I do dry-erase markers on a battlemap, I use a laptop with vimwiki on it, I also hit tabletopaudio.com and play through a little bluetooth speaker. I don’t think I really have any other tools.
Curses like eternal hunger and eternal thirst would ruin people’s lives, same for everything tasting like one thing (disgusting or otherwise). Undead food would be quite gruesome if it were to wake up after being eaten. Even right before, or during.
Wanted to play DnD for years but never really had the opportunity as I didn’t have enough friends who also wanted to play so we could get a campaign going.
We’ve got a group together last year and now manage to play about once per month.
I think I’d have still been interested in BG3 even if I didn’t have a DnD group, but I’m definitely more interested in BG3 now than I would have been because of my DnD group.
Being DM is a big responsibility, and being able to do it well is a real talent, but it’s one of those things that you can absolutely improve on with practice.
Players have to take some responsibility too, by getting a grip on the core rules and mechanics, dedicating time to fleshing out their characters, and committing to the role itself. They can’t rely on the DM for absolutely everything.
There are some one-shot campaigns out there which I hear are designed for beginners which would be a good place to start. In fact I’m pretty sure if you make a DnD Beyond account, you get the basic rules and a beginner campaign for free, so that would be a good resource for you.
Also, if you haven’t seen it, go check out Critical Role, starting with campaign 1. Matt Mercer is an outstanding DM and will give you a great demonstration of how to run a campaign.
I’m in the same boat. A bunch of friends are interested, too but none of us trust themselves to be DM or has the necessary time to prep campaigns. Hence BG3 is our only option.
It’s a one-shot campaign, pretty much ready to go, to the point that I think it’s even got pre-rolled characters included.
Very little set-up required beyond the DM familiarising themself with the campaign itself, and the players reviewing their chosen character and brushing up on the core rules of the game so that they know how to actually play.
Beyond that, pretty much everything else is already taken care of, so far as I know (I’ve never played it, but I know it’s a firm favourite for beginners for these very reasons).
And as for DM experience, someone who is willing to put in the work kinda just has to bite the bullet and go for it. It’s a skill like anything else, and you only get better through practice. Start with pre-written campaigns to help keep the amount of prep required and wildly unexpected events that require lots of improv on the DM’s part to a minimum. Branch out from there into more homebrew stuff when you’re feeling ready.
Above all though, just give it a shot and see what happens. There will always be reasons not to play, but if you’ve got a group who are willing to give it a go then you’ve already overcome the biggest hurdle by far.
@DoctorTYVM
I did this last month with an idiot shiftless Hieracosphinx reluctantly guarding a treasure, and just had him ask the dumbest possible riddles in the most pompous and self-satisfied tone:
“Why did the chicken cross the road?” To get to the other side.
“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” The egg. But he will argue.
“What is the difference between a duck?” One of its legs are both the same.
“What's got two wings and is going to eat you?” Point at the sky behind him and shout “That thing?!”
Lots of great tips here, but one that works pretty well for my group, is to think of myself less as an actor playing a character, and more like a narrator. Which is to say, I’ll often describe the actions and/or thought process of my character before saying what I think they’ll say (in my normal voice).
This is easiest for mages since cantrips like Prestidigitation become powerful roleplaying tools, but even something like holding a Fire Bolt in the air over the person you’re trying to intimidate can have an interesting affect on the mood of the scene.
Your comment made me realise that this was a key part of my development as a roleplayer - I played a Kenku for a small campaign and I had decided to lean into the mimicry aspect of Kenkus and build myself a phrasebook over the course of the campaign.
This meant that there were many times that I wanted to say something, but the words I had at my disposal either weren’t quite right or not there at all. If I wanted to express my character properly, I needed to describe body language and actions more.
I’m still a pretty new player, but I’m fairly certain that in my group’s second combat encounter, our DM saw that we were going to struggle, so a few rounds before he thought we’d die, he started hinting that people on the street were hearing us. He didn’t play around with his rolls at all, which meant us getting hit by some very powerful (even permanently crippling) critical hits, and some of us rolling awfully on his critical miss table. As we started to go down, one by one, the door was getting battered, and when the crew was down to 1 member alive, the city guard arrived and intervened, scaring the remaining mobs and healing up the three of us on the floor.
To me, it meant that he cared about the dice rolls and wanted consequences and actions to feel real, but also he didn’t want our journey to end on the first night. But he didn’t make the entire encounter feel like a victory, and our characters had to deal with the repercussions of that encounter.
Sometimes that’s what it takes for new players to really feel and understand the consequences of their actions. Combat might not always be the best solution and escaping a battle is always on the table.
Long time DM currently running Curse of Strahd for my group. I think I’m in the minority but I actually publicly roll everything. I use Foundry and let my players see all of my results. I also insist on seeing all of theirs. I find it actually kind of fun.
I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying it shouldn't be done.
We just saw lemmy.world collapse in ruin from a hack, for example. It came back quickly, but if it hadn't and all of the TTRPG communities had been there it would have been quite a mess to recover from.
I think it's ok to have themed instances. People are still free to create communities on other ones, even if they're similar topics. No one is saying ALL ttrpg has to be ONLY one roof. I help admin an instance that's devoted only to sci-fi and fantasy communities (any media) but only those themes. Some of the communities we have also exist elsewhere and that's the great thing about the fediverse.
No one is saying ALL ttrpg has to be ONLY one roof.
That was what I interpreted dumbles' objection to be, he didn't like that these communities weren't on TTRPG.network.
To be clear, I'm not opposed to "themed" instances. I just don't think it's bad to have communities scattered around on other instances as well as that.
people are free to go to these places and make their own communities. It wont be me as I am here on .world and as stated above !dnd has been on .world before ttrpg network existed
that's what I ended up doing, searching via kbin magazine search. Weird. I'd like to see the entre instance in case there are other communities not shown here.
Yeah, not sure I want ALL of them for subscriptions, I just wanted to see what else they had in case I did want to subscribe. I'm sure it will be back up eventually and I can go check.
One way I’ve done swarms in the past is treating the swarm as an amorphous blob of things. At the end of the round, anyone in a space covered by the swarm takes a certain amount of damage.
Alternatively, if they’re more annoying than dangerous, anyone that takes an action in a swarm space rolls with disadvantage.
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