Dnd 5.5e. To try to make a long story short, we are about 2 sessions into a collaborative campaign that was an offshoot of a prewritten mod. 5 player characters who were enticed into going a hundred years into the future. Got most of my ideas about how to run this from you all here, thank you ! If you’d like a lot of detail you can probably read my past posts. The Paladin is motivated to find his missing grandfather who had been assumed dead but got clues he might be in this time period, was further found to have a natural time traveling ability. I have two relevant factions to this scenario–the Revenant Occupation who are eco fascists/racists who want to eliminate dwarves and elves and purify the area of time travel and the Temporal Authority who regulates time travel. I set up the clues so the grandfather had previously been arrested by the Temporal Authority in their massive compound but then the Revenant Occupation kidnapped him and took him to their subterranean dungeon and that they want to sacrifice him at a big gathering they’re having. They are set on wanting to talk to someone at the Temporal Authority to get more info about this, the organization itself, the kidnapping, and the revenant occupation. Naturally I had thought the Temporal Authority would just be an afterthought of a faction for now, the players have been told they’re a bureaucracy, not evil but there’s lots of agents, a big fortified compound with lots of weapons & monsters, but of course this is what they’re focused on ha ha. People avoid the Temporal Authority because if you draw attention to yourself or ask too many questions they start following you and harassing your friends and family. The players are aware the Temporal Authority recruits a lot so they’re focused on attending a recruitment event and talking to people on the inside. They feel something isn’t adding up with the grandfather being kidnapped from there. Any suggestions about potential routes to take with that? I didn’t give that much thought, I don’t have a secret reason this doesn’t make sense to them. Any suggestions about what attending a recruitment event might be like or possible options for paths they could take that would tie this together? I do have a local tavern owner who is going to meet up with them in a few days to connect them with someone who deals in magical goods and to connect them with a disgruntled Temporal Authority employee if that helps with any suggestions. Thanks if you've read this far!

Welcome to the Game Master Laboratory! This is a place for people who are running (or planning) TTRPG games to brainstorm ideas with other GMs, share ideas and resources, and test their creations with each other. I recorded a short video to get you started, which you can view in this post. It's all about what we do here, but it's also about how to use Skool, so if you're new to Skool, make sure to check that out! If we haven't met you yet, we would like to. Please make a post in the "General Discussion" channel to introduce yourself and tell us... 1. Which systems you like to play/run 2. A bit about the games you're running right now Glad you're here. DM us if you have any questions.

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.

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...

In my 5e game I have 4 different types of note takers, the traditional minutes taker, the a bag full of memos note taker, a journalist (mix of sketching and writing) and a scrapbooker. I want to add in things that are relevant for each style of notes. The writen note takers are easy to accommodate for as I'm used to the minetes and memo styles. It's the more creative notes I have ideas for. My ideas are: picture puzzle clue rewards for my scrapbooker Symbols and marks for the journalist to sketch down Is there any idea you guys have?