I’ve always had a lot of respect for people who paint as a hobby. I know I don’t have the patience or skill to do art, so I’m always flabbergasted by what people can make. Great work, and thanks for posting it here!
I find GPT is very good at saying obvious things, but not so good at throwing the curveballs that you want from a DM. Did anything in the adventure surprise you in particular?
Nothing in it leads me to believe it could fully replace a human DM in its current state, but if it was trained specifically on every dnd module, rulebook, fan content, fantasy books and movie scripts, then possibly.
In my opinion that’s what we do. Every homebrew adventure is the product of our combined knowledge of the system and the genre. We use some things designed by others (if you use a creature from a monster manual for example, or run a module), we create our own things. But the things we create still depend on things we have learned. We’re just organic AIs with a slower and less reliable training process lol
I used it to run an impromptu one-shot for some friends. It created the outline, the story hook, NPCs, encounters, traps, treasures and the big boss at the end. I had to tweak stuff and all the combat rolls were made with real dice, but overall it was fun and I said I co-DM’d that night.
It also creates and runs interactive fiction stories. I told it I wanted to play a game like zork with it lol and it wasn’t exactly zork, but it was actually more fun and flexible than zork could have been.
Yeah. It’s not going to replace a human who can read the room and respond to how the players act and feel any time soon, but I’ve used it to help flesh out some NPCs, because I’m pretty weak on that point.
I totally agree. But I know I had a folder of bookmarks with all sorts of tools for making NPCs, locations, enemies, names for stuff, treasures, and so on. Now ChatGPT does all that for me. I found ChatGPT is a great tool to inspire personal creativity, too. When I tell it to invent puzzles, they are kinda meh by themselves but inspires me to put something more cohesive together.
Eventually, sooner than you might think, I can see an AI with cameras around the room, so it can see the players’ faces. It will be able to identify common emotional faces and can improvise accordingly. Honestly, I predict there will be live streams of a bunch of humans sitting around a table that is being run by the AI dungeon master.
The tabletop is one of those big digital screen ones, and the the fights are animated as they play. I would totally watch that haha. Maybe at some point it can generate movies based on the game session. I know we’ve all had some epic game moments that would be awesome movie scenes.
It will be hard to convince me to let an AI run a game for me by reading my facial expressions, but I will allow that A) they’d probably do fine as supplementary players, and B) if AI is eventually able to generate short movies based on session recordings, that would be outstanding.
When running a module don’t be afraid to tell the players that they should expect things to happen within the confines of the module. That’s not railroading, that is just playing a cohesive game. I find that many new DMs are so afraid of railroading that they overcompensate into the other extreme. Then that adventure becomes an incoherent mess which also isn’t fun.
As for Dragon Heist which I have run recently I got a few tips: You can run it as is which imo is absolutely fine and I did that. There is also the “Alexandrian Remix” which expands the module fairly short module to a huge campaign adventure. I personally don’t think you should do that as a first timer but it’s still useful to know it exists.
From here on very major spoilers. Players of the module don’t read further.
Before session 1 what I did was give all players the Waterdeep Enchiridion to use as player knowledge if they want to. 2/4 players red most of it. You as the GM should read chapters 1 to 3 and the Enchiridion fully, plus the major NPCs. Chapter 4 only makes sense once you figured out which villians to run. I selected 2 villians to have appear. Imo more is too much to keep track of for the players in this context and they already felt overwhelmed at times. I used the Casselanters as main villians and the Xanathar guild as further Antagonists. Then I had the Zhentarim and Jarlaxle only slightly involved in the background and as a faction in chapter 2.
Chapter 1 is fairly linear. Bar fight, troll comes up (I changed the troll to a devil to hint at infernal activities by the casselanters). Quest by volo to investigate. Absolutely use Old Xoblobs shop, it is very fun. Investigations in the Skewered, encounter in the streets. This is where I’d level up the party to level 2. The encounter in the warehouse with the Kenku is pretty deadly otherwise. And the Xanathar hideout even more so. This is the biggest balancing flaw in the whole adventure imo.
Capter 2 starts once they got the tavern. I leveled them up to 3 at this point for 2 reasons. First so I can run more faction missions in this chapter so the fireball chapter doesnt get diluted as much. Secondly because it felt like the correct timing. This chapter is the open sandbox part. Stay here as long as it is fun. Let them get to know the neighbors, decide weather you want the competitor guy interfere with the tavern, how far you want to take the management part, or if you let them higher a manager etc. The ghost can be fun too. There is a fantastic DMs guild resource with fully fledged out faction quests for chapter 2 which I used. This is where my players did a ton of cool shit. They made friends with the Zhents and Black Viper, Once this stops being fun throw the fireball.
Chapter 3 can be mostly run as is imo. You might need to hint less subtly at how to find the construct. I didnt like the part with the detection device so I had the group follow some other clues. Also I had Floxin in liege with the Casselanters because I removed Manshoon.
Chapter 4 against all advice I ran exactly as is with the chase rules from the DMG, it wasn’t even 2 sessions of 3h each long. But that was the most fun part of the adventure for me. The players got the stone but had no idea who the villian was yet. So they ended up handing the Stone to the Casselanters asking for 10% of the treasure which they did get (50k gold is nothing to sneeze at).
Chapter 5 the players Casselanters were invited to the Founders Day Festivities where the sacrifice was to take place. I took some inspiration from the book but mostly made up the exact events as it fit to what happened so far.
Dragon Heist is the most fun I had running a 5th edition module so far. So I hope you enjoy it as well and I was able to help a bit with your preparations.
Wow! Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. I actually bought the Alexandrian Remix and ended up getting more intimidated than I was before, so it’s comforting to know that it might be too much.
I’ve been on the fence between running Xanathar or the Casselanters as the villain and I think you might have pushed me towards the Casselanters. I really like the story flavor that you described. Also, the sheer amount of villains/factions have been bogging me down quite a bit and it’s nice to know that I don’t need to deal with all of them. That seemed way too cumbersome.
Either way, I really appreciate the advice. Thanks!
From the remix just grab what you like and leave what you don’t need. Same for the main adventure. Or any module you will ever DM. It’s your game and your player’s game, so you decide what happens and what it’s about.
As for the potential allied factions I did look at what my PCs were likely to flock to. Then I had those factions contact them. They ended up allied with the gauntlet and Savra Belebranta is a major recurring NPC. They Grey Hand and Force Grey with Meloon and the Blackstaff is another factions the players love. One of the shadier PCs is allied with Davil Starsong and the Zhents. But the others didn’t make sense for my party like the Emerald Enclave for example. So I left them out.
The Casselanters have the most interesting story. But it gets dark quickly and the moral dilemma might not be for every group.
The Xanathar is super iconic and a great straight up villian. We will end up fighting him soon now in Dungeon of the Mad Mage.
Jarlaxle is absolutely amazing and likely the most fun villian. Him being fun depends on using his cover identities in fun ways and good roleplay and planning from the GM. He is also vastly overpowered. So there is little chance in the PCs taking him head on.
I found Manshoon not very fleshed out or interesting. So Idk.
You can also switch villians later. If after chapter 2 for instance the player for some reason really have grown to hate the Xanathar even though you planned on using someone else, you can simply change the villian as nothing is set in stone at that time. Also the seasons don’t really matter too much. Don’t worry about those too much.
I'd like to add the OGL they were pushing would have effectively allowed them to steal homebrew and 3rd party content. They'd reserve the right to resell this content as their own or make it disappear altogether.
This would include supplements and adventures, of course, but the way it was worded, it would even include blogs and YouTube videos, etc.
Of course this isn't a unique situation (Meta has done this forever, for example)
I'd get the fourth sword, then I'd take a regular dagger, and cut open a pregnant cow or cat or dog or something. I'd then slay all the kittens or calves or puppies with my new sword. Since the animals are not born yet, they would have an age of less than 0. When we add their negative age to mine, I'd become weeks or even months younger per kill! With this I will have everlasting youth!
Am I really so strange? There are tales as old as time itself where powerful people seek everlasting life, and they are willing to commit far worse atrocities to reach their goals. For me the price is merely the lives of a few barnyard animals, common livestock that would have died for the goals of man anyway! This is no different than you eating a meal.
Is the amount of food that would barely feed a small army really such a high price to pay for a longer healthier life? I think not!
Nah, I'm completely fine. I was only trying to find a way to get the most benefit from the four choices given in the post. We don't live in a world with magic, so I don't see myself ever doing anything like that.
Impressive, you had a more evil response than mine!
I feel like the chances of you getting a drunk or some sort of criminal who decides to kill you all the way with the sword and take all of your gold while not knowing what the sword does would eventually end up killing you, though. It's even possible that there's nothing nefarious behind it too, they just happen to stab you in the right way where you end up bleeding out or something.
Or maybe, some poor men's wives would appear and hunt you down. Angry that you somehow stole something from them when they already had nothing. After stealing their husbands' youths, they're now out for blood! I dunno, haha.
He didn’t last long, because my party murdered him, but I had a cleric of the goddess of luck that would challenge people in the tavern to dice games (which he couldn’t lose), to raise funds for his temple. My barbarian spent like an hour trying to beat him before he realized what was going on
@Infynis@jossbo Another Luck Cleric! Mine was basically Friar Tuck. He was always drunk (a lucky drunk) and searched every couch for loose change that he would give to the needy. I built him with a level dip into Barbarian so he could wear robes and occasionally “lose his temper”. I would love to get to play him again someday.
I had a blast watching the first episode. There’s something so satisfying about watching new players playing D&D and get engrossed in the story like they did. The queens are such fun to watch. It helped introduce D&D (and Brennan Lee Mulligan) to my friends. They didn’t even notice the episode was 2 hours long!
A pigeon aarakocra, who is a very caring matronly figure. The voice I chose for her is very light and airy and uses a lot of pigeon coos. It’s always a blast to voice her and hear the players’ amusement.
My favorite npc I ever ran was in a homebrew spelljammer campaign a few years ago, the foible for the party was a beholder pirate captain named eye-beard who would constantly one-up or outmaneuver the party. Also let me talk like a pirate. After they killed him he later came back as a death tyrant
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