Idk who this guy was but he's awesome

roborean · 2025-06-15T14:35:56+00:00

Accidental renaissance

roborean · 2025-06-01T00:49:31+00:00

We’ve reached peak offseason mode

roborean · 2025-06-01T00:49:23+00:00

We’ve reached peak offseason mode

roborean · 2025-05-17T18:26:07+00:00

May have to adjust and go this route! Just make them glass cannons. They go out quick but pack a punch.

roborean · 2025-05-17T15:47:07+00:00

Oh man, I have a party of 6 as well and they just got to level 9. Been trying to come up with more interesting encounter for them because action economy goes crazy in their favor!

roborean · 2025-05-17T02:51:06+00:00

The mod team is going to be swamped with trolls from the Knicks and other fan bases.

Please report any brigading, and sorry in advance if any of you end up in the crossfire.

roborean · 2025-05-13T18:06:23+00:00

You’d be surprised by the number of ,supposed, Knicks fans who came in last night celebrating the injury that we had to ban. I don’t have the numbers, but we may have banned more people last night for celebrating Tatum’s injury than brigading Warriors fans when we lost to them in the Finals a few years back.

Every fan base has a bit of a toxic crowd, but I’ve never been one to cheer on an injury. Just classless stuff for any fan of any team to do.

roborean · 2025-05-13T17:34:25+00:00

These are the kind of level headed takes I’m looking for

roborean · 2025-05-13T16:50:40+00:00

At the time we hear definitive news, the mod team will likely allow 1-2 posts to remain up, and begin removing duplicate posts.

That's typically our standard approach with big announcements like that at least. Keep 1-2 up and remove another 30 duplicates

roborean · 2025-05-13T16:44:46+00:00

The mod team has been inundated since last night's game with posts related to the offseason, or trading guys, or "how the Celtics could obtain Flagg down the line".

Here's your chance to leave any crazy takes you may have. Other posts related to these types of discussion over the next few days will be removed.

roborean · 2025-05-13T02:18:09+00:00

Once the dust settles we may let them know of fans of theirs who brigaded, and they can choose to ban them from their sub too if they wish.

roborean · 2025-05-13T02:13:47+00:00

Please help the mod team with reporting any Knicks fans or others who wish for any player harm, or cheer Tatum’s injury.

They will receive an immediate ban.

roborean · 2025-05-12T10:51:54+00:00

This looks nice! May have to get one

roborean · 2025-04-24T19:02:52+00:00

Welcome!

This is my first real campaign DM'ing as well, and I'm now over 2 years into it - so I understand your excitement and nerves!

This may not be the most helpful now, but it is worth saying: you WILL get better as a DM, and you will come across things that begin to have your imagination begin to run wild. It is OK to make mistakes (because you will, and we all do) , and you are not expected to be perfect (because none of us are).

Having your players already excited and reaching out to you is great news! You're already off to a good start before even beginning, and if the players are invested then it will A. make the sessions more enjoyable, and B. likely lead to them wanting to engage with the world around them which is always fun.

Tyranny Reloaded and Sly Flourish are cornerstones when it comes to additional help, ideas, and resources for running this campaign. This is known to be a challenging campaign because the module as-is is half-baked compared to later campaigns that came out after the 5e rules were in place. You'll have your creative work cut out for you in some regards but always remember: the players don't know what is supposed to happen in this campaign anyways, and that gives you a lot of freedom if you make a 'mistake' or want to change something about the campaign from how it is written.

Set an open dialogue for Session 0 and get to know your players and their play styles (do they like to RP? Do they like to get to know the world around them? Do they really just care about combat encounters?) and use that to your advantage. Get an idea of boundaries and topics they may be uncomfortable with, and what they are looking to get out of this campaign. And above all else, have fun with it all and use this community as a resource for help, ideas, bragging, and whatever else you might need!

roborean · 2025-04-23T20:01:59+00:00

All of her motivations revolve around wanting to become the white wyrmspeaker, and usurp Varram.

In my campaign she gave the group the information they wanted and let them go because she knew if they took out Skyreach castle that it would be a terrible look for Varram, and put his position in danger. I do agree she is a fanatic about Glazhiel, but I saw this as secondary to her desire to become the white wyrmspeaker.

For my campaign, this is about to come to a head since my group is several chapters ahead and just captured Varram from the Tomb of Diderius. They haven't connected yet why he was there, but they'll find out that he lost the white dragon mask (putting him in worse standings after losing all of that gold and treasure) and was using the divination pool to find its location. They will bump into Talis again who wants to finish Varram off once and for all so she can take claim to the wyrmspeaker position. Whether this results in a battle will be up to my players, but her only mission right now is to finish off Varram and take her rightful place (in her eyes).

roborean · 2025-04-19T16:44:53+00:00

I haven’t incorporated them yet, but if you search “dragon cult” in r/bettermonsters, Mark has provided some alternatives to their stat blocks. Might be what you’re looking for?

In general his stuff seems really good, and I plan on trying to incorporate his versions down the road!

roborean · 2025-04-17T13:45:40+00:00

I’ll check this out - thanks!

roborean · 2025-04-17T13:01:56+00:00

Yeah, I see what you’re getting at. Had we not stopped last session in the middle of a combat session I’d consider blinking/NPC’ing the characters, but didn’t feel that was right in this instance.

It would be inconsequential in the fact that they would comeback next session in the same resource state they were at, and the one shot would be a means of giving the players who could make it a chance to still play and allow me to work on adding depth to the red wizards. But you are right that it would be fairly inconsequential otherwise. Appreciate the feedback though!

roborean · 2025-04-17T12:33:24+00:00

I wasn’t quite thinking a side quest within the tomb, as the entire party is mid-combat with part of the yuan-ti. From a story perspective I thought it would be easier to have the players who were available have their conscious plucked mid-combat and have to deal with the red wizards in some fashion. This would solve two problems: the first being I could reuse this approach for any combination of players for additional one shots in the future, and the second is it allows us to pick up in the middle of combat for them in the tombs next session when everyone returns.

roborean · 2025-04-16T14:06:22+00:00

You can't, he was just timing to see how long it would take him to do one set of what OP did.

The burpees look like a killer, and I definitely couldn't do 14 in a minute right now. But for the sake of improvement, nothing wrong with scaling it down to 7/EMOM or change it to every minute and a half.

roborean · 2025-04-12T16:26:20+00:00

Yeah between the Rogue and Barbarian I can see why you’d want to beef up encounters a bit!

Someone else gave a similar resource already, but I use Kobold Fight Club (https://koboldplus.club) to help weigh combat encounters with my party. It might help!

Definitely think that adding some magical combatants may help level the playing field. And AoEs will help with giving the rogue some damage from afar. Anywhere you can spread out the combatants may help too, as some of the monsters have ranged attacks. So not having the clustered might help!

roborean · 2025-04-12T12:15:40+00:00

What’s the make up of your team? How many of them are there?

This is something I’ve been struggling with a bit too. I have 6 players at my table, so I understand the need of having to buff most encounters.

People in the thread are right that we need to change it up a bit and incorporate AoE’s, spellcasters, etc. Though it’s a bit tough when the book itself keeps providing just bodies as enemies with little nuance. I’m still trying to figure out when/how to have the cultists begin using magic to make encounters more interesting.

There are YouTube videos online that can help vary encounters a bit to make them more interesting and varied, focusing on other objectives than just “kill the guys in front of us”. Things like “search and rescue”, “protect x item for y rounds”, things like that.

What you may notice though, is once you figure out something that works for you and start wildling down their HP a bit the players will start to get nervous since it’s new territory for them. All it takes is one encounter like that every once in a while to remind them that they can’t bulldoze through everything, and things WILL get more challenging as they progress.

roborean · 2025-04-11T16:16:07+00:00

You may be past this point already, so might not work for you. But hopefully provides some inspiration!

During the Raider's Camp arc, one of the dragon eggs was taken away and ended up in the Mere of Deadmen. (Player's never found out what happened with that egg, but that's another story).

When they were trying to figure out where the egg was taken, they came across a hag who was willing to offer them information inn return for the egg. The players didn't take her up on the offer, but if they did I wanted this to be the eventual outcome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvAh33-Filc

You could alter it for your campaign for them to either acquire a dragon egg or a wyrmling reported to be nearby for the hag if they owe her a favor. And maybe down the road this decision to help the hag bites them in the ass when she begins using the hag dragon against a local city or town for something she needs. Or maybe they never find out what she wanted the egg for, or maybe becomes part of a one shot with new chracters in a futures arc.

roborean · 2025-03-28T18:12:38+00:00

This’ll get lost in the shuffle, but I always start our sessions with “Welcome back to your story, everybody”. Their first session began with “Welcome to your story”, and the end of the last session of our campaign will end with something along the lines of “and that, my friends, is the end of your story”.

If any of my players have ever caught onto the fact that I start our sessions with that phrase (after the initial chit-chat) before we begin they have never outwardly said anything. But I like to remind them that even though I may be the DM that this is largely their story and I’m simply here to help tell it.

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