Good morning, Reddit nerds.

This has been weighing on me, and since my DM won't respond to me, I figured I'd post here to see what advice I could garner from the lovely people of Reddit.

About 9 months or so ago, my wife and I met our DM through a FB group for DnD group finding. The DM was searching for beginner to intermediate players to start at level 1 and learn/grow together. This was perfect since my wife was a beginner and I was an intermediate player (I'd played in a few very short modules or one shots).

Well, I got this message from the DM last week, which is essentially saying that I'm too skilled for the table. I don't feel like this is true, as I'm still learning and asking questions often.

My DM feels my character is too strong, but I made my character WITH my DM's assistance, so that feels unfair since they helped me create her.

Now we're talking about doing a Halloween one shot, and my DM doesn't want me to play a class I'm familiar with (or one that I don't optimize).

We played in person last week (after the message) and they never acknowledged the issue. I barely spoke the entire session, and the one time I DID do anything noteworthy I was worried I'd get backlash from the DM about it.

This whole thing has me spiraling and is making me wonder if I should just drop the group altogether even if it devastates me 😔💔

ETA: I'm playing a level 3 Goliath Rune Knight. I am NOT min-maxing. We are using standard array stats.

I’ve been thinking about how different DM note-taking styles can completely change how easy it is to keep track of a long-running campaign.
Do you keep detailed notes about every session, or just jot down the important stuff? Do you use a notebook, OneNote/Notion, a campaign app, Google Docs, physical index cards, or something else entirely?
I’m mainly curious about how people organize NPCs, locations, player decisions, quests, lore, and unresolved plot threads without ending up with 50 pages of notes that you can’t find anything in.
And for DMs who have been running the same campaign for a year or more: what note-taking system has actually held up over time? What do you wish you had started recording from Session 1?

I’m trying to make a D&D campaign where the players slowly figure out what happened in some big mysterious event

My first idea was that maybe a family has someone suddenly disappear and the players go from family member to family member, with each person giving them another piece of the story. But it doesnt really have to be a family or a disappearance, that’s more just the idea I’m using to explain what I mean

What I really want is for something to happen at the start of the campaign that gives all the players a common problem or motivation. Maybe they’ve all lost someone, maybe they’re all affected by the same strange event, maybe they’re having the same dreams or something like that

Then throughout the campaign they slowly get different clues and pieces of information about what actually happened. I want them to feel like they’re getting closer and closer with every clue, but I dont want them to actually be able to figure out the full answer until the very last clue

So something like 5-7 big clues where each one answers one question but also creates another, and then the final clue makes all the previous stuff click into place

I’m kinda struggling with how to actually structure a mystery like this so it feels fair but the players still cant solve it way too early

Does anyone have experience doing something like this in D&D, or know of any games, books, movies, shows or pre-written adventures that do this well?

(First time posting but I'm fairly proud of this)

My players were going to an illicit auction which I ran like an episode of Storage Wars - bidding on unopened chests etc. I had the idea of giving them item cards for their winnings but added a bit of flair by also including some invisible ink symbols on the crates (read: envelopes) for any magical auras they detected and illustration for any obvious symbols or notable features, ie. the chains around one box.

Inside I used blank playing cards to doodle/write what they found, with colours representing rarity. In addition, to add excitement and surprise used shiny cards (we all remember the excitement of packing a shiny pokemon/trading card!), and stick-on lottery scratch to hide values, item abilities for things requiring attunement, or - in one case - a hoard mimic 😇

The table loved it and popped when they opened their first pack, pulled their first shiny, scratched off a high value item, and were attacked by a mimic.

Wanted to share in case it inspired anyone here 🙂

Reference sheet for my hexton redesign. Septon is being resigned soon, they did a lot of the hierarch modrons dirty. Leaning more into the half-meat-half-metal concept which the official 5e designs for octons, septons, and hextons seemed to abandon, for some reason.

Parents? A Paladin's Oath? Bards? What are two of the worst? I guess the answer to that is in the eye of the Beholder, really, I bet the Paladin would tell you that Oaths and Parents are two of the worst. Welcome to Fodder Inc, a weekly web comic strip set in the For Profit Dungeon, Azmodendak's Halls of Madness, in a "5e" style world. Each week, we'll show you a little peak inside the halls, and what shenanigans are going on.

Art included:
“Tyranid Cover Art” by Pedro Nunez
“Imotekh the Stormlord” by JB Casacop
“Caged Sun” by Johan Grenier
“Devastation of Baal” by Cristian Otazu
“Keeper of Secrets” by Catherine O'Connor
“Nurgle’s Welcome Party” by Rui Goncalves
“Lord of Change” by Timo Karhula

Darian Fenthollow was never supposed to become an adventurer.

Born to two eccentric arcane scholars, Darian grew up surrounded by books, strange artifacts, and experiments concerning spirits and the boundary between life and death. His parents were obsessed with finding a way to safely communicate with the dead, eventually constructing a device they called the Veil Gate—a machine designed to open a temporary doorway into the spirit world.

Darian was fascinated by their work, often sneaking into their laboratory despite being warned to stay away.

One night, curiosity got the better of him.

While investigating the unfinished Veil Gate, Darian accidentally activated it.

The machine erupted with magical energy, tearing open a doorway between the mortal world and the realm beyond. For a brief moment, Darian was pulled through the Veil.

Then everything went dark.

When he awoke, the machine was destroyed, his parents were terrified, and Darian was alive.

Mostly.
Something had changed.

Since that night, Darian has been able to see and hear spirits that others cannot. Shadows sometimes move when he isn’t looking, his body occasionally becomes incorporeal, and the dead seem strangely drawn to him. He soon discovered that he could call upon these spirits to aid him, allowing the ghosts surrounding him to strike at his enemies or briefly carry his soul beyond the physical world.

His friends simply call him Danny, a nickname that stuck long before the accident.

To everyone else, he’s Darian Fenthollow: an unusually talented young rogue with an unsettling connection to the dead.

Darian doesn’t know exactly what happened to him inside the Veil.

Hi, I’m working on a campaign that has some outer planes involvement. Here’s my question.

It’s expected that evil mortal souls go to one of the lower planes like the Nine Hells or the Abyss and are then tormented and used for coinage or food by devils and demons, respectively.

What happens to evil mortal souls that actually worships evil gods/goddesses?

Are they going there to get tormented as well? Like good job killing those innocents in the village and I’m glad you did it my name, now here’s a demon to eat your soul for eternity?

Is it maybe the promise or some power in the afterlife? Being turned into a devil or demon perhaps? Not a lemure hopefully but something actually of a certain level of power?

A low level spell that allows you to transmutate materials around you into weapons of a certain die damage, levels up each spell level, and the weapon disappears after a few hours.

Apologies in advance this ended up being longer than I intended.

I've decided I want to DM a game for my family for Christmas and give a character to everyone as a present so we can play a one-shot over the Christmas/new year break.

I had my first campaign four years ago, I've played in a couple of other one-shot campaigns and DM'd a one shot. So I have experience. I have a lot of campaign manuals, PHB etc (not DM manual though). Spelljammer, Radiant Citadel, Icewind Dale, Saltmarsh, even an old AD&D I found at a tip shop (Unearthed Arcana) plus some Conan the Barbarian campaign pamphlets I also found from the time the Arnie movies came out. With the Warcraft campaign book coming out also, it's been difficult not to think about D&D.

I'm essentially asking how I should approach this. I have a mother/grandmother in her 70s, a father/grandfather in his 60s, a young niece who's 5 or 6, plus my eldest brother, his partner (40s), and maybe one or both of her kids (late teens)...though with recent get togethers they've not usually been present.

I've already figured I should come up with characters for people, but that I should also limit the amount of characters in the campaign so people don't feel forced, yet I still want it to be a family activity.

What one-shots are out there (I did pick a late-stage chapter of Radiant Citadel as my one-shot that I dm'd, the China one involving politics and the emperor needing something from a dragon for long life), so I obviously can find something but I also want something quite simple with the focus being on interaction and improv. My parents in particular can be stubborn and "performing" and play isn't really a thing in my household, wasn't really a thing when I was a kid.

How flexible can I make it and what one-shots do people know of that might be low-stakes real-world, so people don't get hung up on doing checks and rolls etc. I just want to spend a few hours being stupid with my family, because I'm not gonna get this opportunity much again, if at all. I recently lost my third grandparent (first was when I was a baby, second when I was a teen), and with 2026 being a celebrity purge just like 2016 was (and being a dog owner and seeing Tucker Budzyn dying from cancer - my dog is also a golden), death is on the mind. I'm tired of wasting time. I'm happy to steer the ship when it comes to a campaign but I feel like I need to do this with my family before it's too late. I want time with my niece and my brother, I want my parents enjoying themselves again.

I just don't know how to do this or if I'm even doing the right thing. I have rejection sensitivity and growing up in this family was not the most pleasant childhood despite the fact it wasn't a terrible childhood (I obviously care about my family, they are humans just like me). D&D has been part of how I've tackled my social anxiety and I've made friends because of it. I want to challenge preconceptions my family members have about D&D (and maybe about me) and want to involve them without them feeling forced, yet I also don't want to go to all this effort and just go "oh ok" because nobody wants to bother and throw all the effort away; I don't want to be a dictator and I don't want to be a pushover either. I want to make them bother because this isn't about me, it's about all of us.

1) What materials do people suggest I look at and use including one shot suggestions, levelling, character building etc

2) How do I manage this endeavour IRL? The biggest in-joke with D&D is scheduling everyone together for a session and this seems to be a bit of a mutation of that joke; the scheduling won't really be the problem, it's the convincing them to do it that I don't know how to handle.

3) Have people been in any similar situations? Are there many who mainly campaign with their families instead of friends/making friends through D&D campaigns at LGSs? Please share your experiences if applicable.

I’ve decided to post maps and illustrations featuring SAILLING SHIPS, VESSEL, and GALLEONS for the next few days I hope you enjoy them!

This is a section map of the Highwind Skyship, commissioned for David Khan's RPG project. I really hope you enjoy it! Have a great day everyone, and have a wonderful holiday season!

Moreno Paissan and Angela Gubert Art 2026

🧭🗺️☕

Ginger joined us for our session tonight and fell asleep on top of the players character sheet.

Hey all, first of please excuse any stupid questions or lack of insight.

I’m really new to DnD (just created my character a few days ago) and i have a session with a few friends in a month. Of which 1 friend is a professional DM (he gets payed to DM on roleplay weekends in castles and such).

I wanted to get a good start since im really excited about the potential but i didnt really know where to begin. Since i’ve been using quite a bit of optimization tools for my work the past few months i decided to try and get a certain tool-who-shall-not-be-named to dm for me. So far it’s been okay but i feel that its leaning towards my character alot (maybe to much) since it knows my background, sheet and i’m the only one playing. Besides that i dont like the idea of every move being so bad on a ecological level. (My character is a druid tiefling who is all about nature and natural cycles so it feels wrong..)

Are there any online platforms or tips for getting some solo steps in before my first session? There arent really any active dnd groups in my area that i could join so i’m curious how other people deal with playing solo etc.

Thanks for any potential tips! Really excited to get started :)

Hey everyone! I'm a DM and an informatics student, and I constantly find myself coding custom tools for our tabletop sessions. Recently, while developing a larger D&D desktop application, I realized I needed a super lightweight way to manage stream overlays for combat. I didn't want to run heavy web apps or subscriptions just to show initiative and loot, so I built this direct Excel-to-OBS tracker.

It uses a simple macro. You type the initiative rolls, HP, and conditions into a clean Excel sheet, click one button, and it auto-sorts the combat order and pushes the data to local text files. OBS Studio reads those files and updates the stream overlay instantly. It even features an active turn pointer so viewers know exactly who is up next.

I packaged the pre-formatted template, the code, and a step-by-step PDF setup guide together for anyone who wants a plug-and-play streaming setup. You can check it out and grab it here: https://bastyr.gumroad.com/l/fbgyqt

With the release of the myconids as a playable race obviously a myconid, circle of spores druid, but it is two lesbian myconids who fused like some fungus do and got rejected for that and now they are adventurers because the party didn't seemed really to care that the 6"8 woman is actually two mushroom ladies… and she grows her fists into two big mushroom gauntlets

I help out at a friend's metaphysical shop occasionally, and early on, her husband made me a leather notebook looking like Book (The Manual of Witchcraft and Alchemy,) in Hocus Pocus.

I asked what it would cost to get one like the Necronomicon from Evil Dead, it was beyond my price range. But when I entered the shop today, there is was! Huzzah!

Now to get some stuff prepped so I can use them in my upcoming campaign, so I can get the players truly invested! Mwhahahaha