u/NemoHornet

Anyone knows why N Quincy St. in Ballston is currently blocked off with what looks to be secret service cars?

I am running a tournament arc and wanted there to be a selection process to the tournament my first instinct was to do a brazier where names written on parchment get magically chosen. Obviously this borrows heavily from Harry Potter and I don't want them to just play out a movie they have seen a hundred times.

I am struggling to make a decision in my campaign where the players have attempted to bring in a group of Duergars fleeing oppression into their city that is already struggling for resources. One of my players ("the face") really wants this to work. Another player is adamantly against this since they were attacking a clan of innocent Kobolds and trying to steal their territory. the remaining two don't really care about this. The face of the party made his arguments to the city council and they all voted (based on persuasion checks) 3 were for the idea and 4 were against with the Queen of the city having the final say.

Even though they failed these checks I could still have the Queen to allow this to happen because there is a rumor that her mind is fading or I could stick with the outcome and deny this request and potentially have some shady person approach them about illegally moving the Duergars into the city.

My players recently stumbled into a complex territory dispute. A group of Duergar were pushing into a local Kobold clan's territory. After intervening, the PCs discovered the Duergar weren't just invading out of sheer malice, they were actually refugees fleeing the oppression of the Deep King in the Underdark.

One of my players (the resident "Face") had a radical idea: let's bring the Duergar back to our home city and integrate them. Of the remaining three players, two were totally neutral on the idea, and one was actively opposed.

They managed to get a hearing with the city’s governing body (a council of seven led by a Queen). The Duergar representative made a poor opening argument, so the pro-Duergar PC jumped in to advocate for them.

From there, the council began grilling the party on the logistics: How will the city handle the increased food demand? Where will they house them? Etc.

This line of questioning turned into an hour and a half of real-time gameplay. The player who came up with the idea was highly engaged, but the other three players looked visibly bored. To make it tougher, my table is split: half love deep roleplay, and the other half prefer to just roll the dice and move on. I really struggled to keep the "mechanics-first" players engaged while giving the "roleplay-first" player their spotlight.

At the very end of the 90 minutes, the players made their final arguments using Persuasion and Intelligence checks. Due to some poor rolls, they only secured 3 out of 7 votes. The Queen gave a hard "No," and the Duergar were rejected.

Spending that much real-world time just to hit a dead end based on a few bad dice rolls felt terrible as a DM. The players who were already bored felt like their time was completely wasted, and the player who championed the idea felt defeated.

How would you have handled this situation?

How do you all handle having too many story arc ideas that you don't know what to set up for your players? I have a ton of ideas for my current campaign and we just finished a story arc where they managed to settle a territory dispute between a group of kobolds and a clan of Duergars fleeing the tyrannical oppression of the deep king. I could continue this story and set it up where the players need to go back in the underdark to stop the deep king, however I have too many other story arcs that interest me.

I've thought about setting up a spelljammer arc, or an arc where the PCs get trapped in the Feywild and have to find their way home, or a coven of Vampires targeting the PC's home city or two clans of giants have wagged war on one another and the PCs home city is in the middle of it. I want to ask my players on what direction we should go in, but I don't want to spoil anything.

I recently ran an encounter where the evil guy captured a few NPC from the PCs hometown and was slowly transforming them. A battle ensued and the bad guy was surrounded by many minions and the transforming NPC. So my PC decided to casy shatter on the bad guy, many of the minions and the allied NPCs. I asked him if he was sure he wants to hit the allied NPCs and he responded with "yeah, they're just NPC, plus they are good as dead." The other PCs eventually talked him out of doing so and he just casted a cantrip which he was pretty upset when it only did 7 damage.

I brushed this off because I was busy running an encounter but did he break the social contract of DnD by stating he doesn't care if these NPCs live or die? This is unlike his character who is a charismatic bard and I feel like he was just playing to "beat" the game instead immersing himself in the story. Should I talk to him? Any advice on what I should say to him?

Edit: I realized as some have pointed out I should have titled this Did My Player Break the Social Contract of DnD.

Are there any fantasy city map artists for hire? Looking to create a city map for my homebrewed city. I am not sure if this is the correct subreddit.

I recently introduced a homebrewed rule where if there are minions on the battlefield (which I will call out which creatures are considered minions) the PCs can continue to attack those creatures provided they don't miss on their hit and they can reach the next minion. Minions drop after being hit and PCs can't suddenly swap their attack once on this rampage to another non-minion creaure unless they have an extra attack to do so.

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This is largely to solve the issue of my PCs standing in one spot and only attacking the boss ignoring the minions.

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Do you think this is a fair homebrew rule? I've tried this in one combat encounter so far and the PCs seemed to like it except for my Barbarian who has the Great Weapon Master feat (5.5e) and believes this rule negates the Hew property. I've explained to him that not every encounter will have minions and his feat is still a good pick. Should I modify the Hew property of Great Weapon Master to regain 5 feet of movement when he drops a minion to 0, in addition to what it normally does to appease his choice in feat? Or should I just drop this homebrewed rule?

Is a permanent +2 to strengthen and -2 to constitution too much of a boon and bane to a player character eating a magical mushroom offered by evil Duergar scientist?

More just a rant because I have noticed an increase number of Smurf accounts on Overwatch and it's ruining the player experience. I truly do not understand the point of Smurf; so Smurfers why do you do it?

Are there any tournament style or Triwizard Tournament style story arc I can purchase and weave into my current campaign? I'm looking to incorporate a competition series into my current campaign where there are multiple adventuring parties all competing in a tournament for glory. I've searched DMsguild, but couldn't really find anything. Any suggested content would be greatly appreciated!

So outside of the one off jokes where they implement some silly thing as in game "lore" like a king in the distant land name Hugh Erection or Deez Nutz they don't really seriously contribute to world building.

In my campaign the world is shrouded in a frozen wasteland and traveling is near impossible due to weather. I was going to have an NPC propose/invent some sort of steampunk vehicle to help with traveling this frozen wasteland, but I also wished this idea came from one of the PCs whose character is an inventor. It would feel more like the PCs are actually changing this world. I am not sure how to hint at this without just telling them to do this. Any advice?