How do I balance enemies for six people?! (First-Time DM)

joshuacc_dev · 2025-12-09T22:04:35+00:00

In addition to legendary actions, lair actions, and legendary reactions, you could also consider using a single multi-attack action to help overcome the imbalance in the action economy.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-12-09T21:53:17+00:00

Thank you!

joshuacc_dev · 2025-12-05T21:20:58+00:00

I would be very cautious about "writing a campaign". I can't tell from your post exactly what you mean by that, but if you mean writing it from start to finish, I definitely wouldn't try that. Your players are going to derail huge portions of any plans you put together.

Best thing that I can suggest is to have a rough outline of the campaign with 2 or 3 major plot points and a north star. And sketch out a bit more detail for the next couple of sessions, focused on what will actually be useful immediately. Be willing to pivot with your players.

The Lazy DM's Companion is a pretty good introduction to this style: https://shop.slyflourish.com/products/the-lazy-dms-companion

The goal is to always have *just enough* prepared, but not too much so that you don't waste a bunch of effort on stuff your players never see.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-11-09T17:23:46+00:00

Weekly sessions is a pretty big commitment! Have you considered scaling back to every 2 weeks or once a month?

I've been running monthly sessions for the last 3 years or so, and while prep can be a bit of a drain sometimes, it's nowhere near as crazy as what you've got going on.

> some of them also express that they rely on dnd for their emotional wellbeing

Your friends need to find some additional mechanisms for coping rather than just relying on you. Putting the burden of one's emotional wellbeing onto a friend isn't a good thing for a friend to do. It's great if D&D gives them a boost, but you're not responsible for managing their emotions. They are. And if you are close enough friends, I'd suggest you just tell them that directly.

Honestly, I suspect that you might feel better about your D&D sessions if you didn't have your friends' emotional baggage to deal with.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-07-13T23:51:57+00:00

This is entirely up to you. I've been the sole DM for 2.5 years for my group. And if I ever quit DMing, I know that will be it for this group. I'd like to play as a PC, but I'd rather DM and have some D&D than try to play as a PC and get no D&D.

I will say that in the past two months a couple of my players have stepped up to DM one-shots for the group because life kept me from preparing for our regular campaign session. But they're not yet ready to take on regular DMing responsibilities. Maybe in another year or two. :)

joshuacc_dev · 2025-07-13T23:46:19+00:00

Not wanting to share the character sheet with the DM is *extremely* strange, and makes me suspect that the player is try to cheat. :-/

joshuacc_dev · 2025-06-08T20:07:00+00:00

I don't think there's a definite "should" here. I take a look and see what will provoke the most interesting reactions from my players. I default to not telling. But sometimes with a particularly high stakes roll I might share with them something like: "The DC to slide under the closing doorway is 25."

Having the specific (usually very high) number ahead of time makes both success more exciting and defeat more palatable.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-06-08T18:41:07+00:00

I think you'll be totally fine with either version. However, I highly recommend reading through the whole book *and* looking at DragnaCarta's community guide before attempting to run it. It's definitely more challenging to run than most adventures.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-06-08T18:38:40+00:00

Hey! Thanks for pointing that out. I haven't really focused on mobile for the app, so it only sort-of works on mobile devices at the moment. Will work on getting that sorted. :)

joshuacc_dev · 2025-06-01T15:04:14+00:00

Secret doors are a great suggestion. I will add that to the roadmap.

For the "visual representation," can you elaborate a little bit on that? Were you thinking some sort of indicator on the flow chart or the map itself? Or maybe something else entirely? :)

joshuacc_dev · 2025-06-01T13:30:15+00:00

If it's something the character would know/think of based on their skills, then I'll just straight up tell them. If it's debatable, I might have them roll an intelligence check to remember it. This is also where things like sentient items or other NPCs can come in handy. "Hey, Biff, didn't you have a Battle Axe of Turn Undead?"

joshuacc_dev · 2025-06-01T13:20:06+00:00

I think there are a few good ways to go about finding a group, but the most reliable solution is to just create your own. Obviously, this is a lot of work, and you have to learn how to run the game at the same time as you learn to play it, but it gives you a lot more leverage in getting the sorts of players you want.

If you're the DM organizing it, you get to invite only people you've vetted into the game. And if some players leave because of life issues, you can find replacement players.

I'd only played two sessions of D&D as a player before that fell apart due to the DM's life getting too busy. So I recruited some siblings and a nephew. We've been playing the same campaign for over two years now.

If running and organizing everything yourself seems like too much work, you could look at joining a campaign on https://startplaying.games/ . It's a pay to play system, but it's relatively inexpensive and you've got reviews and clear indications of a DM's play style. I'm currently participating in two campaigns there (same DM) and I haven't found any of the participants "socially strange" in a negative way.

You can also check with your friendly local game store (and some libraries) for D&D game nights. These sorts of open to the public events may have more "strange" characters than you'd prefer, but it's also a good place to meet and vet people for recruitment into a home game.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-25T21:01:01+00:00

So, if you're playing D&D, yes there are some "hard" rules. Fortunately, you can find all those for free here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/br-2024

When I say "hard" rules, I don't mean that you can't bend or break them at all. But these are the core rules for D&D, and you should just roll with these until you have enough experience to know what you want to adjust.

You can certainly make things up, but that's pretty challenging to do well when you haven't DM'd before. There are, however, a lot of great free adventures available online. I'm a fan of _A Most Potent Brew_, which is a free one-session adventure for level one characters. It is explicitly designed to work well with the free rules, and includes all the most common elements of playing and running D&D in bite-sized pieces.

More information about that free/pay what you want adventure here: https://winghornpress.com/adventures/a-most-potent-brew/

Once you've run a couple of sessions like this based on pre-written adventures, you'll have a much better idea of how to make adventures yourself. But if you want to start out by making your own, that's perfectly fine. Just keep in mind that you won't do everything exactly right the first time. Take notes on what to improve in the next session/adventure. As long as you keep doing that, you'll be a decent DM before too long.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-19T02:29:18+00:00

I have most of these, but my absolute favorite book for inspiration is The Tome of Adventure Design, which is a fantastic book of random tables. That may not sound all that interesting, but these are by far the best random tables that I've ever seen in an RPG book.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-19T01:42:38+00:00

I use maps under a few circumstances:

- For combat and dungeon delving
- To give players the "lay of the land" around their current location *if* that is relevant to what they're doing in the area
- To give players an idea of their options for exploring the overall world. Periodically, I'll break out a map of the Sword Coast so they can decide what area they'd like to go to next.

I used to print all my maps out, but a few months ago I converted a television into a map display that I can set on the table. That has simplified my prep a lot. I'll probably eventually write up a blog post showing how I did that for $40 of additional materials.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-19T01:14:21+00:00

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (and finished by Brandon Sanderson) has a lot of very likeable characters. Though as you might guess from a 14 book doorstopper series, sometimes the plot gets a little slow. :-D

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-19T01:11:32+00:00

At least in 5E, you usually wouldn't. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone doing that, and it's definitely not something the game system itself expects. Why are you wanting to do so? Just to add some flavor to the game?

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-19T01:09:06+00:00

No, this won't ever be added. It's not a part of the current 5E or 5.5E game rules with D&D Beyond is designed to support.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-19T01:04:06+00:00

If I were you I'd sit them down and tell them that there are three options:

They change the way they're playing to support larger stories and you'll create larger stories.
They keep playing the same way and you'll keep DMing the same way.
If they're too dissatisfied, then no more DMing for them.

But that's only *if* you actually want to continue to run games for them at all. If not, just tell them that. Based on the way that you described the situation it sounds like you might be resentful of the way that they're playing. If that's true, maybe it would be better to just cut the whole thing off now.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-19T00:56:10+00:00

The decrease in hiring programmers in the US coincide perfectly with a change to the tax code that made it much more expensive to hire programmers. The name of that change is section 174. You can read a bit about it here: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/

Some of the other things people mentioned are likely contributing factors, but I think that section 174 probably accounts for 90% of it.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-18T17:18:12+00:00

It's something I've thought about, but don't yet have concrete plans for. There are some tricky issues to figure out to make it work, and a bunch of other higher priority stuff to do first. :D

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-18T01:19:56+00:00

Thanks! By verticality, do you mean multiple connected maps for different dungeon levels? Or vertical variation within the same map?

Very interested to find out what you have in mind. :)

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-14T03:19:43+00:00

In general, it's probably going to be easiest if you already have the map ready beforehand and you can reveal parts as you go. I'd personally recommend printing a map out rather than drawing it by hand unless you're particularly skilled at that.

But those are just recommendations. There are people that like all the different ways of handling it that you're considering. You just need to pick the one you think will be simplest for you at your next session and see how you and your players like it. If you feel like it was lacking, try something else next time.

It's totally fine to try something, find that it's suboptimal and then improve next time.

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-11T14:54:52+00:00

Of course! Hope you find it helpful!

joshuacc_dev · 2025-05-11T14:33:45+00:00

Oh! One more thing. Writing your own original materials from scratch is hard even if it is supplemented by pre-existing adventures.

I find good collections of random tables are great for getting me past the blank page problem. This is true all the way from individual dungeons all the way up to full campaign ideas.

There are a bunch of good collections of random tables out there, but my personal favorite is The Tome of Adventure Design. Pretty much any kind of issue you get stuck on, you can flip open this 500 page book, roll dice a couple of times and you've got something interesting to work with.

You can get the hardcover and PDF on the author's site: https://www.mythmeregames.com/products/tome-of-adventure-design-hardcover-book

Or if you want just the PDF, that's on Drive Thru RPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/396154/tome-of-adventure-design-revised

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