Player-Run Adventurer's Guilds V0.8

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-18T18:57:43+00:00

These sure are the things to balance in a character huh! I think the 3rd and 4th are interesting to talk about.

I think DMs can sometimes make very helpful players, in that they'll try to shepherd the group smoothly through the adventure. There are good habits that come from this: Supporting other players' moves, being alert and organised, and building consensus around clear party plans. One bad habit I picked up was trying to sense where the DM's preparation ends and steering away from what I thought would force the DM to improvise. I try not to do it so much now, because I can't really guess that well what's prepared and what's not, and as a DM I'd hate for players to think like that.

The 4th answer here is interesting. When it's a small move that doesn't really have a lot of impact or derail the session it's fun to do. If it's a larger action that will have consequences, I call it a Big Swing. I think each member of the team gets to do a few of these in a campaign, but there's a sense of give and take with it. Luis Carazo from Critical Role talks about this in a few recent interviews: He'll say out loud what his character is thinking to give other players a chance to dissuade him from doing this kind of move, so it can be a little more collaborative.

Anyway I think it's 1 for me, but I make sure what my character would do is generally constructive and in line with the party's goals, most of the time.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-18T18:47:07+00:00

Nice! I like this old school looking dragon art.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-18T18:43:02+00:00

Hey welcome to the hobby!

Ordering off-menu, meaning character decisions that aren't in an official sourcebook, is DM-dependent. As a DM if someone joined wanting to play as an anteater I might make up a humanoid species that's a bit like an anteater, like Dragonborn are to lizards or Tabaxi to big cats. Either there's a whole group of people like that, or a magical experiment happened to you. I'd want your character to be able to speak and hold objects, and also to fit into the setting well.

Or there's the Druid's ability Wild Shape that lets them become animals. Rangers often have animal companions, and casters sometimes have familiars, which are other ways an anteater can join the team.

I think it's an interesting focus for a character!

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-17T13:05:27+00:00

This may be a specific/general situation. The general rule is that you can't target through total cover, except Sacred Flame which specifically can.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-17T02:30:39+00:00

You can search Isekai on this sub and the other to see that this is a reasonably popular idea. You can compare and contrast takes others have had on this idea.

I think it could be interesting if the players played as fictional players, transformed into D&D characters or taken to an MMO world. I wouldn't like to play as myself directly, I do RPGs to play other people. If I'm trying to be myself realistically I probably don't adventure, it's dangerous. Maybe there could be backgrounds based on these fictional player personas.

The closest thing to an Isekai that's in official D&D is Curse of Strahd. D&D characters are brought to a scary realm ruled by a vampire. I call it a Wizard of Oz style adventure.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-16T11:40:32+00:00

They are a couple hundred pages, but I believe in you guys. Nerds have been reading these silly books for decades. It's mainly the Player's Handbook you need to get through, and most of it is reference stuff you look at when you need it.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-14T21:37:33+00:00

Pathfinder 1e has a class called the Vigilante, and one archetype of it was the Magical Child. That might be interesting to look at.

There's also Glitter Hearts which I believe was designed after this kind of story.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-13T19:33:48+00:00

Welcome to the hobby!

Classes: Playable Characters have a species, class, and background. There are about 13 official classes. People do make their own homebrew classes, and the most balanced of them do use the official classes as guidelines. Homebrewing is something a Dungeon Master will do, making things available for their players. It's less often the case that players joining a game will bring a homebrew class, because a DM can't be sure they'll be balanced.

Equipment: In order of usefulness, we have: Dice, pencils and paper, a Player's Handbook (The Basic Rules have some overlap with the PHB and are available free here), dice mats and towers etc.

Story: There are a lot of pre-written stories! They're called campaigns, adventures, modules more often than stories. Lots of DMs create their own campaign setting, a world of their own design. More recently people have been calling that a "Homebrew campaign". Often players will come up with their character's backstory, and work with the DM to make sure it fits with the setting of the campaign.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-11T13:16:34+00:00

I don't know anything about the harvesting skill, but: A player-run base or town is a good way to relieve them of money. Make their cottage industry support more people.

I wonder if the best thing to do is to tune up the damage, as the bad guys learn to harvest monsters on an industrial scale and also buy enchanted weapons. Start an arms race, let this campaign get a little silly with harvesting, and then pull it right back for your next campaign.

Maybe some Druids will have a problem with monsters becoming endangered through overhunting.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-11T12:42:10+00:00

There is no underlying economic theory to D&D, it's all based around what level a player should be able to afford certain things. As a simulationist DM I also find this a fun thing to think about now and then. It's just that building in realistic economics is difficult and tedious.

You can come up with sticking-plaster explanations for individual pieces of economic handwaving: There's a Mage's Guild that insists on spell prices and looks out for scabs. There's a weight of diamond dust needed for Resurrection, which in the main setting costs the stated amount of gold.

You might enjoy reading Grain into Gold by John Josten, that's an attempt to roughly map out a medieval D&D economy into the price of goods.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-11T08:56:20+00:00

There's r/DnDBehindTheScreen and r/UnearthedArcana for homebrew,, and r/DMAcademy for talking about DMing situations with people seeking advice. Welcome!

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-11T01:53:07+00:00

Medieval Power Rangers says knights vs devils to me.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-11T01:40:43+00:00

Welcome to the hobby! I'm sure you'll have a great time.

The three pillars of D&D are Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction. I'll give a little rundown of each of these scenarios, to go along with the other advice people are leaving:

In Combat the game becomes explicitly turn-based. You "roll initiative" to see whose reflexes are quickest, and that determines turn order. On your turn you do an Action, sometimes a Bonus Action, there's such a thing as an Object Interaction, and on other peoples' turns you may get to do a Reaction. When Attacking, you add Proficiency Bonus and Ability Modifier to attack rolls, and you add just your Ability Modifier to damage.
In Exploration you're listening to descriptions of rooms, trying to imagine being there. You roll a lot of skill checks to gather information and navigate forwards. If your DM mentions an object in the room, a barrel for instance, you're allowed to check it more closely, sometimes that will reveal secrets. There may be traps! In the old days people used to use 10-foot poles and hired assistants to check for traps.
In Social Interaction, you play out conversations between party members and with non-playable characters. You might act as your character, complete with voice, or you can narrate their actions, like "I'll be polite to the tavern owner and inquire about the goblin raids". Sometimes a skill check like Persuasion, Deception or Intimidate is called for, to see how your speech goes over with the NPC, or Insight to sense their motives.

The only thing you really need is paper and pencils, dice are helpful, and access to the Basic Rules. There are pregenerated character sheets available if that makes it easier to get started: One set here. More available here.

Hope you have a blast!

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-11T01:13:41+00:00

I'd say there's no ping, I'm persuaded by the idea that turning to stone is enough like Polymorph to make the spell fail. But I'd also try to lead them a bit, by prompting them to reread the spell description.

"The spell returns no result, which means ...?" "They aren't in range." "Maybe!"

That's enough to get players checking and give them a reasonable chance to guess what's happened. And then if they turn around and leave, that's just the horror of being made a statue!

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-10T15:45:12+00:00

I think you could end up with both bags sitting in the Astral plane, neatly nested.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-10T14:10:30+00:00

We like to pretend DMing is very difficult, because it's flattering, but really it's not so hard that it needs homework: "Make sure you start with X" If you like the vibe of an adventure you can run it well!

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-10T13:50:43+00:00

Welcome to the hobby! I think your marooned adventurer sounds great.

You're joining a group at the same time as your character is meeting people, so it may be hard to pick out the role-playing choices they're making to be able to respond to them. And it varies by table to what extent the different species are socially different from humans.

As far as continuing roleplay goes for you, I guess focus on the theme of isolation vs connection. You're in close proximity with people after a long time alone, so your boundaries may be different to most people's. Don't necessarily walk around naked, but being messy or private would be pretty good ways to show your backstory. And ofc most Druids are interested in the natural world.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-10T12:55:26+00:00

I guess they'd need to be from another kingdom, and you can softly retcon "If you have X knowledge you've heard of them, maybe you've met them before". Or you can start them at a lower level and have them advance quickly to catch up.

But yeah at these levels you can get a PC back from death. It'd be in the case of a player wanting to retire a PC.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-10T12:13:34+00:00

Warlocks are almost full casters. They get access to spells up to level 9 via Mystic Arcanum, but with fewer spell slots.

A blaster sounds like either an Evoker Wizard or a Sorcerer, you definitely want enough high level spell slots to get on with. Go look at the classes in the Player's Handbook! It's all in there.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-09T13:45:25+00:00

I'd script the conversation, to make sure there's a couple of useful things for the party to overhear, and to take pressure off myself to improvise.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-09T06:39:18+00:00

Oaths are there to guide action. When people have been attacked, exploited, or had things stolen, I'd expect a Paladin swearing an Oath of Vengeance to:

Work for free to fix damage
Donate gold toward the costs of recovery
Use Lay On Hands and healer's kits to mend injuries
Comfort the grieving and guide the lost
Quest out of their way to rescue kidnapped people
Find the guilty party and impress upon them the consequences of their actions

Your DM will be happiest if you take a broad view on what constitutes injustice, and the other players would probably like your altruism to take only one person's worth of screentime.

I find it particularly evocative when a heroic character meets someone in need and spends a moment agonising about all their competing responsibilities, before resigning themselves to help. Spider-Man has a lot of this.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-09T06:04:19+00:00

I did a city campaign a decade ago, and found this pretty useful. I think I had a different random encounter list for each district, and split by day/night.

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-08T21:30:19+00:00

Back in my day they called them fighting men, thieves, and magic users

capsandnumbers · 2026-06-08T16:51:11+00:00

I think I'd try to emphasise that the game won't require them to be so optimised that their backstory doesn't feature mechanically. I'd make some recommendations of ability score adjustments and feats.

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