Quest Guide: For DMs

So you want to tell a story. Veleda is so proud! We wish to support you, young storyteller.
If you have never DMed before, here are some resources to help you prepare for your very first session:

• Tips for beginner DMs (this one also contains a list of helpful references at the end)
• How to Dungeon Master for Absolute Beginners
• Tips for character advancement & EXP rewards
• D&D 5E encounter difficulty calculator
• Tables for treasure, travel, & magic items
• How to write a good game
• We strongly recommend reading the D&D 5E Dungeon Master’s Guide

Protips for beginner DMs: don’t be generous, be fair. Use your judgment and be consistent. If you later need to reverse a decision, it is ok to acknowledge it! The principle of “be fair, not generous” applies to rulings during your games as well as to awarding loot and EXP afterward.

There are five things you need to do to run a quest in Apotheosis: (1) Develop your premise, (2) get your lore implications and loot approved, (3) post the session, (4) play the session, (5) reap the rewards.

1. Develop your premise

Anything can be a quest. A N Y T H I N G! If you’re new, it’s a good idea to start with a prewritten quest or adventure, just so you get a feel for what’s needed. Start small, learn the ropes, then go big as your power grows.

If you are preparing to run an epic, the Mod team will provide you with direction, but will not hand you a pre-written session. Going back to our cultist example, the Mod team may ask you to run a session that introduces The Asmodudes, a cult dedicated to Asmodeus but leave the details of how that cult is introduced up to you.

Note: Sometimes Epic DMS will be expected to use certain plot points, NPCs, goals, or secrets mentioned in primary character apps during EPic quest-lines.

Encounters should be designed with consideration to the intended party (i.e., maybe don’t insert a puzzle that requires one very specific level 4 spell that no one has access to) but not every encounter needs to be winnable and not every encounter needs to result in combat. Make sure your plans are both flexible and resilient with player engagement. For example, if a recurring villain is supposed to escape an encounter and the players catch the villain anyway, make sure you have a backup strategy.

2. Get your lore implications and loot approved

The foundation of an adventurer’s career are rewards from a quest session! You do not need to have a full quest (i.e., maps, encounters, tokens, etc.) when you come for approval. The world lore implications (if any) of your quest and the loot you plan to give to players are what matters for review.

Request review for your quest proposal by clicking the "Create Ticket" button in the #quest-review channel in Discord.

Example submission template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ilM9JjD44YRRkIXKg5qUBFLOD35Z6TlpbxZ-Lqu0mq0/edit?usp=sharing

Loot Tables

Player EXP Tables

What is EXP? EXP is an abbreviation for "experience points". The abbreviation EXP is interchangeable with XP. Experience points are an abstraction of gaining skill as a result of successfully overcoming obstacles that the DM throws at the players.

EXP earned is a function of encounters overcome. Use the following guidelines to determine how much EXP to award to players:

• Low EXP: Easy game. Roleplay-centric, minor combat, no consequences for failure.
• Medium EXP: Normal game. Using resources was necessary to resolve combat, maybe some limited-use resources such as potions/scrolls were expended. Appropriate roleplay was used to solve typical problems.
• High EXP: Strenuous game. Characters dropped to 0 HP, some might have rolled death saving throws. There may have been moments of brilliant roleplay with high-stakes consequences.
• Very High EXP: Extreme game. One or more characters may have died, tears were shed, and roleplay was on point the whole time.
• LMAO: Exalted game. God tested the party with storm and fury and the party endured. Possibly one or more tarrasques. Roleplay was top-tier, and the players deserve an Academy Award for their brilliant performances and strong play.

Combat Encounters. All monster stat blocks include a "Challenge Rating" and an EXP value associated with overcoming that creature. Divide the EXP listed by the number of Player Characters (PCs) to determine per player EXP for a combat encounter. If you have multiple monsters, add the EXP together and then divide by # of PCs. (e.g., 4 PCs fight 4 bandits (25 EXP * 4 = 100 EXP), each PC gets 25 EXP).

Non-combat encounters. Only award EXP for non-combat encounters that have a meaningful risk of failure and meaningful consequences for failing. Determine the difficulty of the encounter, then award EXP as if it had been a combat encounter of the same difficulty.

There is no floor and no ceiling on EXP, but the EXP you award should make sense

If you are DMing a quest for a party of 19th-level characters, the quest objective is teaching table tennis to toddlers, and there are no consequences for failing, there is no reason to award high EXP. 100 EXP is plenty for a quest that has such low stakes, regardless of the level of the characters.

If you plan for an easier/harder encounter that becomes more difficult/easier, adjust your EXP award accordingly

If you intended for the party to negotiate with the kobold tribe but instead they kill every kobold and anger the ancient gold dragon that the kobolds were serving… well. Actions have consequences and life gets harder. If you intend for a party to fight a vampire and 69 bat swarms all in the same encounter but the party traps the bat swarms in a place where they cannot come to the vampire’s aid, your vampire fight is now way easier.

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The player EXP guidelines above are brief rundown of EXP. We strongly recommend reading Chapter 13 of the DMG, Building Encounters for details on building encounters & determining rewards.

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Player GP Table

You may award an amount of Gold (GP) per player according to the table below. For parties spanning multiple levels, use the lowest level + 3 (up to the highest level player present) to determine how much gold to award.

You can replace coinage with items of the equivalent resale value (i.e., a brick of rare spices that sells for 20 gp in place of 20 gold coins).

Magic Items as Loot

Evara is a high-magic setting, but that does not mean magic items are everywhere. They should be given sparingly as loot. Quests that include magic items as potential loot will have added scrutiny and may require additional justification.

Magical items are restricted by character tier. Characters are not able to obtain, use, sell, or trade items at a higher tier than they are.

Behind the Curtain: Loot and Lore Approval Process

To run a quest, your loot and lore implications must be approved by DMs and/or Mods. Request review by clicking the "Create Ticket" button in the #quest-review channel. If you submit a proposal and then modify the loot/lore implications as a result of feedback, you must inform anyone who has already voted of changes so they can reaffirm their approval.

A proposal with no "NO" votes and 1 "YES" vote after 48 hours is considered approved. Otherwise, a proposal requires 3 "YES" for every "NO" to be approved. Any quest proposal needs a minimum of 48 hours from posting to be finalized and considered approved if it has enough votes in favor.

Note: Approved rewards can be taken rescinded if they prove to be too disruptive after they have been handed out, and players can be given alternate rewards.

3. Post the session to the appropriate quest board

If your quest is for the current world story arc, post to #epics. Otherwise, use #side-quests. Use text formatting to make your post readable.
Quest Postings consist of:

• Title (this title should be used in the final loot report and in any logging)
• Session date, session start time, anticipated session end time (use https://hammertime.cyou/ to generate a time stamp that will automatically match the viewer’s local time)
• Short description
• Level range (tag players in your range using the appropriate level tags!, or use the LFG, or freeforall roles)
• Spectator Permissions (if they are allowed, can ask to join, not allowed, etc.)
• Difficulty (corresponds to your loot rank, i.e., low, medium, high, very high, LMAO. The difficulty rating is based on the DM's plan. Players & DMs should be aware that play decisions may dramatically change the quest difficulty.)
• Content Tags (If your quest may contain heavy or difficult material, we strongly recommend including content tags on the posting or encouraging potential players to privately message you for tags)

Note that the quest postings are not literally on a quest posting board. Some might be, but that isn’t the norm.

4. Play the session

DMs should be aware of the X-card policy. To pre-empt the use of X-cards, you should include content warnings on your quest posting.

Choose your players.

Quest sign-ups are not first come, first served. Players who have reacted to your posting will not assume that they have been selected for your quest unless you have explicitly tell them they have been chosen! Let players know they have been chosen when you...

Claim a quest channel.

Be mindful of quests that are happening before and after yours and do not claim too early. You can use discord's mention functionality in the quest channel and encourage your players to self-assign the role associated with your chosen quest channel so you can tag them more easily:

• Watch the grass grow = story of the land role
• Are you shore = story of the sea role
• The raining champions = story of the wind role

Provide the players with any instructions!

Should they provide you a token? Join your VTT in advance so you can set up the session? Provide you with information, such as rumors that others might have heard about their character, character fears, etc.?

5. Reap the rewards

When you finish a session, write up a loot report for yourself and players! The loot report contains everything (EXP, GP, Items, Piety) that the players AND that the DM earned from the session. The DM is responsible for adding any GP earned to the players' balances and to to their own balance using the Capitalism II /add-money command after the loot report is posted. A link to the loot report must be entered as the reason for the /add-money command (click on "+2 more" to see the reason field).

Tag the players and the Moderators (Avatar of the Gods) when once your loot report is complete. Remind players to remove the quest channel role from themselves once the quest is over.

Player Loot

Player loot is based on the Player Loot Tables. Players must type out in the quest channel how much EXP they are claiming (up to their EXP max).

The DM rewards depend on whether the quest was an epic or a side story:

Epic DM Rewards

• The average medium EXP and average medium GP equal to the level of your active character (refer to the Player Loot tables above - you get the average medium for your character's level)
• 2 DM points

Side Story DM Rewards

• The average medium EXP and average medium GP equal to the level of your active character
• 1 DM point

What do DM points do? A DM point can be spent to upgrade your DM GP or DM EXP reward for a quest to a higher level (i.e., from medium to high, from high to very high) after a specific session. You can spend multiple DM points to upgrade either or both one or more levels. DM points must be used on DM rewards during the session they are earned or they are forfeited - they cannot be banked for use on later sessions, even if you earn more DM points that you can spend on that session.

Ways to Earn Bonus DM Points

You can earn additional DM points for doing items on the list below. The maximum number of DM points you can earn or use on a single session is 4. For example, if you are running an epic and you have 3 new players and this is your 2nd or later epic during the current story arc, that would give you 6 DM points. However, the maximum you can earn or use is 4. The extra DM points are forfeited.

• Running a player-requested quest (the quest must have been requested in #interest-polls and the requesting player must have been on the quest)
• Running a new player's first game on the server (repeatable - you earn 1 DM point for every new player in your game)
• Running your first open game on the server (open game = no pre-selected players)
• Running your second (or later) epic for the current story arc (this bonus can only be earned by epic DMs for running multiple epics during a single arc)
• Running a side story during an interlude between story arcs (this bonus can be earned by player DMs or epic DMs for running side stories outside story arc periods. Story arc periods are always published in the #epics channel)
• Completing a side story questline (this bonus can be earned by any DM after concluding the last session of a side story questline. A questline consists of 3+ sessions that develop a single, coherent storyline. You are only eligible for this reward if you clearly connected the sessions in your initial quest review request. The default submission template has a section where you can indicate a questline adventure.)
• Running a game for a party consisting only of Tier 1 player characters (unlocked on Aug 2, 2024)

DM Etiquette

Especially when in the DM seat, the basic group rules apply. That means being respectful, assuming the best instead of the worst of people, communicating clearly, being mindful when venting, treating IC & OOC as separate, and not godmodding or metagaming.

Here are a few examples you might encounter in a DM context:

• Respect. For your players' and their time. Being late, running your game hours and hours past the posted end time, saying things like, "Wow this is my least favorite adventure", "I'm not having any fun at all" is disrespectful to your players and will BUM THEM OUT.
• Communicate/Be mindful when venting. Your players are not mindreaders. If there is a problem to solve, get constructive not complainy. "Hey guys, the side coversations are making it hard for me to run the game. Could we save those for the breaks so that we can keep the story rolling?" is a perfectly fine thing to say to your players and set expectations! "Shut up, you guys are being rude and disrespectful by having side conversations." is not fine. It's the opposite of fine. You owe everyone an apology for that.
• Treat IC & OOC Separate. As a DM, treat all players at your table equally, regardless of whether they are OOCly your partner or OOCly your worst enemy. Arbitrarily allowing your significant other to take actions that you wouldn't allow from another player is bad. Likewise, if a character is doing something you do not like, do not take it out on the player.