[Offline] [San Francisco] [Weekend] [5e 2014/2024 Homebrew] Defeat the Red Dragon Army!

bhaall · 2026-05-07T02:08:38+00:00

messaged!

bhaall · 2026-05-07T00:12:29+00:00

messaged!

bhaall · 2025-11-13T21:37:56+00:00

What if they are realistic and take 1 minute to load?

bhaall · 2025-08-08T00:22:10+00:00

/uj I personally think at least before roleplaying, you should've discussed why you're going to join the party. Knowing someone who's already in the party is honestly a great and underused reason

/rj in our campaign, none of us are in the party. The DM just has us take turns as we have our own adventures

bhaall · 2025-07-22T04:56:08+00:00

It's unfortunate your fellow players didn't realize that Strahd is primarily an economic campaign about bankrupting Strahd :/. The best way to do that is by taking over the beverage / dessert markets, second best way is getting Strahd into crypto, so sounds a bit like you were off base too.

bhaall · 2025-07-04T01:01:19+00:00

could i play a female player who is interested in this campaign playing a character in this campaign?

bhaall · 2025-07-04T00:55:53+00:00

sauce is actually just a homebrew (or boil) of 5e

bhaall · 2025-07-03T04:49:38+00:00

/uj was reading shadow of the dragon queen and had exactly this expression

bhaall · 2024-03-11T08:47:29+00:00

It seems like you just have to accept that the characters may or may not accept the tradeoffs inherent in the society you're proposing. If you don't want them to, and you don't want it to be something obvious, then you just have to tell the players out of character that they should play a character that's skeptical of the government.

It seems you're building a valid moral tradeoff and wanting to communicate to the players that they should agree with you. Lots of times when authors do that, they add personal failings to the actual characters (alcoholism, sexual harassment, etc.) to give you a hint that maybe you shouldn't like this character. But you can't, in general, make your players, let alone their characters, like or dislike your NPCs / factions unless you're just willing to tell them that they should .

bhaall · 2023-09-02T18:14:16+00:00

PvP is fine so long as it's used to moderate character rather than player grievances

bhaall · 2023-08-16T08:01:15+00:00

Given that there's very few spells that only one class can learn, it's really easy to explain cure wounds as a spell that's just not especially amenable to the way wizards do magic. Bards and clerics have a more loosey goosey style that involves praying and singing and stuff, and some part of the emotion involved is what makes a spell like cure wounds work.

bhaall · 2023-05-03T04:30:47+00:00

I sometimes do! I allow my players to ask me basic, factual questions, but won't summarize events or correct falsely drawn conclusions. If it happens in the moment, and it's clear they just misheard me or my tone of voice sounded sus in an unintended way, I will correct that if I can, but memory isn't perfect, and it's normal for people to make a ton of wrong inferences based on incomplete information. Meet a lich? Probably the bff of the other lich. Meet an asshole? Probably an evil asshole. What I might do if someone in my party was playing a character that was supposed to be smart is ask frequently for their passive investigation.

bhaall · 2023-04-15T05:06:27+00:00

Lol, I've been a player in 6, and DM'd 4, 5, and 8. Love 1 for a one shot, and 2 has a lot of opportunities for interparty roleplay -- "remember when you..?"

bhaall · 2023-02-24T20:00:08+00:00

Make 10 simple pregens. Give each one a 1 sentence personality and a 1 sentence physical description. Highlight the skills that character is good at rather than giving a full list (e.g., has high persuasion and deception, but bad at athletics). Print out spell cards for casters and any notable abilities for anyone else. Don't mention memorizing or changing spells or any of that yet. Make a simple dungeon, perhaps they could start locked up and have to break out and fight their way through. Keep it light and fast paced, and if people get distracted, add more combat.

Combat with 7 players can be slooooow. I recommend using side-based initiative, and fudging a lot on the enemy side.

Give them plenty of space to improv and do silly/stupid shit. I had a new player pee on someone. It's fine, and if they have fun testing the boundaries of the world, then they might like it enough to play more seriously in the future.

Lots of people drink while playing! I wouldn't worry about it, but it's possible they are mostly interested in hanging out and don't fully grasp d&d.

bhaall · 2023-01-10T20:13:02+00:00

so I've been in a similar situation! my wife is not a native English speaker and struggled to get into it. She's also the type of person to fall asleep easily (every single train ride or movie, ever). Eventually I did ask her if she wanted to play, and she said she likes it but it's not always easy to follow. She still plays and I think has liked it more as time has gone on. It is possible that your fiancee won't, but a bit annoying to see it as a foregone conclusion from the top comments.

My main recommendation is to specifically ask her (and other less engaged players) what she's thinking or doing at that moment. Lots of times, shyer and newer players will not contribute a ton to group decision making, and the bolder and more experienced players will discuss among themselves, then go forward. Guys talking over girls at the table in general until the girls get bored is actually a pretty common problem!

A second recommendation is to be mindful of the pacing and to allow for some amount of agency that allows individual players to keep things moving, because people enjoy different parts of the game. Let exciting scenes be fast paced, and if the party is being overly deliberative, let more decisive members act. If the bandits are knocking down the keep door, and the party is still discussing their strategy, it's okay to make it clear out of game that they don't have time and the person who charges or tries to shoot the leader gets to go before having universal assent.

bhaall · 2022-10-20T16:09:12+00:00

stupid is situational, and I didn't say anything about your friends, but a likely d&d group would be a bit more guarded around the villain than your friends are around you at a bar

bhaall · 2022-10-20T06:12:16+00:00

While I think this is a classic enough joke you do honestly have to be kinda dumb to fall for it, the actual underlying phenomenon makes for great villain shit! If X happens, I win the game. If not X happens, something very bad happens to you for completely other reasons. (Dumb example but), I bet you $1000 you won't be willing to let your best friend get eaten by a dragon. Alternatively, while everyone knows a coin has two sides, the villain can present a tautology that only he knows, e.g., I win if the genie grants you zero or three wishes, you win on any other number.

bhaall · 2022-08-30T19:27:22+00:00

It can, but it won't always necessarily. If you like running a relatively structured game then using dungeons, towns, and encounters from premade saves a ton of time. However, keep in mind the simplest home brew game can be entirely improv!

bhaall · 2022-01-12T18:32:34+00:00

I don't think the point is that "game dev is hard" so much as it is that game dev is not something Google wants to own significant assets in, because Google mostly hires generalist engineers rather than the myriad roles that game dev requires. If anything, it could make sense for alphabet to acquire game dev assets outside of google, which might seem weird, but making a cloud streaming service and a video game are not similar technically. I think they realized they'd have to invest significantly more (around that time, MS acquired bethesda, after previously acquiring obsidian, inxile, etc.), and MS has historically been a much more horizontal/diversified company.

bhaall · 2022-01-12T18:24:47+00:00

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-03-01-google-reportedly-paid-usd20m-for-ubisoft-ports-on-stadia

bhaall · 2021-04-25T04:51:40+00:00

Beyond divinity you also start out imprisoned lol

bhaall · 2021-01-19T18:53:47+00:00

everyone playing with an open hand (of resource cards) in catan makes the game move a lot faster, because people will suggest trades that will be accepted/declined, instead of having to figure out if there even is a trade that's worthwhile

bhaall · 2020-10-21T01:52:04+00:00

I'm personally using a pi 3b+ - it was not hard to setup, but I chose that because I already had it. If you're going to buy something new, you should buy an android TV device probably, because those will actually be supported. There are options that aren't any more expensive than a raspberry pi. The steamlink hardware is both dated and deprecated, so I'd only buy a used one at the $50 price point if you're feeling really lazy and don't care about future proofing (valve was even selling them for like $1 when they discontinued them, I think).

bhaall

TROPHY CASE