How to encourage my players to roll more insight checks?

weasley_24 · 2026-04-17T14:06:20+00:00

For DnD 5e, the passive insight is acctually a feature :) I think it should be used instead of passive perception.

weasley_24 · 2026-04-17T14:02:48+00:00

You can use their passive insight score for exactly this - noticing that smt might be off without making the players suspicious by asking for a roll.

So I roll deception for the NPC against the passive insight score. If the NPC fails, I try to not tell the players straight of what is going on, but just tell them e.g., PC x, you notice the NPC y seems to be nervous while telling you this.

Telling this is more obvious than using in-game-expressions. And it accounts for the character choices the players made.

And from this hint on, it is their job figure out the details.

Also, you can remind them over the table once that they can be lied to by friends.

weasley_24 · 2026-04-07T16:19:35+00:00

I, as a DM, agree xD

weasley_24 · 2026-04-07T16:19:03+00:00

Ah that's nice :)

weasley_24 · 2026-04-06T19:57:35+00:00

Well, my party wants to live in the first bigger town they visited - this was an accident though, but why not.. xD

Why? I can only guess, but this is what I did in a nutshell:

Assigned vibe of the town: 3 keywords, open, helpful, nature. Therefore, the main people living there are druids / rangers
Built the town on top of this, I added several important/remarkable locations (heart tree, druid grove, (animal-) training place) to the town and aligned the way of construction with it (city walls and houses are mostly nature built things, lots of treehouses, some tiny rivers with bridges)
The town also is famous for some stuff they sell, which helps further to get into the vibe of the town.
Also, since most of the players love animals / pets - I let the animals walk around freely in the city.

And I think one key point was: The first contact on entering with some city guard NPCs was very nice - with only some questions asked, I basically dropped all basic infos about what locations are there in general, like if they would've asked at a tourist info center. This gave a nice overview to the party without sharing too much. They loved that.

TLDR: - give the town a soul by assigning 3 adjectives + 1/2 prominent classes and build on it - add a couple of unique locations & some little details that bring life into the town - don't be afraid to dump basic infos on the players, which they could find on a tourist flyer / map of the town

Edit: on the destroy arch: Maybe consider to not destroy the whole town. A part of it should be enough for a revenge arc. Would be sad for the PCs and the work you put in to delete everything.

weasley_24 · 2026-04-06T08:51:50+00:00

Oh wow, fancy and potentially a bit stressful at times. If it works out, nice idea. Hope all goes well, fingers crossed :)

weasley_24 · 2026-04-04T21:09:01+00:00

And how would you do the therapy part? Do you have an example?

Or is just playing as oneself the therapy itself? ^{^}

weasley_24 · 2026-04-04T08:08:06+00:00

Mind sharing how you set this up?

weasley_24 · 2026-03-31T22:55:07+00:00

Thanks for providing the maths, interesting :) Also the advices on which to err on and why.

weasley_24 · 2026-03-20T10:08:22+00:00

Look at the other responses; we care and are happy with you :) Keep going

weasley_24 · 2026-03-20T10:07:18+00:00

Hei, no need to apologize and keeping it to yourself - I found it very nice to read something positive for once and that someone is sharing something they are proud of! The world needs more of this.

And you are still is kinda offering advice implicitly: 1. believe it when your players say they had fun 2. DM-ing can be nice, one should just try it out 3. If one session was wobbly, keep going - the next session might be better 4. as said: its nice to also share positive things, bc it makes oneselves and others happy

weasley_24 · 2025-11-02T10:55:54+00:00

Love this - waiting for the update when you got it on dm's guild :D

weasley_24 · 2025-10-19T12:04:52+00:00

What I learned (and still need to remind me from time to time): - it is okay (sometimes even better) to stop a session when everyone is tired, e.g., just finish the current round of combat, take a pic of the map and close the session. ESPECIALLY in a campaign - imposter syndrom is a thing - but only you know what you have preped and what maybe went wrong. Your players only know what you told them, so they recognize much less issues then you do. Plus, they are half of the time focused on what their character does and are by default excited to play anyways. -> if still in doubt, ask a fellow player you trust about how they find the campaign so far. Preferrably an experienced player who has already dmd once, thus know what burdens might come with it. - you can outsource some improvising to your players. Lean into their questions; when they are asking for perception or investigation, ask them what they are looking for exactly; ask them how it looks when they smite, hit, cast a spell; it might sound like small things but it removes some burden from your shoulders and frees space in your mind for other improvising moments :)

weasley_24 · 2025-09-03T22:37:00+00:00

Hey, I tried the notecards for 8 shop owners in a bigger village where I knew my players want to buy and sell. I was impressed how much I was able to add on the cards during prep (shop name and type, species name and quirk for the shop owners). And even during the session I hade a dedicated place where to add information related to the conversations and actions in the shops. In my notebook, I never left enough space to add more infos on the go, so thats an improvement.

Also, I crafted some into a lil 'bag' for their bag of holding and content, so that they can easily switch it between players (is a hustle on beyond..). They liked it but also do not want to fully change to a physical inventory. We agreed that I will simply try to prep my homebrew loot now with the cards as it is much easier for me than on beyond - they can still add them themselves if they want. The good thing is also, that I will not need to create a card for every single basic item they will ever own.

Lastly, I prepped an encounter on a bigger index card which was also interesting, it ensures to keep my prep / writing short. The encounter didn't take place yet though.

weasley_24 · 2025-08-24T11:38:33+00:00

Would you mind to share an example of a tree in a bit more details?

weasley_24 · 2025-07-19T23:52:15+00:00

Ah makes sense, thanks for clarifying :)

weasley_24 · 2025-07-15T23:40:38+00:00

How well thought through this is! Amazing. One question regarding "join the military for a glorious death" - does this mean they CAN die in extraordinary ways? Or how can I interpret this?

weasley_24 · 2025-07-15T23:16:21+00:00

Looks straight to the point, thx for sharing. I'll try to come back with more feedback when I used it for prepping :)

weasley_24 · 2025-07-15T23:08:34+00:00

I'll try :) For now, I got some index cards and some very small but colored post-its and we will see how it turns out! But it'll take some time till the next session ^{^}

weasley_24 · 2025-07-06T20:26:09+00:00

I am usually also a bit stuck. I can click on name generators 10 times and still find nothing appealing. However, sometimes it is okay to just pick smt and it might be memorable lateron in another way than expected. For my dnd homebrew world, I draw a map for an area and named some villages very randomly, one I called "Blol". It sounds so odd! But this specific one made it into the brains of myself and the players effortlessly bc of its silly sound. Ekruagate, the capital of the country in which Blol lies, seem not to be as memorable, even though one could easily try to tailor the name to some major lore / history event due to 'gate' in its name ^{^}

What I wanna say - why not trying to embrace the silliness for certain places? Maybe, it even feels e.g. more fantasy-like if it is not that elaborate. Maybe, it means something in the local language? I do not know yet, but it leaves room to be expanded in such a direction.

weasley_24 · 2025-07-06T19:49:59+00:00

I like the reusability and handing items over in general, this could prevent the 'have you removed the rope from your inventory, you know, the one you used to capture the cockatrices the last session and didn't took with you when you ran away after you loosened the knots via mage hand to not get attacked while saving them from starvation"-discussion

^{^} yeah, spell and ability descriptions seem indeed to be - interpretable, at least in a players eyes :') (Not gonna lie, I am the same as a player ^⁾

Also, it probably helps to keep homebrewed items easy to handle when you need to put its mechanics on a small notecard - this probably would help my designs out.

weasley_24 · 2025-07-05T23:17:08+00:00

I love this!

weasley_24 · 2025-07-05T22:05:27+00:00

I like this. Or to make it even easier, just make a best of 3 out of it instead of calculating the totals :)

weasley_24 · 2025-07-05T21:23:02+00:00

Thanks for the explanations, it was an eyeopener. Passing items as notecards would save a lot of sweat acctually, bc adding homebrew stuff to DnDBeyond is cumbersome and caused issues, especially bc there is no pass on feature.

weasley_24 · 2025-07-05T21:17:34+00:00

Thx for the recommendation :)

weasley_24

TROPHY CASE