Hello! I like to make miniature scenes, and am super proud of this one. I carved the lute and staff from basswood, the daggers are coffee stirring sticks. I used an old earring for the sword that I added detailing to and used fabric scraps for the pack and quiver. The fire comes out so it can turn on and off.

Thanks for taking a peak at my little hobby! I’m going to try to sell this and others at a local craft show in November, but this one might get priced ridiculously high so it comes back home with me… hahaha.

Hey everyone - this one is from years ago, but it still makes me laugh and brings back fond memories at times...

I was running my own homebrew world (started back in 2015) and had Lost Mine of Phandelver lined up, with Ghosts of Saltmarsh ready as the follow-up, but my party had other plans. After finishing Phandelver, they walked right past both story hooks for Saltmarsh, found a boat that wasn't theirs, and pointed it at the one spot on my map that was literally just a name: Dreadparish Isle (which was my placeholder for the Saltmarsh content that they completely ignored storywise)

So there I was, building an island on the fly while they argued about who had to row with skill checks and all. I remember them arriving there and I tried one last time to get them on board with the first mansion investigation story hook while placing a few other story seeds of my own that wer ejust there to flesh out the world. But all they were focused on was exploring more of the island thanks to my hooks.

The funny part is that the island never went away. It stayed in the world, it got a harbour, a council of captains and a whole history, and it keeps growing every time I come back to it (it even ended up in a book I'm writing currently, a fantasy novel set in that same world, but that's a story for another day).

So I'm curious on your journeys and experiences that came from them - what's the furthest your group ever went off your map? Did you improvise your way through it, and did the place they found end up sticking around long after the session or even campaign?

Cheers.

TL;DR: I'm DMing Curse of Strahd for four close friends who are still fairly inexperienced as am I. Mismatched play styles, a player who struggles with failure, and a couple whose behavior at the table breaks immersion have me burned out. I don't blame anyone, and I'm open to the idea that my DMing is part of it. I want to talk to everyone without drama, encourage role-play, and enjoy the game again.

Hi everyone, I need advice. I'm DMing Curse of Strahd for four friends. We've played 4 sessions, and after two of them I wanted to quit. This isn't about blaming anyone. I know my DMing style is part of the problem, and I'm open to hearing that. I think I'm fairly flexible with rules, but what feels flexible to me may not feel that way to them. I don't want to punish anyone or force my preferred game on them, but I also want to have fun, or else why am I doing this? Generally I enjoy playing with them, but the last session was especially bad and that’s what pushed me to write this post.

These are my best friends of about 12 years, and the friendship matters more than the campaign so I don’t want to make a mistake and for all of it to turn into big drama.

The table (everyone has roughly 10-20 sessions behind them, except for me and Z, who has more and has DMed a bit):

Z (my girlfriend): human warlock, very roleplay-focused
P: aasimar paladin, loves combat, light on roleplay
O: kalashtar artificer
M (O's partner): gnome ranger, his first campaign

What I'm seeing:

Player engagement. I'm struggling to get the table invested in the game itself. A lot of the time it feels like they just want to move to the next step, talk to the next NPC, and move on again, with little emotion or play in it. It feels empty to me. Part of that may be on me: I don't feel connected to my NPCs in Curse of Strahd, and I don't know how to fix that. Also I get discouraged when I try to role-play NPC and I don’t get much role-play out of them.

P in particular is hard to read. He enjoys combat and used to roleplay a bit, but last session, which had no combat, he didn't take part at all (even though I tried to include him and Z tried to involve him into a scene). He was tired after work, but it was frustrating to me and Z. I don't know how to draw him in when there's no fight. Maybe part of that is that they don’t feel connected to their characters.

O and failure. She's had bad luck with dice since session 0 (rolled stats, low HP at level-up) and she gets discouraged easily. When things go wrong not only with the dice but also in the story, she loses motivation, withdraws, or gets annoyed. It leads to very tense situations in which I feel very uncomfortable. It reached a point in which I dread her important rolls because I don’t want tension at the table or even an argument. In addition to that she argues the rules quite often and doesn’t take the no very well.

Also she told me her character feels flat and she doesn't know how to roleplay her. I suspect it's because she built the character around an optimized build rather than a personality or story, which is fine (I like optimizing too), but now she's stuck. How do I help her without being pushy?

I warned everyone that Curse of Strahd is brutal and that deaths are likely. Failure is part of D&D and of storytelling generally, so I don't know how to help her with it without softening the game.

M and O. M is doing great for a first-timer. He made a simple character with a clear backstory and stayed in character when the group pressured him, which impressed me. But he struggles to watch O get frustrated. Meaning well, he tries to fix it with things like "it's just a game" or "it'll get better," which tends to make it worse, because she often just needs space. He also sometimes breaks character to help her character, even though they barely know each other in the story. That breaks the scene for everyone, especially Z, who takes roleplay seriously.

Meta gaming: Due to the above they meta game like crazy and I don’t have anything against light meta gaming (it sometimes sucks to realize that you had an ability you could’ve used and your character would’ve probably known about it but you, a player forgot. So having someone remind you that you could do that I think is OK) It really breaks the immersion and kills any role play that could have been played and it pains me sometimes and really frustrates Z. Us both try to stop them but we don’t want to come of as too high strung or as metagaming police. How do I deal with them metagaming?

Z's character. Being morally gray, she sometimes goes against the party or splits off, and the others can resent it. I've talked to her about it. Others also sometimes say a flat "no" instead of "yes, and," which stalls the story. How do I talk to them about being more open to cooperation without betrayal of their characters values?

Table behavior. O and M sometimes do PDA that clashes with the scene (O sitting on M's lap, pouting about a failed spell while the party crosses a dark forest). We often play at their place, so I don't know how to raise it without overstepping.

Roleplay prompts. Z told me I don't encourage roleplay well. I never cut players off mid-conversation, but when there's a window for roleplay I tend to say it bluntly: "You're traveling for four hours. Do you want to talk to each other or move on?" I know there are better ways. But I’d appreciate some tips on how to encourage role-play in those slower moments in the game.

Rules. I try to say yes, but I have limits (like a ritual needing 100gp of diamonds nobody has). Since only I know the rules well, my rulings can feel arbitrary. Should I be more relaxed or how do I communicate better that rules matter to me?

Feeling underappreciated. I put a lot into this: printing paper minis to save money, drawing maps, prepping modding a lot of the module so it plays better. I know others may do more, but reactions are often a lukewarm "oh, cool," and sometimes I feel taken for granted. How do I tell them without coming across needy? Or maybe I ask too much and should just suck it up?

My plan: I'm afraid an open group discussion would turn into everyone listing what others do wrong. Instead I want to talk to each person one-on-one, like I did with Z: ask for feedback on my DMing, help anyone who wants it flesh out their character, share my feedback, and ask what they want from the game (even though we did all that in session 0). I'd tell everyone I'm doing this with each of them. But at the same time I don't want to act like the group therapist. Is that a good plan? How do I deal with talking to them?

I also consider doing a second session 0 to express my concerns and listen to feedback but also I don’t want to miss a game session because as probably all of you know scheduling is a nightmare.

I’m aware this is a lot and maybe the problem is expectations of mine and everyone’s else’s. If you’ve read to this point thank you and I appreciate all tips and guidance you may have regarding one or more of stuff I mentioned.

Somebody in my local area D&D Facebook group posted their desire to have a group of Oompa-Loompas great the party at the entrance to a dungeon and sing a song about what happened to the last party that tried to clear it; so I took five minutes and wrote one out. In hindsight I wish I had caught the autocorrect toward the end of the third paragraph but, I'm still kind of proud of it. 

Not gonna lie; kinda feel like doing an entire Willy Wonka-themed oneshot.

For the moderators, the image is the original FB post and my response.  I can’t claim credit for the OPs image, but I take full credit for the lyrics.  Also, this makes 523 characters.

I was browsing reddit and saw a post from a sub I enjoy about names spelled weird. A tragedeigh if you would.

Example:

Ashley become Ashleigh

Zoey becomes Zoueigh

How would you turn your character's (or favored npc's) name into a tragedeigh?

Edit. Some of you guys are killing me with these. Bravo. r/tragedeigh js the sub I mentioned. Wasn't sure if I could share in the post body.

Allow me to share my first character. Guess the original name. Ehlphough

Hello everyone! I’m excited to share this commission I had the pleasure of working on ✨ Meet Cassandra, Champion of Corellon! While she isn’t one of my original characters, I had a wonderful time bringing her to life through this piece. I hope you love how she turned out as much as I enjoyed creating her. Thank you so much for your support and for taking the time to check out my work! 💜✨ Thank you!!

A few more shots of my ruined city! There are so many little details scattered throughout this scene, and I had a lot of fun bringing everything together.

Hope you guys like the pics!

It's currently live on Kickstarter if you want to check it out

And there is a free tower STL!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grimrotcollective/the-ruins-of-lumenfall-2?ref=3cjs9m

Had a really good session last night with a lot of laughs and some good combat so I thought I'd show off some art of my players. We're exploring a spirit realm atm and getting into some trouble in a ghibli-esqu setting using some of the Obojima source books.

An odd little group starting with Mochi, our awakened cat warlock; David the tiefling fighter and party tank; Brayum the party elephant-kin cleric/healer; and Bandit the bat-kin rogue who will one day blow them all up on accident.

Art by me; its a 80's aesthetic game so gave them some pop art character portraits.

Hi everyone!

First of all, English isn't my first language, so this post may contain a few mistakes. (^_^)
second, i really tried hard to get a better result with shadows, but still, it feels like they are not right.

In all honesty i've reused the same model did before for another a character,
bacuse the last map I drew took a lot of energy out of me,
so I wanted to stay in my comfort zone and just relax.

This time i am presentig you another dragonborn, a winter dragonborn since it is october

I've never played this character but the idea is that, he’s a Warlock with the Archfey subclass

he made a pact so that his band would become successful, and in return his patron feeds on the emotions of his followers.

A few details about the design:

The shirt

it was a gift from the fey.

The eyes on it show that the patron is always watching what he does, and they can change their look depending on whether the fey is pleased or not.

The triangles and the square on the collar represent the pact itself:
the grip and the lock that keep him bound to it.

I hope you like it ^_^

Any feedback or advice is welcome.

Recently in my game we had a large combat encounter. Part of the party consists of a Goliath and a halfling rogue. In combat the halfling stepped behind the Goliath, who was directly adjacent to the villain, and rolled stealth to hide. Being a halfling, i allowed this without issue. But then the halfling stepped away from his hiding spot, moving to another unoccupied square directly in front of the villain, and expected advantage on the attack from being hidden. I ruled that once they stepped away from their hiding spot and exposed themselves, they no longer retained their hidden advantage.

The argument was, since the villain was being attacked from different places, the villain wouldn't be able to see a small person come into his field of view. My thoughts are, if this was done from a distance, i would actually agree. But because it was done in the combat square directly next to the villain, they would absolutely see the rogue.

DMs, how would you handle this?

Edit: I didn't clarify that this was all on the same turn, as well. If that makes a difference to your thoughts

Edit edit: It's 5e, like the flair says. Not 5.5

Did a session zero last night with someone who has never played D&D before. Super nervous, super excited. He built a fighter who spent his whole life in chains, and his story starts with him walking free for the first time toward a monastery where the rest of the party is meeting.

So My setting is a valley ringed by walls so tall you can’t see the top. Like 50 miles straight up. Nobody knows who built them.

So this guy gets his freedom and the first thing he sees is... a bigger cage.

I love it but I’m scared of fumbling it. It’s his first game ever and I want him walking away going “oh, THIS is why people play this.”

What I have so far:

making the game descriptions all about small physical stuff. like His wrists finally feeling light. or like Walking on his own pace. Nobody yelling at him to move. Then he crests a hill and sees the walls for the first time. I stop and just ask “what goes through your head?” At the monastery, the first monk he meets treats him like a total equal and asks him what he wants to do. No orders.

What I’m not sure about:

Do I lean into the “bigger cage” thing right away, or let him enjoy freedom for a session or two first? How do you keep a heavy backstory from smothering a brand-new player who’s still learning how to play dnd?

Any small moments you’ve used that made a player’s backstory land without a big speech?

Would love to steal your ideas. He’s genuinely excited and I don’t want to mess it up.

Who are these people?

• The woman with the flowers is Kayra - a changeling who replaced the real Kayra when the elder hags stole her away to make her one of them.
• The woman with not enough dress is the original Kayra, a night hag in disguise. Hags are not usually welcome in society, but these ones are special to the changeling.
• It's Changeling-Kayra's wedding day, and she just finally confessed to her betrothed that she's not really human. Happily, he was remarkably cool with it.
• The original Maid of Honour, Sassy, has her own thing going on. Best to give her some privacy.

If you're really confused, you could go back to the very beginning of the changeling's story arc.

Or even the very start of the series if you want to binge read and maybe laugh a bit.

Love and Hex started out as a joke about my D&D campaign and turned into an ongoing rom-com/existential horror story. It's on Webtoon and all basically most other places you can find webcomics. Also r/LoveAndHex. And you can find a version with a full transcript on my website. (There's also a book.)

I started to DM again (thank God) and decided to make a cleric DMNPC because the party needed a healer. Because of this I ended up making a cleric who is a half-stained glass golem who has no memory of who they are or even what they are outside of being a cleric who has gone through an incredibly traumatic experience (they do not know what trauma or kindness is). Upon the characters meeting this lovely character named Glass they introduced the concept of dogs, petting, kindness and gifts, along with teaching how to use lotion. I was not expecting the amount of love all three of my players gave to this character to the point where they cared more about what had happened to this character previously than anything else.

Glass is a character I initially designed to just have little backstory that I could easily throw in as a healer character who only cares about healing for a small amount of coin (straight up one copper per heal). During creation of this character I ended up having them be a human that was drastically altered in the process of turning them into a half stained glass golem, replacing both of their arms. Glass narrowly succeeded their wisdom save because of universal intervention resulting in them becoming a universal cleric (domain mind and strength so that they had the mental and physical strength to fight against this sort of trauma again). The only thing glass knows is that they are a cleric and that they have a tattoo on their incredibly scarred head depicting the scene at which their arms are removed in a beautifully done stained glass tattoo. Their main goal is to continue living and heal those they can, because that is the only thing they know clerics to do.

My players absolutely adored Glass upon their introduction and they were all deeply interested in this character. They have so much interest in this character now that I have decided to make the main campaign being uncovering their history and getting revenge on the person that turned them into the state.

I can't wait to continue playing!

Hello everyone! I've been learning my way to get into D&D because I'm legitimately interested, and I've noticed a lot of people treat it as if there's this dichotomy between having Orcs be pure evil without any mind of their own to do otherwise on one end while on the other it's that even if they commit horrible things they're vaguely neutral.

I don't personally interpret things that way, Orcs can be perfectly okay and you have evil individuals who do evil stuff for their own reasons without it being morally nuanced. My issue isn't moral clarity or ambiguity, it's the logic behind their acts. I don't want creatures who exist to be evil, that's lame, if an evil being exists I want him to have their own reasons even if the reasons are just "I want other people stuff."

I just need to vent and be told I'm right. This subreddit has shown me that my 3.5 DM is not great despite being a dragon master. How would you rule this in 3.5? I had a lv 20 character. I wanted to jump up onto a 10ft high ledge. I rolled like a 54 or something ridiculous like that. The DM ruled I rolled so high that I jump too high and hit my head on the ceiling and take damage. WHAT!? WHAT DO YOU MEAN I ROLLED TOO HIGH ABOVE THE DC!? Then either on this jump or another jump I took fall damage FROM MY OWN JUMP!? WHAT KIND OF SENSE DOES THAT MAKE!? I mean sure if I rolled low I could see hitting my head or rolling my ankles but damage from rolling too high!? WTF!?

Party is level 8 and the campaign is stilted towards an aberrant incursion.

More or less trying to design an area around the idea of being heavily diseased. A city as well as a nearby bog that is the home for the source. I know, how original, a poison swamp. Please yell at me with assistance... I beg. As many monsters as there are, it's a lot to sift through. Just looking and hoping for some help in picking out good beasts for a few session romp through the horrors of pestilence and the body warping horrors that can be the aberrant. Direct drop ins or ideas for slightly homebrew-y reflavorings.

Suppose a party long rests from 12am-8am habitually. When a long rest finishes, you can't long rest again until 16 hours have passed (aka 1LR / 24 hours).

If a party gets to homebase late due to some complication, then the long rest starts later and ends later. So if they start at 3am, then the bedtime stays at earliest 3am every night after.

RAW, how does a party deal with this? I suppose they'd have to just take a day without the LR (perhaps a restless sleep?), temporarily accrue a point of exhaustion, and then sleep at the proper time the next day?

Hey everyone!

I run a small YouTube channel focused on TTRPGs and psychology, and I'm hoping to hear about people's personal experiences.

Has playing D&D or other TTRPGs had a positive impact on your mental health?

Whether it's helped you with self-discovery, building confidence, overcoming social anxiety, making new friends, or simply giving you somewhere to escape life's stresses, I'd love to hear your stories!

I'm particularly interested in how roleplaying and storytelling can positively affect our mental wellbeing.

With your permission, I'd also love to share some of these experiences in a future video. I wouldn't use anyone's story without their consent, and I'm happy to keep contributions anonymous.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share!

I’ll start:

The Paladin was an Oath of Devotion. Devoted to husband and child. Wound up playing a coward who wouldn’t stop flirting with the very uninterested cleric and running away in fights to effectively let everyone else take hits/die while they were in the next room. (They were fighting undead, btw.)

I warned them to knock it off and they kept going. So next session their oath broke.

ETA: This was a Curse of Strahd game over the course of months. I’m just seeking stories of other people who’ve had Paladin oaths being broken or revoked in their games.

These two lovebirds are characters from a Greek inspired D&D campaign I’m running.

Elagor is a flamboyant and highly renowned bard who earns her living by recounting the heroic deeds of ancient champions and god-kings. She now travels the world to rescue her mother—who was kidnapped by members of the enigmatic Cult of the Serpent —all the while singing of the exploits of her companions.

Recently, she has become the muse and lover of Loreus, an albino faun. He is a gentle artist and an NPC companion recruited by the party to assist them in their quest to save the world from the wrath of the Titans, who threaten to return to the realm of the living.

Ok, so when I‘m looking at a DnD book and it shows a subject’s hit points it shows something like: 204 (24d8+96). What does that mean? Does that mean I can either roll the HP or just use 204 or something else?

I love Wild Magic, and I have my own tables I use in my games. Please tell me your best moments.

I have a good friend who lost his eyesight several years back. I was planning to start up a short beginner friendly campaign set in an infinite IKEA, and I thought he might enjoy a theater of the mind style game such as D&D. He seems interested, but figuring out the logistics of how he can play is definitely going to be a process.

Has anyone run games for the blind before? And, if so, what are some things you found to be particularly helpful?