The Pink Dice Chronicles

A woman goes to her brother-in-law's funeral. There she meets a friend of the family, a man that she doesn't know. They talk, they laugh, and the woman finds herself really liking this man. However, at some point she loses track of the man and never gets his name, number, and no one seems to know who he is.  A week later, the woman kills her sister. Why? If you don't know the answer, it is because most people have a part of their reasoning that discounts certain solutions to problems because they don't make sense. In this case, you might have missed the logic that the woman kills her sister so there will be another funeral, and she can find this man again. This solution seems unreasonable, so most folks can't find their way to it easily. True evil is like this woman. It doesn't place the same weight on things as we do. What seems completely unreasonable to a normal person, seems like a logical solution to evil. Because most GMs are reasonable people (despite...

The DMG has a rough recommendation for starting gold and equipment for higher levels, but with my groups running one-shots, we wanted to nail it down to level by level. Here's my DMG-inspired table. Generally I allow equipment to be traded in during character creation for half book value, where applicable. I also, as a GM, offer to make custom magic items for players who can't choose. A list of magical items by rarity can be found here  with stats available in the DMG. I also generally allow players to buy healing potions (2d4+2) for 50gp and greater healing potions for 250gp (4d4+4). PHB items are available at book cost at creation. I do not allow other equipment to be purchased except in game. This is generally based off the "high magic" campaign. Level Starting Gold Starting Equipment / Magic Items 1 - 160gp  OR Standard starting equipment 2 210gp Standard starting equipment 3 285gp Standard starting equipment 4 365gp Standard sta...

So after 66 session of me GMing D&D 5E with a party of 6 players, I have zero PC deaths. I have had a few close calls along the way, but no PC deaths. To me, for my game, this seems too low. Now to be completely fair, my death rules, as I have used them, are not exactly rules as written (RAW). I ignore the instant death rule that basically states that a PC can die instantly if hit by massive damage. I consider it a cheap shot by a GM to kill a PC that way. I also generally don't keep trying to hit PCs while they are down. So basically my death rules are straight death saves. Roll a d20. Roll a 1 and get 2 failures. Roll a 20 and you are back up with 1 HP. Roll 2 to 9, and you get one failure. Roll 10 to 19 and you get one success. 3 failures makes you dead. 3 successes gets you stabilized. Of course, if you get healed at any point from any source, your are back up too. My thought was to mirror the instant death rule a little differently to increase the chance of PC death....

http://tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg

The gerridan are large intelligent water strider insect folk that live in a hive colony. They are found primarily underground in large water-filled caverns. They avoid all contact with other species. The gerridan queen fully commands the drones of the hive using telepathic communication. This makes them a very dangerous enemy when angered. Generally, when threatened, the gerridan will use their water casting abilities to isolate the threat and retreat. The one obvious exception to this is when eggs or gerridlings are harmed. This is generally considered an act of war against the hive, and the entire hive will fight to the death. Gerridan Drone Large monstrosity, lawful neutral Armor Class 19 (natural armor) Hit Points 123 (13d10 +52) Speed 30ft., climb 30ft., water walk 30ft. STR 16 (+3) DEX 16 (+3) CON 18 (+4) INT 13 (+1) WIS 14 (+2)  CHA 12(+1) Senses water sense 120ft. (Can sense any motion in the water within range) Languages Undercommon (understand only), tele...

Everyone wants a better game. GMs will do many things to achieve this goal. Unfortunately, GMs delve into the role of game designer way too quickly without understanding a simple truth: GMs are not game designers. The two have different objectives. GMs want a fun game with a certain tone. Game designers try to build a system that is fun, but not vulnerable to exploitation and imbalance. Normally, this is not a big deal. A GM can use experience to make small tweaks to a system to the get the game they want. If it works well, they want to pick it up and use it everywhere. Doing this can often cause more harm than good. As a GM and designer who tweaks my own system, I understand the desire and the dangers and have dealt with them first hand. The biggest alligator lurking in that swamp is the mystery of empirical evidence vs anecdotal evidence. Evidence is data that contributes to drawing a conclusion. In this case we are talking about evidence for changing / adding / ignoring a ru...

Like many GMs, I feel my players don't influence the game enough. One of my goals is to always customize the game to fit what the players want. Unfortunately 5E is light on mechanics for this. To start to fix this, I am proposing a new mechanic: Rolling for Contacts . Contacts are non-combat NPCs that the players have a connection to in order to get help of whatever non-combat form they want. The player gets 1 contact every 4 levels. To gain a contact during the game (not at level up!), they describe an NPC they want to gain as a contact and then the GM rolls a hidden skill check while the party is not in combat. That skill check must be related to the type of contact they wish to gain. For example, a good stealth skill check may gain a member of the local thieves' guild. A good religion check might gain a local cleric that would be a PC's friend. The player, however, gets to describe exactly who their contact is, in whatever level of detail is desired and appropriate. ...