Tuna

I read the image before seeing who posted it and immediately thought of you, lol

An illustration of a group of D&D adventurers huddled together in a "group photo" pose. From left to right are: a pale, bald, elven man with a long coat writing in a book. A teifling man with dark skin, white hair, and a long coat stumbling over; a crow flies off his shoulder. A dwarven woman with brown hair and read leather armor joyfully has her arms around the necks of the two beside her. An air genasi man with white hair in samurai style armor. A black kobold man being held up by the air genasi. Behind everyone is a large ent with a deer skull head and antler like branches coming from it. They all stand together in a grassy field at sunrise.

Big ol' commission I did for @relevanttuna6.bsky.social 's D&D group! It was fun!

#art #dnd

It looks sooo good! I made the mistake of showing my players right before we started a session and we lost a good 30 minutes to people just raving about the art🤣

In the world of ttrpgs remember that, as the GM, you have the power to make the next plotline a heist if you want. Your players however get to decide if the soundtrack for the heist is from,
- mission impossible
- pink panther, or
- benny hill

...they will usually pick benny hill...

I've been told that sometimes when I'm prepping for a game, I do a specific type of cackle that signals my players to be ready for some BS.

100% same energy, lol

For this dnd encounter we're talking about what to do if you've "done away" with a favorite NPC. This can cause some of that sweet sweet drama we all crave a... Favorite NPC 2: Undead Boogaloo | #dnd encounter

If you haven’t offed a favorite NPC for that sweet drama in a dnd/ttrpg game, you're missing out. Problem is, you can't really roleplay them after

Not anymore with this trick! Check out this Canned Encounter to see how mixing zombies and ghosts get's us the best of both worlds

youtu.be/qDH-ovEsh4g

Lol, thanks! I am open to suggestions so if there's ever a monster you want to see an encounter for feel free to let me know

100%. I have a player that's using the Werewolf transformation right now and all my other players are always so excited to see how it goes for him, lol.

They really knocked the general vibe of supernatural stuff out of the park

The curses are also nothing to laugh at. They've got multiple stages that might turn your character into an NPC if you can't cure it.

Which happens to be one of my dislikes about their curse rules. They read as big deals which makes me shy away from tossing one in for fun occasionally

That's one of the things I like about the Grim Hollow setting. They have ways to curse someone that has some real steps to it. You have to want to curse them.

Curing it's the same way, they have individual items that need to be gathered and used at the right time to break a curse, no simple spells

Ooo, I've never really considered it like that. Just thinking of it like "a round in combat feels like 6 seconds" but then it turns out it was actually more like 3.

I don't want to think about how the concrete spellcasting times are affected by that though. The rules lawyering around it alone, lol

But that spotlight issue is real. Other than a hard timer on turn length or calling out who's next up in initiative have you found anything that makes it less of an issue?

Then I picked up a new table that likes to roleplay and describe things and have those dramatic battlefield converstaions mid combat and there's no way I can speed that up, lol.

The combats are a lot more fun and less stressful now, lol

Yeah it is. When I started GMing I made it my goal to streamline combat as much as possible and I was moderatly successful. I was running 2-3 combats in a 4-6 hour session

I've had similar thoughts on 6 second turns before but 10 rounds being a minutes just reads as nice to me, lol.

I know in my head it always plays out as everyone moving, and casting, and hitting all at the same times and that just feels cool, but yeah hard to do that mechanically

First, that is an amazing visualization of it. I know I've talked timing with others before where they thought the turns were staggered and something like that would have helped clear things up I think

I'm personally a fan of the way it works in dnd. I feel like it feeds into the power fantasy that I like to play the game for.

That being said I'm also struggling to think of ways that it could be done differently so I'm curious what other's thoughts are

Was thinking about dnd combat today and I got to wondering. How does the sudden shift from sudo "real time" to an almost "bullet time" feel to people?

Are you for/against it? Does it break your immersion? How do other systems handle "Combat Time" or what do you do to make it different/make sense?

That's what our DM said after the mine collapsed on us, lol

Recently they just freed a devil prince (Graz'zt specifically) and that player said that he forgot to flip him off. He dodged some consequences on that one, lol

Oh that's brilliant! I have one player who is determined to flip off every powerful being he comes across. So far he's flipped off Jormangund and Moradin.

Jor didn't care and Mor respected the audacity but flipped him off in return, causing damage before healing him back to full

There very much were indications, lol.

It was an abandonded coal mine (because of creatures) in a Dwarven town. There were little posts that looked like torches but they were unlit.

None of us put together that Dwarves don't need light because of darkvision and that they were there to burn off gas

Plus sometimes my table (myself included) just doesn't think far enough before doing something. Miss the larger picture and you get the consequences, lol

Yeah! I'm always a fan of that, succeed at a cost. My table likes to extend this into some moral things as well.

Like, you rolled really well but your character is doing something not good so there are some consequences. They're really into the character drama and roleplay conflict that it brings

Some examples include,
- Trying to use explosives to clear Hook Horrors from a mine but failing to realize there was a buildup of gas until it was too late
- Releasing a tiger in a town to track a greased pig during a festival
- The Rogue, focused on stealing and not seeing the werewolf in the room

My group has a concept we call Succeeding Backwards. Similar to Failing Forwards, its when someone's character does something successful but it has unintended consequences.

Sometimes these are funny, sometimes tragic, but they're always memorable

This is a new thing I'm trying out for November while I do NaNoWriMo

Shorter encounter videos where the aim is to get the idea across fast and give enough info that you can just run with it from there

And if people have questions on the fiddly bits I skipped then I'm always happy to give an answer

What will your dnd party do when they encounter a Blue Dragon in a mine? Will the fact that the dragon can electrify exposed ore veins change that fact?

If you want to see how easy it is to shock your table at your next ttrpg session then check out Tuna’s Canned Encounters

youtu.be/yG_6LA3CgB4

Thanks! I hope you find them useful/fun and if you have any thoughts feel free to let me know

That being said, I'm Tuna, I like to make encounter videos, and I'm always up for hearing about weird ttrpg mechanics from any system