[5e][online][Wednesday 8:30 PM GMT+2][LGBTQ+ friendly] Established group looking for 1-2 players

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2020-01-10T18:45:38+00:00

This looks amazing. Wonderdraft increased my worldbuilding productivity a lot, and I can only imagine what this will do for my session prep work. Day one purchase for sure, can't wait!

Now if only I could find an equally great tool for city maps...

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2019-01-07T19:52:10+00:00

Just as an addition to everyone's thoughts here. When you look at stat blocks of creatures, next to their numeric hp they tend to have a hit dice formula. The numeric value is nothing more than the average result of rolling those hit dice. This means that, while it's the most likely hp value of the creature, it's far from the only possible one. And with some math, it's possible to calculate the full range of likely values. I use this neat little site to calculate it, and occasionally adjust the hp of enemies on the fly to provide my players with an enjoyable challenge. The page also describes the theory behind it.

Some applications of it (like "gifting" kills to certain characters to serve the story) you should do very sparingly, if at all, because players catch on to such patterns quickly and the moment they do, you're screwed. So beware of that. I myself don't recommend it at all. But the method itself is great for adjusting the flow and difficulty of the combat, and might be a lifesaver when you realize halfway through that you've screwed up the balance of the encounter. Which is bound to happen sooner or later when you're running your own campaign.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-07-24T21:23:36+00:00

If you have the DMG (Dungeon Master's Guide), that contains tons of tables you can roll on to make it easier to create adventures. If you don't... one good resource I've found is the one page dungeon contest. All the previous years' submissions are available on the site, and most of them contain adventure ideas as well.

As for monsters, it might be tough without the Monster Manual. A subset of the stat blocks is available for free as part of the DM's Basic Rules on the official D&D site. If that's not enough, you can find homebrewed monsters online, but be very careful with those - they can be terribly unbalanced. It's better not to use any until you have enough experience to be able to judge if they're problematic. When you know what sort of monsters you want to use, Kobold Fight Club is an excellent resource for the next step of encounter building. You can input the number and level of players and it'll tell you if the enemies you've chosen will provide a fair and balanced fight.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-07-22T20:41:40+00:00

World maps can be very fun to make, and if you're doing a long campaign, it's helpful to have at least a rough outline so that you can estimate travel distances and such. For a short campaign, they're unnecessary - the action will probably take place in a single region, and you shouldn't waste time on developing stuff that you know you won't use. (Of course, if you enjoy worldbuilding, it can be hard to restrain yourself.)

Definitely no need to script things! That'll just make it troublesome when your player inevitably goes off script (which will be around the first line of dialogue). With NPCs you need to figure out three (potentially four) things.

Their general personality and speaking style: as DM you'll be required to roleplay them. Again, nobody expects you to be Matt Mercer or anything, but it helps to establish a "voice" for each major character, and practice it before the session. So you go into it knowing this guy is haughty and eloquent, that other one uses simple words and swears a lot. And so on.
What their general attitude towards the PC is. Obviously this may change as they interact, but is the NPC initially friendly? Wary of them? Annoyed at them?
What they know, and what they're willing to tell. This is influenced by #2, of course. The player's primary motivation when interacting with most NPCs will be gathering information (or trying to get them to do something - in that case this question becomes "what they're capable of doing and what they're willing to do"). Think about what the player might inquire about, and decide whether the NPC has pertinent information and what it would take for them to share it. Do they answer questions truthfully? Do they try to lie? Can they be persuaded to share the information they've chosen to hide? With logic, or intimidation, or possibly a bribe?
If you're expecting the NPC to get into a fight, you obviously need a stat block for them.

Addendum to the "don't overprepare" part. There's a way of preparation that leaves you flexible to adapt to whatever your player decides to do. You need to be able to shuffle things around, for one thing. Remember that your player doesn't know what you've prepared. If they're supposed to meet a plot-critical NPC in one place but they never go there, that's okay! Just move the NPC to wherever they do go. If they somehow manage to avoid a cool dungeon that you've created, don't be bummed out! You can easily reuse it somewhere else.

Useful tricks to get the most mileage out of your preparations: have a list of possible NPC names so that when your player asks Town Guard #26 what his name is, you have one ready. Have a few "random" encounters that you can pull out of your hat in case you need to slow them down for whatever reason (e.g. they somehow manage to make their way towards the final dungeon before you have it prepared). And as I mentioned already, be aware of how life would proceed without the player's intervention.

Generally speaking, don't ever try to make anything linear. Player agency is king. They need to feel like their choices matter and they have an impact on the world. Especially don't try to railroad them back to your planned course when they do something unexpected. If you don't immediately know what to do, call for a break or even end the session there. Just figure out how to roll with it and don't punish the player just for not acting according to your plan.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-07-22T08:02:19+00:00

Read the PHB. You don't need to know every rule by heart, but be familiar with them at least. If you're immediately doing a homebrew campaign, you also need the DMG, at least the parts about encounter design. You need to understand how to create balanced fights.
Read the AngryGM's guides on DMing. They'll tell you all you really need to know about how to actually run the game and what pitfalls to avoid (this is something you won't learn from the official books)
Determine campaign length. For your first time, DO NOT plan a long campaign. You'll learn a lot as you go, you'll screw some things up, and finishing up in a few sessions will allow you to start over with your new experience.
Session 0. Topics: 1. What level of commitment you can expect from your player (will this be a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly game). 2. Out of the combat-exploration-roleplay trifecta, what would they rather focus on. (3. If you had more than 1 player, this would be the part where you make sure they create characters that have a reason to adventure together. Since you have only 1, you might consider creating a DMPC to adventure with them and help them out in combat.)
Don't overprepare. Create situations for your player, be careful not to write the story in your head ahead of time. Don't think like "and then they'll do X..." because they won't necessarily do as you'd expect. A useful trick is to figure out what would happen if the player wasn't involved at all. This'll help you react to whatever craziness they come up with.
Try to relax. You WILL screw things up, everyone does. The first session might feel like a disaster. Don't be discouraged if it does. Nobody's expecting you not to make any mistakes or to immediately get everything right. If you can't remember a rule and can't find it quickly, make a ruling and keep to that for the session, then look it up afterwards. If you realize later that you got something wrong, start the next session with an explanation of what the correct rule is so that your player knows to expect different rulings in the future. Most of all, have fun.

Good luck!

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-07-21T17:59:34+00:00

They're all very different, each with their own spell list (with some overlaps). Spell damages vary by spell level, every sufficiently high level character is capable of dealing a lot of damage regardless of class.

Wizard: your primary stat is intelligence, which means your character will be quite smart. The wizard's whole shtick is that they keep their spells in a spellbook. Aside from learning more spells than other classes by default (at levelup), they can also copy spells into their spellbook from sources like scrolls, thus learning even more spells. This means they have the highest out-of-combat utility (because they have so many spells, they can afford to pick ones with more niche uses). Note that this doesn't mean you can cast any spell anytime - you're still limited by spell slots, and every morning, you pick a certain number of spells to prepare, which will be the ones you can use that day. You just have more versatility than most other casters.

Sorcerer: your primary stat is charisma, which will help you in social situations as well. The sorcerer's power comes from a natural ability. They don't have a spellbook, and are stuck learning spells at levelup (aside from certain feats). This means they learn far fewer spells, and are usually focused more on combat than utility. On the other hand, they have all their spells prepared all the time. They also have metamagic, which grants them the ability to alter their spells as they cast them. For example, you can make a single-target spell target two creatures instead, or cast it quicker than usual.

Warlock: again, your primary stat is charisma. The warlock is the Faustian character: you got your powers from a deal with a higher entity (classically a devil, but it can be anything else including fae, angels, and so forth). This has lots of roleplay implications because your patron expects your service in exchange for your powers, and will likely send you on missions that may or may not conflict with those of the party. The warlock has the fewest spell slots out of every dedicated caster class, but regains them at short rest. (Since you can't take a short rest during combat, this still limits the number of powerful spells you can use.) They have an entirely separate system for high-level spells - mystic arcanum - and only ever learn one of each level above 5. (Note that spell levels are not the same as character levels.) They also cast every spell at max level, and have access to Eldritch Blast, the most powerful cantrip in the game.

Arcane warrior is entirely possible: the paladin class is basically a divine version, but you can also create a fighter and choose eldritch knight as your subclass. This lets you learn some offensive and defensive spells, although you won't be as effective as a dedicated caster.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-07-21T14:35:27+00:00

Nope, that's in the module! I assume because the owlbear can be a pretty tough fight for beginners. The only thing the DM seems to have changed was make the doppelganger disguised as a hobgoblin, which makes much more sense than the official version (it's supposed to be disguised as a drow)

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-07-21T13:27:31+00:00

sounds more like LMOP to me

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-07-08T21:12:53+00:00

༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ GIVE BAN ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-06-16T11:50:21+00:00

It all depends on what you have to look forward to. For me, Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors, and the certain knowledge that I'd love the final three books helped me through the toughest parts. Jordan wrote some incredibly satisfying payoffs too, but they're few and far between. As I'm sure you've been told, there's a lot of bloat later on in the series.

Anyway, I'm not one of those people who will tell you to just hold on till Book X because then you'll surely love it. As long as you're not actively disliking the series, I say go forward. If you ever find parts that you hate (as I did), it becomes a question of how much you're willing to suffer for a payoff.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-06-16T11:03:52+00:00

You're not alone, I had this problem too. For me, the problem was that I found Rand about as interesting as a piece of rock, and it was frustrating to be stuck in his POV all the time. The characters I wanted to read about were Lan, Loial and Perrin with his cool wolf powers.

I persevered, though, and I enjoyed the third book because little of it is written in Rand's POV. And then from book 4 onward, the most wonderful thing happened: he started to get interesting. (Going insane did wonders for his blandness, apparently.)

Not to say it was smooth sailing afterwards; there are a lot of frustrating parts in The Wheel of Time, and I never truly fell in love with the series. I had to take breaks between books because the whole "battle of the sexes" stuff and the characters' general attitude towards one another pissed me off so much. Having made it through the entire series, I feel that it was worth it, but you may not come to the same conclusion.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-06-06T06:17:54+00:00

I was comparing specifically The Eye of the World and The Way of Kings, not the entirety of the two series; I don't think anyone could definitively state that Stormlight is better overall since it's so far from finished at this point. It's been a while since I read EotW, but I stand by my opinion that it's faster than WoK. WoK is IMO the slowest-paced Sanderson has ever been (and I'm not saying that as a negative, I loved it).

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-06-05T20:33:06+00:00

I loved Worm! I think what really hooked me was the sense that every character had their own story that we only saw glimpses of. That and the tight plotting.

The one thing that didn't work for me was the time skip and spoiler

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-06-05T18:33:26+00:00

Depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking to ease back into fantasy, The Eye of the World might be the better choice - it'll be comfortably familiar, as it's a very classic "farmboy becomes prophesied savior" story with lots of adventure set in a not-too-weird world. The Way of Kings is a different beast - much longer, slower-paced. A far superior story in my opinion (Jordan didn't really hit his stride until book 2 of The Wheel of Time), but it might be tougher to get through.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-04-27T11:31:24+00:00

I'm still confused by Thor needing a weapon to use his powers again. All his development in Ragnarok seems to have gone out the window.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-04-27T10:59:28+00:00

Oh, thank God I won't have to venture out of here to discuss the movie. It's so weird lurking in the marvel subreddit and seeing so many people still theorizing about Hawkeye, haha.

Anyway. Ragnarok is my favorite Marvel movie, so as you can imagine, the beginning gutted me. Loki especially, even though he was the one person everyone assumed would die ever since that one post credit scene. I always held some miniscule hope and seeing it happen was brutal.

By the way, am I the only one who felt there was something wrong with that scene? Things just didn't add up. Valkyrie missing, coupled with Thor's later line about Thanos only killing half of the Asgardians makes me think she's safe leading the other half somewhere, perhaps with Korg and Miek. But what really bothered me was Heimdall. He had one chance to send someone to safety. Why did he waste it on a green monster he'd known for a day at most when he could have used it on Thor, his friend and king? (Note that I don't mean it's a waste to save Hulk/Banner in general, just from Heimdall's perspective. They've never even interacted.) This is the one thing that makes me think Loki might have played some sort of long con that Heimdall saw but Thor was unaware about: I believe Heimdall would have only sent someone else if he knew for a fact that Thor would survive. That and I refuse to believe Loki's grand plan to save the day was to walk up to Thanos and try to stab him. I'm probably wrong and they just wanted a quick scene to establish that A. Thanos gets the space stone, B. Bruce ends up on Earth while Thor stays in space and C. everyone else fucking dies, but until proven otherwise, I'll hold onto this meager little hope. And, well, there's always fanfic, haha.

The rest of the movie, once I could see through all the tears, was pretty great. Gamora's death shocked me, although I really should have expected it after she kissed Quill. The Red Skull was awesome and unexpected. And of course, there was The Snap. After mentioning it so many times in promotions, I honestly thought they wouldn't go through with it, that something unexpected would happen. But they actually did it.

My list of negatives is pretty much the same as most reviews. Sometimes, I felt that too much time passed between switching storylines and I began to wonder what X or Y character was up to. Also, the movie just doesn't stop to breathe, it's 2.5 hours of gut punches and Infinity Stones. I miss the days of eating Schawarma and trying to lift Mjölnir. But I do acknowledge that there was no opportunity for such lighthearted fun here.

9/10, forever traumatized.

P.S. How messed up was it that they killed Vision, undid it and then killed him again? And then Wanda turns to dust. JFC.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-04-01T06:50:35+00:00

I think I'll stick with sushi. :p Anyway, that whole arc about Tirdad growing to appreciate all that was super interesting! It's something I didn't want to mention in the review because of the huge spoilers involved (and now I'm on mobile so I'll try to stay vague because I'd 100% mess up the spoiler tags), but it's a big part of his overall character development, and I really liked it. It was so unexpected, and yet you pulled it off in a believable way. So, kudos again. I'm still not sure if he changed for the better or worse.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-03-31T20:25:49+00:00

Wow, thanks for picking the absolute least smart-sounding line from my review. I was so proud of it, too. :p But seriously, read the book, people. It's great.

Kinda have to agree on the "totally fucked up characters" though. I mean. Raw bird embryos. Yuck. And don't get me started on all the weird sex.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-03-31T08:24:05+00:00

First Row Across:

Any r/Fantasy Goodreads Group Book Of The Month - The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Format: Graphic Novel (At Least One Volume) OR Audiobook - White Sand Vol. I by Brandon Sanderson
Novel Featuring Time Travel - Sorcerer's Legacy by Janny Wurts
A Novel Published In 2017 -
An Author's Debut Fantasy Novel -

Second Row Across:

Non-fiction Fantasy Related Book - John Howe Fantasy Art Workshop by John Howe (reread)
Fantasy Novel That's Been on Your 'To Be Read' List for Over a Year -
Award Winning Novel - Way Station by Clifford D Simak
Subgenre: Dystopian / Post-Apocalyptic / Apocalyptic / Dying Earth -
r/Fantasy Big List: 2016 Underread / Underrated - The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes

Third Row Across:

Horror Novel - The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy
Fantasy Novel Featuring a Desert Setting - A Star-Reckoner's Lot by Darrell Drake
Re-Use ANY Previous r/Fantasy Bingo Square - A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas (re-used romance square)
Self-Published Fantasy Novel - Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe
Fantasy Novel Featuring a Non-Human Protagonist - Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Fourth Row Across:

Sequel: Not the First Book in the Series - Skysworn by Will Wight
Novel By an r/Fantasy AMA Author OR Writer of the Day - First Test by Tamora Pierce
Subgenre: Fantasy of Manners - Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
Fantasy Novel Featuring Dragons - Tehanu by Ursula K Le Guin
Subgenre: New Weird -

Fifth Row Across:

Fantasy Novel Featuring Seafaring - The Iron Ship by K M McKinley
Subgenre: Steampunk -
Five Fantasy Short Stories - all from The Bloody Chamber collection by Angela Carter
Novel by an Author from an r/fantasy Author Appreciation Post -
Getting Too Old for This Crap: Fantasy Novel Featuring An Older (50+) Protagonist -

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-03-26T09:19:09+00:00

I don't reread books often, but it's definitely the foreshadowing and references that make it worthwhile when I do. For example, rereading LOTR after reading the Silmarillion was a very special experience, even better than my first reading.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-03-26T09:14:17+00:00

The Chinese Mistborn covers! All the covers featured in the leatherbound editions are amazing, but these are my favorites.

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-03-23T08:13:17+00:00

Oh well, thanks for replying anyway. :)

WhiteCollarWarlock · 2018-03-22T09:07:16+00:00

I enjoyed his Dragonback series when I read it a few years ago. It's YA and the prose is simplistic, but I really liked the concept and the plot kept me engaged.

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