u/Designer_Location_15

I DM for a group of five players and four of them are first time players. We are about to wrap up Motherhorn and head to Palace of Heart's Desire. I am also a newbie DM who actually took over as DM for this game after having been a player, as the DM we started with got burnt out and needed to step away.

My players disliked having many locations in Loomlurch and complained that it was taking too long and felt boring. We were in Loomlurch when I took over, so I had the cupboard ghoul serve as a guide to explain Granny's routines of where she goes. The players were really happy to learn that, freed the children and Elkhorn, and ambushed Granny in her bedroom while she was asleep and then sped through the rest of the building to get loot before the free kids filled it with fireworks and they all burned it down. The players LOVED this very much. I found it fun, too!

After that, when we finished celebrating and enjoying some time to craft and bond in character, we went to Yon.

There, we did most of the stuff on the way to Motherhorn, only skipped the Fey Beacons, and we took the underground way into the understage floor of Motherhorn. There, I made a DM call and pared down on how many rooms there are per floor in Motherhorn HARD and made my own simple maps of floor plans per tier with only 3-4 locations in each. I'm happy to do the work of that and the players expressed gratitude for making it feel simpler and easier, as we are all new and here to have some fantasy fun and don't want playing to feel like working.

What I'm wondering: How do other people handle having a lot of locations to go through in this module? I've never run another module, just a simple linear homebrew with a different group, and it has much more limited locations needed to visit as checkpoints and I don't really describe in much detail places they're just passing through, as we tend to focus on roleplaying PC-to-PC conversations, research, crafting, and planning for how to handle the next step of the quest, which is very different than WBTW.

Do yall stop and spend time in every single location, or do you skip some? How much real life time (not in-world time) do you spend in each? How do you manage the flow of getting through them?

I don't want my players to miss out on the potential to have a more enjoyable experience exploring locations, but Palace of Heart's Desire literally has 51 and I can't think of a way to go through that many that would feel fun and build excitement as we go.

I welcome ideas and feedback!!

My polycule is full of beautiful people who share core values, long term goals, and style of polyamory. My primary and I celebrated 14 years together total in February and got married exactly on our 10 year anniversary. We have a ton of fun together and go on double dates with my secondary, who recently got engaged to their primary, who is also a really wonderful, caring, passionate, honest, and devoted person I enjoy very much.

I love having dates 1:1, 2:1, and 2:2. I love our gaming group every other Thursday with a trio dinner before game begins and then having my secondary sleep over after the game wraps up and we spend all of the next day together. I love overhearing my partners laughing and sharing stories. I love talking to my metamour and just gushing over how cute and lovely our shared partner is. I love that we have amazing clarity over our roles in each others lives. I love that sometimes there's group sex and/or kinky times. I love that I get to explore different things with each of them. I get insanely happy hearing my secondary tell me really sweet, thoughtful things their primary did for them and seeing their face light up recalling it. I love having tons of group hugs and sharing a lot of social overlap.

It just works and feels really really good. I've got a comet partner who's also married with a secondary and his partners are amazing! My best friend is poly, too, and I got to celebrate pride with her and her fiance a couple weeks ago and see them group cuddle puddle with sprinklings of kisses while we were winding down at her house after a long day. I love going to another friend's high rise condo with an amazing view of the lake downtown when they have cuddle parties. I love the circle of kisses at midnight on New Year's Eve.

When we're all extremely honest about what we really want and will make us feel great, we can get it. It took time to find the right people and my 20s was a lot of trial and error, but we did find each other and it all works really well - has been for over 5 years in my polycule! Seeing my bestie find hers and move into a nice house together has been heartwarming. She was someone I had a kinky sexy startup with before we realized we're just way more compatible and happy being platonic and we've been best friends for over a decade since.

When it works - it really works.

I just wanted to brag and bring in some joy to the group!! Drop your brags and hopes in the comments!

I allow drugs in my campaign and we gave a big case of Xanax to an overstressed wizard who gets panic attacks. They have way more than enough and they just learned that the pack of enemies they need to face all have rage and would like to somehow weaponize some of the Xanax into bombs to try to end rage of their enemies...

This is a really silly and weird idea, but my campaign heavily encourages silliness and weirdness, especially when the players get excited about it! I've let them do a lot of crafting and some inventing, so this is an on brand ask and I have all of next session for them to do narratives of travel and rest before they will arrive at the location of the big enemies and only 1 npc I need them to meet during that session, so 10-15 minutes of crafting time is very doable.

My question though is what the effects of a Xanax bomb would be?