Final party (unless anyone decides to change after Session 0)
Aasimar Cleric (War)
Goliath Fighter (Champion)
Half-elf Bard (Swords)
Human Wizard (Chronurgy)
Shadar-kai Monk/Ranger
Always wanted to this, my house mate used to belong to a group, but I’ve always backed out as I know I’ll just clam up with strangers.
Your maps etc look great.
My life is basically 70% D&D nowadays
Monday: Day off
Tuesday: DM my main campaign
Wednesday: Play in a hexcrawl campaign
Thursday: Day off
Friday (alternate): Play in an in-person Forgotten Realms homebrew
Saturday: DM my mini-campaign
Sunday: Play in a Call of the Netherdeep Campaign
And there’s a good few hours (often more) of campaign prep outside those.
Anyone want to start something for a Monday or Thursday? 
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Forever sending gratitude to the amazing DiSers who got me into D&D and put up with my generic-but-bland-and-vaguely-edgy character I now cringe massively at.
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And especially my D&D besties @Peanutbuttertoast and @dingers for continuing to put up with my endless DMing questions 
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How did you get so many games? 
I love that for you though
An entirely absent social / family life does wonders for my availability if not my wellbeing
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I’m currently in a month off because my game is seasonally shifting. Half of the year play an ongoing campaign with my NZ pal, but then time shifts and our slot is too late for her, so then the other half the year I do a shorter limited campaign which this last year involved my Australian friend who a couple timezones over from thr NZ one was in just the right spot for her
It’s only been one week off so far but I miss it so much, can’t believe I still have to do more weeks like this.
The main game is an Exandria-set thing and we’re entering our third year which is so cool, longest running game I’ve been involved in. I’ve got plans to take us through to a fourth year if everyone can still stick around. We’ve only lost one originally player to scheduling so far and that feels like almost too good to be true.
Off season game this year was again Exandria, but specifically set in Aeor a few years before Downfall and I am so proud of that game. Managed to make everyone cry in the last session and got lots of “best game ever” type feedback. It was such a joy to run with players who absolutely understood the very specific assignment and gave me so much to work with, one backstory in particular really pivoted my plans in a direction that help me enmesh it really into the setting and time period really satisfactorily. It was a pretty serious and bleak game (the central dilema of it ended up as a twist on The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas) but also totally laughed our butts off at least once a session, it was great.
I love D&D so much
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D&D counts as social life. If not I don’t have any
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Really 
that our availability overlaps again one day because the envy has been at 
hearing about your Aeor campaign.
It’s hard work and there are times it doesn’t go the way I was hoping, but the realisation that I am capable of creating something that people look forward to and that feeds their own creativity is a feeling I never thought I would experience.
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Such a great feeling in that feedback loop with others
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Started a campaign with my brother and my dad dm’ing last night. It is mine + my brother’s first time playing and my dad’s first time in over 20 years. It was fun, we are currently looking for my cousin in a goblin cave.
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Is the plan that your cousin will join the game once you find them?
idk if that’s a possibility. we have rescued a Human from goblins who know where he is.
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Sorry, I was being hilarious in suggesting that you were looking for your cousin in real life.
Have got to the “give in and make a custom calendar” point of world building. Swore I wasn’t going to do it but turns out it’s really hard to lkeep track of time and avoid glaring plot holes without one. So now of course I might as well make star signs and all of that too.
But however much world building that I do it all just feels so insufficient. Like, how does this city of 200,000 only have three inns/taverns? Why does the commander of the city watch only ever interact with the same three NPCs? And the more I expand things the more I feel like I’m failing.
Also made the mistake of having two separate big bad plots happening in the background and of course the players are trying to link everything that happens so are developing some wildly innacurate theories.
Still having an absolute blast though. If I can one day actually get the hang of balancing encounters and DMing combat I think I’d make a decent DM.
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Flip it around though, if you’re a PC, probably focused on some sort of goal, how much time are you going to spend trawling a city to find more than that sort of amount of options if that has already covered your needs? Or an NPC advising out of towners, are they going to give a full rundown or list one or two they are more familiar with or know are in the right part of town?
You only see/hear about the City Watch Commander interacting with those people because it is what is relevant, and chances are at that rank they are delegating a lot of the leg work of talking to more different people and aa lot of that is bureaucracy etc that is most of their job at that level
Worldbuilding can give the impression of a 200,000 population city, you don’t need to know all the details to fill it in and make it feel like that. You can help it along by mentioning things in passing and the like to give a sense of what is there that doesn’t really matter beyond set dressing. So like the tavern example, idk someone rolls investigation to find somewhere and maybe they roll high, say something like “you find a really amiable young person [optional description] who spots that lost look on some of your faces, you ask about an inn and they start listing off some names before stopping to ask some questions about what you’re looking for more specifically and roll it back to a couple specific places they think will best meet your needs, which are…”
There’s the trick of having multiple paths which lead to just one place to give the illusion of there being more options but really it will always lead to the thing you have ready
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Yeah, for sure. I think what I would like to get a bit better at is having places feel more distinct - everything tends to fall into a very Eurocentric medieval inspired vibe. Might have a look at the Radiant Citadel book as inspiration for pushing out of that generic comfort zone and giving places clearer and more diverse identities.
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Absolutely love playing my Tabaxi aberrant mind sorcerer. She thinks she’s a priest of a chaotic neutral god (Waukeen) but is actually being granted powers by a cosmic horror being. Such good spells, almost all illusions or charms but with some real damage dealers in lightning bolt and hunger of Hadar.
Plus I get to act like a cat basically, pawing at doors, circling before taking a seat, losing her head over fish, etc.
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She sounds amazing. Also playing cat/cat-coded characters is so much fun, though I’ve only done it with NPCs
If anyone else wants to tell about their PCs I love hearing this stuff