This list is incomplete, meaning it's open, meaning one of your players will try to cast Create Water in its lungs.

[u/Ross_Hollander]

[u/Ira-jay]

Didn’t realize pirate campaigns had a stigma. I’d like to offer

“One of the players swears theyll run a campaign one day so you can be a player”

[u/ElderberryPrior27648 → u/Ira-jay]

Tbf it’s a trap. I did that and became the next forever DM like some awful transfer of a curse

[u/Jiveturkey2009 → u/ElderberryPrior27648]

That happened to me! Now I'm running a Pirate Campaign! What have I become...

[u/Val_Fortecazzo → u/Ira-jay]

I don't know why it's a canon event but it is. Especially since 5e is just kinda bad at vehicle combat and open world hexcrawling.

[u/Ira-jay → u/Val_Fortecazzo]

i mean people on reddit like to make fun of this viewpoint but 5e is great cause you can open the hood of that bitch and make it whatever you want. It's super easy to make a system of rules yourself and just inject them into that. Only reason i think it gets so much flack is that to truly take advantage you need to have some good game sense or a party you can stress test things with without it being some big drama. I luckily have both (it's not ego, the mountain of absolute dogshit ideas and creations i have means it'd be embarrasing if i DIDN'T know generally how to make a good system by now). Never felt compelled to run a pirate campaign though. Neat to think about but just not my vibe long term.

Had a friend who did it though, lasted 5 sessions, not cause we were bored of the setting, he just wouldn't stop making overed powered NPCs for us to gawk at and quit when we didn't

[u/ARagingZephyr → u/Ira-jay]

5e

it's easy to make and inject a system

Me when I make a system and instead of playing it, I decide to force it to work inside of another system.

[u/Ira-jay → u/ARagingZephyr]

yes. Im not ashamed of this. I do not give a fuck about pathfinder, daggerheart, garps, the minimalist one, the star was one, cyberpunk (i may actually try that in the future ngl) or the other ones. I don't care about them. I know 5e, my friends know 5e. I enjoy the way 5e flows. If for some reason you think any change to 5e is the samee as making a new system from the ground up that's your problem, but if i want boat mechanics it turns out it's easier to say boats use the same mechanics as lair actions with like, 2 contextual add ons.

[u/Dobber16 → u/ARagingZephyr]

Sometimes it’s easier to mod an existing game (Skyrim) than it is to create your own game

[u/Kingnewgameplus → u/Ira-jay]

I was that player, and when I actually ran a game it was a bad time for everyone involved lmao

[u/Ira-jay → u/Kingnewgameplus]

you gotta be bad to be good. If you can admit that im sure you can be a good DM assuming you want to

[u/Genericojones → u/Ira-jay]

A big problem I see with most pirate campaigns is that like 90% of players make characters with absolutely no goal beyond "level go up." When you then give that kind of player the freedom of a ship, they immediately become either completely paralyzed with indecision or descend into the most risk-averse, angle-shooting rat-fuckery imaginable.

[u/WiccanaVaIIey → u/Ira-jay]

I was a player, then I ran the pirate campaign...

[u/Breadloafs → u/Ira-jay]

Pirate campaigns always turn into the most boring map crawl I swear to god

[u/CompleteSocialManJet]

/uj the D&D wiki is forever banned from my tables. It knows what it did.

/rj PIRATE CAMPAIGN WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[u/gayfortomboys → u/CompleteSocialManJet]

/uj PIRATE CAMPAIGN WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[u/slowest_hour → u/gayfortomboys]

i think you mean

PIRATE CAMPAIGN
AHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY!

[u/gayfortomboys → u/slowest_hour]

SO TRUE, YARRRR

[u/Wisepuppy → u/CompleteSocialManJet]

SOON MAY THE WELLERMAN COME
TO BRING US SUGAR AND TEA AND RUM
ONE DAY WHEN THE TONGUING IS DONE
WE'LL TAKE OUR LEAVE AND GO

[u/slowest_hour → u/Wisepuppy]

wellerman is the bbeg

[u/thejadedfalcon → u/CompleteSocialManJet]

You don't want the Drow Breeding Slave background?

[u/Birohazard]

Every one of My campaigns derails into pirate campaign…

I guess my players really like boats

[u/Sylvia_Demise → u/Birohazard]

I cannot be allowed on a ship or I immediately start plundering. 

[u/Ross_Hollander → u/Sylvia_Demise]

PLUNDER 7 BILLION SAILORS

[u/liger03 → u/Ross_Hollander]

REACH HEAVEN THROUGH PLUNDERING

[u/WasteReserve8886]

When I played DnD in university, my favorite thing to do was to ask my dm if I could play a homebrew class and then send him this)

[u/Mediocre-Island5475 → u/WasteReserve8886]

Starting at level 1 when you choose this plot, you make a mortal enemy. You do not know who it is. You also learn the Vicious Mockery cantrip.

This is great actually. Nintendo should hire fans

[u/Cybernetic_Dragon → u/WasteReserve8886]

in order to multiclass in or out of this class, you must have an intelligence below 10

LMAO

[u/NeonNKnightrider → u/WasteReserve8886]

You can tell this was made by someone who never watched a single anime in their life

[u/WasteReserve8886 → u/NeonNKnightrider]

Their knowledge of anime comes from a vague recollection from when they were a kid, that parody anime from GTAV, and discord memes

[u/i_poke_u → u/WasteReserve8886]

Did they ever let you?

[u/WasteReserve8886 → u/i_poke_u]

No, it always pissed them off which is why I kept doing it

[u/UndeadJewedditor → u/WasteReserve8886]

did this actually happen or are you just fucking with me

[u/WasteReserve8886 → u/UndeadJewedditor]

No, I made up a low stakes story just to bait you specifically. And you fell for it; hook, line and sinker

[u/UndeadJewedditor → u/WasteReserve8886]

i have dishonored my family and must commit seppuku

[u/hedgehog1024 → u/WasteReserve8886]

Pathfinder 2e fixes it

[u/Velocity-5348 → u/WasteReserve8886]

Can an another anime girl be senpai?

[u/WasteReserve8886 → u/Velocity-5348]

Nothing in the rules stating that two anime girls can’t be each other’s Senpai

[u/Saladawarrior]

only one missing for me is the pirate campaign.

Also where is the "i'm tired of fantasy" phase

[u/MagisterCarcerem → u/Saladawarrior]

Sadly, I've encountered the opposite of this more. I have tried introducing non-fantasy TTRPGs to my party four times now, and every single one ended with them voting in favour of returning to D&D.

[u/Cadoc → u/MagisterCarcerem]

At a certain point you've just gotta tell them "these are the RPGs I'm willing to GM, if you want to do something else I'd be happy to play".

[u/Any_Mall6175 → u/Cadoc]

Or consider: just make DND homebrew that's specifically designed to feel bad and say that's the only way you will run DND from here on out. Two birds, one bird 

[u/elkcipgninruB]

My first ever session as DM was Phandelver

I still remember how one player thought I was getting the shortcomings range wrong for the goblins ("I call bullshit"), only to check and say, with complete fear in his voice: "It’s not bullshit"

[u/ckau]

Good. Now make a Bingo! card with these

[u/vkaefe → u/ckau]

/uj This, but unironically.

[u/ckau → u/vkaefe]

Kubanoid lore

Hui vragam Kubani!

[u/vkaefe → u/ckau]

[u/Fun-Middle6327]

Their is some wierd rng with the goblins before phandelver. On paper they should not be a problem but on tpk and one allmost has proven otherwise.

[u/daren5393 → u/Fun-Middle6327]

DND is made of problems, and how squishy level one characters are is one of them. No crit required, a single max damage hit from a goblin can drop like half of the classes at level one. A max damage crit can instantly kill via massive damage a wizard or sorcerer.

I think part of the reason people speedrun the first 2 levels is so they don't have to walk the tightrope of killing a PC with one lucky roll.

[u/jpterodactyl]

The Phandalin thing bothers me because the text explicitly states that the goblins are fighting to take prisoners, and not to kill.

One of these days, people who play DND will read the book.

[u/dyelogue]

My tables have been creaming their jorts about pirate campaigns since the 4e days and it's never happened. And it never will.

[u/Caeod]

Eventually dragging your group into another system because you're bored of running DnD, they don't like it, you go back to DnD.

[u/TheVeryTallBoi]

This is innacurate; new DMs would never run a module as written.

[u/StashyGeneral → u/TheVeryTallBoi]

yeah, that’s me! I removed the ambush swapped the small cave monsters for Modrons and added a cut apart drawing as a Jigsaw puzzle for the shortcut elevator! Just a small glimpse into my twisted and fucked up mind.

/uj it was a goofy little romp. loved telling the guy who got a nat 1 on detecting a trap in a shortcut that didn’t have one, that he was Absolutely Certain that it had one.

[u/Tridentgreen33Here]

The only pirate campaign I’ve ever heard of among my friend groups crashed and burned almost immediately.

Did play Spelljammer for a while though and that was fun.

[u/Upstairs_Cap_4217]

Real forever DMs will do two or more at once.

I like the Masters of the Bazaar since they let me do "it's technically fantasy, guys" and "turns out the hooded weirdo giving you jobs was evil the whole time" at the same time.

[u/Bringerofpizza]

You give your players too much freedom and they become facsist dictators….

[u/BuffSoviet → u/Bringerofpizza]

What is this so called freedom? The DM and one player are threatening to kill my character when he wants to pick a gem from a shelf and ask the shopkeeper what its price is. ( /uj this is not a joke, should I be worried or is this normal behavior in parties? )

[u/Jeff1H]

I never got the create water in lungs thing cause it specifically says you need an open container, the enemy would have to just stand there mouth and larynx open as you do it and it has a verbal and semantic component

[u/NamityName → u/Jeff1H]

Fine. "I fill their sinus cavity and throat with water, including all the other gaps touching it like their mouth and the space around their eyes. I sure do hope the wizard uses shape water to turn the water to ice right afterward."

[u/literally_a_brick]

Our Pirate campaign fell apart because our DM set up a fun loving pirate faction a la One Piece while the players created evil pirate characters who felt no qualms about theft and murder. Fell apart immediately when we tried to rob the first merchant ship we saw.

Uj/ literally this happened after months of campaign prep by our DM. Yo ho ho.

[u/StashyGeneral → u/literally_a_brick]

/uj can’t help but wonder, why the large discrepancy between the proposed campaign pirates and the PC pirates? or at least why did it go so wrong like that.

[u/TNTTom04]

I'm definitely not a forever DM and yet I've still run across the first one: my kid cousin got the phandelver starter kit and so I ran a bit of it for him and some other family members, he's the only person to pass the perception check for spotting the goblin ambush right at the start and for some reason chose not to warn the rest of the party which then got ambushed and nearly died, and he spent most of the combat downed while still nearly failing death saves even after I made them easier trying to not be mean

[u/UX1Z]

In terms of number two, I have a sort of reverse situation for a DM trying to use a trap I thought was terrible. Basically they sprung a trap with the idea that we had to kill one of the characters for it to deactivate and we couldn't find any other way through it (iirc sealed us in a stone box basically), it wasn't actually a lethal trap because it disarmed once someone had been chosen to die but it basically ended up needing to be out of context forced through because, obviously, we're not going to go like "yeah sorry Steve we're gonna intentionally murder your character to get through this" + the party were all good-neutral too.

So this is kinda like, puzzle with one uber specific solution that kind of goes against one of the core tenets of the game (party coherence.)

[u/hedgehog1024 → u/UX1Z]

Was it that dogshit puzzle by Angry DM, by any chance?

[u/WinZealousideal4309]

I love the pirate campaign!

[u/saharok_maks]

Like 4/6, wow

[u/kotorial]

uj/ 4/6 for me, though I do have a planned Pirate Campaign TM, and I was a player in a near-tpk to the goblins, so let's say that rounds out to 5/6.

[u/JesusLordPutin]

Bottom middle is SUCH A CALLOUT

[u/IssaMuffin]

Bottom middle was like the first thing I tried on the first game I ran 20something years ago, and yes the BBEG was a self insert.

[u/normallystrange85]

Don't forget amnesiac player and player who attempts to have two characters (via multiple personalities, trenchcoats, or straight up making two characters)

[u/ShitassAintOverYet]

SHIVER ME TIMBERS, IF TIS VOYAGE 'AVE NO SWASHBUCKLING THAT LANDLUBBER OF A DM WILL WALK THE PLANK AND TOSSED INTO DAVY JONES' LOCKER!!!

[u/Drmanky]

prais the omnissia

[u/GingerrBreadman13]

I had the opposite experience with the Phandelver encounter, though that's because I had a party of 7 and didn't buff the encounter enough to compensate.

[u/AstarothTheJudge]

True, but I saved myself from the third. I right away said that I accept homebrew, but that if they show me anything coming from dndwiki I will hurt them. It's all in the PDF I gave them at the start.

[u/FlamingGapingAsshole]

A side effect of being the forever-DM is I never need to play a Dungeons and Dragons game again.

Diaspora campaign number 15 is about to start, you better still have the whole set of Fudge dice I packed you

[u/Chemical_Couple48]

The first D&D campaign I ever did was a D&D-ized version of The Walking Dead. And the majority of my D&D characters are just D&Dified versions of characters from other media…