Malpais Legate posted:

That's my most frustrating part of DMing 5e. There's so little in the books for me to make available for my players to spend their exceptionally large amount of money on, and that's just with a fraction of the loot they could get from the starter set. The wizard had a constant need for gold just for inscribing spells, but the rest of the party had little to do but fill a bathtub with it.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Xanathar's has buying magic items as a down time activity. If you don't want to get that book or follow those rules. You can just make them for sale and pick a price point for some stuff. (Other things they can spend money on would be stuff like land and forts, which are things not in all types of games.) the rest does not even put a dent in most parties spending money.

Here is magic item buying rules from Xanathar's

Even if you don't like them, the pricing stuff there give you a point to start on if you just want magic items to be available in general.

gradenko_2000 posted:

D&D 5e rejiggering the math so that you don't need a +1 weapon, but then having loot rules that yield +1 swords anyway, as well as having so little guidance on how to get the party to spend their hundreds of gold that the GM will naturally gravitate towards +1 swords out of tradition is a great example of disjointed game design.

Nihilarian posted:

you don't need a +1 weapon, unless you actually want to contribute in battle past like, level 5

kingcom posted:

Nah you just need a magic weapon of some kind to bypass the resistance wall that shows up. +1 is probably the lamest answer to that tbh.

gradenko_2000 posted:

The Rolemaster guys made this generic supplement once called "... and a 10-foot pole" whose point was supposed to be that it'd tell you the prices of things for drat-near everything:







It's maybe one or two orders of magnitude too low for what you get from 5e though.

Mendrian posted:

IMHO if you're trying to with a lovely DM who is also a good friend, say something to this effect: "I don't think I'm cut out for this sort of game." If pressed, suggest, "I wasn't looking for something this challenging, I think maybe I'm cut out for something more casual." This will allow him to retain his pride because it's not that he's lovely, it's that you're a filthy casual and he probably will say he's sad to see you go.

Mendrian posted:

IMHO if you're trying to with a lovely DM who is also a good friend, say something to this effect: "I don't think I'm cut out for this sort of game." If pressed, suggest, "I wasn't looking for something this challenging, I think maybe I'm cut out for something more casual." This will allow him to retain his pride because it's not that he's lovely, it's that you're a filthy casual and he probably will say he's sad to see you go.

quote:

Meet One of New York’s Best Professional D&D Dungeon Masters

...

But now there’s a resurgence and appreciation for a more personal experience.”

Which is one of the reasons Woods is so busy these days. He’s currently overseeing nine games a week, all of them focusing on either Dungeons & Dragons, or the kid-friendlier, D&D-influenced game Dungeon World. His clientele is made up of an assortment of armchair-adventuring adults, students, and families (including one with a few Oscar wins, though he’d prefer to keep their identity a secret). He’s spent the past few years doing all of this while also working to earn an RPG-related doctorate (his dissertation title: “Anything Can Be Attempted: Table-Top Role Playing Games as Learning and Pedagogy”).

...

“I’ve had people say they want me to be harsher as a DM, and I don’t always take that advice,” Woods says. “If I’m too much of a hardass, then they’re really gonna start questioning what they are paying me for.” So he adapts the game's difficulty levels to his players' wishes and skill levels. And while it is possible to be revived in D&D, it can slow the game down. In D&D, Woods says, "death and unconsciousness are relatively boring."

Yet there’s another reason Woods might want to keep everyone at the table happy. When he was younger, Woods couldn’t find enough people to play with him, and wasn’t even sure how to find them; now he has enough D&D pals to fill out that ridiculously detailed notebook of his. “Before I start a game, I think, ‘I am not their friend, I am their Dungeon Master,’ ” he says. “And then, within 30 seconds of me walking in and someone saying, ‘Hey, Timm!’ I’m already like, ‘Oh, gently caress it, I love these people.’”

...

quote:

A few weeks before the con, Woods finished his dissertation—the latest, most seemingly grown-up victory in a decades-long campaign he’d begun when he was barely a teen. He was soon to be Dr. Woods, but he wasn’t yet ready to leave D&D for the far dicier world of academia. “This all started as me trying to figure out how I could get paid to run these games and survive on it,” he says. The plan, for now, is to keep adding more games, keep finding more clients, maybe even get some corporate gigs. To help his clients undertake their next battle-scarring campaigns, even if a few of them die along the way. To keep riding the friggin’ dragon as far and high as it’ll go.

quote:

As it turns out, the very attributes that help form the core of every Dungeons & Dragons character—strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma—are the same ones needed to be a stellar Dungeon Master.

quote:

kid-friendlier, D&D-influenced game Dungeon World

gradenko_2000 posted:

Huge slam on Dungeon World out of nowhere!

Kaysette posted:

The newbie party I’m running wanted a nautical/pirate arc and boats are a great goldsink (not that there’s much RAW support for it). Hiring skilled crew, upgrading weapons, repairing damage, etc.

They’ve started setting aside shares of loot for future upgrades I still need to make up.

I’ve been using this Tribality article for our first naval combats, any advice from others who have done naval stuff in 5e?

Uroboros posted:

Cross Post Question:

Anyone have advice on the best way to run a 40K RPG campaign, or just RPG campaign in general over the internet? I have heard of a few programs, but it would be nice to hear from people who have experienced first hand success.

dont even fink about it posted:

Best thing to know about Fantasy Flight 40K is that the rules are terrible, horribly organized, and contradictory (especially Black Crusade--can't comment as much on the others but BC is bad enough to go around). Best plan is to just eyeball the general guidelines and call it good.

Running map software (rolld20) for friends is better than it was 5-10 years ago, but still a large amount of overhead that can slow down online games, so if you can do part of the game without a map, good deal.

Uroboros posted:

I am pretty cool without relying on maps, but more of good ways to view rolls(especially given 1d100 system), and being able to view my players and hear what they are saying well. Basically, what provides the best simulation of sitting at a table with people?

Uroboros posted:

Cross Post Question:

Anyone have advice on the best way to run a 40K RPG campaign, or just RPG campaign in general over the internet? I have heard of a few programs, but it would be nice to hear from people who have experienced first hand success.

Throwing Turtles posted:

So a couple of years back on the forums there was a 40k campaign where all of the players were squats just trying to make it in a galaxy that didn't want them. I didn't really follow it because time issues, but the impression I had is that everybody in it had a lot of fun. Might be worth hunting up.

Kaysette posted:

You mean SCRUNTS?

ReapersTouch posted:

Just finished Tomb of Horrors. All my players jumped in the sphere of annihilation out of frustration. I told them before we started that this dungeon is really dumb and tedious, so they knew that going in. I ran it by the book and took their actions literally and without hesitation.

It was refreshing for the contrast of how I ran the CoS campaign, with hand holding and a very lax dm style.

Tomb of Horrors isn't good y'all.

Kaysette posted:

Just saw someone online argue that a single d100 was different than rolling d% because you could never get a 1-9 with percentile die. I think he just had 2 regular d10s.

The players of this game never cease to amaze me.

Cat Face Joe posted:

0 and 00 as 10

Kaysette posted:

AlphaDog posted:

I didn't think this could get any stupider, but now I'm fully expecting the next d% story is gonna be something like "...and they'd use a computer to print a randomised list of numbers from 1-100 matched to a list of those numbers in order, roll d100, and look up the result on that table".

e: Or how someone's cousin would roll 5d20 and add them, with a total of 100 meaning that you roll a d6 and use the face value except if it's 6, which means it's 100, and what's a bell curve?

AlphaDog posted:

00 and 0 needs to be read as 11, and a result of 100 is when the dice read 90 and 9.

Pleads posted:

But this table doesn't go up to 109!

Cat Face Joe posted:

Years ago we combined two groups and the larger four person group treated a 1 and 00 as 100 and 0 and 00 as 10. This was quite a surprise to us, the three person groups especially cause we didn't know until one of us rolled 0 and 00.

AlphaDog posted:

I didn't think this could get any stupider, but now I'm fully expecting the next d% story is gonna be something like "...and they'd use a computer to print a randomised list of numbers from 1-100 matched to a list of those numbers in order, roll d100, and look up the result on that table".

Guy A. Person posted:

So uhhhhhhh how did they roll a 1?

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Yeah we have a rotating schedule of who gets to set which permutation of {1, 2..., 100} we use for each session - gotta make sure it's fair.