Recent content by Charlaquin

If you’re mapping as you go, making an accurate map is the challenge. The dungeon may be laid out in such a way as to be deliberately confusing and difficult to map, because navigation is just as much a part of the gameplay as combat is. The map is a tool you use to help understand and navigate...

I think this is the way to go for groups that aren’t into mapping. I think for some modes of play, dungeons themselves are puzzles. The goal of a dungeon is to “solve” the space by exploring it, and the monsters and traps that lie within the dungeon, as well as its very layout, are the...

So, I feel like people are missing some important details here. You don’t have to make the save every night. You only have to make it when you go unconscious while the moon is in the sky. The moon being in the sky only really coincides with the hours most people sleep for a few days a month, and...

Oh, I see. Yeah, that would be the first thing I’d try. I actually already edited the opening post to drop the DCs by 5, because that seems to be the consistent feedback I’m getting.

Easiest fix to what? Yes, well I set the DCs the way I did because I want it to still be pretty likely for high-Charisma characters to shapeshift under the full moon. The idea is for the better approach to be to try to avoid having to make the save in the first place - staying in a Hallowed...

Yeah, this problem has gotten worse for me lately too. I don’t know if there’s anything to be done about it, but figured I’d add my voice to those saying “this is an experience I’m having that makes me less inclined to visit the site.”

I would guess there’s selection bias at work here, because there are certainly RPG communities in which player mapping is very popular. But, yes, my experience has also been that most of the people playing D&D 5e don’t want to do player mapping, and that’s fine. Of course. I think it goes...

For the players, obviously. Characters, in this context, are game mechanical constructs that can’t make decisions or solve puzzles.

Personally I think being exacting about it is missing the point. If you just want the players to have an accurate map of the dungeon, it would be more effective to make it yourself (you can give it to them piecemeal if you want to preserve the fog of war effect). The point of having the players...

He asked how other people handle mapping at their table. “I don’t, because my players don’t enjoy it” is a perfectly fine answer. “You shouldn’t, because I don’t enjoy it” is understandably a less welcome sentiment.

Personally, I think making a map as you go, as players, is a fun part of dungeon adventures that it’s a shame so few groups want to do any more. I wouldn’t make a group map the dungeon if they didn’t want to (and don’t, because my regulars don’t enjoy it). But I think it’s a fun part of the...

I wanted to make it a problem. Or, rather, a double-edge sword, because suddenly gaining a dozen HP worth of regeneration that only your party member with the silver sword can turn off when you get KO’d in a fight is actually kind of a huge buff, and there are a lot of precautions you can take...

I mean, that’s a base D&D assumptions problem, not a specific to my version of lycanthropy problem. But, sure, I could definitely see the common folk being distrustful of Druids and other non-lycanthrope shapeshifters. Cool, thanks!

If you’re designing the dungeon yourself, you could design it to be easily mappable with a node graph by following a few simple design principles. Give each room a distinctive feature, ensure room exits always align with the cardinal directions, never have more than one room exit per cardinal...

Oh, I see. Good question! Given the intentional parallels between the forced transformation and possession by extraplanar entities, I would think a druid, for example, would view a lycanthrope as a person possessed by an animal spirit. They might be inclined to seek a way to appease, calm, or...