Where might my players encounter giant bugs that can be domesticated? Which species would you pick as mounts and beasts of burden? What might the players provide that they need... In my Beyond the Wall game, we have ended up with a bit of a plot hole. We need some mounts and beasts of burdent to move mateirals, but the storm requiring that everyone take shelter means that there would be precious few in the outer city. I asked the players and their pitch was bugs, giant bugs. I can see them reacting differently to a storm and not being affected by the curses etc. I can see them not directly competing for paturized land. Sometimes I think they come up with these crazy ideas to see if I can figure out how to make it work.

I pulled together a group of story focused players to try an emergent campaign (collaborative+proactive). I am going to use this thread to share periodic updates on how it is going and what is working. Meetings will be sparse this fall and then weekly after the new year. It is five players from my in-person games who had to move out of town.

I found my players had an easier time not over-thinking goals, and all their criteria, when I prompted them with simple, straightforward questions. The one that helped me with short term goals was "what do you plan to do next session or two?" But I never came up with an equally down to earth way to ask about mid or long term goals. I recently found a video about game loops and TTRPGs. Stephanie proposes these 3 loops, at different scales: Meta loop: Why does your character care? Progress loop: How do the characters move forward? What are they striving for? Core loop: What are they doing right now? (Or next session) To me this seems super helpful for assisting my players with goal making. To me they line right up with Long, Mid, and Short term goals. https://youtu.be/9HXCPiP54R8

The frontier fort town of Ashgate is home to 400 souls, each trying to make a life at the eastern end of Woldarm’s Passage in a strange and unfamiliar land of strange beasts, volcanic lakes, and mud pots. Agents of the Black Hand skillfully manipulate the politics of the many interested factions to hold their control and push down challengers to their strange rule. Wolfram’s Passage is an ancient pathway under the Spine of the World that was hidden for centuries under a pyroclastic flow. Since their discovery a hundred years ago, Kigs and Vess have leveraged their Passage to grow a black market trade between the Manyhorn Traders of The Expanse and the Spicers’ Guild of the Azure Coast. Under the watchful eyes of Black Hands Agents, this trade slowly built a small population of hospitality workers and caravan drivers, most of whom found a new home across the Spine to escape something from their past with the anonymity of a new start. Life is cheap in Ashgate, but it is theirs. A year ago, something notable changed in Ashgate. Unknown to most residents, the Black Hand made a compact with the Arcanum to develop the mining of essential minerals depleted across the Azure Coast: minerals that are rich and untouched in the lava fields of the eastern Expanse. The result in Ashgate has been an influx of prospectors and explorers who venture beyond the Fort in search of buried riches. Some of them come back. Fewer know why they are here in the first place.

My campaign (dnd 5.5e) has been going pretty steady (thanks to many of you here who jumped in with advice for me and the Fishel bros. books) and we've just had a bit of a summer break. Essentially the group is gearing up for a big rescue mission. I'm familiar with the concept of dialing up and down the difficulty level but I was wondering what you all keep in mind for running something like this: They are rescuing a party members long lost grandfather who has a special time traveling ability. They're fighting kind of like a fascist organization of dwarves who are aligned with an evil wizard group (that is after a different party member). The party has yet to align with some factions they might share similar interests with. My teen son who is in the party has told me my combat has been getting better, (originally was hard for me to think past the monsters lol) this is what I've been doing, I'm looking for just any other ideas you keep in mind when planning combat. - having interesting terrain, traps, objects - Maybe having countdown clocks at different points - Smarter monsters , monsters that turn into other monsters, different waves of monsters Thinking of adding more innocent bystanders, maybe unclear bystanders. Also more height or trench/ underground possibilities. Maybe this is enough but thought I'd check with you all here! I'm aware that maybe the best way to make combat more interesting is to use a different system 🤣 but this is what everyone is into.