An NPC for a game im DMing soon!

Okay, I'm starting a D&D campaign for the first time, but I'm having difficulty thinking about story beats.

Instead of your usual D&D stuff, we decided to go with magical girls, and I'm very inspired by the story of Madoka Magica, but I don't just wanna straight up copy the story for my campaign. I already have ideas for main NPCs, villains, side characters, but I want input on what would be interesting for the actual story.

Currently what I have is that they all start in senior year of high school, we let them all meet each other and get along, after which is when the plot starts. Girls in their grade seem to be going missing, no one can figure out why or what's going on. One night of group karaoke later, they come out to a battle between two groups. One seemed to be just one magical girl and the others looked like a bunch of circus performers. The circus performers take something from the magical girl and escape. The group approach the magical girl and learn this is essentially the Queen of magical girls, but her power was just taken from her, the only power she has left is to grant wishes that could turn them into magical girls. Obviously they become magical girls.

After they encounter the circus performers again, and this time they have these terrible looking monsters on their side, distorted wrecks of vaguely human beasts, as well as a clown girl who also seems to be a magical girl like the group. Turns out the monsters and clown girl used to work for the Queen, yet once they were powerful enough, the Queen killed them and took their power. All that remained was the charms which let them turn into magical girls that held the remains of their souls. The circus performers found as many of the charms as they could, and stole the Queens power to try and bring these girls (the girls who went missing at school) back to life, but instead they turned into barely sentient monsters that began to destroy everything, the only one who came back in a stable form was the clown girl.

Basically it turns out that the players were working with the villain the entire time, and have to deal with the fact they killed off monsters that used to be girls just like them.

Now that's cool and all, but how do I fill in the time between the start and end? What fights should there be? Should I change some of the plot I have already? Any side quests I should give them? Anything helps, the campaign isn't until December so I have time, I'm just very nervous with this being my first time dming.

Current line up for the campaign I’m about to run. From left to right we have Camanthen, a hexblood Circle of Wildfire Druid, C.A.I.N Unit 097, a warforged Chronurgy Wizard, Apathy, a tiefling Echo Knight Fighter, Aesir/Bron Sunwalker, an aasimar dual Life/Death Cleric, and Sevirun Redheart, a Dragonborn Eldritch Knight Fighter. I have so much planned for them, and I hope they love it!

Im getting ready to dm a group for the first time, does anyone have any helpful tips n tricks?

I have a few more weeks (?) before I dm so any tips are greatly appreciated :D

So nervous about proposing a world and then having to tell my players no on some things because they don't quite fit into the world, but trying to make what they want work...ahh, don't hate me, I've never done this!

EXU Calamity: Brennan gets to do a super intense prequel in Matt's world

ACOC The Ravening War: Matt gets to do a prequel in Brennan's most intense world

man the dev notes w/ the stormshore tabernacle convo. whatever they're there for it's kind of remarkable how so much of the notes there for her are just textbook abuser stuff.

some npcs for my new campaign

Just gotta gush here;

I'm DMing my first oneshot next Friday and I am SO excited and SO scared! It's for my fellow grad students in the lab, including one newbie who has never played any TTRPG before, so I'm. Very Nervous about that. But she requested a Christmas theme, so even though I don't care for the holiday I had Ideas and I'm just.

Having SO much fun trying to balance encounters around a low-level, inexperienced party, and making battlemaps, and instead of minis we have candy instead (I've got a surprise Big Chocolate Santa to destroy if they decided to go for a boss fight), and loot tables for Santa's Workshop (with cheeky references like a Ring of Invisibility addressed to one Frodo), and integrating backstories into this as best I can, and figuring out how I'll vaguely keep things on track, and preparing some music (including old favorite Wrath of the Lich King and Narnia tracks) and JUST!!!

WOW this is so much fun but so nerve-wracking!

Santa's elves unionized, so he sacked them and replaced them with gingerbread men constructs... which attracted mimics.

Seeing the cookie-carnage, Santa fled with his bare-minimum number of reindeer, abandoning the workshop a week-ish before Fantasy Christmas.

A dragon, finding this wealth of gold and toys unclaimed, decided to move in with her goblin entourage, and obviously everyone thinks she ate Santa. The dragon, meanwhile, is quite happy descending into her deep winter slumber knowing her hatchling has a toy-hoard to keep it occupied. And as for the goblins, they have gotten in touch with their artistic side and are throwing themselves into making toys.

Also the mimics are all very small toys and keep eating goblins that are out of sight. And really want to eat that baby dragon.

So that's what three adventurers are going to walk into after braving the blizzard to 'save Christmas'. What happens next? Up to them!

i keep telling all my mutuals that I'll watch merlin at some point but I genuinely think that'll ruin my experience nothing is funnier than hearing about all that bullshit secondhand

The urge to look through the JRWI tags.. when I’m only 58 (nearly 59) episodes into Riptide… I’m going to spoil myself so much but I need to look at all the cool fanart I’m so normal about them all.

just played dnd with friends it was a lot of fun :D

No but the way Aabria brought me into DnD. The way she tells a beautiful story, that she is always thinking about "how can I make this even cooler" "how can I make this moment ring even more true". The way she will RP with tears in her eyes as a DM and a player. The way her BRAIN WORKS. The way the stories she tells are about misfits, and about family, and about love, and the wonder in it and the pain in it. The way she'll make a bear mecha with fucked up chipmunks, and also a tea party with magic potions (some of which just straight up poison you).

It's about Antiope Jones, and about MisMag, and about this story of stoats and their mothers and their mothers mothers. It's about horny gay faeries carving out a place in the world for themselves. And Karna!! God! I love her!

Paladin and the rust beast (aka me vs the silverfish infestation in my house)

the one thing that no one told me about college is that there are people who like you

i wish i was better at making online friends there are so many ppl that i dont even see on here anymore i thought were sooo cool and then was just too nervous to strike up conversation until it all died down