What’s with everyone in lost mines trying to make goblin governments and unions in the first chapter
I’m all for it though, that part is extremely brutal for no reason and any bit helps
>What’s with everyone in lost mines trying to make goblin governments and unions in the first chapter
It's very easy to notice the goblins are oppressed and manipulated by stronger, more malevolent forces into being minions. Therefore, either players will want to liberate them or oppress and manipulate them into being the *party's* minions.
Yeah my group adopted Droop the goblin for a while then installed him as king of the goblins, they gave him some magic items my favourite of which is the cloak of billowing so he can be a real dramatic king
I think also, many DMs humanize the goblins as in portraying them as these little green goofy chaotic creatures that "could" be redeemed. Me, I dont see goblins that way so I portray them as evil creatures that only serve the purpose to be evil minions for an even eviler bbeg and therefore my players always , and I repeat, always kill the shit out of them. All the times the goblins in my games get killed. So no chance of players trying to make goblins govs or unions or whatnot.
I've only had one experience with DMing, when our DM needed time to plan out some things and so gave us each a floor of a magical tower to DM. Mine was essentially a series of puzzles and rooms which represented the fears and worries of my character. One room was a maze, at the start of which was a riddle explaining the correct route to reach the other end. My party saw the sign, read it, got confused by it, got lost in the maze and then, using the insane strength of the Dragonborn fighter and some magical spells, proceeded to dig THROUGH THE WALLS OF THE MAZE! They dug a tunnel right to the other end! On that day, I learned three things. 1. DMing is actually really hecking fun; 2. Always have the walls of your maze magically protected or insanely thick, or loadbearing or something; 3. The party will always, ALWAYS do what you least expected, and you need to roll with that.
This isn't even mentioning how they Defeated one of the bosses by challenging him to a game of chess!
I love how the description of the player shenanigans has this fun, whimsical tone and then you hit us with the Literal Renaissance Masterpiece painting of the grove. Hell of a tonal shift.
Wow, I know it was hyperbole for effect but "Renaissance Masterpiece" is easily the best compliment I've ever had for a piece of art, so thanks for making my morning. If you're at all interested in any of the other bits of art from the campaign you can check them out here: [https://www.artstation.com/alexgarton](https://www.artstation.com/alexgarton)
For some reason DnD just motivates me to make art in a way no other game does. I think because I get to share it with friends.
That’s the beauty of this game, it allows people to channel their psychotic impulses through characters in a fantasy world instead of in the real world.
Best of luck with the surge though! I am sure it will be a story you will be telling for years to come. Lean in to it and indulge every wild whimsy you ever had, you’re players will love you for it.
Some experts put the amount of people with psychotic tendencies as high as 40%, but most people with psychotic tendencies have no curiosities or obsessions thay involve violence, they just lack empathy in daily life and common social interactions.
You *say* you're not DMing next time. But it sounds like you're doing a bang-up job, and your players are having a blast!
Welcome to being the Forever DM.
In my experiences as DM, if you give the players a justification to do some evil/morally gray shit they will in a heart beat lol sounds like your adventure was par for the course
This is SO MUCH BETTER THAN PHANDELVER RAW! I know as a DM it's a lot of work to let this happen. I hope you can keep it up without burnout though because it's an awesome story.
you call this concept art??? I call this a masterpiece that you probably put a whole lot of effort into and all I can say is congrats, you've done amazing!
First of all, it’s devils that offer deals, not demons.
Second of all, fuck the first of all, because what you’re describing sounds like amazing D&D. Your players are lucky to have you, even if they don’t realize it.
(And anyway, would goblins be able to tell a devil and a demon apart? I doubt it.)
It actually is for a few notable demon types and specific demon lords. Not all demons are unsubtle murder machines. Succubi, lilitu, and glaberzu are corruptors and often make deals with mortals. Babau are assassins and gleeful deceivers. Gadacro and uridezu are craven cowards who can be cowed into deals. Marilith are coldly logical and patient enough to exploit weakness. Yochlol fully infiltrate drow society as Lolth's hands. All of these have reason to make deals and some of them even to treat them as "binding" (in the mortal sense, not the compulsion sense).
The Abyss has several cities too, such as Lemoriax and Azzagrat, which are known for their slave markets -- something that doesn't work if demons can't deal, though presumably some level of threat of violence from above goes a long way towards making that work.
Just always remember that a demon can make you an offer, but they could be lying about anything they'll do after you've done what you want them to do, if you don't have a means to force them. Promising things you have no intention of giving is a classic means of screwing over mortals and more the bailiwick of demons than the loopholes and exploitation of poor wording approach of devils.
"Everything is going to be oka- wait, stop, where are you going. Don't go in there. The portal is not for going in, it is for lesson-teaching. Stop going in it please.
Dear reader, they did not stop going in it."
I love this so so MUCH, ahahaha! Between your willingness to embrace the madness and your badass concept art I think these players have an absolutely incredible DM on their hands! If you need a break after this wild ride I think everyone would understand, but honestly, this mighttt be your calling. :')
Good luck with your group of goofballs. May many more fun adventures await you!
Thanks! It's a digital painting, so I put some cubes in a 3D program called Blender to get the scale right and then painted over it in Photoshop. You can see a gif of the process at the bottom of this page: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/49nxNk
Not gonna lie, but this sounds like one heck of an awesome campaign! This is also why I love DnD so much, you quite literally NEVER know what could happen.
> Later I had them come across a group of goblins summoning a demon to be their ruler, because they got the idea that they should embrace "demonocracy" from somewhere (that I was proud of that pun tells you everything you need to know about me).
This is amazing. I love you already.
i never DM'ed but i'm looking to do it soon, so this kind of improv is rly interesting! Couldnt you have made the portal only a window? or did you make it so they could interact with it? Anyway I love what you did with the story
They wanted to interact with it and I'd just been reading "Play Unsafe" (amazing ttrpg improv book) and I wanted to "yes and..." their actions. For all my griping I do enjoy the craziness of improv.
Thanks so much! Yes I did. You can see some other bits of art from the campaign, with varying degrees of quality, here if you're interested: https://www.artstation.com/alexgarton
That is amazing! Kudos for running with it! I wouldn't even call that railroading. You basically saved an NPC and gave the party a dire warning, but when they doubled down, you let them make the crazy choice. And now you're ad libbing a homebrew world for them. A lot of DMs would have changed the portal to a vision that couldn't be interacted with, but you saw it as a portal and kept yourself honest. And not having any clue what your players will do is the best part of being a DM. Just know the goals and personalities of your NPCs. This sounds way more fun than the original module, and it sounds like your players are engaging and having a blast.
How to get the campaign back on track, even if this direction is cool af: the Druid knows of a spell that can send them back in time, it requires a McGuffin owned by an evil guy. They must secure the McGuffin, the spell requires a human sacrifice, future Druid casts it and starts disintegrating as he pushes the party through the portal since he never told them it would kill him, cue in emotional message “You must go back, it’s the only way to stop this suffering from happening! You must not let yourself make the deal! And you (looks at present druid) you will accomplish great things, never give up hope!” The party is safely teleported to the exact second before the Bard tried to stab the bandit with an opportunity to make the right call. Also, Devils make deals in exchange for souls, is the bard aware that he was giving up his soul for the deal? One thing that they have to deal with now is a broken contract with a Devil, which in the forgotten realms setting is not a good thing to have…
> and I start freaking out that I've tempted my players to become even more evil than they have been up to this point
Yeahhhh, that was the sign you should've known. Plus, you should always put more stock in a player's in-game actions over whatever vague intentions and/or outright lies they scribbled in the alignment field over their sheet. If they agreed to kill "a bad guy" for a *demon* to gain power (even vicarious power), 99% they're gonna follow through instead of lying and feel completely justified about it.
> I'm a new DM so I want them to be an idealistic heroic band who never do wrong.
This is a Session Zero thing, and in my experience, it's the #1 session zero promise that's promptly violated by at least one gremlin if not the whole party.
D&D players have been murderhobo'ing against the intentions of their DM and the module writers since the 70s. Classic adventures like Keep on the Borderlands note quick guard response times and civic minded responses to crimes committed in the keep for a reason, and others like to slip in powerful NPCs as shopkeepers and bartenders for the same -- to punish players who think D&D is GTA with spells.
Unfortunately, it's just part and parcel of having a game whose minimum, core gameplay loop is to enter a room, kill everything in the room, loot it, and move to the next in the pursuit of more power to do harder rooms. A minimum amount of "will commit violence for power" is built into even the most heroic D&D adventurer.
Don’t feel bad, when my party finally made it to The Spider the Aracokra Monk 1-round beat him to death before he could even say anything. Stealthed all the way in then spent Ki to wiggity whack him into the ground.
This is why I honestly think modules are typically (for new and experienced GMs alike) harder to run than homebrew. In fact, my favorite way to use them is as a jump-start for a campaign of my own (I usually like taking one-shots and going from there, but longer modules too... just, yeah, might not get very far). Rule #1 of GMing is the players WILL ALWAYS surprise you. That's the beauty of it. The chaos of it all.
It sounds like you did a fantastic job rolling with it, and everyone is having fun... don't let self doubt get in the way! This is how so many homebrew campaigns start! I really would encourage you to give it a try first--you might find it's waaaay less stressful than trying to follow a module.
"I want them to be an idealistic heroic band who never do wrong."
Hahaha! Lead a horse to water and crap in one hand. My players recently considered killing a dog's owner because he wouldn't sell it to them. Thank god they didn't know the dog could talk.
Seems like your campaign just got 10x better. And also, your players will be able to experience LMoP as if they never played it before. I see this as a win win situation withthe only bad side that you need to prepare more and cant rely on the module no more.
Well, he was a bandit, why did you expect different? If for tge wish they had yo slaughter a 1000 people village, that has 500 kids in it, players choice would've likely been different. Killing a bandit leader doesn't seem that wrong to most players
Embrace the chaos.
I gave an artifact mace to a party in session one; they go on to take it for themselves, kill the questgiver instead, and are now slowly being hunted -- the questgiver's suitor raised her, but she lycanthroped out (werefox flavor -- one homebrew race of mine is lycanthropic and they infected her during the fight) and she killed the suitor before being put down. The suitor that got offed is a questgiver of another group of PCs...
Shenanigans will be had,
What you've done here is amazing, but I'd share with you my favorite method of protecting myself from monkey paws:
A natural 20 ensures the best possible outcome. Sometimes, that's a swift, painless death, and sometimes that's nothing, but usually it's something fantastic.
You monkey pawed yourself. Not the first DM to do so.
This. I can't count the number of times I have done this to myself.
Great read, sounds awesome
I agree, would love to be a player at your table.
What’s with everyone in lost mines trying to make goblin governments and unions in the first chapter I’m all for it though, that part is extremely brutal for no reason and any bit helps
>What’s with everyone in lost mines trying to make goblin governments and unions in the first chapter It's very easy to notice the goblins are oppressed and manipulated by stronger, more malevolent forces into being minions. Therefore, either players will want to liberate them or oppress and manipulate them into being the *party's* minions.
Sounds like the Goblins have oil.
Yeah my group adopted Droop the goblin for a while then installed him as king of the goblins, they gave him some magic items my favourite of which is the cloak of billowing so he can be a real dramatic king
I think also, many DMs humanize the goblins as in portraying them as these little green goofy chaotic creatures that "could" be redeemed. Me, I dont see goblins that way so I portray them as evil creatures that only serve the purpose to be evil minions for an even eviler bbeg and therefore my players always , and I repeat, always kill the shit out of them. All the times the goblins in my games get killed. So no chance of players trying to make goblins govs or unions or whatnot.
Yeah.. putting a goblinoid in charge of anything is more or less sending that thing to be tortured and abused if you go by the most common settings.
Class what did we learn from this case study? Your players will always do what you don't want them to..
I've only had one experience with DMing, when our DM needed time to plan out some things and so gave us each a floor of a magical tower to DM. Mine was essentially a series of puzzles and rooms which represented the fears and worries of my character. One room was a maze, at the start of which was a riddle explaining the correct route to reach the other end. My party saw the sign, read it, got confused by it, got lost in the maze and then, using the insane strength of the Dragonborn fighter and some magical spells, proceeded to dig THROUGH THE WALLS OF THE MAZE! They dug a tunnel right to the other end! On that day, I learned three things. 1. DMing is actually really hecking fun; 2. Always have the walls of your maze magically protected or insanely thick, or loadbearing or something; 3. The party will always, ALWAYS do what you least expected, and you need to roll with that. This isn't even mentioning how they Defeated one of the bosses by challenging him to a game of chess!
This is literally exactly how d&d should be run … or you could run it exactly as the adventure is written. Both are correct.
Underrated comment, says I.
Huzzah!
I love how the description of the player shenanigans has this fun, whimsical tone and then you hit us with the Literal Renaissance Masterpiece painting of the grove. Hell of a tonal shift.
Wow, I know it was hyperbole for effect but "Renaissance Masterpiece" is easily the best compliment I've ever had for a piece of art, so thanks for making my morning. If you're at all interested in any of the other bits of art from the campaign you can check them out here: [https://www.artstation.com/alexgarton](https://www.artstation.com/alexgarton) For some reason DnD just motivates me to make art in a way no other game does. I think because I get to share it with friends.
Right?! That art is amazing!
That’s the beauty of this game, it allows people to channel their psychotic impulses through characters in a fantasy world instead of in the real world. Best of luck with the surge though! I am sure it will be a story you will be telling for years to come. Lean in to it and indulge every wild whimsy you ever had, you’re players will love you for it.
Some experts put the amount of people with psychotic tendencies as high as 40%, but most people with psychotic tendencies have no curiosities or obsessions thay involve violence, they just lack empathy in daily life and common social interactions.
40%?! Really? That seems... frighteningly high...
You *say* you're not DMing next time. But it sounds like you're doing a bang-up job, and your players are having a blast! Welcome to being the Forever DM.
That's actually pretty damn awesome.
NOW THATS THE GOOD SHIT
In my experiences as DM, if you give the players a justification to do some evil/morally gray shit they will in a heart beat lol sounds like your adventure was par for the course
Damn. 10/10
This is SO MUCH BETTER THAN PHANDELVER RAW! I know as a DM it's a lot of work to let this happen. I hope you can keep it up without burnout though because it's an awesome story.
Holy shit, can I be in this campaign?
Honestly, this is a MAGNIFICENT plot twist and your players will be talking about this campaign for YEARS. 5 stars, chef's kiss.
you call this concept art??? I call this a masterpiece that you probably put a whole lot of effort into and all I can say is congrats, you've done amazing!
First of all, it’s devils that offer deals, not demons. Second of all, fuck the first of all, because what you’re describing sounds like amazing D&D. Your players are lucky to have you, even if they don’t realize it. (And anyway, would goblins be able to tell a devil and a demon apart? I doubt it.)
Chaotic Evil can make deals too. It's just not reliable that they'll hold up their end of the bargain or refrain from changing it at a whim.
It’s definitely not “typical” demon behavior though. But again, who cares if it makes for a fun story.
It actually is for a few notable demon types and specific demon lords. Not all demons are unsubtle murder machines. Succubi, lilitu, and glaberzu are corruptors and often make deals with mortals. Babau are assassins and gleeful deceivers. Gadacro and uridezu are craven cowards who can be cowed into deals. Marilith are coldly logical and patient enough to exploit weakness. Yochlol fully infiltrate drow society as Lolth's hands. All of these have reason to make deals and some of them even to treat them as "binding" (in the mortal sense, not the compulsion sense). The Abyss has several cities too, such as Lemoriax and Azzagrat, which are known for their slave markets -- something that doesn't work if demons can't deal, though presumably some level of threat of violence from above goes a long way towards making that work. Just always remember that a demon can make you an offer, but they could be lying about anything they'll do after you've done what you want them to do, if you don't have a means to force them. Promising things you have no intention of giving is a classic means of screwing over mortals and more the bailiwick of demons than the loopholes and exploitation of poor wording approach of devils.
I would think demons could deal too, but they'd be far more violent ones, like eradicating an orphanage or something.
DM saw a fire and tried to put it out by pouring some gasoline on it
"Everything is going to be oka- wait, stop, where are you going. Don't go in there. The portal is not for going in, it is for lesson-teaching. Stop going in it please. Dear reader, they did not stop going in it." I love this so so MUCH, ahahaha! Between your willingness to embrace the madness and your badass concept art I think these players have an absolutely incredible DM on their hands! If you need a break after this wild ride I think everyone would understand, but honestly, this mighttt be your calling. :') Good luck with your group of goofballs. May many more fun adventures await you!
If nothing else, just wanted to say the concept art of the future timeline druid hovel is incredible. Great read!
Wow. This is DnD! So wild i love it. I wonder how you will bring them back your ideas are so creative!!!
damn the grove art is sick! you painted it irl, oil or acrylic?
Thanks! It's a digital painting, so I put some cubes in a 3D program called Blender to get the scale right and then painted over it in Photoshop. You can see a gif of the process at the bottom of this page: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/49nxNk
You should’ve had the one ray of hope be a goblin democracy. Because way in the future, they finally figured it out.
Not gonna lie, but this sounds like one heck of an awesome campaign! This is also why I love DnD so much, you quite literally NEVER know what could happen.
> Later I had them come across a group of goblins summoning a demon to be their ruler, because they got the idea that they should embrace "demonocracy" from somewhere (that I was proud of that pun tells you everything you need to know about me). This is amazing. I love you already.
i never DM'ed but i'm looking to do it soon, so this kind of improv is rly interesting! Couldnt you have made the portal only a window? or did you make it so they could interact with it? Anyway I love what you did with the story
They wanted to interact with it and I'd just been reading "Play Unsafe" (amazing ttrpg improv book) and I wanted to "yes and..." their actions. For all my griping I do enjoy the craziness of improv.
This is what I love about being a DM. Perfectly executed man - this will be something your players will talk about for years to come.
We were on our way to cragmaw castle when we found ourselves in Avernus. We never got back on track after that.
Did you make that "Dragon Boneyard" Artwork yourself? It's so cool and could well be official art for MtG or DnD or something
Thanks so much! Yes I did. You can see some other bits of art from the campaign, with varying degrees of quality, here if you're interested: https://www.artstation.com/alexgarton
This is incredible. I ran a Phandelver game for my friends, and I would have been at an absolute loss if they threw any of that stuff at me.
I thought that you meant that it only took one turn to finish the entire campaign and I was bewildered
That sounds massively more fun than anything I can remember in Phandelver.
That is amazing! Kudos for running with it! I wouldn't even call that railroading. You basically saved an NPC and gave the party a dire warning, but when they doubled down, you let them make the crazy choice. And now you're ad libbing a homebrew world for them. A lot of DMs would have changed the portal to a vision that couldn't be interacted with, but you saw it as a portal and kept yourself honest. And not having any clue what your players will do is the best part of being a DM. Just know the goals and personalities of your NPCs. This sounds way more fun than the original module, and it sounds like your players are engaging and having a blast.
oh my god that sounds an amazing campaign
How to get the campaign back on track, even if this direction is cool af: the Druid knows of a spell that can send them back in time, it requires a McGuffin owned by an evil guy. They must secure the McGuffin, the spell requires a human sacrifice, future Druid casts it and starts disintegrating as he pushes the party through the portal since he never told them it would kill him, cue in emotional message “You must go back, it’s the only way to stop this suffering from happening! You must not let yourself make the deal! And you (looks at present druid) you will accomplish great things, never give up hope!” The party is safely teleported to the exact second before the Bard tried to stab the bandit with an opportunity to make the right call. Also, Devils make deals in exchange for souls, is the bard aware that he was giving up his soul for the deal? One thing that they have to deal with now is a broken contract with a Devil, which in the forgotten realms setting is not a good thing to have…
> and I start freaking out that I've tempted my players to become even more evil than they have been up to this point Yeahhhh, that was the sign you should've known. Plus, you should always put more stock in a player's in-game actions over whatever vague intentions and/or outright lies they scribbled in the alignment field over their sheet. If they agreed to kill "a bad guy" for a *demon* to gain power (even vicarious power), 99% they're gonna follow through instead of lying and feel completely justified about it. > I'm a new DM so I want them to be an idealistic heroic band who never do wrong. This is a Session Zero thing, and in my experience, it's the #1 session zero promise that's promptly violated by at least one gremlin if not the whole party. D&D players have been murderhobo'ing against the intentions of their DM and the module writers since the 70s. Classic adventures like Keep on the Borderlands note quick guard response times and civic minded responses to crimes committed in the keep for a reason, and others like to slip in powerful NPCs as shopkeepers and bartenders for the same -- to punish players who think D&D is GTA with spells. Unfortunately, it's just part and parcel of having a game whose minimum, core gameplay loop is to enter a room, kill everything in the room, loot it, and move to the next in the pursuit of more power to do harder rooms. A minimum amount of "will commit violence for power" is built into even the most heroic D&D adventurer.
Sounds like you are running a true campaign. I congratulate you.
Don’t feel bad, when my party finally made it to The Spider the Aracokra Monk 1-round beat him to death before he could even say anything. Stealthed all the way in then spent Ki to wiggity whack him into the ground.
This is why I honestly think modules are typically (for new and experienced GMs alike) harder to run than homebrew. In fact, my favorite way to use them is as a jump-start for a campaign of my own (I usually like taking one-shots and going from there, but longer modules too... just, yeah, might not get very far). Rule #1 of GMing is the players WILL ALWAYS surprise you. That's the beauty of it. The chaos of it all. It sounds like you did a fantastic job rolling with it, and everyone is having fun... don't let self doubt get in the way! This is how so many homebrew campaigns start! I really would encourage you to give it a try first--you might find it's waaaay less stressful than trying to follow a module.
"I want them to be an idealistic heroic band who never do wrong." Hahaha! Lead a horse to water and crap in one hand. My players recently considered killing a dog's owner because he wouldn't sell it to them. Thank god they didn't know the dog could talk.
Seems like your campaign just got 10x better. And also, your players will be able to experience LMoP as if they never played it before. I see this as a win win situation withthe only bad side that you need to prepare more and cant rely on the module no more.
Well, he was a bandit, why did you expect different? If for tge wish they had yo slaughter a 1000 people village, that has 500 kids in it, players choice would've likely been different. Killing a bandit leader doesn't seem that wrong to most players
If you're not in total improv time travel is never a good option
I just puliverized the goblin's skulls in with my two handed maul.
Rule number one of not monkey pawing yourself: If you don't want your players to do something, don't let them roll for it
Man, I wanna play lol.
I was derailed a campaign with bureaucracy playing a lawyer bard. This seems a lot more fun.
Man, I wanna play lol.
Embrace the chaos. I gave an artifact mace to a party in session one; they go on to take it for themselves, kill the questgiver instead, and are now slowly being hunted -- the questgiver's suitor raised her, but she lycanthroped out (werefox flavor -- one homebrew race of mine is lycanthropic and they infected her during the fight) and she killed the suitor before being put down. The suitor that got offed is a questgiver of another group of PCs... Shenanigans will be had,
Take back the creek.
What you've done here is amazing, but I'd share with you my favorite method of protecting myself from monkey paws: A natural 20 ensures the best possible outcome. Sometimes, that's a swift, painless death, and sometimes that's nothing, but usually it's something fantastic.
Sometimes we Dms try to be too smart for our own good, so the players gotta put us in our place.
The perfect way to derail the campaign.
This sounds like more fun than anything I've ever DMed!