I really like the “who succeeds” idea. In events where I roll a fail and have no idea what to do with it, I can just have the outcome only happen for certain characters, or tweak the “success” so that it isn’t quite so successful. Haha.

This is another thing I fear, that causes me to do probably unnecessary rolls. I want the story/ gameplay to have at least some semblance of believability, so I don’t want everyone risking their life on a curiosity because they know I won’t kill them, but I also don’t want to “punish” players every time they take a step off the walking path.

I’ll admit it right here: sometimes I roll the dice just to give the illusion of risk, when in reality I’m buying time to make up the results of what someone just did.

Thanks for spelling it out like this. I think I’ve been too focused on “doing something” and keeping the game going, that I don’t stop to think before doing some things. Ie rolling before I know what will happen with a failure. I’ll try to take more quick pauses to think things through, and worry about smoothness of play later.

That’s where my problem comes from. I’m not experienced enough to know immediately where failure is acceptable or not; rather, I don’t always have backup plans or ideas for when things that should be able to fail, fail. So I roll, and it fails, and it should fail, but I’ve got no idea what happens when it does. So it doesn’t fail.

I think I’m getting better at improv-ing events and making backup plans. It’s still difficult for me to find the balance between the story I want to tell/ have prepared vs the story that my players wind up creating, but checking in with my party here and there tells me everyone’s having fun and only rarely does anyone feel gipped or abused by dice rolls.

I’m a first time DM and I struggle with this a lot haha. There are times where I feel a roll is appropriate, so I do it, and whatever is supposed to happen fails, then I realize… “what the hell is supposed to happen if that doesn’t work?” so it just kinda happens anyways… IDK if my players have caught on…

You do have our energy!

But it comes out in different ways.

When you laugh at our jokes, or respond (in or out of character) to our banter, or lean in with keen interest during an epic monologue, you feed our energy with yours. I can’t get into a back-and-forth with a brick wall; even if you just laugh and describe what your character does instead of acting anything out, if I know you’re having fun with it that gives me the mental fortitude needed to keep acting ridiculous.

Being the only one in character is one thing, it’s a little awkward at first but once everyone knows it’s your thing it’s fine, but if you’re the only one in character and everyone else just kinda deadpan responds it’s an instant vibe kill. If there’s someone in your party that is always in character, even if nobody else is, that means you make them feel comfortable enough to express their character, and that isn’t nothing! I know they appreciate you letting them channel their character.

Yeah I feel you. I’m doing two campaigns right now, one is my first time as a player and the other is the first time as a DM haha, as a player I’m a bard so the face of the party and my old-school improv skills are getting tested for sure!

Personally I find fleshing out your character’s backstory makes playing them a lot easier. If you know your character inside and out, you don’t have to translate an event into their “language” and think about what they would do or say from their perspective, you just let the thing happen and the character will tell you how they respond.

I was a drama kid and as such am usually the loud, boisterous one when playing DnD (as DM or player). I’ve come to terms that most of my friends are going to appreciate my roleplaying, but respond mostly out of character, and that’s fine.

But when someone does respond in a character voice, it feels so great!

I get your sentiment, but this is not my game. I’m in no position to retcon the DMs decision. I’m not the master craftsman, nor are they my tools… Rather, I’m a patron of the crafter, and as soon as I saw him pull out a particular chisel, I’ve noticed fewer people enjoying the crafts.

I get that the deck itself doesn’t do anything, but it’s a mechanic in a game that people play, thus it does effect the game and “does” something to an extent. The same way that having spell slots for casters “does” something. When you introduce new mechanics it definitely does “do” something. Idk, maybe semantics.

As a player and a first time DM, I did not like it at all when my DM brought out the DoMT. First off, a player was given the deck outside the context of the game, so we’re all (characters) sitting at a bar when out of nowhere one of us pulls this deck of cards out that none of us had ever seen before. Then (because RP goes out the window when you have the opportunity to use a new real-life toy) everyone in the party decided to pull one, causing one person to get 3 wishes, another to get a follower, and (after peer pressuring me) my character (a punk rock vampire!) to have his alignment changed to lawful good.

That was 3 sessions ago and since then every game has been non-stop gimmicks to cater to the results of the deck pull. One player is leaving (partly for this but for a few other reasons) and the game is slowly drifting apart; I completely blame the DoMT (and my DM’s poor implementation) for the likely death of my first DnD campaign 😞

The DM of that game is a player in the game I’m running. He asked if I’d like to borrow the deck… had to politely decline. “too complicated for a first timer” I told him. “and it’s dumb as shit and only makes things interesting when you’ve made them boring,” I did not tell him.

Nice! I started my first ever campaign as a DM a couple days ago and ran the second session last night. It’s a great feeling watching all your hard work come together.

Nice! When you check them out, don’t be intimidated by the lengths of the books. I don’t know what other edition books look like, but the 5e player handbook is SUPER long, but most of the book is covering things like class abilities and spells. The actual rules of the game is a very short section at the beginning and middle of the book.

Oh hey, I want to message you again in case you did not know. Most, if not all, of the DnD handbooks can be found very easily for free online. The physical books, if bought new, are very expensive, especially if you are not interested in actually playing the game. But all of the rules and information you need, you can search and find very easy.

I’ll have to look into 4e then, I’ve only really tried looking at 5e, 3.5e, and 2e (whatever that was called). Honestly now that I’m thinking about it I don’t know that I’ve heard people ever talk about 4e. Sounds interesting, though.

No problem. Like I said, there are probably a lot of people that would disagree with me, but 5e seems to make the most logical sense to me. Once you understand the very core concepts, you can more or less figure everything out from there. There’s a lot of niche rules, but if you are just making your own game based on 5e, you can decide what you like and don’t like.

Are you asking which edition is the best one? You’ll probably get some heated responses (and I’m gonna get some too for my recommendation) but I think 5e is the best one to adapt to a videogame. The system is pretty “dumbed down” for lack of a better term than what I’ve seen of other systems.

Disclaimer, I’m a brand new DM and only have in-game experience with 5e, but I’ve tried looking through some older editions, and maybe Baldurs Gate is to blame but none of them really made much sense to me.

I sorta did this on the first fight of the campaign I’m in now.

We were in a huge bar fight with 5 guys and a big leader, our barbarian and melee warlock had already sliced 3 guys in half and blown another one’s arm off, but we were hacking away at the leader and he’s barely taken a scratch while we were all beat up pretty bad. So I had my bard pull an intimidation check to tell the captain to fuck off unless he wanted to be next and he called off his guys and ran away!

Now we’ll probably have to fight him again with even more guys… heheh… oops.

For me? Now way Dave, it’s not worth it! When you fudge dice rolls, you’re DM’ing for Satan!

Kills me every time.

MY children will read dice where they land, HIS followers will give in to HIS ways and read the number HE wants to see.

I don’t know why you answered the question with so much animosity, but thank you for the answer, because none of that was in your original comment.

I don’t currently treat my players like anything because I don’t have players. I’ve been wanting to get into it and was asking a question of someone who seemed to have more experience than me. Thanks for being so kind and helpful to a new member of the community seeking information 👍🏼

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Ok. So WHY is it bad that GMs don’t want their players to look up the module. That’s the part nobody is understanding. If you missed the last sentence of my comment…

if you don’t want anyone entering the game with advanced knowledge or an advantage on things that’d be a no-brainer

Why is this a problem.