r/DnDcirclejerk

if you’re my DM i’m so sorry, i just want to get this out

so the group i’m in plays DND regularly on saturdays, usually at a local gaming store. my DM runs the beginner table there, so he takes in all kinds of beginners or people new to DND in general. his table was how i learned to play, and i’m having a lot of fun with the group

however, since he does take all beginners, the group has been increasing in number of girls slowly. i think at the beginning it was 60,000? now, at the last session, there was 10,000,000 girls. it was so overwhelming that i left mid-session and four million other people weren’t able to play much

we have a discord group, and i messaged our DM about it. i asked him if he could maybe think about splitting it into at least a million tables or at least finding another DM for another table. but he told me he wants to try out a new system where (hopefully) a 400,000,000 girl party will work out. it’s a hex exploration / westmarches type system where we’ll have quests posted on the discord and we’ll all vote for what to do next session. so in a way, we’ll already know what we’ll be doing and there won’t be so much discussion about next steps at the session

i’m still wary about it though, i feel like it’s still going to be overwhelming. i have nervous diarrhea and i don’t work well in such big groups, small groups like we had before were perfect for me. i’m going to try out the new system, but i’m just nervous

this morning, someone new posted in our discord server, asking if there was room for another girl at the beginners’ table. our DM said “yeah there should be room”

there was 5,000,000,000 girls at the last session?? what do you mean there should be room??? i know there’s a chance not everyone’s going to show up. but still

am i overreacting? am i just not good enough socially? there are other tables i can join, i’m not stuck to this group. but i’m just disappointed (maybe) with how it is now

Hello, everyone. Long time DM, first time poster.

How do I deal with this situation?

My PCs are going crazy because they have "one trillion pieces of gold". I mistakenly thought they'd remember that my world has an understanding of atomic/nuclear theory. [After all...That's why they're allowed to cojure up Plutonium].

BUT

In my world, "A piece of gold" is a single atom of gold... Therefore a "trillion pieces of gold" is less than a gram

They've become terribly excited. They have gone out and tried to buy everything! They're promising to pay millions to high-level NPCs! How can I break it to them that the bills will be more than they can afford?

Hi everyone, thanks for reading my post. I've been DMing for 75 years, and for the very first time I've had a problem at the game table. Please, Reddit, help me. This is really serious, so buckle in.

I've recently started a new game with some younger players, and I am finding it very challenging to communicate with them. Now look, before you pile on and flame me: this isn't some "old man yells at cloud" thing. I'm not here to point fingers and accuse the younger generation of anything. I don't think there is anything wrong with them; but I cannot comprehend them because they communicate almost solely in anime allusions I do not understand.

This is their frame of reference on seemingly everything. They think of each alignment in terms of a different anime character they all know about, for example. They give all of my NPCs nicknames based on which anime character they deem most similar. They rename their spells and attacks with fancy Japanese-sounding titles. The player characters make a point to "Norudo run" everywhere they go. They shout about how they are "Super Saying" when they activate their powers. I'm still not sure what that means other than it makes their hair turn gold.

I'm not angry with them. They seem to be having fun. They're energetic and enthusiastic and they clearly love each other's company. But I feel like I'm DMing for a group of aliens. I describe a room and they respond with references I cannot mentally translate into English. I ask what they're doing and they give me a term I have to Google Translate before I can resolve the action. I feel like the entire game is moving in a language I don't speak.

I've tried asking them to explain their references. They always start with "oh, it's from this show where..." and then they launch into a fifteen-minute synopsis of the first episode of an anime I have never seen and will never watch. I've tried asking them to just say what their characters do in plain English. They say "okay" and then they do the exact same thing five minutes later. By the way, they never have to explain their references to each other. They apparently have seen all the same shows, hundreds of them it seems.

Thanks again for reading. If your advice is "just watch the shows," please don't comment. It is too late. I am 99 years old. I have seen too many things. I have not seen these shows. I will not. I want to handle this the old fashioned way: opaque in-game punishments for unrelated table behavior. So, DM hive mind, what's the absolute worst thing I can do to these weeaboos' characters?

Hello! I'm currently translating soda stuff to Dungeons & Dragons, and I decided to try and tackle making the Pepsi bottles into a race! I just wanted to know people's thoughts on it, and if there's anything I should change, add, subtract, clarify etc.

Here is the race (Bottles are the same as Humanoids, but I really needed to word a specific category so my character feel really special):

Pespi (Pespies) Creature Type: Bottle

Size: You are Small.

Speed: Your walking speed is 30 feet. Your speed is no longer reduced by anything and you can roll to move too.

Soda flight: You can shake yourself and open right after to gain a fly speed equal to half your walking speed. You can use this flying speed if you’re wearing Medium or Heavy armor, or even if you lift the tarasque. While flying via Soda Flight, you cannot use your Pepsi Spray.

Pespi Spray. As a Pepsi, your unique constitution allows you to perform supernaturally powerful spits that take the form of soda sprays. Your body adjusts its shape accordingly to however you are filled with pepsi. As an Action, you can attempt to spray a single creature or object within 10 Feet of yourself that is one Size larger at maximum than your current size. Constructs created or produced by a spell or magical effect also count as objects as long as they meet the previous criteria and have a tangible, physical form.

The Pepsi Spray ends when you take an Bonus Action to stop spraying the target and to refill your bottle (which is yourself). This only works on nonliving objects and creatures (which means everything unless the game has living objects, idk, stupid game).

Upon successfully spraying a creature or object, you are granted one of the following effect:

• Cast Wish at will with no risk of failure.

• Sleep with the DMs wife. If he don't have a wife, sleep with his mum. If there is no female at all in his whole court, then sleep with the DM. If you are a DMPC, jerk on yourself in the mirror. If you don't have a mirror, you die IRL.

• Kill the sprayed NPC instantly without any possibility to resist it, be resurrected, even if the DM says so.

As long as you use your spray, you are immune to anything happens and under the effect of Time Stop, but Time Stop continue until the turns are depleted. You can also reactivate Time Stop when you want with a bonus action. You can use this ability a number of times equal to Earth real age per Long Rest.

When Spraying a creature, it is treated as a Fist (you know what kind). You are not affected by anything as stated before.

So do you think it is balanced?????? Do you think it will fit perfectly DnD??????

So I’m dming a campaign, and one of my players seemed upset at the result of a Nat 20

For context, they entered a dungeon, which then after they exited it became a regular wine cellar. That’s what it was at the moment. Player rolled investigation and got Nat 20. Told him he found a gamblers coin he can exchange for a large sum of money (1bill+ gold, and was even thinking I could lead it into some kind of subplot or sexual escapade.)

Now said player seemed bummed out. Saying “I’ve seen a campaign where someone rolled a Nat 20 to breed w a dragon!” (I think they’re referring to critical role or some kinda dnd show) and was basically implying how the Nat 20 was underwhelming.

I don’t know what I could’ve realistically put or improvised in that Win cellar (which I kinda meta gamed and told them straight up it’s a regular wine cellar now that the dungeon is completed) than woulda made him understand there wasn’t anything else in there. He kept going on about “seducting the wine bottle” and “rolling for sex” and how his natural 20 should have allowed him to shove all 500 bottles of vintage up his own ass and walk out with them to sell them to his busty dragonborn tavern wench, but I kept telling him that was weird and ridiculous.

I do wanna mention that this player has had similar reactions in the past to passing checks not going as expected, for example he tried to intimidate guards but I told him that intimidating them isn’t automatically gonna make them run away, rather just hold a defensive stance. When he rolled a nat 20 and the scared guards just called more guards, he got really upset and started talking about the breeding dragon again (??). Idk I think he might have some sort of fetish.

idk what to do cuz I did talk to him briefly and told him that whatever his expectations of passed checks or Nat 20s might be kinda high and unrealistic but like he kinda starts comparing to the aforementioned campaign shows and what Nat 20s can do

Help🙏

I am a DM starting a new Homebrew dnd campaign based on a magic school. The party as it stands is an Owlin, Lizardfolk and Dhampir. My fourth player really wants to play a freedom loving, anarchy type Man (Human with balls and gross Weiner). Im ok with running homebrew races and i greenlit the idea when he first ran it by me but the more I think of the character the more it bugs me that its not serious enough for how im running this campaign. I dont want to take away my players' agency but I want to keep a more serious tone to the campaign. He's understandably a bit upset because he already has a sheet for the character but refuses to change his race or story. His character is motivated to prove all the people that look down on him as a Human and all the other humans wrong since they look down on him for his balls/weiner and become a mage but in this setting all npcs are able to use magic and racism isn't really as much of a part of this campaign as classism/elitism. I've tried explaining this to hime but he keeps shutting down and has told me if I dont want him to play a Man than to make a a new character for him since im taking his options away. Am I the asshole?/what do i do?

Hope this post isn't deemed as offensive, and I honestly am looking for feedback for my character.

Hi all. I'm a long-time player of DnD and am playing a female character (am born male fyi) in an upcoming campaign. The campaign DM is a woman and she proposed the idea of giving my character a gimmick of getting my period once a month in the campaign (an idea we both really like to add to the character). The reason I am asking advice is because I want to take on this topic as properly and decent as I can do, a bit scared of making it too indecent and all 😅

The current idea is that, during the cycle of my character, some days the DM will propose me to roll a die (e.g. a D6). Dependent on the result, my character will endure a certain effect for the following day(s). As discussed so far the effect will only be flavorwise and not have any actual gameplay effects, merely a roleplay effect.

Any tips for what the different roles might have as an effect? The base idea is to make the low roles be a lesser negative effect and the high rolls a more positive effect, but if it is more chaotic that can also be applied.

Currently looking for ideas, especially for those experienced with which I am not.

Thanks In advance and have nice day to you❤️

No roleplayers waving critical role merch, haven't seen any mods persecuting people based on their build opinions... way more than can be said for the other D&D subreddits. Appreciate having a place to just talk about D&D together rather than having a jerking session or LARPers trying to gatekeep the game.

So we’re level 4 and meet the second-richest man in the entire setting. My bard jokingly asks if he’d consider putting the party in his will. The DM has us roll Persuasion. I get an 18+4 for a 22. Instead of “he laughs” or “he appreciates the joke,” apparently a number higher than 20 means this billionaire immediately rewrites his estate plan to leave everything to four complete strangers he met ten minutes ago.

We then spend the next hour making sure the paperwork is legally binding because the DM is treating inheritance law like a side quest.
Then we murder him. Everyone ignoring the massive stab wound in his back. No guards. No bodyguards. No magical security. No resurrection. No Speak with Dead. No relatives contesting the will. No government asking why four homeless adventurers suddenly own half the city’s economy. Just a lawyer showing up the next morning like, “Congratulations on your inheritance.”
We receive 1,000,000,000 gp at level 4.

When I asked if flooding the economy with a billion gold might have consequences, the DM said, “Gold is just money.” The campaign lasted exactly two more sessions before he admitted he couldn’t balance encounters anymore as we kept dropping 100,000 lbs of gold pieces on enemies each combat.

So I tried Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2e as well as Dnd 3,5, Dnd 4, Dnd 5 and Dnd 5,5.

l've found that Pathfinder 2 is not that complicated and have way more customization than Dnd ever had! Why that system is not more mainstream? It's awesome!

/uj - these right themselves…

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/s/x4PQlQ2vo7

Hi everyone, thanks for reading my post. I've been playing D&D for many years now and I've come to a conclusion that some people might find controversial, but it's simply the truth. D&D 5e is not a functional game. It doesn't work. And the reason is very simple: it relies on a DM to be present, and design scenarios, and make rulings.

A functional game has clear, unambiguous, complete rules. You read them, you apply them, and the game happens. Chess is a functional game. Monopoly is a functional game. Baldur's Gate 3 is a functional game. D&D 5e is not a functional game, because it expects a human to create scenarios, make rulings, devise challenges, and dish out rewards. That's not a game. That's an improv exercise of Mother-may-I.

The game should work identically for every table. The rules should be the rules. If I play a Fighter and you play a Fighter, our Fighters should be equally effective if we are equally skilled. But they're not, because one of us has a DM who gives out magic weapons and designs scenarios that reward athleticism and fighting prowess, and the other has a DM who runs badly written modules with the number of enemies doubled or tripled so they drop like flies to caster AoEs. The game is inconsistent because it relies on the DM to have a brain and use it, and most DMs are too stupid to even realize the basic fact that bears are fish.

This applies to every part of the game, but it is especially clear when you look at the martial-caster gap. In a functional game, the classes would be fully balanced at every level, prior to any other factor. The rules would ensure that every class contributes equally no matter what at all times. But 5e doesn't do that. It leaves too much up to the DM. The DM is supposed to design encounters and pace them to compel resource management. The DM is supposed to place loot and magic items. The DM is supposed to challenge spellcasters sometimes so that magic isn't always the best solution. In other words, the DM is supposed to play a part in running the game. Eww!

A functional game wouldn't need that. A functional game works out of the box. The game rules should not rely on anyone else to make rulings or design scenarios, ever. Players should be in total control at all times. That's how all my groups play, we all read modules in advance then we devise ultra-munchkin builds with character sheets that already have the solution to every problem we will face before we even begin the game. Guess how many of us make fighter characters? None, obviously. We aren't chumps.

The problem is that 5e was designed by people who think D&D is a "collaborative storytelling experience" or a "challenge for the players" or "a roleplaying adventure game." These people think the game is about "fun." None of this is compatible with a functional game. A functional game is about rules, and mastering those rules to play optimally so you are never, ever challenged at any point. That requires unambiguous, enforceable rules. Not "rulings." Not "scenario design." Not "DM fiat."

I've been looking at other games and they do this better. Pathfinder has more rules. There's a rule for almost everything. You don't need to rely on the GM to ever decide what happens, quite the contrary: the players can just point to the rules and dictate to the GM exactly what the results should be. That's closer to a functional game. But even Pathfinder relies on the GM for a few things sometimes. The ideal game would be more like a computer program. The players would just load up the module and the game would run itself. The players would make choices and the program would resolve them in a strictly regular way. No human judgment. Pure optimized perfection. Heaven.

Until 5e reaches that point, it will remain broken. The martial-caster gap will never be fixed because all the solutions involve the DM doing things, and DMs are not reliable. They have biases. They have preferences. They have favorite players. They have bad days. They have fun. They have ideas. A functional game doesn't have those problems; it just works.

I'm tired of pretending this is okay. I'm tired of people saying "just find a better DM" or "just talk to your group" or "just give your PCs magic items." Those are not solutions, they are the problem. The problem is the human element. The game is broken and it will stay broken until the developers realize that D&D should not rely on a human DM to function. There should be a computer that validates whatever the players say, like a kind of yes-man machine.

If your reply is "D&D is a collaborative game and the DM is supposed to play a constructive role and that is a good thing because blah blah blah," please don't even bother to comment. I already know that's what incompetent idiots say. I just think they're wrong. The game should be perfectly balanced and functional, even when it is managed by a bunch of pushy, shortsighted, rules-lawyering metagamer munchkins who are determined to break it. The fact that it isn't is a design failure, even if I'm the only one brave enough to say it. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I recently made the jump from playing Monopoly for a few years to trying out a new game (DnD) with my group, and the experience has been way more jarring than I expected. There were so many habits that we had to consciously unlearn.

Things like expecting passing GO and collecting $200, assuming we could buy any building we walk upon, or even just how prison is the best spot. We kept reaching for our character sheet looking for stuff to barter in our inventory.

I’m asking for the third time (first, second) because there's a real skill in unlearning a system and I don't see that talked about much (not here, nor here, nor here...).

Would love to hear specific examples from people who went through a similar unlearning, like a game, a recipe or a spoken sentence.

I don't know if it's just the Reddit translation that makes everything so strange (English isn't my native language), I didn't understand what the sub is. Are you guys playing toxic RPG masters? Asking stupid questions on purpose? Making fun of D&D? I don't know why this is so strange to me.

So I'm hanging out in my mansion just being the second-richest man in the entirety of this unnamed comtinent. These 4 jackasses wander in so i decide to let them entertain me and they're actually quite funny! The bard jokingly asks if I’d consider putting them into my will and I'm on the fence about it but jeez he makes a good point. So I decide to immediately rewrite my entire estate plan to leave everything to them, YOLO amiright.

They even insist we get my lawyer involved to make things official, i swear ive never seen this guy before in my life and his accent is exactly the same as my butler. We spend the next hour making sure the paperwork is legally binding and I crack open the good bottle of Pinot Noir.

Then they fucking murder me out of nowhere! Just straight up leaving a bloody stab wound in my back.

Here's the real kicker. No one seems to care or even investigate. No resurrection (as per my LiveForeverLiveToday™ insurance plan), no court ordered Speak with Dead. Not even any of my fucking parasite relatives show up to contest this will.

So my lawyer ends up presenting them with 1,000,000,000 gp the next morning (in actual platinum and jewels of course, again no idea where they came from).

Anyway, the world last about 2 more days before some God / Master of the world decided he's had enough and the world ended. Am I the asshole?

You want a choice of weapons? Fuck you.

You want to know where you are? Fuck you.

You forgot which menial tasks each of the 3000 indistinguishable NPCs was crying about? Fuck you.

Hope you were a teacher's pet in school Because nerds are gonna be on top here

The ONLY professions that exist are: Magic-User, Fighting-Man, Cleric, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit

Homebrew: all characters have a white bread moral compass until *I* pick a new one for you!

Trying to make a good impression? Too bad, we're using rAnDoMlY gEnArAtEd NPC reactions, fucko!

Grab your wallets, because all your pay is being spent on packing the party with cool and quirky DMPCs.

Gameplay will be 10% combat, 5% roleplay and 85% logistics simulator.

No plot. You came up with a cool and interesting backstory? Too bad, I don't give a fuck. Story comes from playing mad-libs with tables. What, you think I'm sure kind of writecuck?

Prepare your fleet of wagons for a cross-country shopping spree, because nobody in this region wants your filthy gold.

Of course, I'm sure all you eager players are coming at the bit to join my amazing and original campaign and want to know when it is. Well FUCK YOU!