These 20 Dungeon Master Mistakes Ruin D&D Games 

a worthy sacrifice

You did what you had to do

Sacrifices must be made for the greater good. Like a dnd group with full tummies.

I let my players bribe me all the time for tiny amounts of XP. They bring snacks, props, RP, and they get 25-50 XP bonuses. There are pros and cons and I try to acknowledge timid players to balance out the others.

In all fairness, it sounds like he bribed the entire group equally. So I'd allow it.

Hilarious bait-and-switch

I like it... Especially Since some of my friends have told me that since my brain is so I'm a little cold that if I saw something weird I would try to figure it out approaching and I'll light it away at nighthere's a big dragon in the street there must be something robotic or a hologram I should go check it out so it's told me not talking about gaming would be the person who would end up approaching a real dragon and getting eaten as a warning everyone else said it wasn't an some kind of trick...lol

I have a DMPC I plan on using in my session tomorrow night whose entire purpose is to 1: act as a meat shield to let my players get a good look at a mini boss that they are NOT prepared for (they have already gone through 2 rough encounters since their last long rest, and kinda went nuclear on wave one of three... Oops) to decide if they want to stick around and fight it, or make an escape to fight another day; and 2: he carries a magic item needed to take said mini bosses most deadly ability off-line, and since I plan on giving them a more powerful item of a similar nature in a couple more sessions, a DMPC carrying it makes more sense than giving it to the party themselves.

My DM loved having us roll for everything too. Like we where fighting wererats and I had nothing that could hurt them. The wizard cast sleep on one of them. So I thought: We are in a warehouse, so if I lock this wererat in an empty crate, that would buy us some additional time in case it wakes up. "Roll Perception and Athletics." Everything was an ability check. The DM was much better at storytelling that reading the books.

​@@schwarzerritter5724 I call for a lot of rolls that on face value most folks would think are unreasonable. But I am not doing it for a pass/fail type thing - I am doing it to get a spectrum idea. In your example, I would have asked for an investigation roll with whatever DC I was applying. If you barely beat the DC, I would say you find a box with a few rags in the bottom and a lid that was previously pried off. If you beat it by 5 or more, I would say you find a completely empty box, secure lid with some form of locking mechanism. If you barely failed, I would say you find a good box but it is full of crap, or the only empty boxes are on the other side of the room (basically, you are going to have to burn time/actions/etc. to get what you want). Failed it by more and maybe there isn't a lid for the box, or it is warped and there are gaps, etc. I feel that anyone who says "You are in a warehouse...you can't find a box because you rolled a 7..." is not doing this entirely right. But, yah - I ask for a lot of rolls to...I guess "variableize" things? OP - were you being chased, or otherwise did it "matter" if you climbed the wall or not? Then, I would have you roll. Doesn't matter how tall you are, how athletic, super-duper-cool you are, etc. - sh!t happens. Drives me nuts when people think that a character should automatically be able to do something because of stats or what not. On any given week of sports you can watch the elite of the elite make catastrophic mistakes, or the fates just decide to take a dump on them. Were you not being chased or did it not 'matter'? Yah, that's a waste of time roll.

@@jasonOfTheHills so you have your players roll, not to see if they complete something, but to have them determine what you should have already placed there or thought up on the fly? That's like having them roll in an empty room and having their roll determine how big a pile of treasure is in the middle of this room. Seems to punish them in a way I didn't think was possible. Or like their roll decide if there are 2 enemies or 12 Really quick, what about having my other party members follow me and roll when they never said they were doing so? No, it was a wall and I was stepping over it, nothing else. The rooms were connected but divided by this short wall. And the DMs guide even mentions that some things are things that the average person can do, adventurers are well above average. You're right, you can see shit just happen but how often and how likely is it to happen? Having the DC be even 5 easily makes it a 5%+ chance of failing. Do you think of all the players on the field, and all the plays they run, there is a 5% chance on each play that someone will make a "catastrophic mistake". If it's a "catastrophic mistake" like you say, then it should be a nat 1. That's literally what the nat 1 is for. How short would that wall have to be for you to not have your players roll if they were chased? I mean, technically they could make a catastrophic mistake and trip over a twig or rock the size of a baseball. Where do you draw the line? It's like having my player roll to kill a sleeping enemy. Sure, stealth check but to have them roll to see if they hit and then roll for damage is ridiculous. Might as well play "do you complete the quest roll" and skip everything. My experiences of DMs having me roll for the dumbest things is why I'm now a DM. And there's lots of things I changed to make more sense. My games are DnD in name only really.

@@doms.6701 To say I was taken aback by your reply is an understatement. It seems apparent to me that you are pretty passionate about this and I am not sure what I said that was so offensive but I apologize. I was simply trying to give some thoughts on the topic. Furthermore,. with the strawman, ad hoc, false equivalencies, etc, it is difficult to respond appropriately. I literally did not say nor take the positions you attribute to me. But I would like to make some clarifications if I could. I truly don't understand the characterization of "punish". In fact, I started doing this (range of outcome) many many years ago to combat being unfair. Maybe, personally, I think trying to round up kobolds in boxes is brilliant...but what do I know? I am just a dude who has never seen a kobold, let alone tried to wrangle one into a crate. Or on the other hand, maybe personally I believe the idea the player just threw out is flat-out bananas stupid. But again, what do I know? I ask the player to describe what they are attempting to do and then I have them roll what seems to be the most appropriate skill check. If they rock it, I tell them they succeed with some kind of bonus or flair. If they fail it, I tell them it will be a little trickier than they first thought it would be. How this equates to me shirking my duties to the game by not adequately planning or is equivalent to "roll to decide if there are 2 enemies..." I am just lost. But it definitely is not a punishment. In fact, the opposite - a player says they want to do something, they do it. We use the mechanics of the system at hand to determine what the outcome is. Regardless of my personal bias, ignorance or (yes, I admit it) occasional lack of planning to account for every possibility they could throw at me. "No, it was a wall and I was stepping over it, nothing else." Ok, then what is the issue? I completely agree with you. And I clearly stated that in my original comment - this is silly. If there is no 'point' then what is the point. I did not claim that there is a 5% chance of catastrophic mistake on every play run in a game. That is flat out misrepresentation. What I did say was - you seem to be taking the position that because the character is elite in some aspect, they are therefore immune from a chance of something going less-than-planned when they employ that characteristic. To go with the 5% point, I think that if you could find an athlete that only had a 5% failure rate, you would be a pretty luck person in deed. And these are tasks that they have drilled and practiced countless times. 30% is a phenomenal, near super human level of performance in certain disciplines. So, to clarify my position - yes, I think it is perfectly reasonable in a high stakes, high stress situation to ask a player to make a skill check against an attribute they have elite level status in. You fail it, "the BBEG screams out and you risk taking a look over you shoulder and trip over a little decorative bump in the fresco flooring. That's gonna cost you 2 movement unless someone can come up with some way to help"...you rock it, "You notice a small bump in the floor as you run over it and do a little shuck and jive move and the BBEG stubs his toe. He has DIS on his next round..." If this concept is so offensive to you that it has driven you to run your own games, then...honestly, that isn't a bad thing as more GMs in the world is probably a net gain. I am sure you will find players who enjoy your games as I have found plenty who do mine.

Ha, I had players out of a roll happy dm, and they were shocked they could swim across a slow river without any check :).

i had an arena where players could settle differences (and make some gold from spectators betting).

Yakuza 5e

I like it

DMPCs are fine for small groups. With one or two players, it works. More than that and it's questionable.

@@AnotherDuck Old-school D&D had hirelings and henchmen as a core part of the game. I think that kind of got lost along the way, when it went from a game of adventurers that could eventually become heroes to more of a game of heroes that sometimes went on adventures. And I don't know if that is what ya'll are calling a DMPC, but it's valid if they're played right. Like, they're not the ones in the limelight, just the ones dealing with everything else, mostly.

Inventive 👍

Had a DM with same homebrew. But i was able to talk him down with an example. Like how stabbing a Dragon with a knife supposed to stop it on its route.

You know, I was a new DM to 5e but had played prior editions of Dnd before switching to 5e. Due to the learning curve, when I didn’t know the 5e rule / mechanic for something (common with a heavy rule system), I’d make a judgment call on the fly based on how 2e Dnd was run (where I had more experience, could remember the ruling and be consistent, without having to reinvent the wheel every time), and one of the standard rules for 2e is equivalent to the “sentinel feat” in 5e. But, in 2e, you didn’t get a breakup of 3 choices: action / bonus action / movement. You just had 1, and you could be countered. (2e is a challenging version, especially with optional combat and tactics book). In 5e, the mechanics are just different. Basically, I didn’t know that they had changed things later when I tried to DM for 5e on the fly, and was just trying to keep the game going. It wasn’t until someone brought up that there was a feat to achieve that that I realized 5e is just different in that regard. And I didn’t want to somehow penalize players if they wanted to be special and have to take the feat. It’s usually better that the DM eventually learn the rules and have them basically memorized, my life was just too impacted by work / school / wife / and DM duties to memorize the game mechanics. I’m glad my players have more experience with 5e so we can just move on with our lives and game, and I don’t have to look in the book for rules on something I didn’t know existed! My players are chill about it, and help me run the game that way because they know I’m new and it’s a learning curve. Speculating and curious if the new DM has played any other versions of DnD, who knows?

That used to be a thing in 3rd

@MrBigJ: interrupted* (not "interrupeded") 🙄

Final Fantasy Tactics did that I think.

Player buy-in is important in these situations.

The one time I did something like this was in a campaign when a player was tricked by a Lamia and placed under a GEAS spell. The Player was under a Geas to spy on the party and to obey the Lamis'a commands to serve herwhile she kidnapped one of the characters. I discussed the situation privately with the player. Everything went well until the Kidnapping occurred. The Geased player was commanded to prevent the party from following the kidnappers. They fought and captured the Geased player. Then the players, who did not even attempt to try in game to figure out why the player was fighting them, got angry with me because I was forcing a player to do something in game and I would not even tell them what was going on. Without knowing what was affecting the PC they reasoned that if he was under the influence of a spell, then being knocked down to 0 HP and becoming unconscious should have ended the spell. When I said No... the rest of the players got really mad. The funny thing was that the player of the Geased PC was ok with it.

@@johnevans5782 I don't know where that idea that 0HP knocks charms, etc. off of targets comes from. I run into it with more frequency than I would have imagined. Especially since I've never seen it so much as referenced ANYWHERE!

@@urdaanglospey6666 the mythical ' Death Cures All ' technique..used by Chaotic Stupid PCs from the Dawn of Time..

I use bad guys to do this stuff all the time.

That sounds more like a problem player issue than anti-favoritism.

@@MonkeyJedi99 Could be both, depends on how they mean "slap him down." If "slap him down" means making a ruling, having him complain about your ruling being 'personal' and then internalizing that to think that you've just slapped him down just by saying no, then that's completely 'problem player.' If "slap him down" means you tell him no, he whines, then 30 minutes later a passing wyvern poops on him from above, that's a problem player and anti-favoritism.

Your players shouldn't be arguing with you in game. If my players have an issue I tell them to just roll with it until the next bathroom break. It's not fair to the other players to have him waste the entire party's time

@@Jermbot15 When I saw slap him down I mean give him warnings then have a squad of ethereal ghost monks walk out of the wall and beat him into 0 HP. He IS a problem player but its one of those situations where the positives he brings to the table outweighs the negatives he brings to the table.

Dear youtube, Luke does not suck In my case the worst homebrew were one time my dm decided that if a hit took half or more of your hp you would fall unconscious. We were a level one party. The tankiest playar had 12hp. If it continued that way you could guess what would happen

@@piketheknight2581 Dear RU-vid, Luke does not suck. In the worst homebrewing I played in, the DM was writing their own game system, and we were the unwitting alpha testers. Every other session would start with, "Here are the rule changes that effect your characters. And I changed YOUR class entirely." Which is how my illusionist became a dual wielding DPS character... - Edit: BACON!

@@piketheknight2581 pretty sure that one is in the DMG, but you get a save?

@@Hepabytes when he implemented that he didnt allow saving throw (he allowed it later)

I doubt bacon could fix that.

Another win condition I'd say is the players engaging and having fun.

What story? I have lots of situations. X wants to kill Y; the emergence of sorcery; the birth of a man-made god; the widow's quest for justice and revenge. Lots of conflicts at every level from the divine to the most mundane. Which of these, if any, get woven into the 'story' is largely down to the players.

That's awesome. I'm so very happy to hear that we were all able to help you!!! That sounds like a resounding SUCCESSFUL first game session! Well done. :D

GG. Hope it worked out for the past year.

Don't forget to thank yourself too. You put in the work.

Even as DM a 12 hour session would be sick, but we all had places to be the next day😢

I've run into this as well ;) Now, I don't try to solve the problems I throw at my players. Now, I evaluate their ideas for odds of working, choose a skill, and set a DC based on difficulty of the task. Impossible plan? Will they learn something from the failed attempt? Then, I'll have them try, roll and describe what happens. If it's impossible and they won't learn anything, I'll try to quickly explain why the plan won't work (preferably after a relevant [probably knowledge] check).

This is a common mistake in any sort of creative writing. And with the modern notion of a DM most definitely never, ever, being a "Story TELLER" but some sort of facilitator for the players, this gets horribly overlooked. As the writer you have all the information in your head, and so a straight line from A to B to C is automatic. The audience, readers, or players don't. No matter how much information you give them they will never have as much as you. So it is very important to give them enough information to make those connections. Good DMs are capable of doing this without giving them too much information and making it too easy, (at which point the accusations of "Railroading" and "Removing player agency" start being thrown about.) Being aware of THIS is one of the keys to running games that follow intelligent design and structure. If you only serve to chase the players' whims this is less likely to happen, but if you want to run something linear AND smart it's one of the most important elements of being a DM.

@@andrewtomlinson5237 Yup. I agree with everything you said. I've learned a lot since then. Today when I present a problem I always have at least one solution that should be within their capabilities, but it can never be the one and only solution. If their solution makes sense, it'll probably work, even if I have to quickly adapt the situation to give their solution a little push. That's not saying players should never fail, but succeeding will almost always be the most fun outcome for everyone (unless failure also pushes the events forward in a fun and unexpected way). The only thing that cannot happen is players losing interest and the drive to try new things because nothing they do ever works, or the DM having to solve things for them because he's narrated himself into a corner.

@@CidGuerreiro1234 Yeah. You can't be too precious about YOUR solution. No matter how clever it is... The players will often see a gap in your logic and solve your riddle in 10 seconds... Reward them. Don't curse them for being smarter than you. There are lots of lists and memes, from lofty experts about what constitutes a Good or Bad DM, (and according to most of them, I've been a terrible DM for over 40 years...) but the one thing that will really kill your game... and I'm talking about players never wanting you to DM for them again, is if the DM punishes good ideas. It's the behaviour that will cause a DM to lose players faster than pretty much anything else. I fudge like a... well... you know... and very few players' characters in my games die as a simple result of unfortunate dice rolls. They die when they do something dumb, or don't think through a situation, or just ignore the signs and evidence. Even poor resource management will see them die of thirst or starvation... but if they come up with something that SHOULD work, then I will always try and nudge things in their favour.

Yeah, I remember this being an issue in the first game I played, where, although we all enjoyed the world and our characters, we ended up running into a "what do we do?" problem. I'm currently just starting my first game DMing, and the idea is that the players are searching the world for a powerful artefact. To avoid them not going to the right place to find information, my plan is pretty much to have many and multiple sources of information everywhere, so that no matter where they go, it's the "right" place, and they can progress through the plot. Does this seem a reasonable idea?

That’s a horrible rule, how did anyone think it was a good idea.

Healing is already really bad in dnd, *why* would it ever need to be nerfed

quote from the barbarian: i hate this javelin so much i throw it as far as i can *YEET* dm: roll? barbarian: nat20? dm: *rolls* by pure luck, your full speed javelin manages to hit the boss, right in the heart taking it down in a single shot... good job you can so badly use this insanity for the sake of roleplay to "outmeme" that dm

Guess someone could not deal with a thing, and tried to get rid of it instead of try to be better or talk?

but why?

I'm putting together a small sandbox rn for a custom world that will be used for a Campaign in a few months, and holy crap. So I'm doing a mix of modern fantasy (actually based on Type-Moon/Fate if anyone knows what that is), so the players will be left free to roam around in essentially a small rural town and the surrounding wilderness. After my previous experience running a couple campaigns, I've decided to prepare ALL the NPCs and ALL the maps ahead of time. This way when the players hop in, they can literally do what they want. Needless to say, fairly tiny sandbox, but the prep work I've put into this already is half the amount I've put into a linear campaign that's been running for 6 months now.

@@jmmproductions6741 I've noticed that some GMs treat writing campaign notes like writing content for publication. You don't need that. You could just have brief notes. Nobody else is going to read them. I like to find pictures that evoke a scene. I will think about NPC personalities, but won't work on stat-block and skill sets if I don't need them. If you are prepping a whole village, remember that most inhabitants are going to have similar life experiences and skill sets. Perhaps they are farm labourers or miners. Maybe they are housewives and beer wives. There may be one or two craftspeople, but in a small village, not many; there will be markets and faires and peddlers for buying goods. Most village houses will be the same. They will look the same and they will have similar contents, because people did not have access to wealth or such a vast array of material goods. My current WiP campaign spans two continents. I've prepped stuff that, depending on where the group chooses to start, the PCs will never see. But I only have two or three villages worked out for the civilized lands, because that's all I need. I can just use one of those if the PCs come a calling. On the map, I just mark the position and size of a village.

It takes way less prep if you learn to code and then make some text generators that create content in your own words to your own needs. Why spend an hour making one NPC when you can spend 3 hours to make 94 million instantly thereafter?

@@MeepChangeling but then you don't know your characters. You might as well get them out of a Rogues Gallery book. You might have a description and some skills, but you won't have put yourself in their place and thought their thoughts. I did something similar for villages - randomly generating many aspects, but it didn't really help. It didn't tell me about the local politics or rivalries. Didn't generate stories.

@@jmmproductions6741 you don't necessarily need to fully create every character, just the ones that intersect with the story. There are many boats operating out of Seport. I could detail hundreds of crews and thousands of sailors, but I only need the one crew, the one the PCs hire. The rest are out of focus. Maybe have two, just in case.

Yeah I didn't really agree with him on that. On my first campaign my character and another character got into a bar fight. My character got humiliated but it was so funny and fun

You see, my players don't mind it because they know it's for both side. The barbarian was really happy to roll a Nat 20 when saving against a DC24 wisdom or become paralyzed for the whole fight. Don't you think it's good for the game to have a 5% chance to succeed something thought impossible? Also, I'm not saying all 20s should be auto successes, but I tend to not make my player roll if I know they have no chance of success, even with a natural 20. It's demorilizing to know you "wasted" a 20 on something that had no impact. If the roles were reversed and the ennemy had a +10 on a check and your only way to get out of that tight situation was a 20 and you rolled it! Wouldn't it be awesome?

@@bozieu yes. I agree with most of what u said. There are ways of bumping a skill check tho, guidance, bardic inspiration & other means which should be considered before we start bending the rules. If they NEED a nat 20 to meet a DC 20 then there should be consequences for rolling anything less. If ut is an important roll, u should slow down & maybe ask anyone who wasn't paying attention if they have anything to assist like a spell or bardic insp. I also like the idea of success at a cost if they roll high but are off by 1-2 pts. In my example, my roll was a 29 which is close to nearly impossible DC, & the DM should've seen how far apart his total check was from that & an NPC barbarian shouldn't have anywhere close to a +9 Insight modifier to break even, even with the nat 20. It should start with the question to the player, if u roll a nat 20 what is the highest DC u can achieve. If the skill check is still fairly too high don't even bother rolling, failure is certain if they want to do acrobatic maneuvers on a chunk of rock floating in the pool of acid-lava, or whatever.

I see nothing wrong with that. If he asked you to roll that means there's a chance for you to fail. perhaps the things you were persuading that barbarian for was not an easy thing to make him do. So obviously the barbarian would have a chance not to be convinced by your persuasion attempt. If this wasn't the case than I wouldn't have asked for a roll if I were that DM.

@@bozieu If it is supposed to be imposssible, no roll should even take place. Near impossible? Roll away! Nat 20s should not be the equivalent of divine intervention imo.

I enjoy the nat 20 rule, it is fun and feels great to get one

I agree with you. As someone who makes dialogue part of their prep, I find having a few pre written quips or responses to questions that are likely to come up really helps keep scenes moving rather than have me stumble over my words or not convey the info I need to get across. Plus who doesn’t like hearing a great villain quip mid battle!! If it doesn’t get used, then jt get recycled.

@@CaseyWilkesmusic oh definitely, I like creating catchphrases and last words. Plus random things grunts can say because who doesn't like a funny sidekick

@@davidanddragons5339 Halo infinite has the best lines for grunts!

The occasional and extremely rare deus ex machina to move the story along can be OK. Like the Eagles in the Hobbit movie where the party was trapped in burning trees. Gandalf and the Eagles saved them. But if it had been a game, the players would have been frustrated by the 3rd time Gandalf had to save everyone.

It's only a problem if it becomes a habit ;)

You cannot just prep the 'sandboxier parts'. The whole world is a sandbox. The PCs may never go to the spice lands, but if they board a ship, and they are curious about the main cargo, I can tell them because I've mapped the trade routes and designed the main sea going vessels.

Yeah, homebrew should be done sparingly, and the more of the game it affects. The more it should be tested in oneshots before dumping it into your main campaign.

I played once with a DM who had a SIX (6) inch binder of house rules. It was 1E and he was smarter than Gary. At the time you could only get a binder that thick from the Army Tech Manuals.

In the same boat here! This man is a God when it comes to reducing stress and prep time

You are very welcome! And thank you, Heather!

@ArtsyAria: starting* city (not "started city"); guiding* (not "guilding") 🙄

@@pablohammerly448 Lol sorry. Spelling isn’t my strongest suit 😆

I don't think that counts as removing player agency, you're running a specific theme, everyone has to get on board for it to work.

The player still had other choices, so that's not really taking away player agency. I'd call that a house rule.

I agree with the previous comments. If you had allowed it just imagine the multitude of things they would want to do that so didnt fit the theme, it could have been a constant issue had you agreed.

There's a limit to agency, you can't defy gravity or posses unknown knowledge. The Ninja is up there with okay, just how and why did this Ninja travel half the world. Avoiding peril, travelling far beyond the furthest reaches of their maps, to alien lands with alien language, you don't speak their language and you're 1000 miles from friends and allies.

​@@al424242 Try several thousand miles -- IIRC, going across mainland USA is about 2500 miles, so Japan to Scandinavia is even further, maybe twice as far. 🙄

pursue.

That's honestly less of a homebrew, and more of a "we're going back to how it was in older editions." However, rogues had Extra Attack back then.

Hmm... Now I need to re-read some rules. That 'homebrew' is how we've been playing it for over a year since we started 5E. If it is different, I need to share that with the DM and other players.

@@KevinVideo Huh. TIL! Only really played 5E and a tiny bit of PF1e. I'll see if I can find the game primer again and compare it to old rules!

@@KevinVideo Yep seems to be a 3.5 rule at least. Didn't see anything about Extra Attack though.

@@MonkeyJedi99 Yes. The rules as written are basically summarized as: if you roll dice on an attack that crits then you roll twice as many of them. Doesn't matter where the dice come from: sneak attack, smite, battle maneuvers, spell effects already on the target, spell effects on you, dice rolled based on a magical weapon's effect, etc. You do not double any flat bonuses like your str/dex bonus and any +1, +2, +3 weapons.

How is that anything to do with favouritism?

@@danielcrafter9349 It's a positive story with a happy ending, that shows fun can be had without favoritism. Just trying to spread positivity and share a fun story, that's all! :)

@@danielcrafter9349 it's sort of implict I suppose that someone might show favoritism to their SO

@leorellik: bazaar* (i.e. a place with multiple merchants; bizarre = weird) 🙄

Well, I know I'm not Luke, but I have been in your spot before. My advice is to bring it up in a random conversation, when you're warmed up on talking to people and you're both comfortable. If they say no then you slowly change the subject to something else. However, if it seems just like they aren't showing too much interest, carry on. Keep trying until they either say "sure" or "nah it's not for me".

@@thehunter907 thanks for the advice :) definitely will try it

I used to DM for a group full of ASD and similar things teenagers. It started when one of them - one of my son's friends - saw my old AD&D 2nd Ed books on my bookshelf and asked if I could run a game. I agreed, expecting it to be maybe a one on one game seeing as my kids weren't the slightest bit interested. This young guy got excited and went and asked literally every friend he had and got his friends to ask their friends. Our session zero I expected 2 maybe 3 players at most, ended up with 13 of them, only one of which had ever played any kind of RPG! Most of them had never heard of the game until then. All it takes is - and I know it isn't easy to start with but once you've done it a few times it gets easier - when it's just you and and a person you know, and everything is chill and friendly between you, just politely and calmly but bluntly and straight up ask them (and really ask anyone that you know, even your neighbours, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents even! You'll be surprised who will be interested) "I'm wanting to play a game of D&D, would you be interested in playing?" They may say yes, they may say no, they may ask for more information, you might even find out they're already playing in a campaign you didn't know about and they might invite you!. You'll never know if you don't ask. All you need to get started is a copy of and some understanding of the basic rules, a set of dice, an idea for a storyline, and one other person. Anything more than that is all bonus.

Try joining our Discord. We have a looking for groups channel where you could find a group. Most people in our community are friendly and helpful.

@@theDMLair im not social enough (introverted and anxiety) to join larger discord servers right now

That's a very slippery slope and can't be decided at the moment due to the chance that it escalates. Everyone in the game should consent to the PvP, even if it doesn't involve their player. It's nit just a matter of maturity but what people want to experience at the table.

That makes sense seeing as Player vs Player combat, especially if one of them ends up killing another, is illegal in most places. I admit the part about PVP made me giggle. Character =/= Player.

There's actually been a fair amount of pvp in one of the games I'm in, that has lead to a few deaths. We're all enjoying it.

Definitely looking forward to these two products!

Someone has not heard of action economy

@@Pherim_ Yeah, I believe his reasoning was so people who know what they want to do can go first or something?

Yes, this. It seems the best approach to me. 'Missions' will only be introductory though. After that there are situations and, maybe, jobs. As you say, if the PCs don't get involved,that doesn't mean that the situations are held in stasis.

Many years ago I was running Champions - a (the) supers game. A fight started, fights use lots of dice. My girlfriend went out. Two hours later, she came home. The same fight was still running. We had used about 30 seconds of game time. It was a slog.

That's definetely true. You can't prepare for every outcome anyway, so overdoing it might just burn you out. Same for worldbuilding, there's a high chance that 90% of what you create will never make it into the game if you overdo it.

The simple fact that you say 'back on track' should tell you you are railroading. Some groups are fine with it. I hate it.

Thank you! But I cheated a bit and asked others for stuff to add to the list. 😁