LGBTQ+DM

‘With this blade, you accept to be mine and only mine. You will be my hand, my heart and my weapon. You will answer to me and do my bidding...do you accept?’

This is something I’m super excited about! This druid subclass is all about the Mysteries held by the Depths of the Ocean. Believers in the power of the primordial soup and the inevitability of all things succumbing once again to the sea, druids of the Circle of the Deep have a natural affinity for the ocean’s mutability, its raw strength, and its incredible capacity for strange and even eerie life.

While I couldn’t get into it here, I’d also argue there’s a lot of re-flavoring someone could do to make traditional druid spells more sea-themed. Barkskin could create barnacles instead, for example, or you could rework Tree Stride to pass you through tidal pools instead of trees.

The hope I have for this and the next few subclasses I plan to homebrew is that I can get to the core of how immense power can make a character something more than a natural, mortal being. You don’t just do the impossible; you ARE the impossible.

Hey everyone!

We’re back with a brand new map. This is our 7 storey opulent art nouveau library. Each floor holds different mysterious and secret knowledge. Take your party down through the depths of the library, discovering an orrery, a taxidermy bestiary, a dragon skeleton, map gallery, endless pit of books and more!

Journey into the Festerwood!

A mysterious fungi filled land with myconids and other horrors lurking behind the toadstools.

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This map was made in collaboration with Griffon’s Saddlebag and comes with a PDF of lore, items, monsters and more. Patrons also get access to 12 different variations!

About Your Dungeon Room…

Dungeon Room Name: What’s this Dungeon Room called? Instead of calling it “Room #3 on Floor 2″, try making each room unique by calling it something like “The Corridor of Knives” or “The Sinking Square”. 

Naming your Dungeon Room peaks the interest of any DM reading it, as well as keeping the Name stuck in your head so you don’t have to flip through all those DM Notes mid-game…

Dungeon Room History: What’s the History of this Room? Is it the bedroom of a mad alchemist? Or is it the bathroom of a powerful necromancer?

Threat Level: This is how deadly this Dungeon Room is. Is it no threat at all, a simple setback, a moderate threat, or straight up deadly to anyone who enters?

Dungeon Motif: Is the Dungeon Underground, Abandoned, or does it lead to another Plane? 

Selecting a Motif for the Dungeon Room based on the Dungeon can be pretty crucial. A mega-dungeon buried in the desert is very different from a ruined mega-dungeon that’s underwater…

Layout

Dungeon Walls: Are they stone or wood? Are they bare or decorated with elaborate tapestries and faded paintings?

Dungeon Floor: Is it stone, glass, wood, or something else? Will it make a noise if an oblivious Adventurer walks in?

Temperature: Is it unnaturally cold or unusually hot in this room? Maybe as the Party ventures deeper to the core of the earth everything gets supernaturally hot, or maybe as they venture deeper into a creatures lair, the air becomes supernaturally cold and the Adventurers can see their own breath!

Illumination: Is the room pitch black or lit by torches, or does the Room have small magical flames that burn forever?

Room Features: This is what’s in the Room. Statues, chests, pools of water, broken bottles. Room Features can be whatever the Adventurers see when they first enter the room, and what they could find if they explore the Room further.

Encounters

NPCs: This is usually a social encounter, such is meeting and talking to a friendly denizen of the dungeon, or maybe the ghost of a long-dead tomb-robber…

Traps: From corridors that flood with lava to false stairs that lead to a pit of boiling oil, these are the dangers a Dungeon Room (or corridor, or even stairs leading to the next Room or Dungeon Level) can have to stop any unwanted treasure-hunters.

Wandering Monsters: These are the Monsters that could possibly be found in this particular Dungeon Room, just in case the DM wants to spark some combat after a long session of busting down Dungeon Doors.

Puzzles: This is for the DM that likes to test their Players smarts. Maybe your Dungeon Room isn’t filled with Monsters, but instead a carefully composed riddle that only the Denizens of the Dungeon would know, and failure to solve such a puzzle could lead to a painful death at the hands of the Dungeon Room itself!

In my d&d games, I use a simple, three step system to maintain a cohesive plot structure. If you as a dm have been having problems with keeping your party on task or on track with your story, I would suggest giving it a try. It is most helpful when you are in the planning stages of the campaign, but you can implement it at any time to try to steer your party back on course.

Step One: The Archplot

The Archplot is your overall story. Decide what themes you want the game to explore. For instance, my game includes themes like patriotism v. idealism, war, democracy, and technological advancement. The archplot helps inform your major villains, the beats of the overall story, and what values you would like your players to hold to make a narratively satisfying game. My steps are usually: decide on a few themes that fit together along with related motifs, create major villains that fit with those themes and motifs, and decide the basic shape of the story including how the party will eventually meet each villain.

Step Two: The Arc

The arc is the next step smaller. This is the current problem that the party is attempting to solve over a series of sessions. The component parts of an arc are: a conflict of some kind, a clear goal, and some form of time limit. For example, let’s set up an arc where a region is being overtaxed by corrupt government officials. The conflict is between the people and the officials who are robbing them, the goal for the party is to remove the officials in one way or another or to convince them to stop taxing the citizens so highly, and the time limit could be the law-keepers closing in on the small resistance group the party is working with. This creates a story that will capture the attention of the party (if they are open to your efforts) and give them a clear sense of direction. Usually, at the end of an arc you will give clues to the Archplot, usually in the form of hints towards the major villains.

Step Three: The Session

This is the smallest unit of measurement in the story of a d&d campaign. The session refers to each individual meeting of the party, and is set up similarly to an arc. A good session should inform the arc and be moving towards solving the conflict presented in it, while having its own conflict and problem to solve. Let’s build a session in the arc we just used as an example! For the first session in the arc about the corrupt officials, let’s say the party arrives at a town and witness law-keepers extorting from a man who appears to be sleeping on the street. This can be resolved by combat or by watching it happen. This will intrigue your players and they will most likely investigate further. Upon investigation, they learn about the corrupt nobles and meet an operative of the resistance. The rebel tells them about a plan they have to break into the castle and capture the noble family to give them a trial in the town, but before that can happen they need to create a major distraction for the guards at the castle so they won’t be caught. They ask you to go and give out aid to the poorest citizens of the town in the meantime.

The first session should act mainly as exposition (or lore dumping) and introduces you to the arc’s important NPCs and the party’s goal. This will hopefully hook the party into a sense of obligation to help the people of the town. To make it feel less like lore dumping, throw in some minor combat and some fun minor NPCs to keep the party entertained.

FAQ:

My party just ignored my plot hook!

If the party ignores your plot hook, move to the next arc in the archplot, but there have to be consequences. For my previous example, if they remain unstopped, the noble family could return as a threat with now inflated wealth and influence. Perhaps gaining a coveted seat on a royal council and proposing anti-adventurer measures.

I didn’t do this planning before my game, how do I weave it in?

I find the best way to weave this planning into a game is to introduce a villain with goals dependent on the players’ failure. This will, in itself, create an arc where the players feel that they need to defeat the villain, and then you can plan the shape of it. Alternatively, I would also recommend using a “Gandalf” archetype NPC who can inform the party of an arc. Just be careful to make the NPC trustworthy if the integrity of your story depends on it.

How do I start off with this early in the game?