Working on developing my first campaign. Looking for general advice on how to tie it all together, have appreciate the advice I have received so far but I feel like I needed to make some sort of general plot concept to start to look into those resources more. This is long so no need to read or reply but if you have the time and interest I appreciate it! I mostly want to know if my general plot actually makes sense in some way outside my own mind! Started with Dragons of Stormwreck Isle DnD starter set with the idea of having a time portal appear at the end. PC’s include Paladin Aasimar-goal is to find his grandfather (or more likely information) who was allegedly carried away from the island by a dragon a long time ago Tabaxi Rogue-No clear goal yet but following the will of Bast, ((ancient Egyptian goddess of home, domesticity, fertility, childbirth, and protection)) was suggested here to help her find a powerful form of catnip Sword-wielding human Wizard-being chased by a Wizards guild because they don’t like him pursuing training in sword fighting etc. Guild is called The Trust of the Song Warlock with a patron called the Deity Moander, which I’m just learning is an actual deity in DnD materials. Warlock wants to find some dirt on his patron so he can no longer be manipulated by him. How can you find dirt on a deity? Or am I missing something? Can they just kill him in a future time period? Sorcerer-occassionally when he rolls on the wild magic table he gets pulled to the elemental plane, so he would like some type of power to stop doing this. and/or maybe learn additional wizard magic more easily. The idea is they have just defeated a dragon (in a clifftop observatory) that wanted to perform a magic ritual during a celestial event, they have gotten rumors of some type of time portal potentially opening up during this event. So the next scene would be they’re in the observatory with the dead dragon, and they see the celestial event cause the observatory and telescope to glow and they see someone appear holding a large staff. This is a wizard human named Ebeneezer holding a time staff (I found online has certain stats etc.)

I know Dnd 5.5e is not popular with a lot of folks, just wondering why. Also curious what systems are your favorites and why? I'm in my first year of ttrpg-ing and don't feel I can take on learning a new system yet but I'm just wondering in this group what factors influence your likes and dislikes about various systems. I have played some independent systems at conventions and enjoyed them, and I do like the combat mechanics of Pathfinder, but Dnd is really big where I live and I already have a lot of the physical materials so I'm pretty invested in it for awhile. Open to any thoughts though, thanks!

I thought long and hard about this. And played a lot of systems. And I have to say I like it better to gain XP with bother my completing micro task to keep myself engaged in the story we are trying to tell. But at the same way I am torn by getting XP by failures. The idea getting XP by learning from your mistakes. Speaks to me. And then again I like what as a group we all level up with milestones. I know how bad it felt when one class would level up and you did not.

Glad to meet folks here. Breakout Con starts tomorrow, I'll be running 4 sessions of Daggerheart there; if you're there, come say hi! Typically however, I'm based in Minneapolis and I'm a full-time GM, running 7-10 campaigns and various one-shots/etc. I'm the mostly-not D&D guy; currently I've been enjoying running things like Good Society, Vampire: the Masquerade, Legend of the Five Rings, Ars Magica, Daggerheart, and the D&D I have been running has been Monte Cook's Ptolus and the Historica Arcanum: City of Crescent. Through Sortilege, my company, I've also done various kinds of bespoke private client game design work, and currently I'm working on some software tools that I hope to release later this year. Got to join the session -1 for some kind of Blades in the Dark west marches prep.

Me and my Homies are making a pan African ttrpg. When we playtest and i gm for them, my GM style is very Samuel Jackson to put it lightly right. I mean, we have a blast, but I feel like when it comes to paying patrons ( not my patrons btw I was assigned). I’m probably gonna need to clean that up and I guess my real question is how do you speak when you gm for randos. Is a few mf acceptable? because thats how i improv I’ve been improving this whole time. I guess I do have a slight outline of where I want to go and then I just hope that they’ll rock with the language that I used to explain. As i get to that point a lot Umms and mother fucking ummms fly out as i trying to pull the Homies into the world. It makes my Homies laugh but I worry about how I’m gonna switch it up for “the public.” Please advise gang