u/Covid669

I’m trying to make a few for mine based on environments my party will most likely visit. I just wanted to read through some of yours to get inspiration

We play every two weeks which is already a huge improvement from the "well we might play next month but who knows" that we used to do in the past.

Every time either university or work stuff comes up and I can't even imagine how people find the time to play every week.

And as a DM I can't imagine how other DMs prep for weekly sessions. These two weeks are a bit tight already with all the other stuff going on in my life.

So one of my players has an item that is directly connected to the BBEG. It’s kinda like the One Ring, by which I mean if the player interacts with it, the BBEG’s minions and scouts will know where the party is.

He was already one of the players most connected to the BBEG because he accidentally (in a good way) made a lot of parallels to the BBEG’s backstory in his own backstory.

I’m just afraid that I will make the plot with the BBEG focus too much on him through this item and the parallels. I don’t want to make him feel like Frodo while the rest of the party are just Samwise Gamgees

Of course I plan on making a lot of smaller arcs before then to give the other characters some moments to shine but still I don’t want them to feel bummed out about the BBEG

Last night was the session 2 of my campaign and I feel like we had a very strong start with session 1 and even though the boss was an easy kill for the party it was good and very thematic.

Session 2 was horrible. It was more of a roleplay session but they didn’t seem to have too much fun with it so I gave them a quest. I botched the roleplay multiple times through stupid decisions (the harbor master insisting that the party were smugglers even though they clearly didn’t have anything in their little boat, which the party pointed out to me that it was stupid) and not planning enough stuff around NPCs that the party was drawn towards. The priest of my druid’s religion was passed out drunk in front of the local tavern and I planned on it being a funny little moment but they followed him to his chapel which was fine but they really wanted to find something interesting here but I didn’t even plan anything in there and improved all of it so I didn’t have a quest to give them involving the priest.

Then they wanted a quest so I gave them one but even that felt forced, like they only took it to finally do something.

I asked them what they thought after the session and they said it was good just a bit slow and one of them hoped for more plot relevant stuff but I haven’t really came up with a plot yet so I couldn’t do that but to me this felt horrible. It felt like a shit session with very disappointing roleplay and a very disappointing quest.

This is kind of a vent sorry but I really want advice on how to deal with stuff like this and not worry so much about DM stuff.

My party steamrolled a boss fight I just made. They are level 3, spores druid, fathomless warlock, battlemaster fighter and a cleric (1) + monk (2) multiclass.

I thought the fight was going to be a challenge but I did unfortunately make the map a bit small even if I tried to make it vertical and it ended in 2 turns.

How to make fights actually hard but not annoying?

So my party is Level 3 with a Spores Druid, Fathomless Warlock, Battlemaster Fighter, and Monk (2) + Cleric (1) multiclass. It's a seafaring dark fantasy campaign, inspired by Lovecraft's stories and Curse of Strahd.

The session is set immediately after they have escaped from a Triton pirate ship where the quartermaster went insane and killed the captain and started a ritual.

They are in a fishing village which I plan on making the hub for the first few sessions. I worked out a lot of the current problems and history of the village. I even worked out a small legend that the barkeep or some sailor could tell the party because one of the Warlock's character traits is that he loves hearing weird stories and legends from local weirdos.

I worked out quite a few NPCs and possible interactions for the session. Here are a few:

• After they've docked the greedy harbor master could greet them, thinking they are smugglers. She holds a lot of political power in the village so she could threaten them with hanging unless they pay her a "smuggler's fee".
• They could meet the alcoholic priest, passed out in front of the local inn. The guy dislikes high elves because he was a slave on a high elf ship when he was a young man. There is a high elf and a half high elf in the party so that could result in some fun interactions.
• In my world there is a substance that is used for navigation because navigation from the stars is impossible. The people don't know it but this substance is secretly connected to the Shadowfell through one of the gods. Two sailors are carrying a barrel of this substance when they are attacked by a giant toad who steals it and eats one of the sailor's peg leg and the barrel. The party meets them after this. They ask them to track down the toad and bring back the barrel and the peg leg so they don't punish them for losing them. At the end of the quest they would find the giant toad transformed into a giant shadow toad by the substance. It would be an interesting little boss fight imo.
• A weird hag-like lady is sitting in the local tavern. She finds the party particularly interesting and she invites them to sit at her table. I'll try my best to describe her as a sea hag when the party meets her, just to fuck with them a little and put them on edge. In reality she's just a really sweet old lady. She will offer the party to read their fortunes and future through magical cards in her cabin. It's inspired by the Tarokka cards from Curse of Strahd and similarly to those, it could point them to some interesting characters and items they could find during the campaign.
• Finally, they could meet the local pirate captain. They could ask to join him in exchange for a ship and he could start a quest to rescue his first mate from the trading corporation the pirates are fighting. This and the toad quest is somewhat connected because one of the rewards of the toad quest is that those two sailors would put a word in for them to the captain.

So this is mostly what I have prepped for tomorrow's session 2. There are some smaller interactions that I didn't bother to put in here but these are the main ones. Thoughts? What should I improve? What more should I add?

I'm looking at the single coil version and I'm just curious, if you own one, what's it like?

I’m looking into buying a new guitar more suited for math rock because while I love my current guitar, it’s more suited for metal and I’m writing more math rock oriented music. It’s too harsh for the sound I’m going for.

I’m looking at some guitars and there’s one that looks amazing and it’s 100% my vibe but it has classic single coils while there’s another one that is not really my vibe when it comes to color but it has noiseless single coils.

So my question is, should I buy the one that is less my vibe but wouldn’t be as noisy or stick to the one that has a very beautiful finish?

My party is going to be fighting a homebrew Giant Shadow Toad in a cave next session and to give it some chance to get away from the party's torch and to use it's jumping ability, I want it to happen in a room with a super high ceiling with ledges and small cliffs the toad could jump up to to get away from the light.

It's not a super tough enemy so adding something like this could turn a super easy fight into something that might be a bit more memorable but I don't want it to be boring or annoying for the players with little to no ranged options (the fighter and the monk). I thought about having vines that they could climb up to reach the toad but I don't know if that's the best solution.

They are still nowhere near level 15 but that's what I'm planning on making the party during my campaign and I want to introduce the BBEG pretty early in the campaign.

Would an Illithilich be too much for them? I could also just tweak a Ulitharid and give it spells and make it undead if an actually Illithilich would just be a straight up TPK. I want the fight to be challenging but not impossible though that's probably the case with all BBEGs.

So I plan on making the big threat in my world to be the return of the Pirate King who disappeared around 200 years ago.

He made a pact with a god from the Shadowfell (all of my gods are technically creatures from the Shadowfell) but he broke their pact and he was imprisoned there for 200 years.

He’s inspired by Strahd when it comes to his personality but I don’t want to make him a vampire, I want him to be a man corrupted by 200 years in the Shadowfell.

What monster should I use as a base? He’s a powerful sorcerer if that helps narrow it down.

Thinking about getting into the Massive-Verse comics but I’m curious what people think about the comics.

I read reviews about both Radiant Black and Rogue Sun and it seems that Radiant Black kinda loses steam later in the run but Rogue Sun stays pretty consistent. Is this true?