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1500 questions
58
votes
7 answers

My players went from 100% murderous cretins to 100% nonviolent diplomats; how can I achieve a middle ground?

Related: How do I get my PCs to not be a bunch of murderous cretins? History The same group of players and I have played D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder for over one and a half decades combined. We are all personal friends and know each other better than we…
Zangief
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3 answers

Is there any known limit for how many dice RPG players are comfortable adding up?

After reading a few RPG systems that use successes and others that use dice whose shown number are totalled, I came to the conclusion that personally I prefer adding up a maximum of 3–4 numbers and don't like having to add up more than that — while…
Thomas E.
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3 answers

What is the purpose of old-school D&D class level limitations?

When I played 1E and 2E, racial level limits was one of the first rules we decided to ignore. We decided that it would prevent us from playing (say) an Elven fighter for as long as the party might last and that we couldn't figure out a reason for…
rjbs
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58
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6 answers

What is Sandbox play?

How would you describe the concept of sandbox play? How about to someone who is used to adventure modules or adventure paths?
user162
58
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14 answers

How can I get players to realize that their enemies aren't evil?

For an upcoming game, I'm planning on making one of the early hooks a standard-seeming "tribe of monstrous humanoids (in this case, lizardfolk, if that makes a difference) is bothering us, go deal with it," thing. However, I'm hoping for this to be…
Tablesalt
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17 answers

Dealing with "fearless" players

I have some "badass" players in my group who do not fear death, 4 out of 6 to be precise, which causes problems for the rest players as they feel they are always getting dragged into trouble, trying not to break the group in two. When I say they do…
Necrofear04
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58
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22 answers

What approaches are there to lessen or eliminate reliance upon dice in an RPG?

Is it necessary to use dice all the time in a dice-based RPG system? In other words, are there occasions or means by which you speed up gameplay by either reducing the number of rolls or removing the dice from the game altogether? How did that work…
John Rudy
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58
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1 answer

What d10 RPG is this cat playing?

A friend posted this funny image. There is a cat with a character sheet of a game. There is a pool of 10 d10s on it. It isn't clear enough for me to figure out what game it is.
Solx
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6 answers

Should I prohibit a player from having a character goal that makes me uncomfortable?

A few friends and I (as game master) are gearing up to start a Fate game set in a society inspired by ancient Greece, with a direct democratic political system. One of my players wants to play a wealthy merchant transitioning into politics, and has…
Dom J
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3 answers

Do 10 second turns/60 second rounds make spellcasters horrible?

My DM insists on the combat being 10 seconds per turn and the round time to be the sum of all turn times (so a minute for 6 participants, for example). I am aware that this is not how turn/round time normally works. This makes many spells with 1…
Inqy
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9 answers

I unknowingly guessed what will happen next in the module and it's angering the DM

I'm playing D&D with a group of friends. Since some of us are new we picked a module that would be easy play. This is a module that I have never played before. While playing through the module, my character and by extension myself, managed to guess…
Rolhn Schmidt
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6 answers

I deciphered the meaning of a cryptic language out-of-game: should my character know what the meaning is?

I have just started my first D&D 5e campaign, and have encountered a seemingly mind-controlled bandit who keeps writing the same thing over and over on the wall. Our DM wrote out what it looks like (character for character). It's supposed to be in…
Chris Cirefice
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58
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1 answer

What is the proper way to style references to D&D game elements?

(Preface: I'm not looking to establish an official formatting style we, on this stack, must adhere to. This is for my own personal writing consistency when writing on the topic of 5e.) I've been doing some writing on the topic of 5th edition in my…
CTWind
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6 answers

How do I keep presenting progressively more challenging encounters to my PCs without making them think that the world is gaining Levels as they are?

So, obviously during first encounters a DM usually makes PCs fight small goblin groups, giant spiders, blink dogs, etc... but how should the DM keep up the challenge for higher level PCs without giving them the sensation that they are fighting more…
Albuz
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58
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8 answers

How do I rein in a player who talks over my descriptions?

I am a new DM (although I have played D&D before), and I was very excited to play with my friends, but as we started playing I realized there would be a problem. As I would describe either rooms, or situations, as soon as I mentioned an enemy was…
Harkness
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