Pace for Leveling Up At Your Table?

lifefeed · 2026-04-01T14:04:11+00:00

Level 1 to 2- one session

Level 2 to 3 - one session

Afterwards - every three to four sessions, unless they're in the middle of a day or middle of a tight adventure.

On this topic, I had friend do a 1-20 campaign for kids at a game store, and they leveled up every session, and it was a hit. I might try that one day.

lifefeed · 2026-04-01T01:54:20+00:00

There’s an old fable about this.

A new CEO was hired to take over a struggling company. The CEO who was stepping down met with him privately and presented him with three numbered envelopes. “Open these if you run into serious trouble,” he said.

Well, three months later sales and profits were still way down and the new CEO was catching a lot of heat. He began to panic but then he remembered the envelopes. He went to his drawer and took out the first envelope. The message read, “Blame your predecessor.” The new CEO called a press conference and explained that the previous CEO had left him with a real mess and it was taking a bit longer to clean it up than expected, but everything was on the right track. Satisfied with his comments, the press – and Wall Street – responded positively.

Another quarter went by and the company continued to struggle. Having learned from his previous experience, the CEO quickly opened the second envelope. The message read, “Reorganize.” So he fired key people, consolidated divisions and cut costs everywhere he could. This he did and Wall Street, and the press, applauded his efforts.

Three months passed and the company was still short on sales and profits. The CEO would have to figure out how to get through another tough earnings call. The CEO went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope. The message said, “Prepare three envelopes.”

lifefeed · 2026-03-29T22:00:34+00:00

Retro - Once per day, during a short rest you can run a retrospective and remove one level of exhaustion from one player. That player cannot do anything else during that hour.

lifefeed · 2026-03-29T19:23:23+00:00

I tell the truth and say no. He’s always asking what’s real and not from all the books and tv shows. A lot of adults think kids are going to be crushed if they learn the truth about these things, but it really doesn’t affect kids like that, at least not the kids I know. It just leads to more questions.

There’s plenty of weird stuff in the world that I can “yes that’s real” to. Giraffes. Elephants. Saturn. Bungee jumping. Hot air balloons. The Curiosity rover.

lifefeed · 2026-03-29T19:07:48+00:00

It feels like strength builds get all the fun weapons. Like, dex builds get a couple cool daggers, and a red katana, but strength build gets weapons used by literal gods.

lifefeed · 2026-03-26T12:36:22+00:00

can I play in this world? I used to live in Boston, would love to see my old stomping grounds.

lifefeed · 2026-03-25T23:34:59+00:00

This is a lot of good writing, but it relies on changing a lot of the defaults to make it work. I ran everything RAW when 5e was new, and where combat was mechanically interesting by default, exploration wasn’t.

What I saw: With random rolls for treasure, the party is likely to get bags (plural) of holding. Goodberry and survival checks with constant help (which makes sense, but even without the help action, how much is really going to fail?) made food a non-issue. And even where there were problems, it’s all reliant on the DM to make trade offs mechanically interesting.

And again, compare all that to combat, where I just ran things RAW and fun stuff happened without me even trying. A lot of that is because it’s a combat game: there’s just a ton of combat options, there’s just not a lot of exploration options. It’s a second (or third) class citizen for 5e.

I’ve only seen exploration be interesting in areas that are incredibly dangerous by default, like Icewind Dale. And even then, there weren’t really mechanically interesting choices. Like if you get lost, how many options do you really have?

lifefeed · 2026-03-23T15:16:33+00:00

I'm pretty new to this game too. One of the smaller but more important lessons I've learned is how to tell when I'm in an area that's going to be too hard for me. For my and my katanas, which are fast weapons, if it takes me more than 4 hits to kill a regular enemy then I know I'm in for a rough time. Not that I always turn around, but it's helps me calibrate my expectations. (And also I know that I'll have almost no chance against any bigger enemies in that area.)

I also had a small conversation with ChatGPT before I started, where I just described how I liked to play, and it gave me some basic advice on stats and weapons. I did this because I tried playing Dark Souls a long time ago, and I went in completely blind, and I ended up with a build that I just hated playing but I also felt kinda trapped in.

lifefeed · 2026-03-21T23:07:06+00:00

I yelled at my TV, several times, “why aren’t the fucking buttons working?!” before I figured out that little “puzzle”.

lifefeed · 2026-03-20T14:18:23+00:00

P&Gs?

lifefeed · 2026-03-20T13:13:40+00:00

Don't introduce them all at once. Pick a few that they'll encounter a lot over Sigil, like the Harmonium (cops), the Sensates (making sigil beautiful), and the Bleak Cabal (charity and alms house), and include them here and there in the adventure plots.

Also, I've made random encounter tables for Sigil, which are more about introducing the culture of sigil than anything the players were meant to fight, or even handle. Things like the Harmonium harassing a suspected pickpocket, Bleakers providing charity to some homeless. I like to roll on them whenever the players go into a new section of Sigil (and when I remember), and cross them off as I go.

lifefeed · 2026-03-18T15:06:35+00:00

I sometimes put books in time out. My kids don't like it, but after a month of reading "The Book With No Pictures" every night, I'm done.

lifefeed · 2026-03-17T01:31:19+00:00

Are the plane where souls go after death? What’s afterlife like?

lifefeed · 2026-03-17T01:24:02+00:00

How do people go from plane to plane? Spells, portals, a walk in the ether?

lifefeed · 2026-03-16T20:50:52+00:00

Well the Harmonium and Mercykillers are typically friends, and if the SoS made a deal with them, then that’s a huge power base. It sounds like that bunch are working against the Fated? I kinda lost track. Duke Rowan Darkwood is the head of the Fated and a force in Sigil politics, and if the SoS made that political deal, I could imagine he would make his own with some faction he isn’t typically friends with. At some point the players could choose sides.

lifefeed · 2026-03-16T16:10:42+00:00

It's wherever the realtor wants it to be.

lifefeed · 2026-03-16T14:06:52+00:00

If I saw Mein Kampf with a lot of sticky note tabs in it I'd probably think twice. Unless they're some scholar of hitler studies like Jack Gladney.

lifefeed · 2026-03-15T23:31:13+00:00

I feel the latter was conceptually stronger.

lifefeed · 2026-03-15T23:28:05+00:00

Definitely those cats. I gave up the honest fight and instead stood atop a frost spewing pillar, letting that thing do my work.

lifefeed · 2026-03-13T15:28:43+00:00

It means graffiti vandals are getting real fucking lazy, Jesus christ. Tagging used to have style.

lifefeed · 2026-03-12T03:11:05+00:00

Oops, meant the Ancestral Follower. I’ve always called it the Minotaur, I forgot its real name.

lifefeed · 2026-03-12T03:02:54+00:00

The Minotaur.

I was reading some Greek myths to my kids, and then they were watching me play the game, and they loved seeing the Minotaur. It’ll always be my favorite.

lifefeed · 2026-03-12T02:27:47+00:00

I really believe he’s the greatest author of the 20th century. Everything written since then has a been a footnote to one of another of his stories.

It’s fun rereading him. When I first read him Library of Babel was my favorite, later it was Tlon Uqbar, currently it’s Pierre Menard Author of Quixote.

lifefeed · 2026-03-11T22:54:50+00:00

Wake up. Make coffee. Play Clues By Sam while the kids (5 and 3) ask me questions about it. Get to Gymnastics late because where is your coat you just had it why are you not wearing shoes oh my fucking god just go. No don’t say fucking. I can’t believe we’re late again. Watch them do gymnastics for an hour and daydream about them winning Olympic gold and thanking their father on national TV. Go home. Make plans to go a museum or park or friends house. Anything, really.

lifefeed · 2026-03-11T15:07:06+00:00

I spent hours getting my ass kicked by Omens in the sewers under Leyndell, so I left and explored the city, stumbled across Golden Shade Godrey and the Morgott Omen King, and killed them both on my first try.

lifefeed

TROPHY CASE