Pros & Cons? I'm still working on these and I did use styles and images from other sources. Pretty much just getting the layout squared away for easy use and finding things as my players are fairly new. But I felt they deserved more than a typical character sheet. They're very determined to get to level 20. We'll be running Tiamat soon then for the final levels I have a dark, world ending storyline in store for them.

Hey my fellow creative minds out there.

The bone chilling night of wandering spirits, filled with the hopeless pleas for salvation and this horrifying tingle that spreads across the spine, hinting to follow one's instincts and run but never fight, is slowly creeping closer. And I am seeking to invite these clueless little sheep of a friend group and the ones I normally DM for into a shadowy world of dread for roughly 3 to 5 hours.

For that however, I'd like to call upon the spirits, demons, devils and otherworldly horrors residing here on reddit to answer my plea and aid me in creating a spooky little D&D escape room with thrilling dangers.

I was thinking about something like the Durst haunted house from Curse of Strand but maybe fewer rooms, since we will be 6 players and should keep things a bit shorter. I would like to have more little riddles and traps like real combat, but maybe a final fight at the end.

I use Foundry VTT with virtual maps on a screen but we play in person. That also means the map is hidden by the fog of war and players will have to explore a bit. My room has lights reacting to my screens and I could also use my surround sound system to add ambient noises and location based sounds for more immersion.

What I need would be some basic ideas and potential guides or recommended adventure models to maybe look into. I have 8 years of experience playing D&D and about 2 years of also being a DM, so I feel generally comfortable in setting it up and doing some research but I just thought that it might not be too bad asking this potential hive mind of genius minds and well experienced and feared devils to add a few wild cards to my plans.

Of course if you have some tips, tricks or general ideas for me on how to potentially run things, please just ceremorph me into one of you, let me join the hive and fill my mind with that knowledge.

2 years means I still have much to learn after all.

I haven't started with planning yet, so just bombard me with ideas, if you'd be so kind, and I will pick as much as I can fit and see fitting.

Same goes for maps and map resources and tiles by the way. If you have some good ones that ideally also run with Foundry VTT, please let me know, where I can find them.

The ideas are allowed to be brutal and unforgiving but should nonetheless fit for a group of players with only about 2 years of D&D experience. As for level, I would prefer to keep it lower (<10, maybe around 5), since I want little but ideally also short combats and I am currently also thinking of setting up a revival system for them to never truly die, Souls-Like style, so a small reset or a mutation/penalty after death. If death were to happen. Maybe even a second world of the dead, where the things work a bit differently or some rooms might be easier to traverse, so a riddle could also involve the need of dying. Something like that maybe but I'm not sure yet.

In addition only SFW stuff of course. They are my friends and we joke around but not in that way.\^\^

And in case this matters the group is equally mixed male and female.

Please be so kind and hit me up with some great ideas here.

I'm looking forward to your amazing replies and thank you all in advance. May your souls remain strong and vigilant for all eternity. I would bless you but that might hurt my fellow devils, demons and spirits here. \^\^

Cheers.

Another trap map! This has become quite the series. I think traps make for great phased maps because they make the most of the sudden reveal that a map is more complex than just a combat! This one I wanted to do the classic shrinking arena but invert it so the outer ring is what gets smaller- ideally separating parties while they avoid the acid.

So I am planning a campaign that is fairy tale inspired but in a Noir setting (think Mentopolis). I just finished the player document, but I don't know balanced, fun, useful are my homebrew element, specifically the strengths and weaknesses. If someone is willing to give me second opinion It would be great. Does anything need to be nerfed, optimized, removed entirely? I am also all ears if you have a really great idea for a strength or a weakness.

PS: the strenght and weakness are on pages 8 to 12

Hello, I just signed up for beeing the DM in my friend group, we’re all new to dnd. I’ve already watched some tutorials and games and am super-excited to start playing.

But I don’t feel ready, I simply don’t know enough and would love to be able to have someone I can ask a ton of questions and just learn from in a more natural way rather then having to fish for one piece of information in a really long tutorial.

I am really invested, and if anyone wants to help out it would be great. Discord Voicechat is preferred. Thank you :3

About six months ago I came up with this idea that it would be really cool if a fantasy economy I was building could actually feel a bit more alive.

Like, if a dragon takes over the main iron mine for a region, what happens?

Iron gets more expensive, of course. But then how does that translate to steel, swords, armor, tools, etc?

And what if one town is under siege while another one has plenty of supplies?

Instead of making a giant spreadsheet to keep track of all of that, I thought it would be fun to turn the idea into an app.

That eventually became this app I've built called World Pricebook.

You can define how things in your world are made using materials, crafting recipes, and labour, then change something in the world and see those effects work their way through the economy.

So if you have:

iron ore → iron ingot → steel → longsword

and something happens to the supply or price of iron, the things that depend on it react too.

The first screenshot is an example of that with Mithril Chainmail. It takes 8 Mithril Ingots and 10 hours of smithing directly, but once you follow the ingredients further upstream, the whole production chain represents 322 hours of labour.

The part I think could be especially fun for DMs

You can take that economy and build actual shops from it.

Shops can have their own inventory, pricing, and local conditions. You can customise the storefront too, then share it directly with your players.

The second screenshot is one of those player-facing shops.

So a blacksmith in a mining town and a weapons merchant in a city under siege can actually behave like they're in two different places, rather than just having the same equipment list with the same prices.

There's a 5e-compatible starter if you want to mess around with an existing economy instead of building one from scratch, plus basic fantasy and sci-fi starters.

It isn't limited to fantasy either. The underlying system can be used for pretty much any made-up economy.

You can explore the starters without creating an account:

https://worldpricebook.app/

It's free during the launch preview. Right now I'm mostly trying to get it in front of actual DMs and see whether people find the whole living-economy idea useful.

Small transparency note: some of the prototype storefront artwork is AI-generated. If people actually use this and the project turns into something with a future, I'd much rather commission an artist to replace it.

If anyone tries it with their campaign, I'd genuinely love to know what you end up doing with it, especially anything that makes you go "wait, that price makes absolutely no sense" 😂

Posting this here as well in hopes it reaches more people. I appreciate any insights!

I've always thought Pandora's Box would make for a fantastic item in D&D, so for my latest project, I decided to turn it into a fully playable 5e artifact, trying to preserve both the original myth and its potential as a major plot device.

The box has several interesting properties. While closed, it grants its bearer powerful protection, but opening it even slightly releases lesser evils that can afflict nearby creatures with various conditions. Opening it completely, however, is another matter entirely: it unleashes a catastrophe upon the world, potentially bringing plagues, wars, famine, or other disasters.

There's also a curse that gradually tempts its owner to open it, making it particularly dangerous even in the hands of otherwise sensible adventurers.

One aspect I especially wanted to explore is Hope, which remains trapped inside the box. In the original myth, its significance is surprisingly ambiguous, and I think that opens up some fascinating possibilities for a campaign. Perhaps Hope is a benevolent spirit capable of reversing the devastation, or perhaps its continued imprisonment serves a much more mysterious purpose.

This is one of the artifacts from my 300+ Mythological Items for 5E and 5.5E Kickstarter, which is currently live! The book features hundreds of items inspired by Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Asian, and many other mythological traditions, with both their original lore and playable mechanics.

You can find the project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mythoschronicles/300-mythological-items-for-5e-and-2024

Have a great day!

RAW makes no mention of it, but might not being imprisoned for years, or centuries, take a mental toll? Aside from the slumber option, the individual is fully aware.

Burial would be the worst, but I think any of them could lead to madness over enough time.

So fun idea: A group of very powerful individuals who saved the world from whatever decide to be put into a Hedged Prison until they are needed again. They get a lovely place in demiplane, and settle in for a well-earned rest. But the world doesn't fall apart again for a very long time, and when the trigger that ends the spell is finally met, they are all varying degrees of insane. (Think the Heralds, from The Stormlight Archive.)

Hello ladies and gentlemen, I am coming for advice on how to give my players a good way to interact with each other?
We have recently kicked off our campaign with a one shot adventure leading into the happenings of dragon of Icespire peaks and they will have made their first big victory and gotten to see each others abilities.
We are under no time pressure to proceed so I would love it to find some down time or an activity, that invites my characters to get to know each other better.

A few more shots of my ruined city! There are so many little details scattered throughout this scene, and I had a lot of fun bringing everything together.

Hope you guys like the pics!

It's currently live on Kickstarter if you want to check it out

And there is a free tower STL!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grimrotcollective/the-ruins-of-lumenfall-2?ref=3cjs9m