r/DungeonMasters

I was thinking about villains or BBEGs who seek to destroy the worl/kill everyone or something similair, but they can tend to have pretty boring motivations such as just power for power's sake or to feel superior or some other in my opinion relatively banal reason that I dont find very engaging. So, what do you think could be interesting reasons for someone to desire the downfall of humanity?

As a new GM I sometimes stumble into situations where I’m not sure what my role in narration is. I’ll explain a few situations that happened to me GMing for a few friends who are also new to TTRPG’s.

Player: “I swing my sword and chop off his leg so he can’t run”
- Is this not a called shot and is not allowed? Or is it the players job to tell me, the GM, what he does.

Player: “I cast magic missile and beam a hole through his chest”
-again do I say what happens as a result or does the player?

Now a situation where maybe I over narrated?

Player: “I jump over him and attack with my sword”
Me(GM): “you leap over BBEG in an impressive arc and take a stab at his weapon wielding shoulder as if it was an attempt to disarm him (no pun intended)

I suppose my question is, to what extent do players narrate what’s happening in the world, not only in combat but in any encounter, and what am I responsible for narrating? Is it as simple as letting it happen? Do I re-narrate? Any advice would be wonderful.
(Using the Shadowdark rule set if that makes any difference)

Edit: Thank you guys for giving me good insight on how to handle called shots and player narration. Going forward, I’m going to ask the table that unless I explicitly say that something is a killing blow, to only tell me what they aim to do and let me narrate the results of that goal.
I appreciate everyone’s help!

I am working with a module that was written for 5e but we are playing 5.5e.

Many of the baddies are the same or similar between the 2 systems.

I got to thinking about balance, I know 5.5 can potentially do a lot more damage. I can mitigate this some with more baddies, more hp, legendary actions, etc.

What do other think about giving intelligent baddies weapon mastery skills? In theory an elite opponent would have been training as long as or longer than a player. They should have a similar skillset.

Hi all! So I use Notion for my world building and paper and index cards and other analog tools at the table. I do have my laptop there for looking things up on the fly. One time I tried to run a session straight out of Notion but it was a disaster.

Of the existing digital tools out there (Legend Keeper is one that has caught my eye) are any of them more or less suited for use during a session? Any of you running in-person games primarily with a laptop and how do you do it?

I want to make a magic ring that will be pretty powerful but I feel like I need some feedback on the idea. Its a ring for a level 10 party. The effects are:

The Ring of the Fate Master
It is cursed, and cannot be removed without a spell to break the curse.

The weaer can use the ring's power to magic the next attack/save/skill check a Natural 20. Or they can use it to force the next attack/save/skill check to be a Natural 1. Yes, they can cast it on other creatures. Casting it on an unwilling creature requires a wisdom save DC15. Bonus action to activate eitherway.

Each time the wearer uses the ring there is a 10% chance a high CR monster (apprioriate for the party) is summoned. This % goes up by 10% each time too. So if you use it 5 times there is a 50% chance of the summoning.

Then, the creature summoned gains the ring and can use the effects of the ring against the wearer for as many times as the wearer did. Then the ring is destoryed or resets. I haven't decided.

The wearer doesn't know what the negative effects are, only that there is a negative effect of some kind each time they use it.

Obvioulsy this a very strong item in many ways, and I want it to be as its getting late in the campaign. Looking for any feedback on the idea. :) Thanks!

I’m getting a campaign wrote up for my group and I’m planning on it being a sandbox style game taking place in 1489 DR three years after the war with the Netherese and Sembia, I’ll be using xp inside of milestone and point buy. For session Zero after rules and expectations are discussed, I plan on the players playing as premade characters(purple dragon knights/war wizards) and they’ll all take part in the defense of Suzail. The issue I’m having is finding sources about the battle itself, is there anything that I can read to give me a better idea of how everything went down?

Fairly new DM here, ive pretty much only dmed oneshots before and am starting my first big campaign. I have 5 players and the setting is a 1950s-inspired Americana small town setting. My players are absolutely amazing character makers and made super exciting and fun little guys, but the issue for me is that theyre all different ages (range from highschool student to middle-aged) and most work different jobs. The idea of the campaign is having the characters have their own backstories, but id have weird stuff start happening all over town for the characters to start figuring out why, but i fear the charcters' jobs/school will get in the way. How should i balance this? Id really like it if stuff like skipping school or work would have consequences, but im worried my players will get bored with having to do their jobs lol. Has anyone come across an issue like this before? Howd yall solve it?

One of my players today left my homebrew campaign I made (We're 5 months into it) because there was "Too much filler". In short I have a campaign based on high school life where the party and other npcs go into this other world called Elsewhere and they go through these horror scenarios and life or death situations using School Cliques in the stead of classes. Anyways he disliked how much filler was in the sessions (In his own words, "There is way too much talking to other npcs and relationship building for me and not enough horror" Honestly I'd say it's 70/30 with me on how I distribute the time of "Filler". But normally they'd be there for a while like 2-4 sessions and then they'd have a session maybe 2 of relationship building or happy times/random exploring the town and buying accessories and talking to npcs and getting to explore their stories etc...

I'm currently planning a "reverse murder mystery" ( the PCs are ghosts and need to solve a mystery of an illegal reanimation). Got any suggestions for a murder mystery game system that has room for a supernatural element?

I have a brief encounter that I will be putting in front of my players, the mysterious npc will gift them with a glowing ember of coal that has been created by the cult attempting to free Asmodeus from the Nine hells, is there a way that I can work this item where detect magic or identity won’t reveal the curse? It ties into the broader campaign and will provide clues to the cult’s existence but I want them to figure it out through game play rather than a simple spell. I was thinking of having this being an item from the nine hells, would it being from a planar dimension prevent detect magic or identity?

So, let me explain. I’m running something I call ”The Newbies Campaign”, my group has been continually expanding and decreasing since I started playing DnD. At first I was completely new with just some rudimentary knowledge I had from youtube vids and playing DnD with my family (though we never followed the rules then and none of us knew how to play). But then through the little over what like a year I’ve been playing I realised I was suddenly among one of the most veteran, experienced and knowledgeable players at my table. So when I noticed a lot of other new players struggling with the game and mechanics, along with some players who frankly has played longer than me but haven’t grasped the game yet, I decided to start the newbies campaign!

It’s basically just a series of one-shots with no over-arching plot except what the players decide to do, and I tailor make each session to what the players and I decide we need to improve upon.

Now here is the thing, I say ”we” because this is my first time DMing, and I am fumbling in the dark frantically googling stuff and making documents to prepare for a session, looking stuff up on dnd beyond and the like. I’ve got the hang of it thus far, although I still need to improve upon all my skills I have a baseline of know-how in most of the areas I need except for one. Balancing combat.

I got no clue what I’m doing. What is too easy? What is too hard? What CR should I use in response to their level? How should I distribute CR if I make multiple monsters?

It relates to the question that I’m running this ”Newbies Campaign” like a westmarch, letting it be one of those ”Those who show up can play” since it has no over-arching plot so it doesn’t matter if you miss a session or twelve. Due to this the group varies between 4-9 players, and I like having contingencies incase it changes last minute. Minions for a bigger monster or a group of smaller monster of which I can adjust the size of the group or amount of minions. If I have one single enemy I like having backups incase I need to scale it up or down. But trying to do so myself without knowing how from beforehand has been rough. So I would like maybe some tips and tricks on how to measure your players against enemies and CR?

Last newbies session I threw 4 goblin warriors and a goblin general against a party of 8 level 3 players and the combat took 2 hours

My group has been together for three years and we play every week with very few exceptions. We're at the end of the Hexblade's major story arc and he's showed up drunk to two out of the last three sessions. Both time he kept insisting he was fine. I eventually booted him off the Discord and we just cancelled the session because he can't really have a big showdown with his evil father if he's not here and everything I had prepped revolved around that.

How should I handle this? He apologized the first time but this week he still insists he was okay and we're all over reacting. His speech and text were unintelligible. He's a close friend to all of us but there's got to be a limit somewhere.

Just a rant, I'm fairly worn down by incessant cancellations of our once a never games and wondering if it's time to cut the whole thing and just write a book or something. I realize it's a game and life comes first and people are tired by the world we inhabit, but also it's shitty to keep doing art and writing to never even get close to "publishing". It's not wasted time per se, because I always enjoy creating, but maybe it's time to stop creating for the players and their character stories.

Hi, potentially new DM here, just like the title says, I have trouble while trying to read the books, I thought it was because I was reading them on my laptop but when I bought a physical copy for the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide I still couldn't go past a few pages, I found it confusing and hard to read, had to go back and forth between pages to search for definitions of stuff I didn't know and weren't explained enough, I felt like I was learning a new language. I really want to start DMing, I have all these ideas and all this motivation but when I open those books it becomes impossible to keep up with it. Any tips or a guide I could follow? Thanks!

PS: Sorry if I wrote anything wrong, I speak Spanish.