The latest session of my long term campaign was yesterday. Two of the players were trying to infiltrate the rich side of town and quickly realized they would need to procure a change of clothes sp they would blend in. I had to improvise a merchant NPC on the spot. Being an avid fan of STP and his discworld series, my mind reached for the only character that fit the bill - Cut-me-own-throat Dibbler 😄. I played the character up just as he was in the books. On of the advantages of being older (I'm in my 50's, most of my players are 20s/early 30s) and from another country (I'm from NZ but live in Utah) is that I have been exposed to cultural influences that my players haven't. Not a single one of them has read Discworld, so Cut-me-own-throat Diibbler is completely new to them, and I could shamelessly use (rip off) the character without them knowing. I hope that one day at least one of them reads the books and smiles knowingly.

Heya! Been taking a long break from tabletop DMing but some of my coworkers have expressed wanting to follow through on the idea of playing D&D so I want to give it another shot. Only thing is, 2/4 people interested have never played before, and the other two have done maybe 2 sessions so they're very new. As a newer DM without a *ton* of experience, I'm a bit worried about making the campaign accessible for them and teaching them when I honestly don't understand everything myself haha. With all that said, anyone have any good tips for helping new players get their bearings? Are there certain things you do with veterans as opposed to newbies? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

260+ pages?! Is there an audiobook? Maybe I’ll wait for the Netflix series ;)

Trying to figure out how to adapt a concept to proactive games ... Edariad just pitched six steps for a great campaign (link) based around the concept of a Seed Question. This is a question is not about the plot, but about how the world works or people work. His example is "who gets to decide what the world looks like". He argues that reasonable people need to be able to disagree about it, and that the villian and PCs all need to have a personal connection with it. The idea really resonates with me and feels compatible with the central conflicts concept. Where I am stuck is his suggestion that it is important that you don't come out and tell the players, but that it is the question they start talking about after the first session without recognizing it. That it looses value and impact if they players are thinking from that lens initially. I see the point of it being a hidden force, but feel like it would need to be part of the discussion of theme and character creation in a proactive game. Anyway, I would appreciate others' opinions...

(N.B.: I'm not asking for a debate on the utility or necessity of Safety Tools in RPGs) A question for RPG players and GMs: I'm building a new Safety Tool similar to the X-Card but with a wider range of message. (The X card is a clean, direct, non-verbal way of communicating a single, important piece of information. In the case of the X Card, it's "Stop everything right now") There are some other similar safety tools out ther. The X-Card was expanded to include "N" ('please fade to black'), and "O" ('everyone OK?'). What sort of things might you want to communicate to a GM (or have communicated to you) in a way which doesn't necessarily interrupt a scene? And -- I can't believe I have to say this -- but they don't necessarily need to be bad things. Here are some examples: - "Can we take a break after this?" - "Proceed with Caution" - "I enthusiastically consent to this, even though my character seems to be hating this" - "I have a rules question"- - "More of this, please!" - Think of it like a semaphore or an ideaogram. It's a way to communicate a potentially complex idea in a single moment. What sorts of things do you want to be able to communicate to your GMs?