#dming is hard

[curse-of-dming-strahd]

Oh right... The curse. The curse of Strahd. The curse chosen specially to torture Strahd, Strahd’s curse.

[corviacore]

Been thinking again about GMing and why I dislike it and why I dislike DnD nowadays, honestly half of it isn't even DnDs fault but how players want to interact with it, like I made a whole homebrew world, but did any of my players ask anything about it? Or ask where they could be from? What the local culture is like?

Naw just made characters and expected me to make em fit the world! They didn't even make em fit together as a team properly, and one player wanted me to come up with a whole new tribe of peoples for him to play, wich, ironically worked out the best of all of them because they happened to fit the theme of the campaign well.

This together with the last 2 games I played in being chaotic and undirected because players keep wanting to do random shit makes me just not want to play this stuff anymore.

Like if you want to build a crime empire while we are trying to save the world, fuck off! DnD doesn't support building a crime empire without the GM devoting significant effort to it!

And I'm tired of players expecting such work from GMs, I think that's why I'm so burnt out on DnD and why pathfinder won't help, because people expect it to be a sandbox, but it isn't a sandbox, they can't just do what they want without consequence, the consequence is the GM having a shit time!

So I just want to play narrower games that have specific things they want to do, like blades, or Eureka, because then the players go in with the expectation of what's going to happen and by god do I need them to actually understand what a game is about or I will explode.

This is 100% why I'm so happy about Eureka lately and had so much fun playing it, as any Ttrpg should it leaves you many options for what to do and I never felt "railroaded" or whatever, but still followed a cohesive line throughout the module we played and it was fun! Players focusing on the point of the TTRPG is fun!

Imagine if someone started playing a criminal who had 0 interest in investigating anything and asked the narrator to make up a system to start a criminal enterprise in a Eureka module, that person would be insane right? That's stupid! But somehow in DND they think that's ok, no matter what the DM had planned. :/

[lockhinge]

"...Hmm. For our last session, 'gay displacer beast' is the only thing I have written down in my notes."

- DM regrets not taking better notes

[persuasioncheck]

Player: What's the NPC's name? NPC: Uh, I'm... Douglas. Player: Douglas...? NPC: ...Just Douglas. I lost my last name in the war. Player: Ah, you took an arrow to the last name.

[cliffodabog]

Genuinely feel like a good summer day for me is spent watching Legends of Avantris, their friendship makes me so happy

They inspired me to start writing my own campaigns and DMing for friends :D

Definitely need to draw them more, I have a gricko and a derek, I think a Puggsly and a Peggy would be great additions to my sketch collection lmao

[wh0re-for-angst]

So I DM two 5e D&D campaigns at the moment(we play virtually due to distance between each other), and one of my friends knows I am playing that day due to the sheer amount of coca-cola that I ingest in the hours prior to D&D.

Mind you my DMing beverage of choice is also Coke…

I don’t know what this says about me and I’m not sure if I want to.

[iheartpf2e]

Been thinking about ways to make my pcs feel scared without actually killing them. Since i only have 2 players, it's really hard to balance encounters. Last boss fight i used the gargoyle and set up some traps to do some damage to it while the players cleverly lead it into them. It was hard, but they received it well.

I want to get better at one shots, too. I tried redoing a series of encounters as a one shot and botched it before, i think it's because i need a careful approach to make sure things run smoothly. Pf2e has so many rules and when things get complicated i have a tendency to hand wave - only to later regret it because if i had used RAW, i would have gotten a cooler outcome 😮‍💨

[not-mozzarella]

Some websites I'd recommend if you're just getting started to writing (or DMing!):

So, I (obviously) write fanfiction. I'm pretty new to posting it, I've only been posting what I write for a couple months, but I've been writing it and keeping it to myself for... eons, I guess. As for dnd campaigns, I've been a player for ages, and picked up DMing last year. And here are some of the best websites I've picked up along the way:

World Anvil - okay, so maybe I'm a little biased since I use this for my DND campaigns, but it's great for writing, too. It's absolutely brilliant for charting worldbuilding and helping to get down those ideas you just don't have anywhere to put. The learning curve isn't too difficult, either, and I honestly love it!

Ellipsus - Great for drafts. Very few distracting sidebars, customiseable colour schemes, easy way to store all your drafts at once, and super simple to use. (Again... I also use this for dnd campaigns haha.) Another bonus is it doesn't feed your data into AI training models and it's anti-AI!! It's collaborative, too, with a chat feature that's PERFECT for beta-reader's to use, and it doesn't lag! Really smooth to run, really efficient, and really useful. *WARNING: google docs DOES do this if your copies on there are set to public !!*

FightWrite - Another one I also use for DND. Written by people with fighting and writing experience, it's really, really great at giving you perfect descriptions and neiche information about injuries/blood/that-sort-of-thing-that-you-don't-really-want-to-google-in-case-you're-put-on-a-watchlist ! Especially useful for action writers, crime writers, and fantasy writers- it deals with magical injuries in places, too!

Emotion Thesaurus- Now, I'm sure lots of people already know of this, but it's one of my favourite resources, so I thought I'd share it anyway. It has lists of loads of different emotions and physical sensations/ actions commonly associated with it! Again, useful for both DMs and writers!

The Writer's Cookbook- a great writing blog, and unlike fightwrite, it covers a wide range of topics. It has some great guides to writing different things, and to worldbuilding/ understanding your characters better, too. Unfortunately, it's not being updated anymore, but all the old stuff is still up there and still great!

Let me know if there's any other more specific things you might need, and I'll see if I have something!