New dungeon master here. Do I need to learn a VTT? I can barely operate that box in the kitchen. I guess my lady calls it a stove.🤷🏿‍♂️

Started playing about 9 months ago, also started DMing for one shots. Am 2 sessions into a campaign using Dragons of Stormwreck Isle (it's a starter adventure for dnd). I had read the proactive turquoise book many months ago so my players all have goals of varying complexity I'm working into this adventure module. I only started the newer book after this campaign started so we didn't do a session -1 but I'm intrigued to explore this more later. I'm also a talk therapist and just watched the zoom session of the gold membership, I see a lot of overlap in certain skills like using silence to encourage players to generate their own ideas and reviewing group norms or goals each session, basically holding the frame-- this was what drew me in so much to the first book, I love this idea of putting it back on the players, somewhat because I'm new, don't know all the rules, and in a way I'm not even that creative lol. So glad you started this community, I love the idea of more active player involvement!

The last two weeks, I’ve been trying out a new game called Public Access—it’s an ongoing game, but I expect it to only run 10–12 sessions. I tried it out after watching this truly excellent review from Quinn’s Quest (who, if you haven’t watched, makes what I think is pretty much the best reviews of TTRPGs on the internet) https://youtu.be/DI8fUgSdgZg?si=ieolVb190wGzz_ag The game is an absolute blast. "No on remembers this children's show you watched growing up, except all of you. Something was...not quite right with it...what happened to it?" The explicit goal of every character is to find out what happened to this unsettling children's program that no one seems to remember called TV Odyssey. It’s inspired by analog horror and creepypastas, using the Brindlewood Bay system to facilitate a very cool storytelling system (rather than a puzzle heavy system like some mystery games). Brindlewood Bay and its offspring have a clue system where there’s no set answer to a mystery—instead, players collect clues, then make a role to create their own answer to the question with as many clues as possible. If their roll is a success, their answer is right. This concept bothered me a lot at first, but when it works, it works GREAT. It’s really nice for a game like this where the story, tone, atmosphere, and characters is the focus, and not actually the main mystery like in a Sherlock Holmes game or something like that. The mysteries build tension but never slow down the game from theorizing, which is nice. Other interesting mechanics include Keys, these boxes you can check to improve a roll. They effectively make characters unkillable, which is important for encouraging them to split up and get into danger. They're also all connected to either narrating a flashback to childhood, or mechanically entwining yourself deeper with the forces of horror, which is cool. All of this to set up the games I’ve run! We’ve had two virtual sessions, and I’m running with three players (friends from high school!). In the first session, we spent about an hour making characters, and two hours on our first mystery, the House on Escondido Street. The campaign has a cool narrative structure I won't spoil in case someone plays it, but it comes with a bunch of premade mysteries that are really well laid out. The group spent the day digging around the house, butting heads with the HOA, and otherwise engaging in investigative antics. They spent the night (which is its own phase where all rolls are more dangerous) watching a tape of the mysterious kids show that they found. Very good time.

The Dungeon Mistress is here. 😂 Hi, I'm Helen - a UK-based DM of one-shot adventures that I run at Manchester Board Game Festival. I also run Spelljammer for kids every Sunday, which is tremendous fun! I'll be running sessions at EasterCon and UK Games Expo (I'm still pinching myself), as well as submitting to Dragonmeet (next year). Oh, and I'll be doing my first actual play at the end of March. 😆

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.