#game master

[feebledungeons]

If your some of your goblins don’t speak in terrible cartoony gobbledygook in Common but intelligently, suavely or charming in Goblin then I fear you’re missing a trick in your Games Mastery

Gobbo in Common: Craig say you go there bad big bad go boom! Boom!

Gobbo in Goblin: Oh thank the gods you understand me. I skipped Common to fast track my chemistry masters. Enchanted to meet you but we have a dastardly plot to foil. If you can take me to the detonator I’m sure I can defuse it. It was… my design after all… *smoulders in biochemist*

#dnd #dungeon master #ttrpg #game master #goblins #feeble rambles

[literary-claustrophobia]

What people think DnD is like:

What it's actually like:

#is it thursday yet #shitpost #shitposting #humor #meme #funny #memes #dank memage #dnd #dnd memes #dungeons and dragons #dungeons and daddies #dungeon master #game master #what its like #rouge #bard #wizard #paladin #barbarian #druid #warlock #cleric #mage #fantasy #dnd movie #rpg #tabletop

[andi-o-geyser]

The 5 Stages of DM Grief

#if you pay attention you can pinpoint each stage lmao #big suffering middle school teacher energy from brennan tonight #dimension 20 #d20 #brennan lee mulligan #dnd #tabletop games #game master #neverafter #neverafter spoilers #andis thought geyser

[thechekhov]

Can you share more funny moments from your DnD campaign please

I’ll do you one better.

For context: This happened during our Curse of Strahd game, which is now leaning into Homebrew territory because my players refuse to go to Ravenloft. 

Not pictured: The unicorn, immediately after taking falling damage, also got electrocuted into oblivion because one of the players is cursed, courtesy of the Amber Temple. 

Needless to say, I was thrilled concerned about how much I packed into the dungeon crawl to wear them down, only to realize they were fully capable of doing it themselves. 

#chekhov answers #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #curse of strahd #only kinda #because homebrew #DMing #dungeon master #game master #ttrpg #dnd stories #chekhov draws #chekhov draws dnd

[cyanomys]

Hey TTRPG nerds

Anybody got recommendations for indie ttrpg youtubers? I'm looking for content that is broadly not D&D-specific, and not actual plays. So, video essays/reviews of games, how-to-plays, GMing/playing advice, game design, etc.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #youtubers #tabletop games #tabletop #video essays #how to play #game master #dungeon master #DMing #GMing #gaming advice #indie youtube #help me find

[unnerd]

Dumb NPC ideas to use when your players decide to explore that town you didn't prepare anything for

A scholar that is clearly lost, however you're not sure how he is someone important at all. It even looks like he's glad that he didn't manage to arrive at the event on time.

An old lady (of a race that has a long lifespan), that knows a little way to much about the party's adventure... She doesn't spends much time talking about it though, do you want to buy her pots?

A kid. Just a kid. Make them annoying.

A knight that is very proud about their job and duty, but they just want their shift to end so they can go home to their wife.

A merchant that has a cart in the middle of the fair, however everytime the party goes to another shop or stand he pops up from behind the counter. Turns out the town doesn't receive many merchants so he has to supply all of their needs. He's stressed.

A teen dragon that discovered how to transform into a human, problem is they definitely look 30 but they still are just a teenager, and a moody one.

A shop owner that fucking hates commerce. She's in it because of her family, so she tries to sell the goodies pratically for free and she really wants you to take all of her items. The catch? It's a feather shop. Not magic feathers, not pens, just normal feathers. Probably from a bird that died that morning.

A janitor from a library or big shop that is just too aware of everything. Like, they point out the players class or race without barely batting an eye. They comment on how they "had never seen a chaotic good one in real life". And indirectly disses the players choices they made 2 sessions ago? (Basically a character for the dm to rant a little while not completely breaking the 4th wall)

A woman in her mid-40s (or the equivalent) that is just really excited to meet the party? Her dream was to be an adventurer when she was little so she is definitely asking some weird questions.

A blacksmith that makes weapons purely for the aesthetic. He really doesn't care if it's functional or not, he's just doing cause it looks cool.

A bard that got kicked out of their band or caravan. At first you don't know why but after their 3rd performance of a one-person musical you get it. He wants to stick with the party though. Good luck.

A doggie!! It's cute!! And fluffy!! And it talks!! And it talks? A DOG THAT TALKS!!!!

The most ripped person the party has ever met, they have tons of skulls of big animals on their shoulder. They polish them. They hang them on a wall and start to take notes. They are an archeologist.

A magician that is really not magic at all, he's just so good at card tricks that the town thinks he's a sorcerer. He's freaking out.

A girl that is immune to all kinds of poison, however that is making a little bit hard for her to pursue her cooking career. Apparently poison ivy is not a good seasoning for most people.

An artist that is just really calm and friendly but everyone's afraid of them. The party has no idea why.

#dnd5e #dnd homebrew #dnd npc #dungeons and dragons #npc ideas #dungeon master #game master #rpg campaign #campaign #ttrpg #roleplay #psa you can change their genders!!! #session preparation #critical role

[chalkbird]

brennan was like alright i will dm for critical role but im bringing my emotional support lou wilson

#as he should #he was so right to do that #they didn't know what hit em #brennan lee mulligan #dimension 20 #d20 #dungeons and dragons #dnd #critical role #lou wilson #exandria calamity #dungeon master #game master #exandria unlimited #matt mercer #ttrpg #actual play

[cloaksandcapes]

Tolkien would make a TERRIBLE Dungeon Master.

#Tolkien #DnD #Dungeons and Dragons #TTRPG #Dungeon Master #Game Master #D&D #Dungeons & Dragons

[arielbonestrike]

The description of how Fearne's appearance changes when she re-enters the Fey Realm had so much magic to it.

Here's Matt Mercer's description:

"When you look at Fearne, she's Fearne, but there's something different about her. Her features are sharper, her eyes are bigger and deeper, her ears seem to almost be longer, her limbs seem to be just slightly exaggerated. There's this otherworldly kind of air about her that is just unique. It's upsetting at a first glance."

The moment takes place in Critical Role's third campaign during the episode Ominous Lectures.

Fearne is played by Ashley Johnson.

#critical role campaign 3 #critical role cast #critical role art #critical role fanart #critical role #fanart #fantasy art #biro art #fantasy #dungeons and dragons #ashley johnson #matt mercer #game master #dungeon master #transformation #fey realm #fawn #fearne calloway #cr fearne #fawn art #ominous lectures

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

My players didn't care about the pig races so please enjoy these racing pig names

#dnd #game master #dungeon master #pigs #hamlet

[piratequeen1017]

Made significant progress in my world building pursuits and it made me want to share so look, I did thing.

#dnd #d&d #pathfinder #pathfinder 2e #dungeons and dragons #fantasy worldbuilding #worldbuilding #game master #ttrpg #fantasy maps #map making #maps #worldographer

[sheepintheastralsea]

if you are a dungeon master (or even a fantasy author/worldbuilder of any kind) and you don’t know about donjon let me make your life a million times easier

want to make a fantasy calendar with your own year-lengths, weeks, months, and lunar cycles? https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/calendar/

need to come up with some medieval town demographics? https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/demographics/

want to make a map and layout of a city/town? https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/town/

want a fleshed-out tavern complete with menu, innkeeper, patrons, rumors, and secrets? https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/inn/

leading your players through a dungeon and want to customize the size, treasure, layout, theme, etc? https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/dungeon/

tired of creating lists of magic items for different shops to sell, or hoards to be looted? https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/magic/shop.html and https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/treasure/

even a customizable initiative tracker! https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/initiative/

and that’s only scratching the surface! I really recommend all dms check this out. oh, and it’s completely free!

#donjon #dm #dungeons and dragons #d&d #gm #worldbuilding #cr #dm tips #dm advice #ttrpg #game master #dungeon master

[feebledungeons]

Hey GMs and DMs!

A quick reminder

(Because I forgot recently)

If a campaign is making you

ACTIVELY SAD

You

Don’t

Have

To

Run

It

YOU CAN QUIT!

It doesn’t matter if your players are enjoying it. If it is making *you* uncomfortable or unhappy…

YOU ARE NOT OBLIGED TO RUN A GAME THAT YOU DON’T WANT TO!

You are not a fun-vending machine, you are also a player.

Apologies for the crazy text I am having a moment.

#dnd #D&D #dungeon master #game master

[anim-ttrpgs]

It was mentioned that EUREKA would be the easiest DM-able system ever. From a newcomer's perspective, how is it so?

Well, firstly, it strongly encourages the use of prewritten adventure modules, which just already take a lot of work off the GM's shoulders, and maybe others can elaborate on how much of a burden that is lifting, but it isn't exactly very unique to Eureka.

What Eureka does do however is have rules and play advice which enourages, or even necessitates, players and player-characters taking initiative and driving the story themselves with their own deliberate actions, rather than sitting back and asking the GM "okay where are our characters going next?" The game in general both encourages and facilitates a very hands-off GM approach where the GM's main job is to be a referee for the rules and a voice for the NPCs, not a novelist that inserts the names of the PCs into their plot. There's a lot of similarity here between this approach and a lot of OSR type games' "situations, not plots" approach. This makes feel more like playing a game than being a full-time job.

None of the character abilities in Eureka necessitate that a certain NPC exist for them to work, meaning the GM will never have to come up with a whole character on the fly that has a whole believable relationship with the PCs. In fact, there is an optional system in Eureka by which the players are the ones who come up with NPCs their PCs know, using a series of questions to formulate their relationship to one-another and then handing that over to the GM.

Many things that are traditionally up to the GM in many other RPGs or RPG-groups such as note-taking and in-game time-keeping are instead explicitly assigned to a player.

The system just also has a lot of rules for helping GMs make calls in many different situations, rather than having to arbitrate a bunch of mechanical effects on the fly, and has very simple and easy-to-work-with NPC stat-lines.

All of these things and more add up to a lighter workload for the GM, so that instead of the effort investment in a 1-GM-4-player group being split 80-5-5-5-5% like in D&D5e and many other popular systems, in Eureka it's split more like 40-15-15-15-15%.

Check out our Kickstarter page for the best accumulation of info on what Eureka: investigative Urban Fantasy even is! The Kickstarter campaign launches April 10th 2024!

Check out our Patreon to get the whole prerelease rulebook + multiple adventure modules and pieces of short fiction for a subscription of only $5!

If you wanna try before you buy, check out our website for more information on Eureka as well as a download link to the free demo version!

Interested in actually playing this game, and many others, with the developers? Check out A.N.I.M.'s TTRPG Book Club, a club of nearly 100 members at the time of writing this where we regularly nominate, vote on, and then play indie TTRPGs! At the time of writing this, we are playing Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, and sign-ups are closed for actually playing it, but you can still join in to pick up a PDF club copy of the rulebook to read and follow along with discussion, and sit in on and observe sessions! There is no schedule obligation for joining this club, as we keep things very flexible by assigning multiple GMs with different timeslots each round, to try and accomodate everyone! This round, we had over thirty people sign up, and were able to fit in all but one! Here is the invite link! See you there!

#monsters #eureka #eureka: investigative urban fantasy #ttrpg #rpg #roleplaying #coc #tabletop #DMing #DM #dungeon master #game master #GM #indie game #indie #indie games #indiegames #ttrpg design #ttrpg tumblr #indie ttrpg #ttrpg community #ttrpg character #dungeons and dragons #pathfinder #dnd

[thechekhov]

Do you have any advice for someone about to dm for the first time? I'm less worried about running the session than how the hell do you plan one?

Btw Iove your art and it's inspired me to try out line work again

Thanks! And hey, that's a good question.

Here's the thing I've learned as a DM - you don't have to plan EVERYTHING.

In fact, the less you plan, the more prepared you'll be!*

*Some restrictions apply

How I like to think of when I DM is that me and my players sit in the middle of a WHEEL of possibilities. It looks something like this:

Every session you start with, you have a set amount of possible go-to points. These are limited. Usually, your party won't go from sipping drinks at a tavern to walking out the door and fighting cult members in ONE session.

The possibilities are endless, so what you need to prepare is just the next few steps. In the above image, what I mean is that they first two darker shades are representative of what you need to have prepared immediately, and the lighter shades are plans you can have on the back burner, but don't need to flesh out.

As your party makes choices and travels outside of the Starting Spot, you can prepare the NEXT steps based on the ones they chose.

So, say your party is in your tavern, and they decide to go to the Adventuring Guild to look for a job. You don't HAVE to prepare the Heist Mission in the Wizard's tower for that - you can know it's a possibility, but once they've made their first choice, you have a direction.

You can then kind of visualize what their next steps are.

Of course, this wheel isn't one way! Your players could always just... hop over to an adjacent topic! If they're solving a mystery, that could link up to a Cult involvement. And from there, they can discover a Secret Hideout for the Cult, which you already know was a possibility if they were to go into the forest.

And once that sort of adventure has started, you can go ahead and think about what other things you had planned out might link up to or evolve from where they are.

At that point, it's like playing a giant board-game. Which involves laying down track in front of an oncoming train.

My recommendation is that you keep a few things on hand which can be used anywhere:

a few maps that somewhat relate to multiple things on your map (for example, a dungeon-looking map that could be a Secret Hideout OR the Wizard's tower)

Some named NPCs - at least one per location that you can throw up immediately when they arrive

a few puzzles/plotpoints which can act as a placeholder while you think of details (for example, a Mystery can be hard to think of on the spot. Give them some random clues, such as a missing person, a few discarded items, etc and then take your time before the next session to link those items together!)

The rest is.. well... just making it up as you go along!

Of course, that's just MY personal way of doing things. Some people prepare way less, and some prepare way more. It's just all up to how quickly your players move/how comfortable you are with details.

#dnd #d&d #dming #dm #gm #dungeon master #game master #dungeons and dragons #ttrpg #chekhov answers #infograph #kinda?

[mortphilippa]

The problem-problem in TTRPGs

A problem I come up against when playing some TTRPGs is that I don't want the same person to both make and solve problems. I find it makes an otherwise fun game idea very narratively unsatisfying.

This is sometimes called the Czege principle for Paul Czege who articulated this problem: "When one person is the author of both the character's adversity and its resolution, play isn't fun." In a GMed game, the GM can set a problem (this can be social, a puzzle, combat, an obstacle of some sort) and then the player characters resolve the problem. Or, in some GMless games, a prompt provides the problem - such as pulling card prompts in Quiet Year - and the players decide on the solution. Similarly, having some randomness in the outcome like dice can help justify why solving the problem suceeded or failed.

Brendan Lee Mulligan had an excellent statement on 'railroading' which I think applies here - he said players want a story with twists and turns but character want to solve a problem as quickly as possible. So the GM's job (which we can extrapolate to the game's job too) is to provide the twists and turns that make the story interesting and help players feel justified in their character choosing the most interesting option.

But I think some games want to let everyone do everything and ask the players to both come up with problems and solve them, and i find that tends to lead to obstacles with little weight behind them.

If I'm creating the problem, I'll usually have some idea of a solution, at which point it doesn't really feel like a real problem any more if i solve it. And, if I'm one of the people who can solve the problem, I'm also inclined to make the initial problem easy to solve. Even if i resist that urge to solve it myself, i find it becomes harder for other players to escalate the problem - because who wants to/feels justified in making things worse when you also want your characters to suceed? So the problem gets solved right away. Which is boring.

A good example of treading the line is Belonging outside Belonging- Dream Askew and Dream Apart have the token system to throttle how fast you can solve problems. But if hacks alter the token economy, it can feel superfluous, like you are just making problems to solve them again.

I've found it also in some GMed games that try and alter the flow of narrative by giving a lot of control to players, which can be fun but can also make it difficult to know who has final say on resolving problems.

I think this problem-problem is perhaps a sign for game designers to remember to think about why you are using a certain system and how it fits with the types of narrative cycles you want to encourage. Who is creating and who is solving the problems in your game? Is there support in the mechanics for them to justify making things harder? Will the outcome feel earnt, or will players fall back on the easy option, and how can you encourage interesting choices and further trouble?

#Youtube #ttrpg #ttrpgs #gmless #gmless ttrpgs #czege principle #lancer ttrpg #indie ttrpg #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop games #dnd #dnd writing #game master #brennan lee mulligan #belonging outside belonging #quiet year