Bringing a Fairy Monk to a one-shot in just a few days. It seems a little broken… can fly, has 2 spells 1x/each/long rest due to the racial traits. I’m going to be a 3-foot-tall aerial ball of punches.
I think my partner is even more evil… they are running a Satyr Wild Magic Sorcerer… with Silvery Barbs. I advised them, even if DM says “any official WOTC book is fair game” they might want to ask about that one, but since it’ll only be 4-5 hours one time, they are just running with it.
I’m going to run a Christmas themed one shot while I’m on PTO around Christmas. It’s been a while since I’ve played, so I’m pretty excited.
Love it. Happy to listen if you want to bounce some ideas.
I found a campaign called Claus for Concern that had good reviews. I’ll read through it and let you know if I think it needs tweaking. Thanks!
I’m working on a one-shot for a partner’s milestone birthday, a play on them getting “old”.
The entire party is in a retirement home for adventurers and they’re all 14th level. They’re all mostly through their natural lifespan - humans are maybe 75 years old and elves 700, etc. My partner’s character gets word that their level 1 grandchild adventurer was captured while on a job and the crew needs to get back together for:
One Last Job: I’m Getting Too Old for this Shit
Plan so far is that a faux “adventurer’s guild” has been created that sends people on real quests, but also sends new, young adventurers to the lair of a hag that steals their lifeforce to preserve herself. The owner of the guild is somehow in cahoots with the hag, or maybe beholden to her in some way.
Open to reactions or ideas.
That sounds awesome. Love the premise!
I’m looking for a bit of filler in the middle of Too Old For This Shit.
I have the premise, I’m debating whether there should be difficulty leaving the retirement home.
However, since they are moderately legendary adventurers, they have a local museum where their weapons are stored.
I’m planning that they need to break in and regain their gear - they’ll get a massive powerup mid-session by getting back their +2 Breastplate of Stone Giants and Sun Sword or whatever I end up giving them.
They’ll spend some time at the Adventurer’s Guild and might learn the nefarious plot or might just toddle off to where their grandkid was.
Then: ??? (Filler)
Then the final fight with the “hag”. I’m planning to reflavor a Pathfinder creature actually and incorporate other minions, plus legendary and lair actions.
You could present them with conflicting rumors as to the whereabouts of this “hag” - then they have to follow a few false trails and gain more clues to find the BBEG.
Maybe I’ll send them on a false quest that’s actually an ambush - it’s where the Guild sends anybody who’s too nosy and needs to be taken out.
Then either the ambushers will plead for their lives and give info, or should they straight-up murder them I’ll invent some documentation detailing the arrangement.
We’re about to embark on a new campaign.
I’m a male Feral Tiefling Monk and my partner is a non-binary Air Genasi Sorceror.
We are adopted siblings of a family of 27 children/adventurers, named alphabetically from Amadeus as #1 to me as Xander as #24 and my partner (little sibling) Zephyr as #26, with Aaron as #27.
My character rolled that they have “a secret”. Discussed with DM. Sibling #2 tried to use magic to overthrow the king in a local city and following the failure, all magic is banned in the city. My (IRL partner/in-game sibling) has no idea, because:
We don’t talk about Bruno.
Had a recent session with a full player breakdown. Kicker - It was the DM’s fiancée who was the next room over. Very weird.
We had a fight with a dragon pursuing a plot-sensitive crown we possess. We had one player who my partner and I both thought was giving massive death flags/wanted a new character. Saying things like “if I go down, just help others” and as not a frontliner, approached the dragon face-on… and quickly was eaten with lethal damage. I’ve teared up over a character death but his response was, “Whelp, that’s D&D.”
We started wrecking the dragon and it came down to the breakdown fiancée needing to hand over the crown or another player would be killed. Kept messaging her in every way, "Give it to him and I’ll cast Heat Metal and he needs to make 10 CON save throws or drop it and she responded to the messages but burst into tears and we had to pause the session.
We took a break and she came back, still rough, she gave up the crown and DM said, “I think we should end it for tonight”. But I was next in initiative. Plan unbeknownst to the DM at that time I said “Wait no, could I cast Heat Metal? I am in range and it’s my turn.” and I saw DM’s eyes light up. Dragon was in single-digits of HP after the initial damage and he had to drop it or die.
Was not trying to be insensitive to the player breaking down but I had a gods-damned plan and this MacGuffin going away was going to fuck the entire campaign, and my partner and I called that character wanting death long ago, and even if I or my partner died I’d probably tear up a bit. Not a full breakdown calling out, “I hate this game, everything I do is wrong.” Honestly if she wants to dip out for a few weeks or just not be in the game, I get it.
So the girl who broke down was the one whose character died?
No actually. She just somehow blamed herself but my partner and I workshopped any possible difference that could have mattered, couldn’t figure out how the breakdown character might’ve done anything different.
She just had a breakdown partway through and after a 15-minute break came back in tears, which was very awkward knowing the DM was in the same house, and she logged off immediately after handing off the MacGuffin crown which I immediately did Heat Metal to retrieve.
I think she blamed herself for getting the 1 character killed which wasn’t on her and she referenced a prior “mistake” from our prior campaign where she didn’t act optimally, it was just weird.
Acting “optimally” is very counterproductive to RPG’s IMO . . . to me, the appropriate level of meta-gaming would be confirmation that a given character could respond in a given fashion–or offering advice on how to be closer to the character’s (known) description. Final decision being between the DM and the player, of course.
For sure. I’m a natural min-maxer but some of the best moments at the table, I sat there trying to not express “This is a stupid-ass decision you are making” and then it became amazing.
Best I can think of top-of-head was a Bard with a Disguise Kit pretending to be the exiled Princess of a kingdom and leading the whole damn guard on a chase sequence and rolling so many fucking 20+ rolls to evade them all.
I forgot you guys were playing online - story makes more sense now. Still weird and awkward though, hopefully you can bounce back!
And your story of defeating the dragon sounds epic!
Thanks, was one of my prouder moments 
The dragon chose to drop it rather than die and gave us a dire warning foretelling that he’ll be back for us, but we got the Very Important crown back and he had to flee.
DM told us that without the crown there was likely going to be a giant civil war, so, neat!
Prepping for a D&D one-shot.
Level Bronze (1) female Satyr, Aberrant Mind subclass (telepathic speech at level 1)
Very into multi-level marketing, mainly selling “psychic wine”. It doesn’t exist and is fully a placebo effect but “gets you drunk” without any calories! Have fun and stay fit! Be your own boss and earn money on your own time!
(Telepathically into your brain): “We’ve been trying to reach you regarding your cart’s extended warranty.”
Future levels would be Silver (2), Gold(3), Platinum (4), Diamond (5), Double Diamond (6)
Love it. Would be fun in a longer campaign too if the product kept popping up with random people trying to get the party to join the “company”