I'll note as well that I dislike having "pregenerated" characters.

For the same general reasons -- a player should have their own character.

Even when the adventure might require one, I avoid it, even rewriting things if necessary.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

I'll note as well that I dislike having "pregenerated" characters.

For the same general reasons -- a player should have their own character.

Even when the adventure might require one, I avoid it, even rewriting things if necessary.

I can't think of any adventures that required pre-generated characters for 5e (there may be some... to be fair, I never look at the adventures... usually buying books for whatever monsters are in there that I can use). But I agree - someone rolling up their own characters creates an attachment to the work they've put in - even deciding and rolling dice - rather than handing them over a sheet and saying, "You're playing a half-elf ranger."

Now that said, I've brought pre-gen characters to camping trips - where I make up a random adventure and people pick character sheets (usually bring like 20 different pre-gens so there's variety) - and it's for like the three day weekend type of thing with no plans of ever continuing beyond that. That's fine and fun.

MI:7 - Dead Reckoning finally released today, and so I now know what my second campaign will be.

I am going to turn all the MI films into one single campaign. Do smaller bits in between based on something else. Have to figure out what. 

But I already have the bridging parts, to link each of the film general stories together (and not using the film's relationship basis). 

They are perfect for a full on adventure set.  All the set-ups are divine, the set pieces are like perfect.

I might even get super ambitious and mix in the Bond and Bourne films. That will be a damn good adventure series.

Quote from SirTawmis >>

Question of the Day: Do you, or the DM, write your character's backstory? Do you even care about a backstory? Is it different (who writes the backstory) whether it's homebrew or a pre-generated module (say, like Storm King's Giants)?

 

 I like writing my own backstories. It is fun and gives me a connection to my characters.

On the topic of the DM writing the player's backstories, I have had players who write the same backstory for every single one of their characters. It isn't that they have a favorite character that they want to play in multiple different campaigns, they just aren't willing to put in any effort into making a character who isn't a murderhobo. However, they briefly played in a game that came with pre-written characters that had short backstories. This character was still a murderhobo, but they tried to include aspects from the pre-written characters backstories into their roleplay. It might have said something about a lost temple that they were trying to find and the character had a few roleplay instances where they actually worked toward that goal. It wasn't much, but it was definitely better than the kill and pillage first, don't even ask questions later play style they are known for. 

There are also certain games where pre-written or DM written backstories are essential. I have heard ideas where everybody comes up with a loose backstory and when they get to the table, everybody passes their character sheet to the left and they play a completely random character. These sorts of things are best for one shots, I think, and the players should probably get some sort of warning before hand. 

Personally, if a DM wanted to use pre-generated or DM written backstories in their game, I would probably be skeptical but I wouldn't be totally against it. I would think of it as a fun challenge to play a character I wouldn't normally play. 

It is official: I will be running two groups of 6 to 7 each in January. They will be going through the same campaign independently, with a chance for later crossovers.

It is Boys and Girls. That is, all boys on one team, all girls on the other. Our Enby is going to be on both teams (and yes,there is an in-joke to that). I know I have an entire outline done, but that MI/Bond/Bourne idea combined with the sudden burst of competitiveness from them has me twitchy. I use the term "teams" on purpose.  This is what comes of having spouses in your game. 

I will know more after we run the Tomb of Annihilation.

I am kinda pleased. I know others will join in over time, but a good solid group is nice and with so many of us DMing now, it feels good to have a strong interest in my next game after Isorta had them all throw themselves into the fire in the last one. Also, some of the other campaigns are rock n roll. 

Quote from The_Summoning_Dark >>

Question: I know this is a hot topic, but when do you think it is okay to start playing Christmas music?

 
I just want to point out that I’ve had Good King Wenceslas stuck in my head ever since this post.

Quote from IamSposta >>

Quote from The_Summoning_Dark >>

Question: I know this is a hot topic, but when do you think it is okay to start playing Christmas music?

 
I just want to point out that I’ve had Good King Wenceslas stuck in my head ever since this post.

Underneath the mountain, Right against the forest fence?

Haul you flesh and wine and pine logs?

With your page at your side, do you brave the rude winds wild lament and the bitter weather?

QOTD: What's your least favorite thing about D&D?

Quote from AEDorsay >>

QOTD: What's your least favorite thing about D&D?

 The rules debates.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's sort of interesting to talk about whether, like, a Fireball spell affected by the Transmuted Spell metamagic to deal acid damage should still ignite flammable objects. But 1) I don't actually care what the "correct" answer is, and 2) this isn't why I come to the D&D table, but by golly it sure can take up a lot of time at the D&D table.

Especially when there's the impression that something is riding on the answer. Like, the Sorcerer player has already cast the spell and they're invested in how it works because of whatever's going on in the fight. I hate it.

Also, I'm invested in the game and its various communities enough that I've heard it all before. I'm in too deep. I know that. It's just how my brain works. So like, I know all the arguments. I know the relevant Crawdaddy tweets. I know that this doesn't go anywhere. That when we're done -- eventually -- we still won't have a concrete answer and the DM will just have to make a decision. This might really be the pain point for me. The debates might be interesting in their own right, if they were new to me. I don't know. I still think I'd be annoyed that we had to stop looting goblin corpses to talk about the minutiae of line-of-effect vs line-of-sight vs obscurement vs cover. But maybe it wouldn't be so irritating. Maybe it would be my second-least favorite thing instead, and my least favorite could be, like, the mismatch of design goals to the actual needs of players, exemplified by the absence of crafting and the so-called adventuring day.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

QOTD: What's your least favorite thing about D&D?

 
How streamlined everything is. I wish it were crunchier.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

QOTD: What's your least favorite thing about D&D?

For me, it’s all of the horrible stuff that one of the founders tried to force into the earlier editions. (I don’t remember his name but it was Gary something.)

I didn’t play dnd back then and I wasn’t even alive but hearing about that content makes my skin crawl.

ChoirofFire, that is possibly among my biggest ones. And yet I still allow myself to get sucked into them unless it is during a game (where the rule is argue after). It is part of why I have to write up all the rules when I do a big effort like this -- to end most of those before they start.

IamSposta, I just want to preface this with saying I am in awe of how well you know the DDB system, lol. I very obviously dislike the lack of crunchy, but I could get by if it weren't for my players. Coming to DDB for me has done nothing but make me need to add more crunch. Because some of those things Choir is talking about have pointed out areas where I should turn some attention. 

Nikkifem, welcome to the Anything but thread! His name was Gary Gygax. A man named Dave Arneson adapted some wargaming (all miniatures and armies) rules for playing fantasy characters. He showed it to Gary Gygax, who then took Arneson's stuff and created the original D&D game. They partnered, created TSR, and Arneson was forced out very early. I DM'd D&D starting in 1980, and yes, all of that stuff was there. It is one of the major reasons that I only really used my own worlds.

My least favorite thing about D&D is the absence of the rules for campaigns other than just basic punch a nose adventures. Survival, exploration, creation, the stuff that one would have to do if you were suddenly dropped into a world you didn't understand. But also, I deeply dislike some of the structures they have put in place, specifically within 5e. The Class system is a mess. The switch away from magic items to features I have adapted to, but I still like magic items for a lot of it, and I think they relied too much on what they did for 3/3.5 -- the features should all be their own thing, something player's can use to build a distinct character from.

To AEDorsay:

I can understand that. I tried to make a campaign in a home brew world that had a lack of resources and evil gods usurping each other, but I haven’t found enough content in the DMG to help me make it well. It didn’t help either that It was my first campaign and that I had no idea what I was doing lol.

I’ve been reading stuff from this thread for a while and all of the insight and advice that everyone posts here are really interesting. Especially your stuff AED :D

Quote from AEDorsay >>

IamSposta, I just want to preface this with saying I am in awe of how well you know the DDB system, lol. I very obviously dislike the lack of crunchy, but I could get by if it weren't for my players. Coming to DDB for me has done nothing but make me need to add more crunch. Because some of those things Choir is talking about have pointed out areas where I should turn some attention. 

 
Why thank you. Lei è molto gentile.

Quote from NikkiFem >>

To AEDorsay:

I can understand that. I tried to make a campaign in a home brew world that had a lack of resources and evil gods usurping each other, but I haven’t found enough content in the DMG to help me make it well. It didn’t help either that It was my first campaign and that I had no idea what I was doing lol.

I’ve been reading stuff from this thread for a while and all of the insight and advice that everyone posts here are really interesting. Especially your stuff AED :D

 
I honestly sorta suck, imo, at giving world building advice, because I overcomplicate everything -- I approach world building using what I know about peoples and how those things and systems they create and interact with work.

But then, my approach is really kinda different since I never start off with an idea for an adventure. My last world started as "how does one create a dungeon and support it?". Triggered by an old map of a huge freaking dungeon, lol.

The actual inspiration for this new world, though, was the question "What would D&D look like without Tolkien?", so i did have some vague ideas to start with.

The adventure inevitably occurs to me while I am building out a world.  And I get a lot of feedback from my players, since the world has to appeal to them, in the end, especially one that isn't a "one shot" world for a single campaign. I'm six weeks out from done with world building, and I have two separate 1st to 20th level campaigns figured out for the world. It is the world that ives e the ideas for the campaigns, combined with whatever is going on in my life at the time, lol.

But ask a specific questions about some thing you are doing in world building, and I can probably give an answer if it is structural.

hm. One of the things I struggled with the most was writers block. I got that after three sessions in the starting area and I ran out of my prepared material. After that prepared material, I had no idea how to build on anything and all I could do was slap stuff together in a vain attempt at world building :(

so to summarise: How do you get past writers block/ how do you get ideas you can build on?

Quote from NikkiFem >>

hm. One of the things I struggled with the most was writers block. I got that after three sessions in the starting area and I ran out of my prepared material. After that prepared material, I had no idea how to build on anything and all I could do was slap stuff together in a vain attempt at world building :(

so to summarise: How do you get past writers block/ how do you get ideas you can build on?

 I know this wasn’t directed at me, but I purposely read and watch a lot of good stories. And I don’t mean I watch a lot of tv or read whatever books I can get my hands on, I mean that I look for quality art that is well made. It helps to inspire and there is a lot you can learn from simply observing something that you know to be well made.

I also research whatever interests me. I read boat loads of folklore and mythology because I find that there is a gold mine of good inspiration there. I also put in the work to research other things that might play interesting roles in stories like different people groups, wildlife, inventions, etc.

If you just go through life with open eyes, ears, and mind you will constantly absorb inspiration. Listen to music that isn’t your style, talk to people who have different beliefs and ideas, read genres that you haven’t read before, visit places that you wouldn’t normally go to. 

Also, if you are trying to write a high fantasy Tolkien-esque setting, but all you can think of is gothic steampunk, write gothic steampunk. Sometimes it pays to go with whatever comes easiest and not force yourself into something that you aren’t ready to do at the time.

This is just what I find to work, I hope it helps.

Quote from NikkiFem >>

hm. One of the things I struggled with the most was writers block. I got that after three sessions in the starting area and I ran out of my prepared material. After that prepared material, I had no idea how to build on anything and all I could do was slap stuff together in a vain attempt at world building :(

so to summarise: How do you get past writers block/ how do you get ideas you can build on?

 
For Writer's Block: My usual practice is to get up and walk away fro it, to do anything else for at least three days where I don't think about iit (usually takes a week).

FOr ideas: Start with what is there already. One of the things worldbuilder's like me do is we want to have everything figured out ahead of time. This is a bad habit, lol. You have to keep things loose and flowing -- there are probably a thousand major people on my world, and I don't know any of their names because I haven't had to deal with them yet. I have no clue what the name of the Mayor in the town of Derier is.

The new "starter" thing, Intro to Stormwreck Isle, is an addition to the very first encounter on the island. It is a perfect 'starter, and you never need to turn to the actual adventure it is taken from -- you can run with what's there and start building out entirely based on what you know. For example, we know it is an isle -- a small island, say. We know there is a town there on it. We know it has a problem with undead, and that the players are shipwrecked on it. 

Next we move to what could be. Never what actually is, just what it could be. Here is a call for all the ideas you can possibly pull out of your head when it comes to a small island with a town that people get shipwrecked on that has a problem with undead. Don't try to pick one, just come up with as many different ideas as you can. Scribble the down,  go back if something occurs to you about one, but the important part is to just let your imagination go and do whatever it will do.

While I typed that I thought of:  a lot of folks get shipwrecked here - the town is all the folks who have. There's no dock or anything. Folks who die here always raise as undead -- skeletons, mummies, zombies. There is a necromancer who is doing it in a quest to become a vampire. The people live in grass huts and are all kinds of ages and come from everywhere. The lair of the big bad is a secluded grove of banana trees. The people eat a lot of crabs, fish, coconut, and berries. THey show signs of scurvy and malnutrition.

I also thought: it is a pirate haven, and they are a bunch of the most brutish louts. They are led by a group of five captains who all compete with each other. That competition has taken a back seat since everyone started seeing the Grey Ghost, a ship from the old captain who founded the place, that the five of them murdered.

I don't try to think what they ideas are, I just write them out as they pop in. I have literally cleaned my house with a pad of paper for just writing notes of things popping into my head close by, lol. I never sit down and say "ok, I have to figure this out now. That is how I get writer's block, myself. The reason things take so long for me sometimes to finish is that I will do  dozen parts of something at once and simply wait until I feel the urge to do that thing. Not too long ago, I decided to turn Reeve into a class, and I whipped it out in 20 minutes. I still have to finish 10 other classes.

Once I have my bunch of ideas, I start looking to see if I can form a story around them. Or see what else they spark. And as you might notice, none of my ideas have a damn thing to do with the published module, lol. Because I'm not trying to think of what it came from or where it is going. Just what I have in front of me.

Once I have a vague idea of what might be a story, I think back to what has gone before. IF there is a prior adventure, then things happened. I look back in my head and see what stood out to me -- especially "cool moments' and fun NPC interactions. Those are my possible places to turn to for hooks -- but sometimes those things allow me to add to the list of stuff i thought of.

I use an outline system for my modules. And when I say that, I mean literally an outline -- the 1. a. b.c. 2. a.b.c. 3. a. b. c. kind of thing. I also frequently use one of the many "Heroic Journeys" as a template (Hero's Journey, Virgin's Promise, Heroine's Journey, Propp's Fairy tale outline, other stuff I find or have) for a larger arc, and I will start to drop the ideas where they can fit into it, and soon I have a rough outline of a series of events as I connect things.

Because I use an outline set up I can create multiple events that may or may not connect int he same way -- which is on purpose -- I let the player actions decide, so all my stuff is always just a what if, and after years of practice I am pretty good at just saying "oh, that course of action is like a blend of these two things, so I can wing the encounter from that".

Then I start to flesh some stuff out -- is that a good place for an encounter? Here's a bunch of zombies. They go to the town, so what happens? Ah, here we go, we can have them meet a couple kids who are playing with sticks. Turns out they saw a secret pirate nest, but the adults don't believe them, having given up hope.

Once I have a rough idea of things, then we start playing it, and the bulk of my games are reacting to the player choices. If I need to have a more structured game (say, my younger players), then I will do slightly different things to keep them moving or give them ideas through metagame comments.

Imo/ime, the worst thing you can do is stress it. Get worried about it, feel pressured about it, just generally feel like you aren't getting it done -- this is all anxiety, and anxiety can be paralyzing. So if you feel that, and you don't know why, then stop. It is one of the reasons we have 6 DMs in my group, lol. If I feel overly stressed and locked then my session will go to someone else for a week. And I will do something completely unrelated to D&D.

I really miss in person -- I used to cook for everyone when they came over, and cooking for others always destresses me.

That's all I can really suggest, or think to suggest right now.

That was a lot more than I thought I would get in response lol. Thank you both. 
I’ll try to keep all that in mind. It makes a lot more sense to keep it loose and open to input rather than to plan every detail. I’ve got a while before my campaign actually is ready to be used. 

I have noticed that most things related to DMing is a lot more difficult for me since I am neurodivergent. I think that your advice AED and Dark will help me construct a world that my players will want to interact with and that I could maybe use in pbp down the line.

I’ll be somewhat active here too :3