One direction to take this conversation is to legitimize a formal ads platform and move the technology in that direction. It's not a concept that has had airtime in federated social(open source, anti-corporate and all) but it fits into the model of enthusiast communities to have a magazine that is "both articles and ads".
I’m just confused by what you are asking. Are you asking if this community is OK with you self promoting D&D related stuff you made and want to sell? If it were up to me, I would say yes within reason, no one wants this community to become one loud ad. But I’m not sure the moderator would agree and it is up to them. I don’t see a no self-promotion rule yet but maybe message them directly?
If you just want to share content you found and generally participate like normal then I am absolutely sure you are wanted here.
My question was about the community’s outlook on the presence of creators in this space - and yes, that means at least some of the stuff they’d post would be self-promotion.
I dont think that the platform should turn into just a wall of ads, all of the subreddits had sensible rules for that, like only posting once a week etc.
The instance that this community is on does not allow ads. I do not know whether self-promotions fall under that… I feel like it does? So that would mean none of us are welcome here, at least in professional capacity.
You should always follow the rules of the instance, of course. But if you want to do something that is not within the rules of the instance, you can always set up your own instance or find another instance where this is allowed. Even if a community (like a subreddit) on an instance thinks a certain, way, they can’t conflict with the instance rules.
Creators would probably have to try sharing things in a way that users would not consider it an add. But those lines would be quite blurry, without any clarification from the instance moderators.
I, myself, have very limited time availability, and I really doubt I would have enough technical knowledge to set up an instance myself. I am also already running 2 discord communities… so right now running an instance on top of that is just not an option. That leaves me I guess just to wait and see if someone else creates something like that. Risking blurring lines on instance rules, investing my time and energy into a community that will likely ban me isn’t particularly appealing either :(.
That makes a lot of sense, hosting an instance is definitely not for everyone. But from what @Stoneykins posted, it seems things like that would be allowed here. But it might be a good idea to bring this up in !lemmyworld That is the general lemmy.world community, there we can get input from the instance admins.
Well, based on the linked rules, I guess it should be fine here.
I spent a while looking for a “no ads” rule and then I figured it out.
Your home instance sh.itjust.works , where your account lives, has a rule of no ads. Lemmy.world, where this D&D community lives, does not appear to (yet) have a broad rule against advertisements.
I would still ask the mod before posting self promotion tho.
here are the only rules relevant lemmy.world I could find (from mastadon.world):
“Regarding Spam: We are not your free advertising platform. If you are here only to sell your products or services, you will be removed. Occasional posts of commercial links are OK, but when the vast majority of a user’s posts are commercial in nature, we regard the account as a Spam account. Moderators will evaluate reports of Spam on a case by case basis.”
so it seems just do it in a restrained way and don’t let it be the majority of your content and it should be ok?
I mean… thing is… On reddit i have 80k karma because of my content posts. 99% of my posts there are my content posts. That would be considered “spamming” here, even if I only post once a week.
I’d much rather spend time painting an extra battle map for the community than sit on lemmy to hit whatever quota of interaction to not be considered a spammer.
As far as I know, we don’t have user based karma here. Only posts and comments get a score. But we really should make sure that the community does not get over-run with a specific type of post. Unless the community is for that specific purpose, of course.
But I can imagine that not every instance would like to host a “share your Kickstarter project” community, as those posts will also show up for the users that like to read all local posts. Here on Lemmy.world that feed would already be a full of stuff you aren’t interested in though, but that’s my opinion and I also never used r/all or any of the other extremely broad subreddits.
We had a guy in our group who would find any and every reason to bail or show up late or leave a session early. When he would show up, he would just goes rogue (usually playing a rogue) and do his best to ruin the game for everyone else. There was a campaign a while back where I was playing a changeling and he/his PC knew. We were sneaking through a dungeon, my character changed into a goblin or whatever the enemies were to do some recon. He knew what clothes I was wearing and we had agreed on a signal. Also, most dungeon goblins aren’t wearing cool sparkly robes. He proceeded to sneak and kill my character saying “There was no way of knowing which was which”. It brought the whole good down. The DM said I could just bring the same character back, bla bla bla, but it just soured the game for me. I never understood why he acted like that, because it never seemed like he was having fun and it’s not like the rest of us were.
The other “that guy” that I know has gotten better, but he had a really bad habit of taking advantage of homebrew material and hiding or fudging stats/rules. He’d always argue that he could do this or that and would fight with the DM over how much damage he could do. It was just weird, because I never got the mindset of cheating in dnd. We’re all supposed to be playing the same game, chill out my dude.
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 tried very hard to work with that guy. I knew it was going to be tough when he would hold the party up while he investigated a pendulum trap to try and disarm it when all it needed was a pretty easy dex check to bypass it. He ended up getting killed by it and the party just left him there. Then they were in a town bringing the party cleric to the temple for a greater restoration due to some stat drain. I had the priests collect the cleric and take them to the uppermost floor. That guy followed them up despite the priests telling the party to go find something to do while they fixed the cleric. The priests told him all the way up to not anger the gods and to wait with the party. The priests at the top said turn back now or the temple itself will act. That guy walks past the priests on the stair case, i have the steps dissappear and he falls 80ft, takes max damage and dies, then complains that i gave him no warning and no chance to survive because he was out of ki. The party has my back on this. They were yelling at him the whole time to just it go. I set up a fun session where the parry is being hunted for sport. I let half the party play the hunters as well as thier own characters. They got very into it including the paladin fireballing his own character. That guy complains when his character took damage during the chase amd said he felt he was being targetted.
The last straw was getting him to DM Icewind Dale for us. He was trying to emulate my style of dming where the fights are far and few between but are incredibly dangerous. The difference is that i shower the party with magic items and give them some cannon fodder/flavourful and helpful npcs they can control to help them out. He just hits the level 1 party with a cr 4 monster that kills half the party in one hit and only went down due to two lucky crits. Then he has every single npc act like a complete dick for no reason even though we just saves the town from an incredibly dangerous creature. His last day with us he made fun of one of the other players for his dead wife.
I was tired of this guy long before everyone else was. Ive actually got one more story where he betrayed the lich they were doing some work for and expected to still be alive after the rest of party ratted him out.
I homebrewed a thing set on an alternate history future Earth where basically, there’s an alternate history divergence with Jimmy Carter not losing reelection and then the US basically turning into a demsoc utopia resulting in world peace and sustainable prosperity, and then three different races of aliens show up. At first things go well with humanity, but then there’s complications and tensions both between and within those three races, and the most advanced of the three ends up seeing humanity as a threat to them due to a bunch of other factors I introduced that would take way too long to explain and releasing a viral bioweapon that ended up killing most of humanity in the space of a year before a coalition of scientists and soldiers from all four species banded together to synthesize a cure and stop things. All of the game stuff happens well after, in the ruins of civilization, a la Fallout, but with a post-plague instead of post-nuclear aesthetic.
I have a whole novella detailing all of that lore on my Google Drive, most of which I wrote while unemployed in 2019. So you can imagine how weird 2020 was for me.
But that’s on the backburner at the moment because my group is playing through the one with Gundren Rockseeker on the Sword Coast right now, with someone else DMing, because my mental health wasn’t great in 2021 but we still wanted to play.
Currently running Dungeon of the Mad Mage after we finished Dragon Heist. We’re in level 3 and skull port in the dungeon. But the party has taken a way back to the surface of Waterdeep now to deal with their conflicts with the Xanathar guild which has escalated into all out war.
How has the transition been? I’ve played Dragon Heist, but Mad Mage is a megadungeon, right? It seems like a completely different gaming style, has your group adapted well? Do you see them finishing the megadungeon, or do you think their travel back to the surface means the campaign is going towards homebrew?
There is a lot of homebrew that I added in. I tied in NPCs from the PCs back stories. All the lose ends from the Dragon Heist adventure I’m also directing to down there such as the fleeing Skeemo Weirdbottle is making his way to skullport now. Some is already in the adventure like the Xanathar guild.
The gameplay is very different but the party said they wanted to try it and it’s a nice change of pace. But I make sure to expand some of the roleplay elements down in the dungeon to be more prominent. Overall the dungeon is pretty well designed imo so it all ends up working out well.
Currently they are back to Waterdeep to deal with the Xanathar once and for all.
I first played a druid in World of Warcraft, and the druids in DND are even better. I try to shake things up a bit by making clerics or themed druids (spore is a fun one).
Just started playing as a semi homebrew druid Golden Retriever that can “tame shape” into a human and has “speak with people” “lay hands” is now “pet me” and there’s also "healing bark’
I’m a big fan of sorcerers; it gives me a nice balance of having fun spells to use while not having to manage which ones I’ve “prepared.” My first character was a half elf draconic bloodline sorcerer, and I had a ton of fun playing him.
Even though they can be a bit one dimensional, I love playing a barbarian. The ridiculous stuff you can get away with with a high strength is just too silly to pass up.
Barbagosh, know affectionately as Barb, is an elderly Half-Elf. She seems to be gaining powers of sorcery as quickly as she is losing her marbles. She comes from a fishing village known as Jigow, where she worked in the Unbroken Tusk Inn as a baker. She prided herself on making delicious pies, and resented that Agathe, her orc colleague, held the title for best pies in the city.
Barb is thought of in Jigow as a kind old lady who is everyone’s granny. A wise lady who could help with your garden, or baking tips, a mediator between feuding neighbours, an avid reader that had lots of knowledge of the local area, and a fabulous cook that could fix any problem with food. A few months ago however, she began to change. Working in the kitchen at the Inn, Barb was baking a delicious fish pie when she was unable to find her measuring spoons. She assumed that Zorgath, a cheeky orc child, had taken them for a game. Rifling through a drawer that had been jammed closed as long as she had worked there, Barb came across a set of wooden measuring spoons that seemed deceptively light. She continued baking the pie, and using the spoons, but began to feel ill. Cold to the touch, and pale, Barb went home early, forgetting the measuring spoons in her apron pocket. Overnight, Barb continued to grow weak and unwell, waking in the morning with barely a heartbeat, and a bluish tinge to her skin. Wearing the same clothing as the day before (unheard of for the meticulously clean woman), Barb left her house to head back to work. She did not greet the neighbours with her usual ,cheery smile, and did not respond to Zorgath, running up to her with a cheeky grin, holding out her beloved spoon set. Barb went through the motions of baking her fish pies, but each one was a little off. Instead of adding baking powder to the flour, she would add sugar, instead of water to make the gravy, she poured in vinegar. When Agathe appeared to begin her shift, she was shocked to see Barb placing the pie the gently in the oven using hands that were not hers. A spectral hand had appeared, that Barb seemed to be controlling, Barb was totally unresponsive.
The following day, Barb continued on her routine as normal. Walking to work, she greeted the neighbours cheerily. She play-acted the grumpy old lady with Zorgath as she gave back the stolen measuring spoons. She walked through the door of the Unbroken Tusk Inn and picked up her baking apron, ready to start her day. Agathe questioned Barb about what she had witnessed, but the old lady was confused and told Agathe she must be imagining things. Barb remembered feeling unwell and staying home from work, how could she have possibly been doing what Agathe was claiming?
As the weeks went on, these ‘funny spells’ as Barb refers to them, became more frequent, with the magic persona taking skillful control, while the non-magic persona became increasingly vague and confused. One day, Barb woke up on the back of a Horizonback Turtle, with no clear idea of how she got there, and nothing on her person, but a bit of gold and a set of bizarre measuring spoons that she didn’t remember owning. Barb had lost all memory of who she was, where she was from, but she knew one thing- she could do with a nice cup of tea.
TL;DR- A senile, but surprisingly powerful sorcerer who loves a cup of tea.
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