As a DM, what is something you always put in your campaings? Like an item or a character with a certain trait?

As a DM, what is something you always put in your campaings? Like an item or a character with a certain trait?
For me its gunpowder and zeppelins (or some other kind of flying ship)

I have a love for putting various cloacked figures of ambiguous supernatural or alien origin that trade with the party.

Pic very related.

For me I tend to have a few things carry over:

> Ruins of a prior ancient and powerful civilization

This varies depending upon the setting and rules, but is meant to be a back up plan for if the players don't want to follow the main plot and instead go dungeon-delving and murder hobos.

> Classes/races outside of the official published material

For example, in D&D 5th edition I've got a campaign going where all of the stuff from the 4 main books (PHB, MM, DMG, SCAG) is allowed and can be found. But some things (usually classes or races from earlier editions of D&D, along with the UA races and archetypes) are "hidden options" for the players. If they come across these individuals throughout the adventure I then "unlock" that race or class to be playable should they die and roll up a new character.

> The BBEG is objectively evil, but has a reason for doing so

None of this Saturday Morning Cartoon villainry, my BBEGs have an actual reason for doing all the evil they perpetrate in my campaigns. Usually it's some form of, "I know better than the rest of the world, so bend to my whims," but there's evidence to support these claims.

this guy

a traveller from somewhere far off who wanders into town looking for skilled warriors to fight and is kind of an ass about it. He makes for some easy one-session antagonism and can be made into a recurring character if the players like him. I find myself using him and his entourage in quite a few games

I really liked that guy.

In a major city of every campaign I run there's always a pub populated by strange men in black leather armor.
The pub is always called "Ye Olde Blue Oyster"

I kek'd

Mine is similar: Tavern names are always sexual innuendo. Classier taverns are have more subtle innuendo for names, poor tavern names are downright ribald, but they're all double entendres.

Dwarf Monks. Of the classic kung-fu movie shaolin style, not the christian type

The Scholar/Sage/lore monkey that none of the players wanted to be is always sassy and sarcastic but has a heart of gold and is always reliable.

that's a pretty cool idea, I can see how La Petit Mort and The Sticky Seamen would be pretty different places

Are you a real DM?
Have you ever run a campaign; like a, like a real storyline?
Have you ever played with the guys?
Alright! I can see that I will have to teach you how to be DMs!

I enjoy villain miniboss squads. There's always at least 4 trusted lieutenants for the players to deal with over the campaign before they get to fight the actual villain.

I have a special inter dimensional place that can only be accessed by finding a certain runestone. In this place is a special box that sometimes turns items into other items.

Three groups of players are actually sharing this box without knowing it. They're trading items between eachothers games. The players have no idea that I run more than one game.

haha, didn't know what you were doing until you got to "the guys"

The discarded weapon of a possibly humongous warrior. It is always too big for any known creature or being to wield it. Sometimes it is forgotten, others it's a landmark, it's current iteration is the pillar of a community built around it, and it being worshipped as a symbol of their chief deity.

I just like cyclopean things.

I put my dick in the campaign, as long as it's not crazy. Never put your dick in crazy.

My players have informed me that I am overly fond of two main categories of interaction.

Ambushes.

And social interaction with assholes, who can be separated into two categories: Those they can kill, and those they can't.

an npc called Loni has appeared in all of my games they are a different person but with similar traits and edgy backstory

>The criminal underground is multicultural and egalitarian but evil. Law-abiding society is dominated by a few races and one culture but is (generally) good.

At least one friendly Ogre.

Also, there has to be at least one fight wherein the players are part of a swarm attacking a single, much larger enemy. Like leading a group of town guards to take down a dragon or flying in on fighters to take out the enemy battleship.

A GM of mine has a calling card- A surly blonde elf NPC who always turns up doing some manner of menial job like waitressing, tending a bar or working in a coffee shop. She's never particularly plot relevant, but the people who've played with him for a while always have a bit of a smile and a laugh when she turns up.

Dungeons. And some dragons too

Clockwork shit. I'm planning a UESRPG 2e campaign now so I'm going to get to do that a lot woth the Dwemer.

I know it sounds weird, but I always try to include at least one creature with a snake for a tail. For some reason I just really like it.

I have managed to put Gaston and LeFou in every game I've run, usually as an early villain. It started in my first game where he appeared as the evil opposite, (another cliche I love) to a PC who was a soft-spoken fighter who was raised by a pack of wild dogs.

I have a dwarf that shows up at least once in a campaign. He is very fond of exploding powders and always has something new to sell. Carn Kar'ni is actually an avatar of the dwarven god of creation. He literally spends all of his time chasing down weird ingredients and minerals to use in his workshop, and when he shows up it is usually because he dropped a flask of explosives and took out a dungeon or castle wall. He has rescued my pc's from certain death a couple times, he has also stalled an oncoming army when the hut he was sleeping in exploded from one of his potions hitting the floor when the army stomped by and tried breaking down the door.
he is going to be a larger plot device with my current group, because their passage into epic levels is going to involve having to forge a new artifact that only Carn has the materials for.

It always has to be too hot or too cold, I live in a place where stays pretty comfy most of the year so it makes it feel more exotic.

Pirates

My brother of African descent.

I always include a hard as nails female npc. It doesn't matter whether she's a quest giver, antagonist, helpful npc, or just a set piece. Race isn't a factor either, I had a half-orc viking named Brunhildr in my first campaign, a human sorceress named Jacqueline de Montserrat in another, and the leader of a thieves guild named Black Jenny.

I always have the same friendly merchant appear in some form, no matter the setting. He may look different, but it's always the same character. Same name, general appearance and personality.

I always have an obligatory pet that hangs around the PCs' base of operations. Usually a cat.

I like this too

...

Crazy is the best place to put it.
Just don't let them know where you live or know your full name.

I have 2/3 recurring elements.

>Party Foils
A group of NPCs that level with the PCs. The PCs might not even meet them.

>A siege, Seven Samurai style.
Though none of the games I've played have actually progressed far enough to play out the siege.

>Auto-crits
There's always SOME way to deal double max damage to someone, no save.

I'm similar but I use a Hill Giant.

The cities of Salmwyre and Nuwyre occasionally also Aviarwyre. It all started during a pick up and play game where I was improvising (read: bullshitting) the whole adventure. The players asked where they were at. I said nowhere in particular and they decided that was literally the city of nowhere in the kingdom of particular. It all snowballed from there and became more fantasy spellinged but they are always a staple somewhere in any homebrew world I run now.

I also almost always have at least one gnome shopkeeper who loves to haggle just for the sport of it.

Kind of an overall sense of dread I guess? Considering that my three settings have
>!Not reapers about a year from activation
>godlike entities with the ability to snuff out stars on a whim turning their eyes towards earth
and fianlly
>magitech von neuman machines of the ancients are waking up, and without a leash they'll kill everything on the planet with ease

make a fucking map if you starting your own worlds so you dont get lost. and set up random events on it just incase for quick ideas but still have a plot so can diguse your rail road. dont worry if its shit.

> a bark & bite redhead friendly female npc.
> if fantasy a certain group of bad guys who have armor with skeleton motifs
> a brothel or strip club (usually both) named "the hot leg"

>party foils that level with pcs.
>they may not even meet them

I have seriously been considering this for my pathfinder game. How has it fated for you assuming the groups have ever met?

Recently started the map of my setting after baout 6 sessions with two groups (one in the north, one in the south), but keeping it open and vague enough that I can add to it on the fly.

Good call user.

>bark & bite

What did he mean by this?

In every campaign, usually in every big town if my players dig enough, they find an Irishman merchant named Ferris O'Harris trying to be a snake oil merchant. He is always trying to con them with useless or subpar goods. He also sells magic items.

They're always cursed.

The party now makes it a mini-quest to find him at every new location they reach. The collective groan at his first word muttered in an Irish accent is quickly silenced when his cursed items take them on a new plot thread.

I'm not the best to ask, honestly.

One game only lasted a handful of sessions so they never showed up.

The other game though, I had them show up right away. It's essentially a pack of GMPCs; a fighter, barbarian, ranger and warlock. They're unoptimised (the fighter's a purple dragon knight and the warlock is a pure bladelock) but have good stats.

They're basically just a stand-in for "other adventurers." Felicia's dating Fenris' brother. The warlock does stupid shit on bets. They're a backup plan, so the overall plot of the setting doesn't die if the PCs decide to go be pirates somewhere.

The MAIN reason is that since the PCs started as Good (mostly) and fairly chill, if they ever become total murderhobos the Foils will be sent after them. Complete with shit like "remember that time we got you free rooms at the inn?" and "i was a fool to have trusted you."

How hidden is this runestone and what items have been swapped?

For some reason, my campaigns usually end up having exactly one republic in it, but that one republic is a significantly more functional state than every other political entity in the realm because its citizens are somewhat patriotic, its bureaucracy efficient and power centralized (as opposed to the realm where the kings are not always competent and the nobles usually follow their own interests as opposed to that of the state).

One of the kingdoms usually (whether in the past or the present) has/had a total badass king who managed to point all noses into one direction and make his realm the most powerful of them all until it quickly collapsed after it was taken over by his incompetent heirs.

Have you tried growing up?

I only gm-ed 1 campaign sofar.. So nothing?

Three slightly-mentally and physically incompetent gnolls that try their hardest to be decent villains with their nefarious schemes, named Humdum, Ringring and hissyfits

I have a desperate need to make my characters both loveable and hateable. And I have an obsession with making characters transition from being loveable to hateable - or vice versa.

I need need need to have badguys so cool and friendly, or so morally righteous, that my players have a real hard time wanting to kill them.

I need my goodguys to be assholes sometimes, at least some of them. I especially enjoy making the Lieutnants of some Goodguy faction be virtuous and wellmeaning dogooders - while the Higherup Captaincy of the Goodguy faction will be assholes uncaring about anything.

Except for that one goodguycaptain, whom the players get to meet, who strugglers to do right inspite of his peers being so ruthless. I love turning this same thing with the badguys, where either the middle-management is unwilling, or thinks it is doing right, while the lieutnants are evil assholes and maybe some of the captains are paragons of some virtue.

I think my two biggest nerdgasms where, when in the span of 3 sessions, we played through 2 fieldbattles, one siege, one chase through some woods, and some politics at an insignificant barrons court.

My players told the goodguys to fuck themselves in the first engagement,
then fucked a bad guy lieutnant in the second engagement,
then lured some goodguymen as bait in the line of fire of some badguys, in order to divert the badguys from civvies,
then proceeded to look for refuge at the barrons castle, find him manipulating them ( for his own financial gain, but not to any political ends ), proceed to SLAUGHTER the Barron and most of his knights, to then go on to a big family gathering of one of the largest neutralguy familyfactions, where they proceeded to broker a deal for all the family to support the paragon daughter - and secretly assassinate first her father and then her uncle, who would have threatened to blow the whole politicking.

by "my characters" I mean: "My NPCs" of course.
Best case szenario is perpetual varyness, moral ambiguity and flexibility on the part of my players. When I see them adopting the attitude, that there's good and bad on both sides, that you need to count your shots and call them on a case by case base, that you can't be a real Paragon - nor can you be a real Asshole - but that you need some fluidity in your attitudes and actions.

Said Barron for example was a goodguy, but threatened to essentially worsen an already crazily grave financial situation for the heroes - so they killed him, and replaced him with one of his bastards - whom they knew to be a badguy and whom they feared would defect to the badguys sooner or later - simply because they couldn't otherwise keep their army funded. ( Said Army was funded for another 2 months, bancruptcy already a settled debate - the heroes had basically zero chance to raise sufficient funds to maintain the (rather significantly large) force they had gathered in the initial stages of the campaign).

continued: Another one of my fetishes is a living world, with obviously too much going on for the heroes to take care of absolutely everything.

This has proven to be rather difficult to balance, as players can be frustrated when they find out that they can't do certain quests or battles due to time-constraints. Therefore, my timelines are more or less flexible and rubber-bandy: Such Quests the Players show interest in will linger in the background for a rather long time - as long as sensibly possible -, while such plothooks which the players decide to abandon because they think some other plothooks are mor important, will advance the storyline.

this leads to some delicious stress, where I even had my players abandon two rather important plothooks on the spot once they got a good feel for the timetables running in the background, to rather focus on what they perceived as the more immediate threat.

Check out Folk of Leng in Tome of Beasts

fuck away

This is the first time I've heard such an expression, but I'm guessing it's related to the expression "all bark and no bite", in which case this person has both bark and bite, i.e. acts tough and is tough

In one of the first proper campaigns I ran I mentioned a rip-off of Elsa from Frozen as a throw-away joke about a kingdom in the far north. A few months later they decided to actually go there to meet the ice witch so she became a major character.
Now, since I play with mostly the same people all the time, every new campaign will have some version of that character as my running joke, either in the form of an actual ice-witch type in a fantasy game, or as the generic Lady/Miss/General type character with a fetish for winter-themed apparel and decor in a non-fantasy game.

running joke NPCs are brilliant.
I got those in my gaming groups,
one of them being an incompetent rich guy into disguising himself and trying to orchestrate everything - and always failing,
the other one a benevolent brute who has transcended the original throwaway character joke, the giant Fighter El'Tiburon, who's rather dim in the head, has become a whole concept of NPCs: El Chicuron is a Chicken who was tested in Cockfights and rose to power, winning every fight and being a bloodthirsty maniac, basically anything going *'Tiburon or *uron will be a huge dumb benevolent brute in our games :D

presumably all the games are in the same system?

I really liked your posts but I have a question.

How do you run game where the characters are also leading a military unit? How do you go about keeping track of funding, soldiers, equipment, and whatnot? Sounds like this could be badass.

bump for good shit

Optional villains and/or optional battles. They're also often (but not always) the only villain/s and battle/s with no mandatory ones.

Same here but instead of friendly he's a blatantly bad imitation of the happy jew. He will cheat the PCs and try to sell overpriced useless shit in what appears to be a snip. But from time to time he accidentally sells something that is actually useful, and he also has access to exotic goods that nobody else in the area has or sells.

Sometimes he's an "ally" and sometimes an enemy, normally he's just an irrelevant joke npc.

I DM for a few people that are also regular players in another campaign where I am also part of the player group.

I like to introduce parody characters based on their own characters, that are polar opposites in terms of personality and other character traits safe for race and names thats sound similar.

Visca

But Gaston was the hero

Kek I do that too. Bonus points if they're enemies/rivals.

I always try my hardest to include skeletons. If I can, I call him what is pronounced "Jack Foosbwah", in sort of a half French accent. It's spelled 'Fuccboi' but of course my players never see my sheets

So your skeletons are named NPCs, like a race of their own? Can they talk?

Also, French accents don't work like that, on the off chance you actually care

I like to call the reoccurring elements within my campaigns constants. Not constant in that they are always the same but constant in that if I make a campaign/one-shot/whatever a few names will appear across them.

Mine are that there will always be a small town/village/outpost called Ambergrove which will likely be the starting area for the PCs and a leader of some sort with the surname Gruenstern will exist somewhere.

My heartfelt effort.
I almost always follow up with deep loathing and sadness.

It means she talks a tough game and has the skills to back it up. Something like pic related

Though I never make her better than the party I make her in their ballpark

If this is only about stuff that is actually added as an element of the world it would be this:

I use recurring characters across different campaigns, but only if they are placed in different settings.
They often have similar sounding names, are based around similar ideas, although they are then different interpretations of their theme based on the setting, and look vaguely similar.

The way I treat it as if they were the same actors appearing across multiple works, typecast as the same type of character yet again. It adds a sense of nostalgia that my players enjoy, and gives everything I run a overarching connection.

I'd like to think almost everything I run has a certain "style" to it, based on my own preferences, things that interest me and way I create plots and NPCs, but as those are more metadata than actual things to "put" into a campaign, I guess those miss the question.

So long as it's setting appropriate, I enjoy throwing in a guy selling "discount magic items" that are all unusable in that they're cursed beyond all belief.

Personal favorite among his ever shifting list of wares is a helmet that immediately kills the wearer, but only if the wearer puts it on of their own volition. Holding the helmet gives you full and immediate understanding of what it is and does.

Across five different groups, it's the only item to consistently sell.

>Bad guy wears a mask
>BBEG believes what he's doin is right
>race war happened recently and tension remains

A friendly version of a monster that's just trying to get by and help others.
Currently, that takes the form of a vampire who got turned while on patrol as part of a village guard.
Everyone loved the guy and he likely saved everyone's lives by giving up their own, so in the beginning, they took turns bleeding into a bowl for him to drink out of.
It wasn't too long before he realised his senses getting stronger, and he was able to tell exactly what condititon the other villagers were in when they came to him, so he began learning medicine.
Now he is secretly one of the best doctors on the continent, since at point blank range he can track the bloodflow through a patients body, he is extremely dextrous, and has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of medicine/anatomy.
All he charges for his services is to let him extract a non-harmful amount of blood from you, that he can drink later. (Mechanically, this works out as the player being restored to full hp, removing any non-magical illness, becoming fatigued, and taking a few points of non-lethal damage. Can't do shit about death though.)

Are you trying to make some sort of point, my autistic friend?

So...Gundam, then?

How would you call a person who never barks but bites?

A pro-active sadist.

Mungo.

He's a really dumb, really big guy. Usually half naked, and working for the bad guys.

So far my players have not even tried attempting diplomacy with him, and instead just killed him every time (sometimes with more difficulty than expected).

Should they, it would turn out he's easily persuaded to not hurt anyone and instead enjoy the simple pleasures of life, such as puppies and the laughter of children.

Sergeant Serge. Whenever my players have to have a run-in with the law, he's there. There are some regional variants, like Sergeant Al-Sarji or Sergeant Sergeï, but they're always the same character.
His two main characters traits are a mustache and unhelpfulness. If he's on the PC's side, he's incompetent. If he's not, he's competent enough to be annoying, in an administrative way.
He's my own Cut-me-own-throat-Dibbler.
I've even had the pleasure of playing him myself, as an NPC in a small LARP I had organized. Fake mustache and all.
I'm a woman.

>whore houses
>a gang of degenerate outlaws called "big cats"

A prison colony. Like an island or dungeon where they have chucked criminals, who have formed their own chaotic society. There may or may not be guards. Plyers may get thrown in there as prisoners or have to infiltrate to find a prisoner.

thats a pretty cool idea

An evil female NPC that has an insane laugh and grin.

She's not always the villain, sometimes she's the quest giver or an ally, but it's a part of my magical that leaks into every other facet of my campaigns.

I figure as long as I don't force a yandere love interest or give that character the spot light for too long my players won't get uppity about it.

If it's a teen elf, it is invariably a ninja, and there are always TWO of them. Never three, never one, always two.

i like your style. also i recognised the pratchett influence as soon as you said "sergeant al-sarji" :)

I'm a Runescape faggot, so I like putting in Elemental Altars based on all the Runes in the game.

Scattered around the map. All different encounters. You can even get talismans to imbue with the altar's power and turn it into a magic item based on the "element".

For example, the Earth Altar. If the players approach it, it will spawn an Earth Elemental or two and attack the players if they don't have the talisman. Every time an Earth Elemental dies to an elemental kind of magic, another one will spawn. Otherwise, the encounter is over after two of them.

An imbued Earth Talisman allows the player to conjure a 5x5x5 block of dirt anywhere within 5ft of him. Great for escaping, traversing landscape, etc.

There are talismans and altars for Air, Astral, Blood, Body, Chaos, Cosmic, Death, Earth, Fire, Law, Mind, Nature, Soul, and Water.

This. In a campaign that I'm currently running, I have a recurring NPC who is in fact a cloaked elf who is essentially a fortune-teller riding on a huge tortoise. In addition to being a trader, I regularly like to have him drop rumors and riddles about stuff that might hold some relevance to the PCs interests. Pic related, the original source of inspiration for the character

I do something similar. I have it be a overly kind Bang Shishigami type character that always says he's heard the tales of the party and is a practicing swordsman himself and would be honored to duel them.

He then proceeds to use dirty tricks in the fight such as pocket sand, and gives up thr SECOND things start turning out of his favor. He can come back later on a regular basis to help the party with things citing that it will be his way of "apologizing" for using dirty tricks.

can you give an example of what it's been used for by those groups?

I like how they did this essentially for Path of Exile.
an entire continent full of criminals and mysteries and odd things

If I was a player, I would try my best to kill her.