The D&D thread

Talos · Mar 18, 2025

Finally started Curse of Strahd again. This is the 5th attempt. The campaign itself is cursed.

But all the players get along, there's no family drama (fuck playing with married people again), and everyone has a stable job. I have hope for this one.

Grabbit Allworth · Mar 18, 2025

Talos said:
Finally started Curse of Strahd again. This is the 5th attempt. The campaign itself is cursed.

But all the players get along, there's no family drama (fuck playing with married people again), and everyone has a stable job. I have hope for this one.

You've encountered the most powerful boss in the game.

I genuinely wish you good luck.

My last campaign concluded a few months ago after running for a little over 3 years. It started out rocky and I had to replace 4 or 5 players, but the last two years were rock solid.

I'm taking a break because DM'ing takes a lot out of me, but I plan on running another lengthy campaign in 6 months or so.

Indyocracy · Mar 18, 2025

I've managed to hold off my biggest achillies heel so far, the shiney new idea. My ToA campaign has reached Omu and I managed to not switch to a new idea mid campaign so far despite planning the start of two different campaigns up to this point lol. We swap dms each month and play every other week, the Jungle hex crawl took them over a year( Started Jan 2024, they really wanted to keep exploring before going to Omu heh). Now I just gotta get them through the other 3 parts without me getting distracted...

bigmark268 · Mar 18, 2025

Always remember when DMing. Less is more. The less you plan, the more of that plan the players will do. And the more you plan, the less of that players will do.

But if you want to keep them "on the rails" make up choices and options that are fake. So they end where you want.

Ex: The hallway splits left and right. Which way do you go? Doesn't matter! Which ever way they go they get the same outcome. But they don't know that.

I love adding in tons of that so they think they are doing so much more. Mixed in with a fair amount of real choices.

Arbitrary · Mar 18, 2025

Schrodinger's Gun, also known as Railshroding.

Harshaw · Mar 18, 2025

bigmark268 said:
Always remember when DMing. Less is more. The less you plan, the more of that plan the players will do. And the more you plan, the less of that players will do.

But if you want to keep them "on the rails" make up choices and options that are fake. So they end where you want.

Ex: The hallway splits left and right. Which way do you go? Doesn't matter! Which ever way they go they get the same outcome. But they don't know that.

I love adding in tons of that so they think they are doing so much more. Mixed in with a fair amount of real choices.

I hated DM'ing, but if they wanted me to run D&D I was gonna make it painful for them. Like the time I spent a year completely filling out the Ruins of Undermountain and locked them in for an entire campaign. lol