The Chaotic Good DM

Dungeons and Dragons & some sweet, sweet podcasts. Send me D&D related asks!

[chaoticgooddm]

Anyone have any fun ideas for traps/obstacles/etc. in a paranoid rich guy's house? I've only done this sort of thing for low level parties, but now my party is mid level, so things can get way more exciting than the standard animated objects/trapped safe/trick stair sort of deal.

[chaoticgooddm]

What's your favorite plot twist you've pulled on the party?

Honestly, I don't pull too many twists on my party, since a lot of our sessions are more goofing around and having a good time, but I did do a little murder mystery once. It really wasn't intended to be too much of a twist. It was (at least what I thought of) as a pretty straight forward mystery. The murderer was acting shady as all hell and the other suspects were a little cagey at worst but my players really got got by the reveal of who did it.

There is a twist I'm looking forward too related to a character's backstory that the rest of the party doesn't know about and I don't want to say too much about, but it may or may not rhyme with 'secret doppelganger.'

[chaoticgooddm]

My campaign had to go on hiatus because everyone had a good bit of school/life stuff going on and in that time I've had a ton of time to prepare, however, with our first session in over a month I do NOT feel ready in the slightest oh boy

[chaoticgooddm]

I was chatting with a friend about my D&D campaign and I realized... we are so far from where my planning for the campaign started out. I love that and my players seem to be having a good time, but it's kinda becoming a political intrigue with a lot of breaking and entering when it started out as epic fantasy quest with mystery undertones.

[chaoticgooddm]

Next puzzle is going in a goddamn anti-magic field.

[chaoticgooddm]

So D&D finally worked out, however, the session was severely derailed by the spell 'Jim's Magic Missile.' Like it sounds so fake but it's a real spell?? Like it's on the forgotten realms wiki??? whaaaaat the hell???

[the-cool-shit-was-already-taken]

-Infernal Eminence-

[chaoticgooddm]

Thought it'd be a great weekend to ask the party if they'd be free to hop on a discord call for a while and play some D&D until I realized that I would be dogsitting for one of my players and that likely was related to their availability.

[chaoticgooddm]

I'm getting ready to fight god so I don't have to deal with any more scheduling conflicts.

[chaoticgooddm]

I have been smote by god with more scheduling conflicts. We were so close!!

[chaoticgooddm]

I'm getting ready to fight god so I don't have to deal with any more scheduling conflicts.

[chaoticgooddm]

So... I mentioned a couple weeks back that there was a possibility that my players would infiltrate a cult. And, I mean, they did, but they didn't actually realize that the cult was a cult and now they're joining!

The best metaphor I can use to describe what this is going to do to the campaign is that they started out driving down a road that was sometimes a little bit bumpy and with a couple of pot holes (campaign as planned) and then they took a little detour onto a dirt road (just a lil side quest) and now they're straight up flooring it into the woods (uhhhh looks like I have a lot to prep this week)

[chaoticgooddm]

as an aspiring d&d player, what is the best strategy for finding a group to play with? I have no like- Nerds Of [City] group or anything around here where I could find other people who like to play and my college is an ag college bc my family went here so I should too or whatever. I really enjoy listening to D&D podcasts and I made a character I'd really like to use but I just don't know of anyone who likes D&D around here :/

If you're open to playing online, there are a whole bunch of ways you can find a group to play with. Since you're into D&D podcasts, I'd recommend joining their discords and often times they'll have a way that you can post looking for a group or saying you'd like to join that group.

If you're definitely thinking of doing it in person, I'd say to get some friends into D&D podcasts and if they like it, maybe see if you could form a group from there.

Best of luck! Finding a group can be tough, so I hope your search goes well.

[chaoticgooddm]

Hey! Any tips on making individuals of an antagonist group more interesting? A little context, my big bad group is a cult who are devoted to a deity of self-improvement and there are 5 pillars related to each party member in some way. 4/5 of these pillar people are pretty much blank slates and these are the ones I want to make interesting

Something major you can ask yourself is why _______. You can fill in that blank with all sorts of stuff, like 'why are they apart of this group?' or 'why do they represent this particular pillar?' From there, you can take those answers and start to formulate a little bit more about who they are and how they see and interact with the world. Hope that helps!

[chaoticgooddm]

So next week's session can go one of two ways:

1. A solo adventure where the party's monk literally murders a dude (to be fair he's kind of the worst)

2. The gang infiltrates a cult!

[chaoticgooddm]

My players really want to go to an artisan cheese shop for some reason?? So if anyone has any ideas about fantasy cheeses, that'd be great

[chaoticgooddm]

Thank you everyone who contributed cheese ideas. To update y'all on how it went: first, they totally forgot about how they wanted to find a cheese shop the next session, but they randomly stumbled across it. I thought way too much about the cheese and forgot to actually come up with anything about the shopkeeper, so on the spot, I came up with Daven the Cheese Man who has big Garfield the Deals Warlock energy. It went great and now the Bag of Holding is majority cheese and crackers.

[chaoticgooddm]

The fishing mechanic that I've been using in my game has actually turned out to be pretty fun. First, the player makes a DC 10 animal handling check and if they pass that check, they then make a strength check to see if they're able to pull in the fish. But the DC of the strength check changes depending on the animal check, so for every 2 points that roll is above the initial DC, the strength check increases by one. (animal handling of 10=DC 10 strength check, animal handling 12=DC 11 strength check and so on) Though do be warned, this may turn your game into an extended fishing mini-game if no plot elements intervene.

[chaoticgooddm]

The conflict between me wanting to draw my friends D&D characters and my inability to draw humanoid creatures is way too intense. I really want to, but I know that I would be trapped in continuously fixing it because I know there’s something just a little bit wonky about those proportions.