Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

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Just had a kind of shitty D&D experience today.

So, long story short today I took part in an adventure, against my character’s will, involving an elf player who has a long history of causing problems and then dragging others in to fix her problems while providing little to no help and no context. This particular adventure is no different.

To set things up our party for this consisted of myself, a human monk, a high elf wizard, and a human Paladin. The set up is your basic run of the mill dream sequence where we wake up in a tavern and everything is off. People aren’t moving and they appear ethereal except for us, all the doors have disappeared and a thick obscuring fog blankets everything outside. The wizard makes some vague statements eluding to the fact that she’s experienced this before but then when questioned refuses to elaborate or offer any helpful imformation.

Turns out it’s the work of some super powerful and evil celestial bard who shows up and starts talking about how he’s going to drain our souls. So, he casts Animate Objects and suddenly the tavern which we had established prior to this session had no weapons and such hanging on the walls is practically an armory. So he surrounds himself with shields and is somehow in full cover at all times thanks to this but also able to opportunity attack anyone who attacks his shields if they try to move away implying that the full cover only exists when it benefits him.

The fight wears on for a while with the wizard refusing to use any useful spells, mostly just buffing herself and standing off to the side despite being higher level than the rest of us by a lot. Meanwhile myself and the Paladin are having to handle the front line. What’s worse is the bard’s “Animate Objects” keeps letting him make more and more objects every single turn including at one point four suits of armor. Now, what’s worse is these suits of armor for no reason in particular were also given the Riposte ability. All this and it seems the bard has Legendary Restistance… except only when I Stunning Strike it and never when anyone else makes it do a save…

Anyways we beat the guy finally and the tavern begins to warp and collapse in on itself, something the wizard again eludes to knowing would happen but didn’t bother to warn us. Then once we’re finally back in the real tavern she just silently walks away and locks herself in her room leaving us in the dark on what just happened and none of the NPCs know anything either.

So I and the Paladin start discussing what a suspicious and untrustworthy person the wizard is only to be berated by the DM out of character for our supposed witch hunt on the wizard.

Mind you this isn’t the first time this has happened. The wizard has a long history of hiding things or lying outright to the party or even just withholding helpful information that could save our lives for no good reason. On top of that she is a known criminal and tends to act like a total psychopath most of the time, threatening people or casting the sleep spell on others just to get out of having to explain herself among many other awful things.

The cherry on top is that we know she has some sort of familial link through her grandmother with a white dragon that caused a three year winter that killed a TON of people and she refuses to acknowledge any of it. But you know somehow being suspicious and wary of her in character is TOTALLY an unwarranted witch hunt.
 
DDBCAE CBAADCBE said:
Just had a kind of shitty D&D experience today.

So, long story short today I took part in an adventure, against my character’s will, involving an elf player who has a long history of causing problems and then dragging others in to fix her problems while providing little to no help and no context. This particular adventure is no different.

To set things up our party for this consisted of myself, a human monk, a high elf wizard, and a human Paladin. The set up is your basic run of the mill dream sequence where we wake up in a tavern and everything is off. People aren’t moving and they appear ethereal except for us, all the doors have disappeared and a thick obscuring fog blankets everything outside. The wizard makes some vague statements eluding to the fact that she’s experienced this before but then when questioned refuses to elaborate or offer any helpful imformation.

Turns out it’s the work of some super powerful and evil celestial bard who shows up and starts talking about how he’s going to drain our souls. So, he casts Animate Objects and suddenly the tavern which we had established prior to this session had no weapons and such hanging on the walls is practically an armory. So he surrounds himself with shields and is somehow in full cover at all times thanks to this but also able to opportunity attack anyone who attacks his shields if they try to move away implying that the full cover only exists when it benefits him.

The fight wears on for a while with the wizard refusing to use any useful spells, mostly just buffing herself and standing off to the side despite being higher level than the rest of us by a lot. Meanwhile myself and the Paladin are having to handle the front line. What’s worse is the bard’s “Animate Objects” keeps letting him make more and more objects every single turn including at one point four suits of armor. Now, what’s worse is these suits of armor for no reason in particular were also given the Riposte ability. All this and it seems the bard has Legendary Restistance… except only when I Stunning Strike it and never when anyone else makes it do a save…

Anyways we beat the guy finally and the tavern begins to warp and collapse in on itself, something the wizard again eludes to knowing would happen but didn’t bother to warn us. Then once we’re finally back in the real tavern she just silently walks away and locks herself in her room leaving us in the dark on what just happened and none of the NPCs know anything either.

So I and the Paladin start discussing what a suspicious and untrustworthy person the wizard is only to be berated by the DM out of character for our supposed witch hunt on the wizard.

Mind you this isn’t the first time this has happened. The wizard has a long history of hiding things or lying outright to the party or even just withholding helpful information that could save our lives for no good reason. On top of that she is a known criminal and tends to act like a total psychopath most of the time, threatening people or casting the sleep spell on others just to get out of having to explain herself among many other awful things.

The cherry on top is that we know she has some sort of familial link through her grandmother with a white dragon that caused a three year winter that killed a TON of people and she refuses to acknowledge any of it. But you know somehow being suspicious and wary of her in character is TOTALLY an unwarranted witch hunt.
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That sounds like a completely subpar campaign. You should talk to the paladin player and ask if he wants to find a new group with you.
 
Ghostse said:
My party is about to encounter two mimics working as a pack to pretend to be a 10ft bridge.

There is a small chance they will notice the bridge doesn't look quite right.

While we're talking about monsters...
- An evil GM has a trap open a door to a 10x10x10 empty room - the room contains a Gelatinous Cube that will attack the party.
- A truly evil GM has the trap open a trap door that sends party down a 10x10 pit into a gelatinous cube.
- However the greatest GM has the trap open a trapdoor in the ceiling that drops the gelatinous cube onto the players.
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In all honesty the AGC webcomic has my favourite pit trap. Not because it is especially lethal but because it is used instead to dump them back to another trap the party already encountered which was very lethal (good old Prismatic Wall).
 
DDBCAE CBAADCBE said:
Just had a kind of shitty D&D experience today.

So, long story short today I took part in an adventure, against my character’s will, involving an elf player who has a long history of causing problems and then dragging others in to fix her problems while providing little to no help and no context. This particular adventure is no different.

To set things up our party for this consisted of myself, a human monk, a high elf wizard, and a human Paladin. The set up is your basic run of the mill dream sequence where we wake up in a tavern and everything is off. People aren’t moving and they appear ethereal except for us, all the doors have disappeared and a thick obscuring fog blankets everything outside. The wizard makes some vague statements eluding to the fact that she’s experienced this before but then when questioned refuses to elaborate or offer any helpful imformation.

Turns out it’s the work of some super powerful and evil celestial bard who shows up and starts talking about how he’s going to drain our souls. So, he casts Animate Objects and suddenly the tavern which we had established prior to this session had no weapons and such hanging on the walls is practically an armory. So he surrounds himself with shields and is somehow in full cover at all times thanks to this but also able to opportunity attack anyone who attacks his shields if they try to move away implying that the full cover only exists when it benefits him.

The fight wears on for a while with the wizard refusing to use any useful spells, mostly just buffing herself and standing off to the side despite being higher level than the rest of us by a lot. Meanwhile myself and the Paladin are having to handle the front line. What’s worse is the bard’s “Animate Objects” keeps letting him make more and more objects every single turn including at one point four suits of armor. Now, what’s worse is these suits of armor for no reason in particular were also given the Riposte ability. All this and it seems the bard has Legendary Restistance… except only when I Stunning Strike it and never when anyone else makes it do a save…

Anyways we beat the guy finally and the tavern begins to warp and collapse in on itself, something the wizard again eludes to knowing would happen but didn’t bother to warn us. Then once we’re finally back in the real tavern she just silently walks away and locks herself in her room leaving us in the dark on what just happened and none of the NPCs know anything either.

So I and the Paladin start discussing what a suspicious and untrustworthy person the wizard is only to be berated by the DM out of character for our supposed witch hunt on the wizard.

Mind you this isn’t the first time this has happened. The wizard has a long history of hiding things or lying outright to the party or even just withholding helpful information that could save our lives for no good reason. On top of that she is a known criminal and tends to act like a total psychopath most of the time, threatening people or casting the sleep spell on others just to get out of having to explain herself among many other awful things.

The cherry on top is that we know she has some sort of familial link through her grandmother with a white dragon that caused a three year winter that killed a TON of people and she refuses to acknowledge any of it. But you know somehow being suspicious and wary of her in character is TOTALLY an unwarranted witch hunt.
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Is the Wizard's name Mary Sue McGuffington the White, by any chance and is she the Dungeon Master's girlfriend?
Mind you this isn’t the first time this has happened.
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And why have you guys tolerated that shit? I admit I'm a newfag compared to more seasoned players ITT, but even I'd be looking for alternatives to being a guest star to someone else's solo rpg campaign.
 
MembersSchoolPizza said:
I suppose it makes me a bad GM, or at least a boring one, but I've never really been a big fan of dungeons.

Not that I never use them. Old dwarven cities, dragon caves, crypts, things like that. But when a player encounters them, they're likely going to mostly get one or two thematic types of monsters, that thematically fit the dungeon. A crypt will mostly be undead, with maybe some cultists. A ruined dwarven city will be crawling with goblinoids. The whole Gygaxian "dungeon ecology" thing has never worked for me. Which is, I imagine, why I never use things like mimics. I have this mental block where the whole "dungeons as lethal theme parks for roving bands of adventurers" mentality fails for me.
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I'm somewhat the same way, but I add in variety. Usually the dungeon is set up in a different area, so you have a mixture of local monsters + special things unique to the dungeon + usually some sort of at least loosely organized opposition.

Like say that the dungeon is a Dwarven Crypt set in an abandoned mine. So you'll have undead-adjacent tomb guardians and traps to discourage robbers.
Additionally you have local monsters that have drifted into the crypt to colonize it. Chokers, ropers, carrion crawlers, etc.
Then finally the Party might be sent there because a group of Hobgoblins have turned into their base while they search for the Red Herring of Macguffin, a magical fish idol that would allow the Hobgoblins to grant their entire army the ability to breathe underwater and allow them to attack some city through the sea.

So encounters might be magical skeletons that are ignoring the chokers, and a party of hobgoblins & allies might arrive to see what the noise is.


Or there is the Tower of Th'k'l'w'y the Unvoweled. In addition to Th'k'l'w'y's various arcane and aberrant guard dogs/creations still wandering the area, some of the other forest denizens have moved in. There might even be a frienemy party of Elves trying to clear up the corruption. And then there are the mercenaries of Blackheart the Baddie, the wizard you are currently dealing with who is there to try to loot Th'k'l'w'y's study for notes about the dark Ritual of Yule Haud Byta Stlu-Pi'it.

So encounters could include various aberrations that might have gone a little native, or forest denizens. There also might be Blackheart's orcish mercenaries who might have a couple of aberrations that Blackheart has been able to slave to his control.
 
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This will be a bit of a weird request, but I figure if anyone can offer some good suggestions, it'd be you lovely autists.

So, we've been playing D&D in our group for a few months now, pretty much exclusively at one couple's house because small children make it difficult to have it anywhere else. Their toddler son has been enjoying watching the game as it progresses, and I'm happy to see that he does, even if he does occasionally want to grab at minis or dice and play with them (though he's getting better about understanding that those aren't to be messed with while we're playing). He even talks about D&D with his parents while we're not around, and he misses seeing the rest of us if we have to cancel a week.

Anyway, recently the parents told me that he'd said he wanted to play as well, and asked if I could work him into the current dungeon crawl they're doing. They didn't have any high expectations or anything (he is a toddler, after all), but they just wanted something that would make him feel included. They even got him his own set of dice for his birthday in his favorite color, which will hopefully reduce the amount he wants to play with everyone else's. I said sure, I'd think of something. Since they just so happened to be next to what is normally an empty room, I threw in a pile of blankets in a corner and told them it was moving when they entered. Luckily, nobody decided to just stab the pile outright, and instead they found a gnome child, which I totally didn't just base off of the OSRS meme. They took him with them, and now he's basically the party mascot, much to their son's delight.
1669629387917.png

Fast forward to our latest session. They decided to buy him some gnome child-sized armor for extra protection and take him back down into the dungeon, because parenting is apparently not one of the party's strong suits. Mostly it was because we couldn't think of something for him to do where he could feel like he was playing a part. I included him in initiative order and when it was his turn, I just had him roll a stealth check. The roll was basically meaningless; if he rolled high, I said he was being very sneaky, and if he rolled low, I said he was screaming but the monsters were preoccupied and didn't attack him. Poor kid probably has PTSD in-game now. The party decided it would be best to leave him in the care of one of the characters' butler instead of dragging him into a monster-infested hellhole that they themselves barely managed to get away from (they were down a member).

The events got me thinking after the session. We had talked a little bit about having the child go on little mock adventures with the butler while the party was dungeon delving, which would probably amount to just telling him to roll occasionally and making up something that happened. But I don't want him to feel like he's not a part of their adventures since he really enjoys when we play together.

So, any ideas for something very basic that we as a group could walk him through, in between their dungeon dives? Something simple that a toddler could understand that gives him a little more to do than just hide in a corner.
 
DDBCAE CBAADCBE said:
Just had a kind of shitty D&D experience today.

So, long story short today I took part in an adventure, against my character’s will, involving an elf player who has a long history of causing problems and then dragging others in to fix her problems while providing little to no help and no context. This particular adventure is no different.

To set things up our party for this consisted of myself, a human monk, a high elf wizard, and a human Paladin. The set up is your basic run of the mill dream sequence where we wake up in a tavern and everything is off. People aren’t moving and they appear ethereal except for us, all the doors have disappeared and a thick obscuring fog blankets everything outside. The wizard makes some vague statements eluding to the fact that she’s experienced this before but then when questioned refuses to elaborate or offer any helpful imformation.

Turns out it’s the work of some super powerful and evil celestial bard who shows up and starts talking about how he’s going to drain our souls. So, he casts Animate Objects and suddenly the tavern which we had established prior to this session had no weapons and such hanging on the walls is practically an armory. So he surrounds himself with shields and is somehow in full cover at all times thanks to this but also able to opportunity attack anyone who attacks his shields if they try to move away implying that the full cover only exists when it benefits him.

The fight wears on for a while with the wizard refusing to use any useful spells, mostly just buffing herself and standing off to the side despite being higher level than the rest of us by a lot. Meanwhile myself and the Paladin are having to handle the front line. What’s worse is the bard’s “Animate Objects” keeps letting him make more and more objects every single turn including at one point four suits of armor. Now, what’s worse is these suits of armor for no reason in particular were also given the Riposte ability. All this and it seems the bard has Legendary Restistance… except only when I Stunning Strike it and never when anyone else makes it do a save…

Anyways we beat the guy finally and the tavern begins to warp and collapse in on itself, something the wizard again eludes to knowing would happen but didn’t bother to warn us. Then once we’re finally back in the real tavern she just silently walks away and locks herself in her room leaving us in the dark on what just happened and none of the NPCs know anything either.

So I and the Paladin start discussing what a suspicious and untrustworthy person the wizard is only to be berated by the DM out of character for our supposed witch hunt on the wizard.

Mind you this isn’t the first time this has happened. The wizard has a long history of hiding things or lying outright to the party or even just withholding helpful information that could save our lives for no good reason. On top of that she is a known criminal and tends to act like a total psychopath most of the time, threatening people or casting the sleep spell on others just to get out of having to explain herself among many other awful things.

The cherry on top is that we know she has some sort of familial link through her grandmother with a white dragon that caused a three year winter that killed a TON of people and she refuses to acknowledge any of it. But you know somehow being suspicious and wary of her in character is TOTALLY an unwarranted witch hunt.
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You need a new group. Sounds like the Wizard has the 'DM's girlfriend' prestige class unlocked.

King Dead said:
This will be a bit of a weird request, but I figure if anyone can offer some good suggestions, it'd be you lovely autists.

So, we've been playing D&D in our group for a few months now, pretty much exclusively at one couple's house because small children make it difficult to have it anywhere else. Their toddler son has been enjoying watching the game as it progresses, and I'm happy to see that he does, even if he does occasionally want to grab at minis or dice and play with them (though he's getting better about understanding that those aren't to be messed with while we're playing). He even talks about D&D with his parents while we're not around, and he misses seeing the rest of us if we have to cancel a week.

Anyway, recently the parents told me that he'd said he wanted to play as well, and asked if I could work him into the current dungeon crawl they're doing. They didn't have any high expectations or anything (he is a toddler, after all), but they just wanted something that would make him feel included. They even got him his own set of dice for his birthday in his favorite color, which will hopefully reduce the amount he wants to play with everyone else's. I said sure, I'd think of something. Since they just so happened to be next to what is normally an empty room, I threw in a pile of blankets in a corner and told them it was moving when they entered. Luckily, nobody decided to just stab the pile outright, and instead they found a gnome child, which I totally didn't just base off of the OSRS meme. They took him with them, and now he's basically the party mascot, much to their son's delight.
View attachment 3953496

Fast forward to our latest session. They decided to buy him some gnome child-sized armor for extra protection and take him back down into the dungeon, because parenting is apparently not one of the party's strong suits. Mostly it was because we couldn't think of something for him to do where he could feel like he was playing a part. I included him in initiative order and when it was his turn, I just had him roll a stealth check. The roll was basically meaningless; if he rolled high, I said he was being very sneaky, and if he rolled low, I said he was screaming but the monsters were preoccupied and didn't attack him. Poor kid probably has PTSD in-game now. The party decided it would be best to leave him in the care of one of the characters' butler instead of dragging him into a monster-infested hellhole that they themselves barely managed to get away from (they were down a member).

The events got me thinking after the session. We had talked a little bit about having the child go on little mock adventures with the butler while the party was dungeon delving, which would probably amount to just telling him to roll occasionally and making up something that happened. But I don't want him to feel like he's not a part of their adventures since he really enjoys when we play together.

So, any ideas for something very basic that we as a group could walk him through, in between their dungeon dives? Something simple that a toddler could understand that gives him a little more to do than just hide in a corner.
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Dead-ass honest:
Bringing children into an existing adult game never works. Children are chaotic little bastards with zero attention span or object permanence. I should know, I spent my entire childhood as one. This means they are exactly like normal players, but since they don't know any better, you don't have the ability to punish them.

Where it does work is when you go full Axe Cop and just treat them as idea generators - no stats or really character sheets, just full roll dice and narrate what happens, going to ridiculous extremes.

If you are looking for a good child-friendly system Stormhollow is pretty solid as an "all-ages" thing though it looks copies have become unobtainium.

If you are absolutely completely dedicated to this terrible idea:
Have your toddler be some sort of sprite or other small magical creature. Let the spite help the heroes by buzzing around an enemy distracting it, so -2 to AC or -2 to attack or something. The enemy should be shown to be much more annoyed and bothered by this then stats would suggest, as irritating adults is one of the great joys of being a child.
When the party would normally just find some treasure laying around, instead have it be in a chest that only our magic creature can enter the lock to open (if the child is tired/distracted, the fighter can just punch through the thin wood). The lock should be some utter brain-dead sequence I'm going to call a puzzle only for lack of a better term. If you do your research and find out what sort of toys your Gamenephew likes playing with this week, make the puzzle resemble their favorite toy.
Missing letter puzzles or "what comes after 4" number puzzles can also work, Sesame Street "One of these is not like the others" can also help. Or even just give a bunch of random shit and "doing anything" opens the lock.
 
King Dead said:
This will be a bit of a weird request, but I figure if anyone can offer some good suggestions, it'd be you lovely autists.

So, we've been playing D&D in our group for a few months now, pretty much exclusively at one couple's house because small children make it difficult to have it anywhere else. Their toddler son has been enjoying watching the game as it progresses, and I'm happy to see that he does, even if he does occasionally want to grab at minis or dice and play with them (though he's getting better about understanding that those aren't to be messed with while we're playing). He even talks about D&D with his parents while we're not around, and he misses seeing the rest of us if we have to cancel a week.

Anyway, recently the parents told me that he'd said he wanted to play as well, and asked if I could work him into the current dungeon crawl they're doing. They didn't have any high expectations or anything (he is a toddler, after all), but they just wanted something that would make him feel included. They even got him his own set of dice for his birthday in his favorite color, which will hopefully reduce the amount he wants to play with everyone else's. I said sure, I'd think of something. Since they just so happened to be next to what is normally an empty room, I threw in a pile of blankets in a corner and told them it was moving when they entered. Luckily, nobody decided to just stab the pile outright, and instead they found a gnome child, which I totally didn't just base off of the OSRS meme. They took him with them, and now he's basically the party mascot, much to their son's delight.
View attachment 3953496

Fast forward to our latest session. They decided to buy him some gnome child-sized armor for extra protection and take him back down into the dungeon, because parenting is apparently not one of the party's strong suits. Mostly it was because we couldn't think of something for him to do where he could feel like he was playing a part. I included him in initiative order and when it was his turn, I just had him roll a stealth check. The roll was basically meaningless; if he rolled high, I said he was being very sneaky, and if he rolled low, I said he was screaming but the monsters were preoccupied and didn't attack him. Poor kid probably has PTSD in-game now. The party decided it would be best to leave him in the care of one of the characters' butler instead of dragging him into a monster-infested hellhole that they themselves barely managed to get away from (they were down a member).

The events got me thinking after the session. We had talked a little bit about having the child go on little mock adventures with the butler while the party was dungeon delving, which would probably amount to just telling him to roll occasionally and making up something that happened. But I don't want him to feel like he's not a part of their adventures since he really enjoys when we play together.

So, any ideas for something very basic that we as a group could walk him through, in between their dungeon dives? Something simple that a toddler could understand that gives him a little more to do than just hide in a corner.
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It's a toddler so as long as there's something fun going on in the background and he's helping I'm sure he'll be fine until there's a tantrum. Give him a magic ring or something that lets him do really specific stuff when provided with a scenario, then come up for some kind of encounter scenario that's sort of related but not really. Kind of like a dialog option in an isometric RPG or a chose your own adventure. So for example...

Party is in the room fighting orcs. Standard combat is happening for the adults but the kid is there and needs something to do. During combat you tell him this:

There is a really big orc with a skull mask on the ledge of combat sneaking up with a big rock he's going to throw at someone. No one seems to notice but you do and don't have time to warn the party. You know you can use your guardian ring to help but how? Would you like to....

A. Use it's dazzling light to blind the orc
B. Use it's teleport power to move the rock somewhere
C. Make the floor slippery so the orc trips
D. Tell the ring to do something else. Be careful, things might not go as expected!
E. Take care of it yourself without the ring... somehow?

Then whatever he decides tell him to roll the dice. If the number is low something wacky happens to make a toddler laugh, maybe to both the orc and one of the party members. If the number is high then have it do extra good and maybe the rock hits another orc for some damage. Small enough to not have a ton of effect in combat but enough to contribute. Every other fantasy movie from the 80s/90s had a toddler wondering around doing random shit to help things along so I would use that as inspiration. Probably a TVtropes article about it somewhere.

Also the ring will just teleport the kid to another plane full of good outsiders when he's tired or screaming.

From there you can start to weave an actual reason for why there's this kid and what is probably an incredibly powerful artifact into your story. I'd have the type of stuff it pulls off start to get more and more impressive to the point where the party can't ignore that it. At some point it might deflect a meteor swarm (using the same scenario format as above) or something equally recognizably dangerous.

Obviously doesn't have to be ring or even go down that path, but that's what my spergery managed to generate.
 
Good ideas. I may just stick with the "butler is saddled with keeping the kid entertained" idea, but I like the notion that he's a little ball of chaotic energy that could have some random effects. I'll keep thinking about it. And note that this isn't entirely a serious campaign anyway since it's a different party running Dungeon of the Mad Mage, albeit slowly (they still haven't reached the second floor).

Which leads me to another question: what's the best way to reveal a dungeon to your players? Right now, I'm drawing out each room individually on graph paper as they enter it so they only know what's right ahead, but this slows down the action a fair amount when I have to retrieve the map, especially if it's a small room that forces me to do it again. For a small dungeon, this wouldn't be a problem, but even one floor of this place is going to take up a 3x3 grid of graph paper sheets, so that time spent adds up quickly.

Should I finish drawing out the floor and cover up what they haven't explored yet with Post-its or something similar? It would make it go faster, but they'd also get an overall idea of the shape of the dungeon and how far they'd need to go in each direction. Or should I look into a digital solution? There's a wall behind me when I DM that I can set up a projector and plug in a tablet or something. Anything that would make this go a little faster so they can actually make a decent amount of progress in a session.
 
King Dead said:
Good ideas. I may just stick with the "butler is saddled with keeping the kid entertained" idea, but I like the notion that he's a little ball of chaotic energy that could have some random effects. I'll keep thinking about it. And note that this isn't entirely a serious campaign anyway since it's a different party running Dungeon of the Mad Mage, albeit slowly (they still haven't reached the second floor).

Which leads me to another question: what's the best way to reveal a dungeon to your players? Right now, I'm drawing out each room individually on graph paper as they enter it so they only know what's right ahead, but this slows down the action a fair amount when I have to retrieve the map, especially if it's a small room that forces me to do it again. For a small dungeon, this wouldn't be a problem, but even one floor of this place is going to take up a 3x3 grid of graph paper sheets, so that time spent adds up quickly.

Should I finish drawing out the floor and cover up what they haven't explored yet with Post-its or something similar? It would make it go faster, but they'd also get an overall idea of the shape of the dungeon and how far they'd need to go in each direction. Or should I look into a digital solution? There's a wall behind me when I DM that I can set up a projector and plug in a tablet or something. Anything that would make this go a little faster so they can actually make a decent amount of progress in a session.
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Depends on the party, depends on the system, depend on your tools.

For OST things, I tell the party they are responsible for mapping and provide graphpaper and pens, and have a public-facing sketch pad for when my words aren't clicking. But usually for OST theater of the mind, graphing and drawing aren't strictly necessary.

For everything not OST, I've been nearly 100% VTT. I use Maptool with Vision blocking. Which honestly is a little more restrictive than I'd want, and Maptool does have the ability to get around that, but its been a bad Effort vs Reward trade for me so mostly I just move a player token around a bit to reveal additional fog of war.

The few exceptions:
-4e Red Box came with a poster-map. So I'd just fold the map and move the party to that room. I'd place monsters as they entered sections.

-I did a physical map section of my current campaign to celebrate COVID ending I gave no fucks but half the party was COVID hypocondriacs; one of them also had eldery parents they would visit - I'm also not a total asshole so I just let them win that one and we just moved to zoom. I don't know why the state government saying businesses could open again magically made their parents immune to COVID but again I wasn't going to fight them on it And I rolled out the ol' Chessex Battlemat to welcome the return to face-to-face.
The entire dungeon fit on the battlemap (barely) so what I did there was pre-mark room corners (along with a few false positives to keep people from metagaming) so it was just a case of quickly connecting the dots when the party entered a new room, and I would just draw the entire room except for any closed off areas.
I also put a dungeon rule in place that said the party had to pick a room to explore, and I would murder anyone who wandered into a new area before everyone was ready.

-Previously I used Dungeon Tiles, and would just have the needed tile pieces pre-grouped and I'd just put them down as the party explored rooms.

Previously for 3.5, from my 2nd campaign on, I just declared that everyone would be burning their lvl 1 feat for "Danger Sense" that let them get the layout for every room from entering it, even the areas they couldn't see; but when they rolled perception they also knew about any enemies that didn't beat a stealth check. But that's because all my 3.5 campaigns had that One Guy who liked to powergame. If people weren't focused on min/max I would have just given it out for free.
Though for other rooms I'd just predraw and have pieces of blank paper held down by little bits of sticky tac and pull them off as needed.

Another thing you could do that I might look into more if I needed was having the rooms printed off on 8x11 (or you could get laminated graphpaper and draw on that) and pulling & placing them as needed. Maybe with post-its covering any closed off subrooms.

But in general I lean towards giving players a bigger view of the battlefield then they might otherwise have. It doesn't make that much of a difference, and it makes the game go smoother.
 
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DDBCAE CBAADCBE said:
On top of that she is a known criminal and tends to act like a total psychopath most of the time, threatening people or casting the sleep spell on others just to get out of having to explain herself among many other awful things.
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Never before has the old adage been so true.
 

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Adamska said:
They are so desperate to force Orc = black that they keep proving they're more racist than the weirdos who use funny dice and imagination to have fun.
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Thinking it over there's actually a better comparison of half-orcs to moolies than with regular orcs think about it:
Half-orc in non orc society is often seen as a reminder of something that happened in the l past such as the ol rape n pillage.
Half-orcs in orc society: usually killed for being weaker but occasionally you get a few light skins that are smart enough to dupe the others by acting extra orcish than normal and become leaders. Sound familiar?
 
Fellow GMs and DMs of Amalgamated Tolkien-inspired Gygaxian High Fantasy games everywhere...! What are some races and monsters you've put your own spins on to make them something... perhaps similar, but also their own things?

I'll offer one of my own to get things started: Kobolds! The trusty kobold has already had a couple of different forms throughout the years, but for a long time they've kind of suffered from being Notblins. Basically a goblin, just... not. Small, low-threat tribal humanoids who jump at you and fill you full of arrows and spears, maybe they have a shaman or a wizard, you know the routine. And we've already got Goblins.

So I started with the "kobolds are dragon-kin" concept that has become the norm these days. They're a created race, but created from the blood and life energy of a dragon, to serve that dragon. They didn't evolve or get created by a god. And they aren't just scaly goblins. They're long-limbed, can go on two legs or four, lean, strong, stealthy, with claws and bite attacks and a prehensile, whip-like tail. They're smart enough to use tools and speak languages, but they rarely do either... at least, not around outsiders. They can see in the dark better than almost any other race, they mostly live in caves, they can climb walls and even crawl along the ceiling, and they have elemental attacks based on the type of dragon that created them... 90% of dragons in my game are fire dragons, the other types are quite rare. So most kobolds have a molten lava bite and some of them can spit globs of magma.

The dragons can create more if they need to, but they breed on their own - most kobolds are males, and females fill a queen-like role, mostly being protected and producing more kobolds. Because they're a magically created race, they can breed without much worry about incest problems. They mature in a year, but keep getting bigger as long as they live. This means a single pregnant female kobold can replace a cleared out warren in only a few short years. Worse, from the perspective of adventurers and the everyday inhabitants of the world, they have the Jurassic Park Frog DNA issue - in the absence of any females, a male will slowly shift to female. Worse still is that when that happens, will lay a single clutch of self-fertilized eggs... Which means it doesn't even have to be a queen that survives. Merely any single kobold. If there's any upside, they're fairly short lived - male kobolds probably won't live much past twenty years, although females are another issue - like dragons, they're effectively immortal, unless killed, and like all kobolds, they keep getting bigger and stronger. This means some old kobold queens that have been alive for hundreds of years are quite smart, big enough to be mistaken for small dragons, and very much a threat in their own right if attacked.

In terms of how they fit into a fantasy ecosystem, they have a few roles. Their primary role is lair guards and general servants for dragons. They're viscous ambush predators, fairly hard to kill, are smart enough to do things like sort a dragon's treasure or guard hostages, can dig out tunnels and caves, and breed rapidly. And they are instinctively loyal to the dragon who created their bloodline - and any kobold will automatically recognize the dragon that created their bloodline. Outside of a dragon's layer, they are occasionally sent on raids to nearby settlements to steal gold and gems, ambush caravans, and all the same basic things Kobolds were used for. But more bloodthirsty and more dangerous. Because of their similar ecological niche (caves, mountains, underground areas in general) and both races being interested in the precious things found in the earth, kobolds and dwarves have a much strong animosity for each other in my world than dwarves and goblins... Dwarves are one of the few races who really understand that kobolds aren't just vicious animals, but rather very intelligent, cunning, dangerous foes.

If it isn't obvious yet, I basically turned kobolds into a high fantasy xenomorph analog.
 
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