A discussion about D&D

That sounds so mean but also brilliant. I have a terrible poker face so it wouldn't work well. Although I do have an NPC crime boss that knows a lot about the PCs because they're actually a well-connected rakshasa. One of the players hate him because I refuse to give them any more information on him besides an elven smuggler that does favours. And they have at least three favours from him so I need to think of some interesting things for him to blackmail them with.

Yeah I just hope that I'll be able to pull it off well enough. I'm trying to do the Storm King's Thunder story then have one of my own devising in the background, although I think I might accidentally fall into the trap of telling them too much in the next session so I just need to be ultra careful in the planning. It doesn't help that we've got a bard with a ridiculous persuasion and a magic item that means he can have an illusory duplicate - I didn't think that item would be so much of a mistake at the time.

In my campaign two of the party are clerics and the other is a wizard so everyone has Sending... it's a nightmare. One of the clerics is forge domain and has an AC of 22... he always ends up needing to make intelligence saves I wonder why...

Damn, in a new campaign that I'm half DMing with a friend (he DMs for one party and I DM for another party in the same world) we have 2 sorcerers (one being my wild magic) a rogue and then a fighter who's homebrew - three halflings in a trenchcoat. So we'll have to see how long that works for...

That has big chaotic energy; can't wait for them to roll a nat 1. My wild magic sorcerer decided to take up trading. I spent all my money buying goods then sold it all again. I asked my DM if i could multiply the money I spent by 2.67 every week for trading and he agreed, not thinking much of it. He basically forgot and I would ask the date loads and just track how much money I had. In like 3 months in-game I had 1,000,000 gold. My DM only really registered it when he asked how much I had and I said a million. I had been buying more carts, horses, employees etc throughout for it to make sense but he never really thought it was anything big. I had my own ship, about 100 soldiers, a couple of buildings, I single-handedly funded a city's recovery after a war and had plans to buy an island and build a palace. My DM then put in place new rules to limit how much money I could make and made it dependent on rolls but I saved up initiative for when I had to roll so still got richer.

That sounds great. I need to do a bit more research into downtime activities because I like the idea of adventurers actually doing something a bit more productive than pratting around killing stuff. Currently, my blood hunter does some alchemy on the side but it's more to help her improve the groups abilties, for example she's trying to make a potion that gives the user temporary HP. Though I like the idea of my sorcerer trading (some possibly forgeries) in his downtime - what rules / info did you use for it?

The PHB has pricing for trade goods, employees and vehicles as well as the cost and time to build buildings. The DMG has a roll table for running a business but I don't think it's great. I started doing the selling myself until I hired people to do it for me. Starting a business is a pretty good downtime thing and it doesn't have to be trade. Mercenary work or a private investigator firm would be pretty cool.

Yeah, perhaps he could have a mercenary firm that does some under the counter forgeries to help mercenaries complete their contracts that could be something interesting or a it starts off with small forgery works and then expands into something like that. But really it depends how long the campaign lasts for and how serious we'll be playing it so I might save that for something else later down the line. For world building stuff how many major towns/cities do you have / work out how many is okay? Because I've been making a world for a pathfinder 2e campaign and I think I went over border with making 26 provinces for one country. It's providing an interesting challenge but there may be a lot of travel so I may need to find ways to shake that up a bit, any ideas?

26 seems like a lotttt. My continent has 4 countries, each with a capital and 2 other named cities/ large towns on the map. With anything smaller I tend to just make it up when necessary so I don't overload. The main issue with making lots of cities is finding something to make them unique. If I set it in just one country I would probably have a capital, maybe 3-5 other cities or large towns and then name some smaller places but mine is on a continent so it's scaled up. For travel my best advice is just to skip it unless something either important or interesting would happen during. I tend to just say some descriptive paragraph about the journey and say how long it takes and give them an opportunity to role play or do anything on the way. I also skill challenges (if you know what that is??? I don't know how common they are). As a player I found most random encounters to be unrealistic and a waste of time so I just don't bother. What sorts of things do you do for organising worldbuilding on a scale like that?

Main things in a province I look at who the leaders are & how powerful are they, what races are prominent in the province, what is the terrain like, what economic resources to they have at their disposal (which can link to the leaders’ power) then at least a capital name for each province.
For the starting province, I have a couple of towns nearby the starting village and the province’s other major cities (although I need to get rid of a few - I want it down to just 2 minor cities then 1 capital with smaller towns and villages scattered.) I do need some basic details of some slightly story relevant villages (but I’ll probably ignore them). For one story arch I have in mind it will be mainly based around the mountain range that takes up most of the province so that helps to control the area players go. But I have rough notes on the other provinces in case they need those and I’ll flesh out the closest ones more as the campaign progresses and as another possible story arch forms (again it depends on the longevity of the campaign). Then other elements I develop as I study parts in history and to better figure out why the current society is they was it is, more for my own nerdy entertainment. For example, I’m studying the experience of British warfare and one of the PCs is a soldier so I have basics of the army down that I want to flesh out a little more. And it helps that I’ve had something like 3 months almost 4 to properly think about it.
This is all very experimental as I have no idea if it will work but I guess we’ll have to see.

I like to incorporate real historical things I'm a bit of a nerd about too! In preparation for a player possibly becoming a baron I made a feudal taxation system but it never came about. I also confuse players sometimes by using armour or weapon terminology they don't know.
As I've DM'd more I've become more trusting in my ability to improvise so my notes are never that extensive. As I mostly homebrew if I've thought of details or lore then they're in the back of my head and I don't really need to write them down. When it comes to an area I think about the leader, the government type, religion, the races, a little on terrain but not much, the main settlements and international relations. But the details I prefer are on the smaller scale, like a mobile tavern pulled by 12 mammoths that is bigger on the inside because I use them to make more nuance than the typical medieval fantasy setting.

I want to try and focus on the smaller scale next so I want to try and create a disparity between urban and rural settlements not only in wealth and status but also in magic by looking at the different types (primal, arcane, occult and divine). For example the arcane being a normal part of town/city life such as flying letters, warding runes, magically generated electricity (lights etc. - more in cities) and some other spell effects being visible/minor magic items (more flavour than PC use). Whereas in the rural, especially agricultural areas, there's more greenery and magic around primal such as fountains with figuring forming from the water and trees talking Sylvan (I might borrow some ideas from Tolkien as well).

After 4 years of playing the bog-standard medieval setting had become pretty tired for my group so I try and make mine really high fantasy, in another campaign we're transferring to Eberron and the other is a different system in a wild west setting. My cities are really magical too. Are you planning on joining the rpg society?

Yeah hopefully. I'll be interesting to see the other sorts of roleplaying stuff they have and perhaps explore some other systems. What about you?

I'm looking forward to playing with new people so I'd like to. I've had decent experience with other systems but it has mostly been 5e which I'm not complaining about because it's still my favourite. Have you just stuck to dnd?

For the most part yeah, like I said I haven't RPed for that long. But a friend of mine's asked be to DM a pathfinder 2e game which is what the massive worlds for (although we haven't actually played yet) but that's very similar to 5e - some of the main differences being how combat works as well as the skill system. Keeping to a few systems helps to reduce confusion a bit. It'll also be interesting to see how other people play the game. What systems have you played and what were they like?

We tried a couple of simple systems. ICRPG is pretty dungeon crawly with a focus on combat. It's more of a typical rpg just broken down to the basics. Icons is a simple superhero rpg. It doesn't even come with character sheets so I designed some myself. We haven't tried it out yet but it looks fun. Call of Cthulhu is my favourite other than 5e. I've run a couple of games but haven't played. Combat is brutal as the players are just people. 15hp is a lot and guns can do 4d6 damage at times. It's really atmospheric which I love and it's a nice break from magic that can just solve anything. Get's players to think a lot more and they loved it too.

Yeah sometimes it nice not to have too much magic otherwise you're like "Right the bouncer blocks the way" and the player's like "I walk through the wall using my illusionary duplicate" then you have to BS a reason why the random shady place by the docks has an advanced anti-magic protection. But ouch 4d6 damage - fireball's bad enough with a 20ft radius to dissuade you. I know that when I played a P2e oneshot with my family to check combat was okay my brother really enjoyed having a velociraptor pet as a druid as they're not exclusive to rangers unlike 5e and the mechanic of P2e made it more survivable instead of being oneshotted.