First time DM, getting ready to start creating my campaign in 5e. My group is comprised of people who have no background in D&D or /tg/ at all outside of board games. Today, the group let me know that they're leaning away from board and minis and want to go for a theater of the mind type of game.
I'm not really sure how to do a good job doing this, but am definitely willing to give it a shot. Does /tg/ have any tips to running an enjoyable campaign like this?
Watch Critical Role
>>49572578
Some RPGs have a concept of "zones" that translates well into theater of the mind. The idea is that you mentally break down an environment into meaningful areas - rooms in a dungeon, a bridge and the land on either side of it, etc. These areas are connected to each other like a flowchart. Rather than tracking exact distances, a turn's worth of movement can get you as far as an adjacent zone. Multiple creatures can be in the same zone, and those creatures may or may not be adjacent to each other. Usually you just say that a zone can have one or more clusters of characters, all of whom are adjacent to each other and none of whom are adjacent to anyone in a different cluster. That way you can have environments with fun stuff in them without counting off squares or feet of movement.
>>49572584
>watch a game that uses detailed terrain, maps, and minis
Kill yourself.
OP, the game has maps. You can grab high quality ones in /5eg/, print them out, and let the players see what you are talking about. Print out character art and things too. Show off some of the large art pieces in the books when you can.
Just because you are not playing with grids and battle maps doesn't mean that you shouldn't use any visual cues/maps. You just base what you are saying on the pictures. You will probably get questions about position, so always have an idea where everyone is in your version of events and stick to it.
Fantasy crafting thread
What do you get when you combine the following into a weapon:
>The blood of a god willingly given.
>The claw of a slain Great Old One.
>The sword of a legendary hero.
>A piece of The Void.
>>49572531
A big gooey mess.
>>49572531
a catana
>>49572531
A rapidly expanding piece of Void.
Don't dabble in void magic lest you have either attained inner peace or are fucking beyond insane.
Who here /professionalDM/?
> be 26 year old NEET
> live with dad
> had a few jobs but quit them pretty quickly
> dad is real into D&D, he started playing AD&D in like the 80s when 1e first came out
> he gets me to run LotFP and D&D 3.5 epic 6 games for him and one of his other oldfag friends
> i spend a good 10 hours a week prepping, the rest I spend jacking off
> dad has shittons of money so while i don't get much I do have internet and a decent desktop
> do all the yardwork and get 100 bucks a month for it
> end up with massive miniatures collection
> own over 100 D&D books of 3.5, AD&D, and various old school hacks
> run sessions 3 nights a week
No end in sight to this, I'll just kill myself when my parents pass away. Literally the best life I can envision, I basically get paid to play D&D, because I'm pretty sure the only reason my dad keeps me around is so i can GM for him. Also I eat fuck-all compared to the average fa/tg/uy who spends 7 bucks a night on dinner alone, my food costs are like 1.50 a day max. So I'm not really costing him much and besides my computer I barely use any electricity. A lot of time I spend prepping and thats with paper pencil and books.
Pic related, LITERALLY me.
>>49572444
Sounds pathetic. Get a fucking job.
>>49572444
You're not a professional DM, you just have a rich dad.
>>49572444
What rpg-related media do you enjoy listening to/watching?
I listen to The Adventure Zone, DnD is for Nerds and other Sanspants Radio DnD games, Friday Night Quests, and the dark heresy episodes of Roll to Seize.
>>49572299
I don't see RPGentlemen get mentioned nearly as often as it should be. Admittedly, the first few episodes are pretty slow, but it gets much better later on.
Also picture Drake is an idiot
>>49572299
Adventure Zone
Critical Role
Harmontown/quest (I don't actually recommend this one, but it was one of the first that got me into DnD Podcasts)
So /tg/, what_isLelouch's alignment?
>>49572248
Alignment is a dumb concept and you should feel dumb for asking this.Also, he's clearly chaotic good.
>>49572288
Definately Chaos, definitely Good.
He just had the bad luck of having to deal with a bad hand which he played masterfully regardless, but he had no code, just an end goal he was willing to go to great lengths to see done.
10/10would watch him slide down to his death in front of his sister again
Lawful evil. So was basically his every enemy. They all wanted to do horrible shit in the name of greater good.
Looking for anything really
Tell us 'bout it
Why do you care so much.
It's people like you who obsess about fetishes that keep people away from games out of fear of running into you.
>>49571810
Noted.
>>49571810
Probably undersexed and with no outlet. Or maybe just fetishes/a certain fetish in game settings is OP's fetish.
I know that they regenerate after a while, do both halves regenerate or do only one side regenerate. Could there be infinite Tarrasques if they both regenerate?
>>49571531
bumping
This actually an interesting question
First, find me something that can cut the Tarrasque in half.
>>49571531
Both halves regenerate and the whole world will be filled up with infinite Tarrasques.
Why are elves girls' least favourite race?
They seem almost tailor-made for them and yet they couldn't care less
Dunno what you're on senpai, girls fucking love to play Drow
generally renegade good-natured Drow like Drizzt.
>>49571444
I don't know where you are getting this bullshit from
>>49571444
The women in my group play as elves all the time.
Nice trips though. Too bad it's wasted on a sexism-bait thread.
Kickstarter thread, whats all that nice looking shit everyone is pumped for? Heres mine(Pic related) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1179385029/luminous-echo-the-world-compendium-re/description
A sweet looking setting for 5e, Pathfinder, and my favorite Anima:Beyond Fantasy! Done by one of my favorite artists.
Anyway lets talk about up coming projects that look good I want to see what else is out there that I havent seen yet.
>>49571148
>https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1179385029/luminous-echo-the-world-compendium-re/description
>Generic animu trash.
>>49571148
The Devil's Run - Hell's Highway. A Hot Wheels scale, mad max style auto combat game.
I'd throw up a link if I could get the format to not look like spam to this damn site...
>>49571679
>https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wordforgegames/the-devils-run-hells-highway/description
Alright /tg/. I usually Lurk on here, make a few comments, take some advice, and get a kick out of the stories posted. But this time around, I'm here to pay up with a story of my own. And oh boy, it is something else.
Let me tell you all the Tale of Gimble.
Now, a bit of background. I'm DMing a D&D 5e game for some friends, five of them actually. We've got a Monk, a Warlock, A Bard, A Barbarian... and Gimble.
See, from the Get go, Gimble was an interesting character. The player's a good guy irl, but he asked many times to make compounds that were a bit advanced for the setting, but I usually balanced out what he could make.
However, this incident is something I could never have Anticipated. I should have, given that he was Chaotic neutral, and played that part VERY well, but... well, let's just jump right in.
Cont.
>>49570670
It all started as a simple Sidequest: each player was doing their own little quest to earn some extra gold and XP before bigger adventures came along, and Gimble decided to look for an attempted assassin. Well, the clues led him to a hotel in the City where he stayed, so Gimble the Gnome, riding on his Mastiff, strolled in to see if he could find the assassin. Now, in a previous mission, he had incited a little racial tension between the elves and Humans in the hotel using his illusion magic. So, he used that to his advantage by claiming that the wanted man he was looking for had tricked them all into fighting. A few sucessful charisma rolls later, and he had about 35 commoners searching the hotel, until they found two men with crossbows. Now, he was supposed to interrogate, or figure out through investigation which of the two was the assassin, and which was innocent. But, after some initial failed rolls, he decided to try something different.
Something VERY different.
>>49570731
So, he had the two men tied up on chairs, facing back-to-back, and... he bought pitchforks and Torches for all the people in the Hotel lobby. He used his illusion and some persuasion to try and convince them to surround the room with these new armaments, and they did. This is the first indication something was wrong.
"Alright, what does Gimble do now?"
>Alright, if the real assassin doesn't Step forward, I'll burn this building and everyone in it to the ground, and then move on to the next hotel!
We all kind of stopped, and I asked him "You... you sure you want to say that?"
>Yep.
Well, the mob may have been persuaded, but this man had literally threatened arson and murder. And they all had the torches and pitchforks.
>>49570776
So, naturally, they tried to gang up on him. No, with Misty step, he warps outside and escapes down the street on his mastiff, heading towards the Guardian Station (basically the Police-soldiers of my world. Think Oblivion Guards). I was expecting him to maybe try to hide in the station until it was all sorted out. But I was mistaken. Very mistaken.
You see, He instead shouted to the Guardians and kept riding.
>Help! I'm being attacked!
The Guardians, doing their job, saw a mob of people chasing a gnome on a Mastiff, and five of them ran after the group. I had lost all abiloty to predict his next move, so, it didn't quite hit me immediately when he said
>I want to lead them out of the city gates.
Then things REALLY went haywire.
How do you guys order your playlists for your D&D sessions?
I know where to go to get the tracks that sound good, crib from the right vidya and get the atmospheric bustles from other sites, but it's a bit of a nightmare when playing the game to actually use 90% of what I've downloaded- especially if like me sometimes you get all the tracks off a playlist in a download to sift through later.
So how do you do it? Do special NPC's have their own themes? Do you prune based on any modern instruments used? Assign different places different tunes? What's the secret to a good, accessible soundscape?
>>49570572
Listen to a lot of music and find what you like. I have a huge rpg music folder separated into scenery. That seems to be the easiest way for me to organize it. Seaside shack? Got it. Swampy witch hut? Bam. Under the city hideout of undead planning to take over the city? I got just the thing.
I've got a series of playlists organized by tone. Sad, Calm, Battle, Dread, Happy, Cool, Weird, and Special are the main ones, with Special for songs I really like that don't really fit a tone.
While listening to my enormous collection of music on random, if I end up hearing a song I like or one that fits a tone well, I just add that to that playlist. I only have forty or so songs for each playlist, but honestly after years of trying them out I really only end up using around twenty or so songs because I know they work well with my group.
As far as character/place themes, I used to use a neat note-taking program that let me embed songs into my notes, so whenever I needed to pull up my notes for a place or character, I also had the song up and ready.
One thing I would end up doing is listening to music, imagining a scene, and then building the scene or character for the music. This actually wound up working quite well, and it's not a bad way to get inspiration for a game.
>>49571119
You just have the one track for each bit of scenery, or a selection?
Best TCG and why?
go away frogposter
>>49569946
I didn't know what else to put for the image
>TCG
Just remove the T bit and play Netrunner. Easily a more fun experience than MTG or YuGiOh. It helps that the cards don't cost a million dollars.
As of recent? The realization that the only cute girl in my classes for this semester has dreadlocks.Also might have a dick, but that's not so frustrating.
In terms of /tg/ related things. Warmachine unit bases. I'm used to picking miniatures by a base without touching the mini itself. Now try doing that with the fucking round rim.
>>49569988
That sounds terrible, and almost like heresy.
the fucking excuse me threads
and much much less OC than I remember
especially on-topic drawfags
I swear they are fucking gone...
Now that soundcloud stopped letting Roll20 use their system, what do you use for music in your online games?
Simplest option is to broadcast a stream using VLC. Have your players connect to your VLC stream with their own media players . This can take a little port routing and of course will require you to give players their IP address.
Slightly more involved is to use a Virtual Audio Cable driver to grab the audio from a music player program like WinAmp and route it to a constantly broadcasting second account that's logged into your VOIP network of choice (you'd configure this second user's microphone input to be the virtual cable, rather than your mic proper, and then adjust volume to taste). This takes a little more setup but is more private on your end and takes less work from players.
>>49569794
they did? why?
>>49570945
something something soundcloud thought they got too big something something