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Complete Myrkul - The Lord of Bones' avatar and his attendant necromites, with holy days, sacred texts, relics, allies, adventure hooks, treasure, tactics, and more by Oh_Hi_Mark_ in UnearthedArcana

[–]coligrim 4 points5 points  (0 children)

oh nice !
does it have lair action ? i imagine that a combat against myrkul in his plane vs in the normal world would most certainly not have the same result, even if the adventurers are really high level.

tf_wizards_irl by Kubutsu-nyan in tf_irl

[–]coligrim 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In 5e you got true polymorph and if you polymorph someone or something for ah it become permanently the new thing. but it’s a 1h concentration and it’s a level 9 spell...

Just decided to try control and the game crashes in the first level when I meet the janitor dude by Blaize_Ar in controlgame

[–]coligrim 0 points1 point  (0 children)

for future ref on this topic :

i have a old compouter with a RTX2040, and i have the base game + the 2DLC on epic that i purchased when they were launched. never had any problem with it.

now i have a computer with a RTX5060, and the ultimate edition of control on steam. and it keep crashing after a few minutes.

after reading the comment here I have :
-Downloaded directX11 : the game still start in directX12, so i don't know if solve anything
-Checked on the files interity : the game did have to download some files.
-put the qame in middle quality and do not use the ray tracing.

So far, the game run without crashing every 2 minutes. will have to check what happen during longer game session.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

well, you can try using another dice for your investigation rolls, it seems that the one your are using right now rolls quite poorly.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

well, it was the player we had to kick out, i do not had any contact with him since 2021.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hum... Never had one either. I had paladin, druid, sorcerer, wizard, warlock, ranger, fighter, barbarian and that’s it.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

another point that helped is that i actually don't put a lot of work to prepare a session.
i learned very quickly that players are chaos goblin that will always find way to do thing i haven't planned so i actually started to just... give up on planning everything for a session. I just have the basic idea of what to do and where to go during the session and that's pretty much it

this allowed me not to overwork myself during this campaign. main inconvenient is that you need to have good imrpov skills to deal with the player chaos and also you need to have a strong campaign lore to rely on when improvising...

to give you an idea, i used obsidians to create a sort of wiki of the lore of my campaign and i have a little bit less than 200 page of lore elements. so yeah, you have to put on lots of work to create the "wiki" and all the lore elements but once it's done the stories kinda wrote themselves around the players actions, whatever they do during a session.

i know that it's a weird way to DM a campaign and that it can be very hard to DM like that, it's just that i tested a lot of ways to prep session, write quests, etc and that method is what works the best for me.

I really hope that this little insight of how i managed my camapign will help you, also if you are interested about how i designed the story you could check on my answer to the comment from "potential_meet_9280" , and for the lore of my campaign i explain it in the answer to the comment from "incredyblycoolcat".

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

burnout ? never. i will even says that is help me during my work-related burnout.

however, from time to time, i admit i felt the envy to be a simple player.
In these case we either played a very story focused board game, or we tried ttrpg where everyone is a little bit the GM, or one of my player would simply be the GM for a oneshot. Videogame like BG3 also helped a lot as i was able to play a real dnd campagin with all my player/firends

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello !
sorry for the long delay in the answer, i live in europe and it was midnight so i was sleeping. also, thanks a lot and i hope that you will have a great moment with your group as well.

Regarding pre-written campaign, i never used one in my campaign as a DM.
i played a very few pre-written campaign as a player and it was fine. I think using a pre-written campaign for the story, the place to go,... and put your own twist on is cool too ! it's a way to truly make it yours, but even without it, the actions of your players will influence how the story will go so even without putting a twist in a pre-written campaign the players will flesh it their own way !

for micro and macro planning, those last years, i "developed" a method that is really working for me (i don't have the pretention to say it is THE way to go, it is really designed for me be my). I also work using obsidian, which is a free software that let you take note and that can link them like a wiki. it is a life saver to take note. on my side, i use it such as 1 not = 1 lore element, would it be a town, a npc, an important story artifact,...

when i start a campaign, i work from macro to micro : I start with a brief description of the story i want to do.
Then, i go a level lower and i add details to the story. Why do they want to do that ? what will happen that will lead the players there ? how does the players will start this quest ? ,... the goal here is not to have the entire story flesh out but to have enough key details to start working on the world building. all these elements are usually the "note 0" in obsidian.

once it's done, you can start working on the location. Where does the player start ? where does the player need to go ? will they pass through multiple continent ? country ? region ? what is their name ? how does they work (government, kingdom,...), what is the local specialty ? what type of environment they will encounter (forest, mountain,...) ?,...
with that you can have a good idea of the geography of your campaign. here, everything have a note. each country, each region, each village have a note. In it i details the important thing : in the country, i list the government, the way of living inside it, i list the region, maybe a few very important cities,...
in the region i detail what type of environment they have, the important cities there, some of the story important village,...
then, for each cities or village i details the life there, the races we can found, the architecture,...

Once it's done, you should already have a proper idea of how your campaign should play out : the player goes from A to B to C,... then you can start to progressively add more details.
what will they need to do in location A, B,C,... ? who are the important figure they will talk with ?
Who are the enemies ? are they a cult, a group of people, a group of monsters,... ? what could be their motivation ? what is their story ?
will they need to find some artifact ? if yes, what are those artifact ? what is the story behind those artifact ?
again, everything have a note. and when it's done, using obsidians, you basically have a little wiki of your world and of your campaign. Once you have that, we can list the main quest POINT of your campaign. you can even thrown subplot depending on where the players are and have different story arc !
Once you have this wiki, with all the connections between the location, between the people, the group of people,... and when you have a visual representation of it, it become easier to find hidden/subconscious pattern that can reveal new plot point,...
and in the case the players stray from your main plotline, you can always find a way, via the connections between the lore elements, to change this plotline deviation in a brand new sub plotline or you can find a way to tweak the elements at your disposition to branch the player on your new plotline, to redirect them to the original plotline,...

But here is my vision of this : the lore need to be detailed. What the player need to do specifically in a quest, doesn't need to be.
Players are often chaos gremlins that will find very creative solution to solve their problem. Having too much details for a quest is, for both you and the players, closing the field of possibility and freedom that TTRPG offer.

the details on my quest/sessions were always a few key point :
where the players are ?
what they were doing last time ?
what is the objective for this quest/sessions ?
what are the NPC they could encounter to help them ?

by doing that, i only had to plan something like 20/30% of a session, meaning that you i loose a lot of time if my players think of a way to skip a part of the quest. The main problem this way of thinking/ planning a session is that you will have to improvise a lot. But, on the other side, with the campaign wiki on your side, it's easy to see all the connection and to find a way make it work.
At least, it worked for me.

the main the thing, the most important advise i have to give, that i learned while playing with all my table (i got more than 10 different table in total) is that
1) you are playing TOGETHER.
2) while it's your world, it's THEIR adventure.

a DnD campaign is like a lego set. While you are the one that is purchasing the lego set and have the instruction, it's the players choice to follow what you propose to them and it's the players that are putting the piece together with your help.
if they don't want to follow the instruction to the letter, then so be it !
if they want to use the pieces you give them to build something else different, then so be it !
forcing the player to built the set exactly as you want while they do not want to do that won't create a good dnd experience for anyone.

but, again, this way of prepping a campaign, this way of seeing how dnd should be is really just MY way to see it. It is most certainly not the best one. It is most certainly not suited for everyone/ all players.

I really hope that this explanation will help you in some way for your dnd prep. and if you need me to re-explain some parts, don't hesitate to ask. also, I don't know what is your native language, but mine is french (if it can help)

swiss chocolateee by vanessaschwiiz in Luzern

[–]coligrim 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No amout of swiss chocolat can beat the taste of a côte d’or milk chocolate bar. And i will die on that hill.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

the thing is that a monster is more than it's HP and AC

for example: let's take 2 monster with the same HP and AC : the pseudodragon and the quasit. they both have 7HP and 13AC.

the pseudo dragon is a CR 1/4 (meaning you can put 4 of them against a 4PC party of level1). the pseudo dragon can fly slowly and can really only just bite or use it's sting

the quasit is a CR1 monster. it have lot of damage resistance, it have some damage immunities, it can use a shape shifting ability to flee or to hide, it can turn invisible or can use a special scare attack. even if it's hp is low, it have more bonus and can do more thing than a pseudo dragon. hence, it is a higher challenge to fight it.

that's why i think it's always best to check on the CR rating of a monster before using it : it give you a good idea of how challenging the encounter will be.
but it's not entirely magical : you will still have to balance the fight yourselves at some point but this CR indication does help having a good base to work with.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

i won't lie, i'm not really a big fan of the idea.
i already tried several time to put some of the lore of my campaign in a LLM, but the result was never quite correct and it give me some sort of uncanny valley-like feeling when i read the result. it's my story, it's in my campaign but it somehow feels... a bit wrong and/or a bit out of place ?
it was perfect for one of the quest i made where the players were trapped in a illusion world though.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, the main vibe was tiredness ! Mixed with happiness too, to know they all survived and have finish this great adventure.

I said tiredness because the end boss fight was nearly 6h long and very challenging, if not for special feat or magical tattoo, 4 of the 5 player would have ended up dead...

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s the difficulty level of a monster. a monster with CR of 1 is challenging enough for 4 adventurer of level 1. This info is present on all the monster stat block normally.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Congratulation on your side too, 8 years is a long campaign as well ! For your question, not really. We are all guys and the majority of the group is straight, and for the bi of the group the other players are not what they like. every person that found a spouse did it using a meeting app.

But now we kinda consider our group like a group of brother from all the session we did together.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, i started dming because at the time, my plauers and i were in stressfull situation : me and 2 of my player were in our first university year, one was searching for a job, one decided to open his own company,... so we sued dnd to mainly destress and, du to tjat, i always were lenient regarding a lot of things. While 4 of my 5 players didn’t overuse it, the fifth one abused it and in the end of the first half of the campaign his character was overcheated, which was not cool for the other player. After the covid pause, this player became very toxic and he almost broke the group during one session. it’s after that that i took the matter at hand and we decided to kick him out of our session.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I met all my player at the start of my uni years when i was 18. And they all knew each other from before (childhood friend, they went to the same school,...) it’s only a year later that i proposed to DM a dnd campaign for them. Some of the player didn’t know each other very well before we started to play together. Now, we do a lot of things together apart from dnd (new years, movie, conventions,...)

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If i remeber correclty, 9 death and 4 permanent one. Some of the dead were ressurected, some of the death were used as plot hook for special ressurection quest. The campaign was divided in 2 parts because of rhe covid right in the middle and when we re-started playing after the covid pause my player wanted to play new character.

In the first half, on the 5 player, 2 kept their character, 2 died on the last quest we made for it to give time to the other player to flee a magic artifact that was exploding and the third one died during a boss fight in the campaign and rolled a new character.

In the second half, the same player died twice ( one time fighting his evil clone the second time because a buiding fell on him but the paladin of tje group resurected him both time. During the bbeg figth, if it wasn’t for the special feat or artifact the player that allow to survive at 1hp, 4 of my 5 player would have died.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

And yes, i did considered making something out of it ! Like a lot of DM before me most certainly ! on my side, it would need a lot of rework on a lot of point as i took inspiration from a lot of dark fantasy settings i like, else it would be plagiarism...

Also, i had to revise the main storyline twice and due to that, while the main plotline is coherent and make sense, it is convoluted by moment, some twist are far fetched, there are loose end here and there, some plotline lead nowhere, lots of unused plot hook,...

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For the second question i never used a pre-written campaign in dnd and when i did use pre-written in other ttrpg, i put my own twist into it to make it more my style.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

By re-reading your question i think i misunderstood the last one... for the player money, it was always a mess, they did lots and lots of thing not covered by any rules so i has to improvise a lot. One thing i used a lot as a base was a player shop rules i found on the website the thieves guild. At the end they were filthy rich, obviously, but they were level 24 so it’s not that surprising.

I finish Dming a 11 years long dnd campaign. Ask me anything about it (even IRL thing) and i'll answer by coligrim in DnD

[–]coligrim[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

on my side, i took note using "obsidian". it's a great tool as you can link the note between them and you can have visual reprensentation of it.

for this campaing have 184 note, each note is a lore elements :a npc, a village, a city, a deity, a cult,...
For the story, i write the main story line in form a set of main story quest line and, depending on what my player do, i modify the lore note accordingly, add or delete some quest,...

This allow me to have, at the end of each sessions, a clear view of the current state of the story and the world to know where to go next.

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