r/AskGameMasters

Do you find it better/easier to guide players with the environment and several different npcs or with a character that journeys alongside the adventuring party?

The campaign I'm leaning into is setup with a lot of biodiversity and theology so I want your opinion on whether I should leave it all to the players to find their path and guide them based on what's around them or have an actual "guide" character/familiar thats a possible noncombatant and can explain certain encounters as they come upon them. If anyone has experience with both, I'd love to hear what pros and cons you've had with them.

As a player, I sometimes feel disconnected from a pre-written module when my character’s goals and the party’s overall stakes aren’t closely tied to the story being told.

I understand not every system or module is designed to do this, or even needs to, but I do notice that when there isn’t a clear personal link, I can sometimes lose track of why our characters are doing what we’re doing, or what specifically makes the situation matter to us.

This is definitely a personal preference, but in games I run, I usually try to make sure the characters have at least some kind of meaningful investment in the story’s events, especially in pre-written modules.

For GMs, do you actively try to adapt modules to create that kind of personal connection for your players? If so, how do you approach it?

I’m part of a D&D group that runs one-shots every week for characters lvl 5-10. I want to try running a one-shot sometime that will take 4-5 characters about 3 hours to complete, but I’ve never DMed before. I have an idea, but I’m still trying to figure out how to put it all together.

The idea is that the characters received a quest about a monk who has sent out a challenge seeking anyone who can beat him in a fight. He’s beaten many in his adventuring and he’s looking for someone who can actually give him a serious challenge. Many of his opponents have underestimated him due to his being drunk often, yet this drunkenness only seems to make him stronger.

The adventure would take place at a tavern, or perhaps a monastery. The party will have to find the monk since he’s more reclusive due to being jaded. It also gives the characters a bit more of a chance to roleplay since many characters are unique in their own kind of way.

For the fight, I picture he fights the characters one at a time, gauntlet style. But when a character is downed, the bar patrons pull them to the side and stabilize them so that no one dies. That character is then out of the fight. The monk then fights the next character after perhaps a Potion of Healing.

The adventure ends when either the monk beats all the characters or one character manages to bring the monk down to 0 HP. The character who beats him is declared the winner and gets his Uncommon-rarity fisticuffs.

For a group of 4-5 characters who will probably be lvl 5-7 or so, what challenge rating would be appropriate for a Monk boss? What sort of buff should drunkeness give him?

How should the hook for the adventure start? What ideas or changes should I make to make it more streamlined and engaging?

In a Dungeon World campaign I have recently had a magic item be part of some loot for my party, but I wasn’t sure how to handle how the whole party would “know” how the item worked. The Rulebook doesn’t mention this from what I can see. For reference, when the party found the item, I had them randomly roll and they got the “Flask of Breath”

From my GMing objectives I would prefer it if all players could partake in knowing and using any magic items like this, because it would be a cool bit of fictional problem solving and adds an interesting element. However, I went into this somewhat naively because I prefaced the find with “wizard, you recognise this flask as the Flask of Breath”, but then the wizard wanted to keep its identity, value and uses hidden because he was “worried the Thief in the party would try and steal it.” and he played it off as “This is an interesting flask, I’ll have to study it”. No faults from the player there of course, it was lore-accurate RP for his character.

The options I can see are:

*The magic item isn’t unique and so the PCs would know that it is A, rather than The Flask of Breath

Or the magic item is unique and:

*Well known enough that each PC would have heard of it *Only PCs with magical backgrounds would know about it *No PCs know how it works and would have to experiment with it/detect magic/take it to a learned NPC/spout lore to do so. *The instructions are on the magic item themselves, inscribed as runes or something *I set the item in fiction, describing its properties as it is discovered *Simply break the fourth wall

I want the item to be unique to add interest and loss-tension to any interactions with it so the first option is out, but I’m not sure how to (fiction first) deal with the other options:

1. Every PC has heard of it

There would be a myriad of magic items in this universe, it seems unlikely that every PC would happen to know about a particular item and exactly how it works.

2. Only PCs with magical backgrounds would have heard of it

This allows for inter-party information disparity which I want to avoid

3. No PCs know how it works and would have to experiment with it/detect magic/take it to a learned NPC/spout lore to do so.

Each PC could have a sense that the item is magical. The problem I can see with this is, the party might not experiment fully, or are too afraid to experiment in case the item is evil, or far worse if the party experiments with an item with a fixed number of uses and inadvertently uses it up. If someone spouts lore about the item then would they then be able to ask to keep the result secret?

4. The instructions are on the magic item themselves, inscribed as runes or something else

How would uneducated PCs be able to read it? And if it was in common tongue, that sounds pretty unrealistic

5. I set the item in fiction, describing its properties as it is discovered

This might work for more obvious items like the Flask of Breath, but what about items with more subtle effects, like the Cloak of Silent Stars

6. Simply break the fourth wall

Sounds like a cop out leading to lack of immersion

GMs how do you handle this?

Hey all im a DM who suffers from depression. My life has been severely turned upside down in the last few months and doesnt look to be getting better tbh. I moved to a new area three months ago and brought all my books with me. I ran a 6 session game of Mythic Bastionland with two other locals here and it went well. They had fun, I had fun, it was great. I decided to take about a three week break between that and running something else. Those two got two other people and now were 5 people and im looking to run Lancer today.

My session is in 2 hours. I have read the material but dont have anything physical besides my core book for it and minis. I feel like a failure. I feel like im not really friends with these people and that ultimately im not a good DM. I feel bad because weve been talking about this session for weeks. And here it is and I havent even left bed today save to go to the bathroom.

Idk I feel so hopeless, worthless, and down. Ill be honest half the time I went and GMd that other game id berate myself the entire way down. Id get to the store and just sit in my car with my head on the wheel and wonder why I was even bothering. Idk how I did it. Now I feel this enormous weight on me. I cant do this, but I want to. For some people that want is an easy enough reason to find the willpower to get up and do stuff. But for me its not.

The want is filled with holes. I feel selfish for wanting to have fun, I feel like im just lying to myself, my players, barely holding together while making sure my barely functioning psyche doesnt fall apart at the table. Im sad

Hi all - my friends and I recently got into DnD. I am a new DM, and I've played one campaign before so relatively new to DnD in general.

We played through the Frozen Sick campaign as a warmup/trial, to see if DnD was a thing people enjoyed because most of us were new.

I did update the story a bit to make it my own and also make it bigger than it was. I introduced a prequel session, where my players made there way to palebank village, and also introduced a couple of gods that have shown interest in this group of new mercenaries/travelers.

Anyway, now where I need help... My friends do want to continue and I am so down to keep the story going! I considered this chapter 1. We are switching to Daggerheart to try that game system out as it seems interesting to us.

My question is how to move to a campaign story that's totally in my head. I have a vague idea of kind of mile stones in my story, but I'm trying/wanting to keep it open ended so the players decisions and what they want dictate more of the story.

My confusion is how I can make this fun? I am happy to put in prep time but what do I prep if everything is open to them? Most of them are re rolling their characters when we start again, so my plan was to introduce a monster that is harming people, and this group is basically getting blamed for it. That way they need to figure out whats happening and work together to kill the monster to clear their name... But how they do that is all their own! How do I prep encounters and loot and everything when it's all open for grabs?

Or am I letting the guardrails down too much? Should I have it a bit more structured?

I honestly don’t know where to post this, but I need an outside perspective on this. Real names changed for privacy.
Currently my friends and I (3/5 are DM’s for over 8 yrs) are playing a 5th Edition campaign, I am feeling a bit frustrated/unexcited about it, and I could use some advice on how to go from here.

For some context,

1. 3 years ago, our GM decided we would play a low horror and adventure with an emphasis on roll-playing RPG campaign from a kickstarter she was sponsoring.
   During our most recent sessions, when trying to save a man’s father from prison, we came across a horde of cannibals, child mutilation, and she was very descriptive with the gore. When I asked how this wasn’t considered horror and said I was very uncomfortable at the table, she said “it wasn’t as bad as some of the books I’ve read”. She also said it’s our fault it’s so dark because of the choices we made. When asked what choices? As we only do jobs that help people in the city, she said that was the problem, but didn’t explain further.

2. When building our characters I asked how we could create/modify our characters to suit this new world (and for RP purposes), and she said it didn’t matter since our characters were likely to die before 3rd level anyways, so I went basic so it would fit with any world (human bard, left family for adventure). Despite my best efforts to role-play during our breaks (like tell a short quip about uncle “Tito” or something) our GM has started making fun of me for it and says it’s “just interesting” when asked why she is making fun of me.

3. For over a year our GM has talked about killing off one of our player’s characters (Kit). In fact she openly said, “I could just fudge the numbers on an encounter so he dies.” For the longest time I thought she was kidding or not serious about it. Then a month ago she told me she doesn’t like him as a person, NOT AS A PLAYER, as a person. When we asked why? What did he do? Is there something specific he’s doing that he could do differently? NOPE, apparently it’s a feeling, which is why she refuses to talk to him about it.
   Then, last session he died, to be fair it was partially due to his own choices. However, it felt really fishy because of how quickly he died. When I later asked our GM, she admitted she fudged the numbers to kill his character. In hopes he would “make a better one next time”.

4. one of our players is a newby, and our dm gets upset at him for not memorizing all his abilities and understanding this world. As a GM, even I have a hard time understanding this new world (despite my note taking) because when I ask for clarification she refuses and she frequently forgets to mention important details then gets mad at us when we didn’t know those important details.
   I honestly thought my memory was getting worse, so I started spending extra time writing notes and eventually realized what was happening after another player accidentally recorded part of our game.

Overall, I dread our game nights now. maybe there is something I’m missing? Is there an explanation for this? Am I being over sensitive? What can I do?

Any advice or suggestions will help at this point.

I find myself more bored as a player after making the jump to GM. Feels like so much more sitting around, waiting for things to happen.

Edit: made playing less enjoyable*

I tried writing a campaign before and it was very lack luster. I'm trying to write a new one for a different game and I'm looking for advice. I have the setting, I have a monster, I have a ton of premade character sheets.

I'm not good at making mazes/labyrinths (required because of what its based on) and I'm not experienced enough to think of what else I should do. It's meant to be a one-shot so I can get the hang of it.

Any advice to help a nervous newbie?

I've been DMing for a while and kept running into the same problem. Either the tool was too basic or I was paying a monthly fee for features I used maybe 20% of. And I never fully trusted cloud tools with years of campaign notes.

So I built something for myself and figured I'd share it.

World Forge is a single .html file. Download it, open it in your browser, done. No account, no subscription, nothing. Everything saves locally and you can export a full backup anytime.

What's in it:

• Characters, factions, locations, religions, creatures, artifacts, conflicts, quests
• A relationship web so you can actually see how your NPCs and factions connect
• Timeline and custom calendar system for tracking your campaign history
• Map section with pins linked to your world entries
• 17 generators for when you need an NPC, town, or plot hook on the fly
• Multiple worlds so you can keep campaigns separate
• Export your full world as Markdown to paste into Notion, Obsidian, or wherever you keep your notes

Built it mainly for long term campaigns where you need to actually remember who knows what and who hates who.

It's on itch. io if anyone wants it. Happy to answer questions.

So I am heading into a new campaign with an established group of 7 players. I thought everyone and everything was going good and I got my last submissions today ....including a last minute change from one of the newer players, I'll call her El.

Right after she posted in our group chat about the change she sent me I got a DM from one of my more veteran players, will call her Nina.

Nina said she's upset that El gets to submit past deadline and make changes when I've pushed back on changed with her in the past. I told her there is a difference between making a slight change to your backstory before even the first session and wanting to change your race midway through a campaign...

Either way I heard Nina out and told her I'll be more clear going forward.

She then starts to go off telling me all the things that El did last campaign that annoyed her.

El got snippy after Nina tried to offer advice El didn't want.

El told Nina to wait her turn when Nina was speaking over her.

...all the things Nina was saying to me really didn't paint El in a bad light except maybe being less than gentle.

Nina was the only woman at the table before El joined and I can't help but feel this might be some pick me shit?

I really am unsure what to do.

I offered to set up a group call for El and Nina to hash it out but Nina doesn't want to do that.

I don't want to deal with the drama. I can't boot Nina, half the table would go with her. I don't want to boot El she's done nothing wrong.

So, I've never been a dm before, but I kind of want to run a one shot with my friends to dip my toes into it. And I kind of have an idea for it, I'm just not entirely sure how to execute it.

My idea:

Rescuing a baby dragon. I want it to be framed as them rescuing a normal kid until they actually find the baby dragon, who was caught by poachers. And they'll have to fight the poachers to save the baby dragon.

So how would you go about it? Is this even a compelling oneshot idea? What tips do ya'll have for me as a first time dm?

Thank you!