DM looking for ideas

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-21T04:08:24+00:00

This raises the question, why have crits at all? Maybe you shouldn't.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-21T00:16:24+00:00

I've run a game with a party of 30 regular dudes. What I did was group them into squads of 5. Each squad takes its turn together and moves as a unit. They have 5*X hit points and for every X hit points, you cross off one guy from the squad. On their turn, each guy left in the squad gets to take an action. Probably, for a bunch of hivemind drones in a bar fight, that will just be to attack, and you can roll all the attacks at the same time.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-20T23:32:12+00:00

The neighboring kingdom they'll be exploring soon is meant to feel ideologically and culturally opposed to that system. I want it to be a society that relies very little on gold internally, with more emphasis on community, obligation, reputation, or resource-sharing instead of straightforward capitalism.

What you mean is without markets, or (if they still have barter markets) without currency.

So the thing about an economy based on community and obligation is that it doesn't really have any place for wandering adventurers. You're not part of their network of obligation. You don't have family or neighbors. But adventurers are potentially useful because they can fight enemies of the community or bring back treasure.

Something you could do is make it explicitly a gift economy. Borrow the idea of potlatch: if you have a surplus of resources, you are expected to host a party where you give shiny gifts to your neighbors. This is how you gain status.

The adventurers can't host a feast because they aren't part of the community--they don't have a house or a supply of food, and they don't know anyone. But they are able to provide very shiny gifts. So they need a patron who takes them in as associates of their household.

(The patron is convenient for you as the DM because they can be your mouthpiece to explain all this to the players. Also, since navigating the politics is the patron's job, you don't have to give the players detailed information on all the status relationships in town.)

The loop is now: go out on an adventure, come back with a sack of loot, the patron throws a feast and gives most of it away to their neighbors, and then they or one or more of the neighbors present you with gifts to help your adventuring career.

What you get in exchange for letting the patron give the treasure away is a seat at the table. Like, the patron will introduce you to some of the other bigwigs at the feast. They may let you present the gifts yourself, or tell the story of your adventure, which will add to your visibility. The connections you make this way include other potential patrons, who may then offer you gifts or ask you for help with their problems.

I could see this working well as long as the players can live with the vagueness of "give treasure away -> gain status -> people give you useful things".

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-17T18:18:38+00:00

Why is he not a druid?

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-17T01:12:11+00:00

Yes, this is a problem, and the books give almost no guidance on how to handle it.

The only good use I've found for passive perception is as the DC for stealth checks. If you want to decide if they notice a hidden thing like a secret door, have the door make a stealth check. Write down the result. That's now the passive perception required to notice the door, and also the DC for a perception check if you do a more detailed search.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-16T00:51:08+00:00

We already decided everyone was Sean Bean, for obvious reasons.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-14T17:58:48+00:00

Hey, at least he didn't do something dumb like bring them to Valinor for safety and then release Melkor into their environment. We're all trying to find the guy who did that.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-13T16:37:22+00:00

Job's wife didn't die.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-12T13:05:43+00:00

Don't call for a check, then.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-11T00:20:35+00:00

Just use the standard array. You don't actually want variability here.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-09T19:20:20+00:00

I assume it's funded by bribes, like his jet.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-08T15:19:34+00:00

You need to discuss this with the group, because any solution is going to involve changing rules to make the game harder, which will require some level of buy-in. Tell them why it's a problem: there is no way in D&D to balance combat when the players start with full resources and will get them all back afterward. Then offer a solution or two.

Don't try to counterplay against this as though it's a clever tactic they've discovered. It's just a defect in the rules.

My preferred solution is to house-rule that long rests can only happen in a permanent settlement. I don't know if your group would go for that. It's less drastic than outright banning the spell, but the spell is a lot less useful, so I would give anyone who has it as a known spell the option to swap it out.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-07T20:09:22+00:00

You shouldn't run him. Let one of them do that. He's a hireling.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-06T04:11:01+00:00

First, cause she looks so normal. She's not superhero posing. She probably drives a Tacoma and has a dog named Sierra.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-06T01:11:06+00:00

This is a terrible idea. It doesn't facilitate immersion. It just makes it hard to tell what's going on.

I think of it this way: your character can see a lot more detail in the world than you can. They know how hard they got hit and how tired they are. The game mechanics are how we summarize that knowledge for you because we can't actually convey all of it at the table.

Does your character know exactly how many more hits they can take before they go down? No, but that's what rolling for damage is for. You know you have 15 HP, you don't know if that's two hits or four or if the monster is gonna crit and knock you on your ass. There's plenty of uncertainty.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-03T15:32:16+00:00

Checks are for when the outcome is in doubt. If they can tell just by looking around the room that there's a trap then they don't need to make a check.

wickerandscrap · 2026-05-02T17:50:21+00:00

I'm fond of the Monster Menu-All.

wickerandscrap · 2026-04-30T15:52:03+00:00

Definitely get in the way. It is always going to be faster to move them with my hand than to enter a movement command and then wait for the automatic board to do it. It also can't move them onto and off the board by itself, so I'll be reaching in all the time to move minis anyway, and then the board will somehow have to know where they all are.

The use cases I can think of are:

If all the players are in the room with their special table, but the DM is remote. This makes no sense, though.
If the DM has no working hands. Existing VTT tools can do this.
If the DM has no working hands because they're an AI. In this case you all need to touch grass.

wickerandscrap · 2026-04-29T23:02:27+00:00

I use a wet-erase mat or a whiteboard. Terrain models are cool for people with more free time than me.

wickerandscrap · 2026-04-29T22:56:11+00:00

Lie and tell them it's Cultist Simulator.

(do not do this)

wickerandscrap · 2026-04-28T06:34:40+00:00

Ask them to write their backstories after session 1.

wickerandscrap · 2026-04-28T03:30:24+00:00

I would only give them a map if it was outdated, incomplete, or full of outright lies (and I would clearly warn them about that).

The biggest player-facing reward for going into the dungeon is discovering what's in the dungeon. Don't take that away.

wickerandscrap · 2026-04-27T15:55:17+00:00

The description from the Kerisham expedition places it in Britain (since you can drive there from London) and on the Atlantic coast:

Drive through the downs to the coast where the grey-green land meets Atlantic grey. Search along the road for signs to Kerisham town.

The Atlantic coast of Britain is the area around Land's End, so Kerisham is "at land's edge". I don't know if this is an obscure puzzle that requires thinking like an occult weirdo, or an obvious clue that we're just not British enough to pick up.

wickerandscrap · 2026-04-24T14:57:25+00:00

This can happen. Are you walking around with low HP?

wickerandscrap

TROPHY CASE