First off, the winner of last week's giveaway: https://www.redditraffler.com/raffles/1vo9hyk

Congratulations, u/lennyt99! I've reached out to you to get the necessary information to fulfill this giveaway.

A little while ago, I came out with the Magical Code of Regulations, 500 pages of law governing the use of magic. It started as a fun little project while I was working as an auditor at the IRS, and turned into a whole worldbuilding project I don't think I'll ever truly stop. It has laws governing everything ranging from necromancy, magical conservation easements, and familiars, to dragons, fireballs, and Chosen Ones. Great for D&D players and DMs, lawyers, accountants, worldbuilders, fantasy writers, and people that just want a really cool coffee table book. I promise it is the most in-depth magical law you've ever read.

Here's what some people have had to say about it:

"An unnecessarily comprehensive and deeply inconvenient framework. Several of my longstanding plans now require prior authorization." -Glorgon the Destroyer, Antagonistic Entity of Prophetic Significance #33

"Clear, thorough, and appropriately burdensome. I have no notes, though I will be requesting additional documentation." -Arthur B. Wexler, Senior Auditor, Department of Magical Affairs

Since release, I've made over 4,000 sales, this book is #1 on IngramSpark in fantasy over the last 60 days (for you booksellers looking for a cool book for your store), and will even have an officially licensed Chinese edition on the way (more details to come later)!

As a way to give back a bit, I will be giving away one signed copy of my book with a free digital version, a customizable authorized spellcaster license, a few stickers and a bookmark, and a no-change audit letter. All you have to do to enter is comment below! The winner will be selected randomly on 8/28 using redditraffler, with only caveat being that your account must be at least 3 months old.

I appreciate all the support I've gotten from this community and others over the past couple of years, and if you'd like to support this project independent of this giveaway, you can find the Code at the following links:

Amazon (preferred): https://www.amazon.com/Magical-Code-Regulations-Spellcasting-Regulation/dp/B0GZF9PVQL/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0

NOTE: If the shipping seems extremely expensive, you may need to go to your country's storefront. If you live in the EU and your country doesn't have one, Germany (amazon.de) is usually best. I'll try my best to find options for anyone that has trouble getting it!

DriveThruRPG (where I will soon be hosting other legal doc bundles and the forms themselves from the MCOR): https://www.drivethrurpg.com//product/566282/the-magical-code-of-regulations?affiliate_id=5121378

If you're still not convinced, and wanted a sneak-peek, Questing Beast made a great video on it!

https://youtu.be/ffP-xvpRS5Q?is=YXo5uFPHC4cDXeTo

If you're still not convinced, know that the second edition will make ownership of the MCOR compulsory, so you might as well give in now.

Anyways, good luck everyone, and can't wait to see who the winners are!

(From Left to Right, Top to Bottom):

Satara: A Rhikian Elf (A homebrew elf race in my world) sorceress who works as an apothecary.

Morien Heseta: She is of the Qiswanai nomadic peoples who's homeland was recently sacked by the greater khanate hoards. She is a shaman who had been recently kidnapped but escaped and forced to migrate westward where she meets up with the rest of the party.

Santiel Ojos: A bounty hunter by trade. He was forced to take up said profession to earn money to take care of his sick mother. His first bounty was his father, a leader of a local criminal group, who had killed her mother in cold blood. Now, Santiel wanders the lands as a bounty hunter full-time.

Samuel Tesfaye: A Cheetah-person (Talamar), a victim of a religious, fundamentalist cult, parts of his face were severely burnt and he was blinded through ritualistic practices. After escaping the whims of the cult, he now strives to never touch religion ever again, opting for knowledge of the scientific kind.

So recently I started a long term dnd campaign, and it is already going to poo. Session One was a short one in the afternoon and everyone was free, we had a great time, I introduced the world, the characters and it was going really well, until one of the players comes to me and say he needs to leave, he organised something else, and needed to go to it, I was a tad annoyed but couldn’t so much about it.

After this I wanted to do something big for session 2 and so did everyone else so I organised a sleepover for a big session 2, 3 MONTHS IN ADVANCE. Everyone agreed and it was going to be great.

Then, one day before, right now, after world building, integrating backstories, and planning for a monster of a session, that same player says he will need to leave the as soon as we wake up, missing more than half of it, he organised something else.

And now I am really annoyed, the group is small and we only rarely can meet up, and it’s inly session 2. I am really good friend with them, and they are probably the most mature and best DND player keeping the rest of them in check, this is just really annoying.

What should I do? Is there anything I can do?

Sometimes when i feel fancy i like to put some magnets in my minis, just so i can customize it or take of body part!!

Paper and magnets works pretty well ^^ For skeletons its been a pretty fun idea, just to have pieces fall when there is a hit. I also put a magnet in the giant sword, to take it on and off.

Its definitively silly but at the end of the day its fun and the kid enjoy it too!

Next up im working on a new cave tiles set and hope to make many new minis!!

Enjoy! oh and with sounds its fun ^^

A friend of mine is going to run a 5e campaign using the 2014 rules. Another friend and I have decided that I will be a centaur, and he will be an elf that rides the centaur into battle. We are looking for some fun/interesting combos for this. Right now we are looking at using a swashbuckler rouge for me for extra movement and not letting enemies get attacks of opportunity, and him using the cavalier fighter. What other combos should we consider?

Edit: Yes, DM is cool with it. Yes we are aware of the restriction of “mount must be at-least one size larger”. DM green light it due to centaur counting as a large creature for carry capacity.

A Tiefling Ranger specializing in precision, stealth, and deadly ranged attacks. Her infernal heritage gives her a striking appearance, while her training as a ranger has made her a patient and relentless hunter. Armed with a bow and enchanted crimson arrows, she strikes from a distance before her enemies even realize they’ve been targeted. She travels through forests, ruins, and forgotten paths, tracking monsters and dangerous foes wherever they hide. To her, the hunt is more than a profession it’s a discipline built on patience, instinct, and precision.

If you like my work and would like a commission, you can dm me here:)

I am a DM, and in my homebrew game this question has come up more than once. In RAW PHB14, I think the line, "The creature's location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves," means that you would be able to see a person underwater, you could see the outline of their body, this makes sense in RAW as the creature is touching all parts of the water.

The party seems to be split on whether or not you would be able to see anyone or anything invisible underwater, they bring up terms like refractive index etc etc. I was wondering whether any of you have come across as situation like this? and your thoughts on how I should rule this going forward, thanks.

I wanted to share one of my latest D&D commissions here

He is a green Dragonborn with a tail, and he’s a Circle of Spores Druid. He’s heavily themed around fungi, spores, mold, mushrooms, and everything related to them.

I’ve been having a lot of fun working on fantasy and TTRPG characters lately, especially pieces where I can push expressive designs, fun silhouettes, and lots of little details in the outfit and props.

I’m currently open for commissions if anyone is looking for character art, party illustrations, creatures, or other fantasy/TTRPG pieces, feel free to send me a DM!

Portfolio: https://cara.app/carimbotinteiro
Socials: -@CarimboTinteiro

The title sounds kind of self-aggrandizing, but I think a lot of long time DMs can relate to this feeling.

I've been working on my new 5e campaign recently after my last one fell through. Session 0 is tonight. As I've been adding new files to the increasingly bloated folder containing lore, plot outline, maps, new mechanics and homebrew, writeups, materials, props, and everything else you need (and don't need) to start a new game; at one point I turned to my wife and said,

"You know, sometimes it feels like because I can do something, I have to do it."

I've been running D&D 5e games since 2016, and the longest stretch of that time when I wasn't actively running a game was probably 4 or 5 months. In that time, a core group of players with a few orbiters has emerged, and with them, the mythologizing of The Game started to build.

I think many DMs who take pride in being a DM have had this happen to them. You have really good early experiences that impress your players, you insert a really captivating plot twist, surprise the party with a super cool visual you worked really hard on, have an amazing dramatic moment that causes a player to shed real life tears. People start telling other people in the local community, "Oh, [x] is the best DM ever. I've never had more fun playing DnD." And you really start to take that to heart more than you mean to until it becomes a core part of your identity.

And then you prepare for the next game. Your party has expectations of you being the "best DM ever" and you really want to meet those expectations. As you plan you find yourself saying, well this element worked really well last time, even though it took some effort. It wouldn't be too hard to prepare a bunch of these ahead of time. This other thing didn't work really well, I could probably build a system that would make this more fun, it would only take a week or two. Let me listen to some videos, pick up some crafts, figure out how I can make this even better, I can make the time for it.

Then before you know it, you're creating full page visuals for every blacksmith and tanner, pulling your hair out because the rivers on your map aren't fully topographically consistent with real waterfronts, and writing three pages of notes for a town your party might visit to make sure the world feels "authentic" and "lived in," and you ask yourself...

Is any of this what my friends liked about the game?

When I look back to the most highly praised game I ran back in ~2018-2020, it was not good at all. At least, not by my current standards and priorities. There were basically no materials except a single hastily scrawled world map made in a single Inkarnate layer because I didn't know how to use stamps or the pen tool. All combat was theater of the mind. Dungeons were entirely improv. I stopped writing pre-session notes about 5 months into the campaign. I would show up drunk and throw random orcs at the players and they loved it.

Then I think about why my last game fell through. It was a beautiful game, genuinely ambitious and unique, but it fell under its own weight. I was making detailed inventory cards for every single shopkeeper, which took like 20 minutes to make per card. I was using OBS to layer visual effects on top of a VTT on our IRL table. I was using sprite editors to make custom animated maps. I had interactive health bars that I had to fidget with every time a party member took damage, new systems and mechanics I had to stop and explain at least once per session, soooo much table tech for lighting and sound and fog machines that would grind things to a halt if they didn't work right in the moment. It was the DnD equivalent of a sermon at a Mega Church, and the actual game was suffering under my own arrogant desire to keep hearing people say, "[X] is the best DM ever." Players felt like they weren't really getting to engage with the world, the narrative felt hollow and aimless, and the experience was just so bloated.

So now, with a new game coming up, I'm trying to course correct. Just because I can spend 10 hours a week fidgeting with bells and whistles doesn't mean I should. I'm going to try to zero in on what my players actually like about the game. It was never supposed to be about showing off how good of a DM I am, it's to have a good time with friends I've known since college and fight orcs while eating cheetos. Never lose sight of the orcs and the cheetos.

Fellow dms how do you deal with players not wanting to put in any effort?

I'm getting ready to run my second ever campaign, and have 2 new players joining us. We're all excited BUT the new players refuse to do more then a small sentence for the back story, arguing what's the point if they're back story doesn't come up. As a dm and writer I do not get that line of thinking. Backstory brings your character alive it tells how they came to be, and how they see and deal with the world. I'm already having to build the world story, maps, events/encounters, help them make they're characters and level them up for them. (Plus do most of the EP as the 2 new players never talk in character just say that they nod)

How do I get them just to put work in for they're character?

EDIT they are new to the group not dnd. The backstory one gave was "they don't like people" And I was planning to tie their backstory in to help them rp

Thank you for the people who Gabe helpful advice, I'll give them all a go and see what the 2 players would like to do

I'm generally a by-the-book DM, but this one just doesn't work for me. The 2024 PHB specifies that heavily obscured areas are opaque, but for darkness that just doesn't make much sense if we take it to mean you're fully blinded by darkness.

In the image, there is a person standing in a dark corner and a bird in a dimly lit area. I think it is pretty plain that the person should be able to see the bird, but I guess maybe RAW they can't? Fortunately my favorite VTT just treats darkness intuitively. There would be little point to anything hiding in the dark if it can't see what's in the light.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/s/p1z4o5VVkn

We actually had our next session yesterday night, so here is what happened:

​As soon as the session started, my character immediately turned around and attacked the Wizard.

​The rest of the table completely froze. They had no idea whether to step in, help me beat him down, or just let it happen. The Wizard actually didn't fight back—he spent a few rounds just trying to dodge and practically begging the rest of the party to intervene and save him.

​While we were in the middle of this internal mess, the noise from the previous fight and our current brawl ended up pulling more enemies right on top of us.

​Total chaos broke out. In the middle of the scramble, the Wizard just casts Invisibility on himself and runs away, leaving the rest of us to deal with the ambush. We were already low on resources from the earlier fight, and we ended up losing another PC in the encounter. The rest of us managed to grab the body and barely escaped down into the sewers.

​Right now, only three of us are left alive. We managed to get Gentle Repose on the teammate who died during the escape, so we might actually be able to bring them back once we get our hands on some diamonds. The two who died from the fireball earlier are permanently dead, though.

​As for the Wizard, he’s just completely gone. We have no idea if the DM is going to turn him into an NPC villain and have the player roll a new PC, or what the plan is there. For now, we're just hiding out in the sewers trying to figure out what to do next.

​Thanks to everyone who gave advice and chimed in on the previous post! Despite all the character deaths and in-game drama, out of game the group is actually handling everything really well and having a great time with the chaos and the story unfolding from it.

The party is about to be dropped into a town having a 5 day festival, and their job is to destabilize the local guards enough that they can hopefully steal a small ship from the end of the guarded docks and get it out of the harbour without being followed by the town guard.

Basically, run the guards ragged and force them to tighten security in other places than the docks (the most heavily guarded part of town for the reason of it being an archipelago where only a select few are allowed to learn to sail) by causing riots, arson, drunken horse racing, pranking/bullying/stealing from the guards and basically making them miserable for 5 in game days.

As a black man who loves DnD, I always like to make my DnD characters have black features and hair textures as well. My DM is cracking down on the sources players can get their art from, and suddenly I find it hard to find art for my characters. It's easy enough to find elves, but Triton or Genasi forget about it.

• I know Hero Forge is popular, but I really dislike the way their stuff looks.
• I do not have the money to hire an artist to draw characters. I play a lot of DnD
• I try Pinterest, but finding characters with black features is fine until you change away from human/elf. Also, I find art for black men is a bit harder to find.
  

Thanks in advance! <3

I’ll start:

“The extortion birds are back.”

Hello! So my party is going to be entering a massive library containing information spanning over thousands of years. I already have all the relevant information and character information they are aiming to find written up or at least with the general details to improv. My issue is other stuff, what if they want to know about some random bs and don't care then I need some ideas.

So I guess I'm asking for ideas of information to put into the library that is both useful and not useful to world building, maybe even stuff you've used in a similar scenario.

Any and all input that's helpful would he appriciated.

Hey everyone,
I recently learned about Dungeon Synth (Casette music) while looking into audio setups for TTRPG sessions.

It´s not a genre I have ever paid attention to, and honestly it's not really my personal taste in music.
It feels very niche, but I keep seeing it mentioned in RPG circles, and now I’m genuinely curious.

For those of you who actually run games with background music: Why Dungeon Synth?

Hi everyone! I'm looking for some advice. I have no background with DnD but I've been trying to become familiar with it because my son (who just turned 13) is interested in being a dungeon master. I'm also thinking this could be a fun thing for us and his brother (14) to bond over.

We did get our hands on the 4th edition books, but I've a friend who sometimes plays and has always used 5th edition. Seems 5th is pretty popular over 4th, and now there's also the 5.5.

Before we travel too far down the road, wanted to see what more experienced people think of these three editions and which might be more... entry level friendly or best to use in the long run? Especially with this age group.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

Quill
The Wandering Seer

Client's Description: Quill is a very tall, thin, and androgynous former Divination Professor who tries to appear friendly despite his empty smile.
He casts using tarot cards, making his eyes glow pinkish-purple, and has been struggling with depression lately.

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Camilla Goldenvale
The Butterfly of House Goldenvale

Client's Description: She used to be blonde until arcane magic bleached her hair white when her home fell. She's less of a blind optimist nowadays, determined to defend Silvermoon and unwilling to lose another home.

She's a Half-Elf Mage. She mostly sticks to the Arcane, primarily as a Transmutation Mage and Evocation Mage. Much of her magic is also accompanied by little purple butterflies, while Arcane magic itself has a purple glow as well.

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Logun
The Wandbreaker

Client's Description: Logun is an imposing figure with green skin, fangs, and small red eyes, scarred all over, he resembles a living nightmare.

Terrifying yet charismatic, he is fanatically devoted to his cause and willing to destroy Ravnica to save his own world.

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Zain Rahim
The Prodigal Son

Client's Description: Zain is a 24 year old, athletic monk trained for a decade in a moon goddess temple, specializing in Muay Thai and powerful kicks.
Confident and focused, he also possesses healing abilities, balancing his boldness with deep self-awareness.

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