#dm notes

[theslaywrights]

"I cast Create Water in his lungs!" "I cast Fabricate to make a nail out of his hemoglobin!" "I cast Plant Growth on the sunflower seeds he ate earlier!"

These are all garbage, tired takes, used extensively by Tiktok creators wanting to get views and the uncreative nerds that watch them. And I say this as someone who *absolutely* loves unorthodox spell and item use. Yeah, there's nothing in the rules that say you *can't* do it, but I feel that, more often than not, it ruins the narrative and tone of the scene, not to mention the mechanics of whatever encounter you're in. So, how do you stop it from happening?

The most obvious and easy answer is communicate with players and say that it's off limits, or go so far as to say "If I let you do it, then we establish that it's a thing that can be done and enemies are going to do it to you." That stops most, but some players love to push things to see how far it can go, and then it turns into a game of Unethical Wizard Rocket Tag where martial characters hide behind a rock while spellcasters invent new and horrible uses for Message that somehow explode brains.

Thus, I would like to present a homebrew I like to use. No new rules, but rather putting rules in context that give DMs a reason to say no to using spells intended for objects on people apart from "because I said so": The biological concept of homeostasis.

For those that didn't pay attention in high school biology or forgot: homeostasis is the state of a living organism where all of its regulatory systems and internal gooshy bits are balanced with each other. A living body is never doing nothing, but all the stuff it *does* do balance out to a place where all those systems can keep working as best they can. Further, if that equilibrium is disrupted, the body will do what it can to fix it and return to that state of neutral homeostasis, be in healing a wound, fighting infection, regulating a mental state, all that stuff. Kind of like a gyro; if it's not moving at all, you can turn it and rotate it or whatever, but if it's spinning, suddenly it becomes much harder to manipulate, and always seems to want to go back to how it was.

So what does this have to do with Unethical Wizard Rocket Tag? Apply the same concept to magic and a soul. When you use a spell on a rock, there's nothing resisting the spell other than physics. It doesn't take much effort to start to do something. On the other hand, a soul has a concept of "self", knowing what it is physically and magically, and that self includes the area immediately inside and around its corporeal form, which is why anything that targets a creature usually also affects its equipment in a similar fashion, like Enlarge/Reduce or Polymorph. It's that continuing sense of self that pushes back and resists a spell.

If you think of a spell slot as a set amount of energy to put into a spell, and then compare spells of a similar level against each other, then you'll notice a trend: spells that don't target creatures tend to have much larger overall effects than those that do. That's because, in order to affect a creature, you have to put a portion of a spell slot's energy into overcoming the creature's soul homeostasis. Too little and you don't break through, too much and the spell doesn't have enough energy to do what it actually needs to do. Objects don't have a soul, so all that spell slot energy can go into the effect. For sake of the argument, constructs like golems and whatnot have an artifical homeostasis brought about by the animating magic, so it applies to them, too.

Importantly, the sense of self extends to the area inside a creature, too, as well as, for the most part, equipment. So Create Water, while it could theoretically spawn water in someone's lungs, the soul considers the space in its lungs to be a part of itself and resists, and since that spell was not designed with creatures in mind, resisting it is trivial. Same with Plant Growth; the inside of the stomach is still, according to the soul, a part of itself, even if it is topographically outside the body.

So yeah, a neat, in-universe explanation to head off degenerate spell usage logic. Again, it would be easier to just communicate with players, but even the best of communication can break down from time to time, and so this is here to be a worldbuilding net.

[chupacabren]

i have a note on a private discord chat that says “Triton with gun”. i never did anything with it :( 

[generic-cleric]

Notes on Jander Sunstar

Here is what I put together when trying to fill in Jander Sunstar’s life between the end of Vampire of the Mists up to the point in which he meets my party! 

- I tried my best to incorporate Jander’s history across all editions into my game’s canon, though there are some areas I homebrewed. My partner and I also collaborated and made his stat block because I didn’t feel that the Vampire stat block reflected his capabilities very well. My lore also has changes to his backstory in regards to Descent into Avernus, but that isn’t super relevant here so I’ll skip that bit.

- After the events in the VotM novel Jander was taken by the Mists before he could be fully destroyed and was forced to reform in the misty borders between domains where all the horrorterrors and mistbeast lurk. For almost 200 years!

- Due to the extreme radiant damage his left arm suffered while wielding a holy weapon against Strahd, his arm never fully reformed. He now keeps his injured arm bandaged up. It’s still sensitive and causes him pain every once in a while.

- While reforming in the Mists, some evil entity stole one of his fangs, his long term goal is to get it back. (a post-campaign adventure)

- He still suffers from his Black Thumb curse where plants whither at his touch, so he wears gloves. 

- He was ejected from the Mists in a dreadplane called Forlorn where he was rescued by a group of monster hunters calling themselves The Van Richten Society. They either travel alone or in very small groups, constantly meeting up and parting ways… like ships in the night. 

- He is taken into their team and networks and befriends a multitude of other members of the society across the planes.

- Some members include Van Richten (who did not name the group, believe it or not), His wife Ingrid, Ez, Pavel (current incarnation of Tatyana, and many, many more)

- Jander helped Van Richten write Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires and was not credited.

- He grows romantically close with Pavel

- While in Mordent Pavel falls in battle. Jander gets tangled up in The Apparatus when trying to save them, a machine which is said to be capable of separating the soul from a living body, translocating souls from one body to another, and otherwise manipulating the substance and energy of spirits both living and undead.

- When the contraption was used, Pavel was lost and aspects of Jander were cloned into their own beings, so now there are different manifestations of him running around the dreadplanes.

- One of these manifestations is Savra, the child he’d love to have with the person of his dreams (Pavel/Tatyana) exceeeept Savra the already terrible teenaged Dhampir is like him in all the worst ways. She/They is hot-tempered, hot-headed, and angry. Jander regards Savra as his child rather than a clone.

- Savra Joins the Van Richten Society and the younger generation create the sub group New Dawn. This includes Savra, The Weathermay-Foxgrove twins, Erasmus van Richten, and Ez.and probably more I’m forgetting about.

- Pretty sure Savra has a huge crush on Ez, a huge respect for Boomer van Richten, and a burning hatred for Jander.

- Another post session adventure I want to do involves the party helping him hunt down his different aspects and eliminating them all, except Savra.

- Jander decides to make his way to Barovia after eventually hearing Strahd is still around

- Jander’s disguise is Rathandal, a sickly elven man cursed to rot alive. Ideally, he doesn't want Strahd to know he's in Barovia, but also doesn't want to be mistaken for the Morninglord Lathander. (Something that happened in the novel which kick-started the religion in Barovia. It's still going strong and even led to the formation of a secret vampire hunter's guild)

- He catches a ride with Arabelle’s caravan and rolls through Barovia, stopping in the Vallaki encampment.

- He sneaks into the town to do carpentry and woodworking to earn meager coins to pay Kasimir to stay in one of the hovels while he gathers information and plans his next moves.

- One day while the party was in Vallaki, the Paladin of the party went to investigate the woods outside of town. There he found Rathandal frantically trying to free a hurt child from some thorny vines. 

And that’s where he met the party like… forever ago. They “saved him” from getting harassed by Izek The Biggest Meanest Guard. They were hurt when they found out he lied to them about being undead, and that’s how Jander found out he had friends! He’s been with the party since and they won't let him leave. 

Jander is a jaded grump who softens into a romantic. The party usually has to pry for his personal information, or beg when they have outlandish requests, and he usually doesn’t humor them. He is happy to share with them anything that might help them fight monsters, particularly vampires. He loves gardening, writing poetry, woodworking, playing his flute, or drawing/painting.

- Bonus: Savra is also in Barovia now, has tried to kill Jander at least once, and has now been hired by Strahd to hunt down Jander and trap him in a Crypt in the castle. Jander will never deal lethal damage to Savra.

There’s sooo much more I’d love to talk about, but I wanted to keep this one just about this chunk of backstory!

[msmoonicorn]

220929 D&D

I thought, I'm really not doing much with this tumblr. So why not post some of the D&D stuff that happened tonight.

I run D&D sessions at the game store where I work. I used to do this about 4 times a week, but now I only have to run D&D 3 times a week :3 at most.

Tonight, I had most of my regulars at the table. We try to do nightly one-shots, but there can be background campaign stuffs happening or stuff that lets the players have a sense of imprint or time and place. My usuals are my boyfriend who plays a female High Elf Monk/Wizard named Thia, a white male dragonborn cleric named Blue, a female gnome ranger/monk named Jinxie, a half elf male sorcerer named Dubstin, a male human paladin named Thurston, a female halfling monk named Dell, and a male dwarf fighter named Mystic. Blue wasn't here tonight, but we had Django, the male human rogue in his place.

The family (Thurston, Jinxie, and Dubston, who are a dad, mom, and son respectively) had been absent for about 3 weeks, and they're going to be missing for a little while after tonight. So, I wanted something...different for tonight.

I told the crew that they're often going off to do a lot of things that felt a little like monster of the week-ish. So, I was going to kick off the night by letting them have a "bottle episode" of sorts, where they can stay home and work on skills and forming bonds with NPCs or their animal companions, or maybe letting them improve their skills and such.

So every sets about what their characters want to do in their down time. They go through it bit by bit. I get through about half of the players' requests and I have one of their local NPC friends knock on the door. It's Giles form Giles Mercantile. He's knocking on the door to remind them that he's down the road and if they need anything, he's here. It's not like there's anyone in town, so his stock is not exactly being used. So...he's in a state of limbo (Oh, yeah, the town they live nearby is mostly burnt down, except for the mercantile--another story).

He leaves, and I go through the rest of the group. When I feel like the entire party has been seen to, I describe a sound that's like a thundercrack in their backyard. A brilliant flash of light flashing after the sound. Everyone rushes to the back yard. There's a hill in the distance, and upon that hill sits a large glowing tree. At least, that's usually what's up there. The tree has been chopped down. A single slice right through it. (Oh yeah...there's a tree in the back yard that's a portal to the feywild. It was a gift from a fey lord...it's regular). The group ascertain that the slice is clean, but it left behind singe marks. It almost looks like lightning burns if it weren't so cleanly cut. They also find tracks leading away from the tree....but the tracks are strange. They're misshapen and whatever this creature is, it doesn't carry its weight on its heel.

They make it through the back of the property, they find a woman in complete cover. She's wearing a mask that only leaves her eyes exposed and a heavy cowl. Every part of her is covered, except for her eyes, and there's a staff on her back. They fight her, though some try to talk to her. Thia, being a dhampir, uses her bite attack and she notices something strange about this one's blood. It's similar to someone else in the way her body reacts to it, but it's also different. She asks which deity the woman serves, and the woman says, "Herassi." But she doesn't seem eager to tell them more. Django casts burning hands on her, and she wails in pain as her whole body is consumed and all that's left behind is sand.

Jinxie is quite traumatized by this. The woman didn't get the chance to fight back (she rolled a super low initiative, and she was vulnerable to magical attacks). She takes the majority of the sand and takes it back to her forge where she manages to make glass out of the sand. She tries her hardest, and manages to make a type of urn out of the sand-glass. Meanwhile, the dwarf inspects it by licking it. He doesn't learn much, but he can taste heavy concentrations of salt and iron in the sand.

Jinxie wishes that they could get more answers about this. Thia casts Speak with the Dead on the urn which serves as the woman's remains. They have three questions. Did you chop down the tree? and What or who is Herassi? are the first two. To the first, she says "Yes." confirming that she chopped down the tree. To the second she responds, "Light of the Path.". The final question was, Why did you chop down our tree? and she responded, "To close the portal." Dubsten debates on whether or not he wants to pee in Jinxie's urn.

That's the majority of the day. Everyone takes a long rest, and Jinxie wakes up needing to connect to her gods. Jinxie has several gods, and she's set up a sort of 'Mind Palace' place which looks like a smaller version of a stone henge style garden. The gods try to reassure her that she was not responsible. She goes into town to speak to the Widow Taffy. Taffy consoles her and gives her a sap to spread on the tree. She says, it might not be in their lifetime, but the sap will encourage regrowth in the tree. Jinxie goes back home with the sap, heading straight to the tree.... and the tree is whole.

Meanwhile, Mystic tried to track out to the area where the woman was last seen. He wants to see if there are tracks on the other side of the fence. He eventually noticed that there were not tracks whatsoever. As though no one had been here at all.

And Jinxie is elated. She rushes back to tell everyone about the tree. The others assume that her gods did something to restore the tree. She shrugs and assumes that that's probably what happened. Mystic rejoins the group, and after messing with him for a minute, he finally tells the group about the missing tracks. Django, having made contact with the goddess of death, asks his goddess who the person he killed yesterday was. She said, "You didn't kill anyone yesterday." He thinks about that for a moment and announces to the group, "Oh! She wasn't a person!" they all nod. That must be it.

They're a little more vigilant now, and that's when Thia spots someone moving at the back of the property. She gets her house manager, Madalyn, to wing-shot him. The party rushes out to find a man doffing an invisibility cloak (which gets stolen and re-stolen and then returned). This is a man named Alan. He moves through the wilderness between the dwarven kingdoms of Razindu and H'rok Undor. He gets claustrophobic in their deep roads, and he uses the invisibility cloak to keep predators off him. Some well-rolled insight checks tell the party that he's being truthful. He didn't know anyone had taken the property again, so his is a crime of ignorance. They heal him and see him back to their home. They work out a deal, securing some goods and merchants from the dwarven kingdoms.

Then there's a knock at the door.

It's Giles form Giles Mercantile. He's knocking on the door to remind them that he's down the road and if they need anything, he's here.

...

"Geeze, Giles. What's the deal? Why are you repeating yourself?" Thurston complained. "You did the same thing yesterday."

Giles turns to look at him, perplexed before saying, "What are you talking about? This is the first time I've come to visit you guys."

That's when everyone realizes.... that something's...not...right. They ask him a few questions, and he leaves feeling confused.

And then I describe a sound that's like a thundercrack in their backyard. A brilliant flash of light flashing after the sound. They all rush out back, but not to the tree. They rush to the spot they know the woman will be at. They actually talk to her, one of them successfully casting charm person on her. She tells him that she will continue to chop the tree until none of her slivers are left. With nothing else left, they attack and kill her (again), and she dissolves into sand. Jinxie makes another vase.

They know that they're in some sort of time loop, and they aren't certain if they've escaped it.

The next day, they wake up and the tree is whole. Thia goes to find more of her capable NPC friends, recruiting them for the battle. She joins the rest of the party as they camp out by the tree. Madalyn, also having noticed what's going on, brings the group food and water while they wait. In the afternoon, they hear a bzzzztht! followed by an 'OOOW!', and Madalyn rushes by, only to rush back, dragging a slightly wounded Alan in tow.

The the woman appears. She pulls out her staff, and an arc of lightning buzzes out from the end of it, turning it into a wicked looking scythe. They all take turns attacking her, realizing that magical attacks are hurting her more. Still, hitting her feels like punching a sandbag. She's splitting herself into more pieces, and this division is taking its toll. Finally she falls, and Thia picks up her staff. There's a strange charm on it, more visible now that the light-arc of the lightning blade is gone. It's a bronze doe with a single diamond in its forehead.

They find out that the bronze doe is a symbol for the goddess Tzafanya. The goddess of History, Time, and Memory....

....and that's the story of how my players spent the entire night at home living through their own version of groundhog day :D

[orcblogging]

the rush you feel when you can combine two pc storylines is like nothing else i stg

[dungeons-and-danis]

How I Prepare For Major Arcs & Organize My DM Notes, As Well As Just General Narrative Advice!

So, I got a question quite a while back to try out this neat little trend of displaying and explaining away how I prepare for a session, as well as show how i organize and utilize my notes as a DM. I’m going to be using my upcoming, work-in-progress arc, “Nightingale”, as a visual reference throughout the post. 

So, I know i’ve released my DM’s notes on worldanvil before, but I gotta admit that the platform I most like to use for notes and plot setup is always OneNote, which I have for free via my college. It’s versatile, organized, and easy to navigate on any platform (even my phone!). So if you can get your hands on it, I highly recommend it.

PART ONE -- THE MAIN PAGE OF CENTRAL INFORMATION

What I like to do first, is create a central tab of navigation, the first thing that will pop up when I open my fresh set of notes! Things I like to include in that main tab would be any of the following:

Format Key

This will come in handy later, but essentially I have a key to differentiating different types of text throughout my notes and it looks like this (note: your notes DON’T have to look like this, but I recommend having a specific format for all these types of text to help keep you organized):

Reference Links

This is to link to articles I have on world anvil with more detailed information

Settings

NPC’s

Organizations/Factions

Misc.

Plot Setup/Brainstorming

This is helpful to get you started on your overarching plot! Be as messy as you want and DON’T DELETE ANYTHING, even if you think it’s stupid. All brainstorming is good brainstorming.

Objective

Themes

Relevant History

Hooks

Encounters

Small Outline of Main Questline

Reputation Points

I like, especially for big cities with lots of factions and NPC’s, to keep track of reputation and karma with a point system. Every good deed or bad deed, I like to record and assign a certain number of points to add or subtract from the total score of each faction, based off of just how good or bad that act was. This will help decide things in both the conclusion of that arc, as well as the conclusion of my campaign. This way, your actions really do have consequences.

PART TWO -- BUILDING THE PLOT IN ACTS

So I believe it is pertinent to keep things simple when it comes to notes, especially when it comes to major arcs where your players have a lot of freedom and you need to do a lot of writing in order to allow that freedom. So i like to build in 4 acts, each of them being dedicated to its own special needs. You can add however many acts as you might need, but this is just a base line! 

Act One: The Introduction

Act Two: Exploration/Information Gathering

Act Three: The Rising Action

Act Four: The Conclusion/The Climax

To add onto this, I usually put these acts as Major Groups in OneNote, and they look a little like this:

Act One; Introducing Your Players To The Setting

This, in my opinion, is the most important act of the four. I usually like to send my players into the setting with a BANG! Throw something at them that they don’t expect! An eerie exorcism, a public execution of an old friend, a plague that keeps the party away from public entrances, anything you can think of! The intro should be narrative heavy, not battle-heavy. That will just make your party snore. Give them a reason to fight, a reason to care about this story and its NPCs. Make sure that this first part is your best work, because it sets the story from here on out and will determine if your players are eager to return to the table. Do not forget to set the precedent of your arc’s main plot goal here. If you don’t do it now, it won’t make sense elsewhere. Make the PC’s care right away!

For example, some snippets of my introduction notes look a little bit like this (remember my format key from before? well here it is in use:)

Act Two; Exploration/Information Gathering

This is a big one, because this is where the majority of your work will go. This is the part where the players can roam around the setting, getting to know the NPC’s and the environment for themselves and make their own opinions on the current state of affairs wherever they are. I like to get super organized with this part, because it can get VERY hectic while going live. You want to write where you leave room for players to move, but also keep them focused on the task at hand. So whatever dialogue or side quests you introduce in exploration, keep it brief and drawing back to the central plot line at hand. 

I will expand more on this in PART 3, because it deserves its own section.

Act Three; The Rising Action

Yes, just like your english teacher taught you in 6th grade, there has to be a Rising Action in your plot line! This is self explanatory, it might seem. But this is the hardest part about writing up a plot line for D&D, because you never know how your players are going to change the plot. So keep things loose and relative, allowing for wiggle room and improvisation. But still, have a decent chunk of the plot ready to go in this act, because this will be the majority of your plot and usually where the information gathering from act two will start to come in handy. Things need to start coming to a head towards the end of this act, or else you’ll be stuck with a very unsatisfactory conclusion. Another helpful tip during this act, is to write down EVERY, and I mean EVERY SINGLE LITTLE question your players might have. Figure out an answer to all of them, even if the answer is “you’ll find out later”.

Act Four; The Conclusion/The Climax

This is the end. The part of your story where everything starts to come together into a full circle! You need to be prepared to answer all those questions your players had during act three, in one form or another. There’s nothing worse than ending an arc finding that there were a million plot holes that didn’t get accounted for. So prepare, prepare, prepare for this final act. On top of that, prepare for several outcomes on top of that! Don’t be afraid to change the ending on the fly, just make sure you answer those questions somehow--be it out right, or implied in the narrative. My best advice is to not write out the ending until you’re at least half way through act three. Because your player’s choices should matter, and should have a major effect on the ending. If they don’t, then whats the point in running a narrative-heavy campaign? This is where my reputation points have come in handy in the past.

PART 3 -- EXPANDING ON EXPLORATION

I wanted to give you guys a taste at how I organize my exploration section. And to be honest with you, it’s fairly to-the-point and straight forward. I’m using a city setting for my example, but I feel like this can apply to any settlement setting to be honest. But I usually like to start with a table of contents as the first page for me to land on when going to my Exploration section. It looks like this, and each link, links exactly to that page on the document so i don’t have to guess at where everything is.

I also have a page dedicated to general information about the city in my worldanvil, linked on the Reference Links page I mentioned before! But it’s always good to have a central source of information about your settlement when prepping.

Now, let’s take a look at what one of the shops looks like, as that’s most likely going to be the bulk of what you’re writing. We’re gonna start with my shop “Dagna’s General Goods Store”, which is simple enough. Here, you can see all the pages I have for this location:

These are specific to a certain encounter, but to put it in a more general sense, this is how I would organize any relevant location in a settlement:

Introduction

I like to introduce my players to the outside and inside of every establishment in my settlements. So, narrative of the outside... and then a narrative of the inside. For example, this one looks like this:

Then, from there, I can dive into whatever introducing encounters I may have planned for that shop on the same page. This is just to give the players an impression. I continue for this page like this:

I like to put in brackets before voicing a new character, how their voice may sound. But that’s just me!

The NPC(s)

Always have a page for NPC’s relative to the establishment! I usually like to link to my worldanvil at the top, but sometimes characters are so small that I don’t make them a page. For those instances, I like to write just a little bit about them under the following format:

Appearance

Personality (including voice/accent)

What They Know

Willing to Share

Not Willing to Share (requires skill checks, or otherwise)

I like to keep this brief as possible, because too much text will just overwhelm me when i’m actually DMing live. Don’t make them too complicated, unless they’re major NPC’s, otherwise you will suffer.

Whats For Sale

Self explanatory, especially for shops. If the establishment sells things, I like to take screenshots from the books and place them in this page. Or I make tables myself! Cause OneNote can do that lmao.

General Information

I like to split this up into three categories:

Schedules

What time does the establishment open and close? When is the owner there? When does the owner go to bed? Is there anything the people living there do at certain times that are of relevance? This all becomes helpful when trying to nail down routines and time tracking.

Points of Interest

Things the players can find! Maybe a secret heirloom, a private letter, or a family tree! Usually these require skill checks to find, but can also just be apart of the apparent environment!

Encounters

Events that happen to the players. This can happen at certain times, or only when the players are currently present! It’s entirely up to you. But don’t equate encounters with battle, encounters are just events, battle or otherwise!

Mine looks kind of like this, though it needs some more fleshing out-- which will come with time as my plot progresses.

Missions (if applicable)

This can split off into various sub pages, if need be, and may not even be applicable to this specific establishment! But sometimes, you can acquire missions from people and places. I like to write the mission pages in the Establishment or NPC pages that will give them out. 

And well, that’s about it! Sorry for the huge post, but it gave me some time to kill, so there you go! LOL Have fun with that, guys.

[aminodumpsterfire]

LOOKING FOR BLOGS TO FOLLOW!

What’s up everyone? I made a new account for D&D and TTRPG stuff and need people to follow. If you post/reblog memes about D&D, tips for roleplaying, DMing and more reply to this post and I will check out your blog (and most likely follow you)

Thanks and stay safe :)

[tea-sipping-kobold]

Best part of my game prep today