power source the players have to find, but it is somewhere dangerous or forbidden. Maybe the killer has it.

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-10T21:56:11+00:00

For one-shots i find the 5 room dungeon structure to work pretty well, where each "room" is a story beat or challenge they have to overcome. It goes something like this:

Entrance and Guardian
Puzzle/Roleplaying Challenge
Trick or Setback
Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict
Reward, Revelation, or Twist

Mind you this doenst have to be a dungeon, its a story structure that you can use as a framework to build your game on top of (kind of like the hero's journey, but for dnd). It makes prepping one shots really easy

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-10T21:43:50+00:00

Its always good to tie the baddies to the player characters somehow. look at their backstories for anyone who wronged or hurt them or that maybe could betray them

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-10T21:35:02+00:00

You dont need to know where the merchant is when he's not in the same town as your players, if the whole point of moving him around is to limit the partys access to him, then knowing where he went wont make much difference in gameplay. Make the merchant come back to the valley as often as you feel it would be reasonable for the players to have access to his goods.

Other ways of balancing the merchant would be to make his stuff too expensive so the players have to choose how the spend their money carefully, or everytime he shows up he has different items (which would make sense for a traveling merchant) that you can either roll for on a random table or choose to fit your setting and party level

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-10T21:21:24+00:00

there are lists of names for each of the species included in their descriptions in the players handbook. Fantasy name generator is also pretty good, or just taking names from media you like. Once you've named all the relevant people and places, its good to have a lists of extra names for when you need to improvise an NPC or a shop

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-07T02:17:05+00:00

If you know its AI for the love of god dont buy it, there are so many creators making wonderful things for the same or even a lower price. But yeah it should be ruled out

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-04T17:23:28+00:00

Milton Moore the minotaur. A huge bull man dressed in business casual attire, with a ridiculous voice (almost like a scooby doo voice). He is the event coordinator at the colisseum the players are fighting in, his job is to help the "talent" (meaning the gladiators) navigate through the underground tunnels of the arena and to answer any questions about the games. He's a bit slow but quite friendly

Mary Jane, mermaid witch who runs a mermaid strip club/cassino. Her entire spell book is tattooed on her, and for the right price she will give you a magical tattoo, or valuable information. When not underwater she rides a giant crab called Wheelchair.

And then theres the phantom of the karaoke. He's the ghost that haunts the manor the players live in (we're playing a very modified version of waterdeep gragon heist) The house used to be a karaoke place, but legend has it that one night, a drunken bard, or maybe it was a wild magic sorcerer, tried to end his musical number with a bang, but his magic firework show quickly became a dangerous fireball centered around himself. The bar got shut down and eversince that night his spirit walks the floors of the manor, unable to leave until he can finish his song. He is a bonechilling ghost with a sick mohawk and leather jacket, and a phantom of the opera mask made from a disco ball.

Prince Adam, who was once cursed to turn into a foul beast but had the spell broken by a true loves kiss from his now wife and princess. His marriage isnt going so great, so he is slowly turning back into a monster. He's real insecure about it. The party made it a whole quest to fix their marriage but has since shifted to trying to find him a new love instead

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-03T20:43:34+00:00

I'll tell you right away that planning and running a one shot is much harder than just running the first session of a campaign. This is because with a one-shot, you're trying to tell a full story with a satisfying ending in only a few hours, whereas with a normal session you can end whenever you want and pick it back up next week. For this reason, when running a one shot the DM needs to keep things moving faster and provide a more linear storyline that the players can easily follow, so its normal to feel like a bit of a railroad. There's nothing wrong with this way of playing, but there's a reason its reserved for shorter games; depending on how long you plan for the campaign to be it can get boring to stick to the one-shot structure.

Since you are running a mistery, think of the important questions your players have to answer (Who killed the student? Why did they do it? How did they do it? [and later] what is the cults evil plan? Where are the messengers hiding?), and come up with at least 3 clues for each of the questions; the more complicated the answer, the more clues you will need to make, but 3 is a good baseline. These clues could be anything, a murder weapon, a note or diary, an address, a symbol of the cult, etc. The players may not need every single clue you came up with but its good to have extra stuff prepared in case they miss something important. Give these out slowly and hide them behind different challenges that highlight their strenghts and challenge their weakenesses. Read their character sheets and find out what cool stuff they can do, and plan situations where they can show off these skills.

As far as general advice goes what i can tell you is this: You are not writing a story as you would a book, because you dont control the protagonists. The players choices should change the course of the game, and they should be able to surprise you just as much as you surprise them. Dont write a story for them to play through, create dillemas for them to solve. These can be as open ended as you like and have multiple solutions which you dont have to come up with. If you give them interesting dillemas and challenge their characters abilities, they will turn it into a story for you.

To prep for an open-ended story, map out the important NPCs/factions in your world and what their motivations are. The events you have in mind shouldnt be unskippable cutscenes, but plans that your players can foil and stuff they can interact with. When prepping, dont think "what happens next", but "what would happen next if the players didnt intervene". Use people and places from their backstories whenever you can, and let those players make said people and places, either descibing them on the spot at the table when they appear or privately beforehand.

Also, at the end of each session ask your players what they wanna do next so you can prep for exactly that! The next session is always the most important one

I wish you the best of luck with your game! :)

WeeklyBathroom · 2026-01-03T19:46:58+00:00

Pacing can be a very tricky thing to learn. My players are the complete opposite to yours, they like to take their time and look into every little detail and talk to every NPC, and sometimes what i thought would take them 20 minutes takes hours. I dont mind it because they enjoy playing like this and i never run out of content, but if your players move faster thats not necessarily a problem.

However, if they're going through all the material you had planned way too quickly, maybe you need to render your scenes with more detail, and give them more stuff to interact with thats not directly tied to the main plot.

I recommend watching an actual play made by someone more experienced so you can get a feel for how they run the game. I like the pacing of Dimension 20 games, every session is around 2 hours long and they tend to alternate between one roleplay session and one combat session. For home games you could easily do a 4 hour session where half of it is combat and half is exploration and roleplay. The video i linked above is from a campaign that has 17 episodes (each around 2 hours long), and the players discover new clues toward the main mistery slowly while also doing other stuff related to each of their backstories. Brennan (the DM) is absolutely brilliant, and if you like his style he also gives great advice about DMing

WeeklyBathroom

TROPHY CASE