definitelybeholderrpgideas

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

planning my evil dark urge run and I have to say I think the juiciest way to do it is play as a guilt-ridden resist durge all the way through act two so the entire party trusts you and wants the best for you and loves you and then you decide after everything you’ve been through together that it’s simply too hard to keep it up and do a full 180 and betray everyone. thinkin’ about it

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

Today's aesthetic: cosmic horror tabletop RPGs from the 1980s whose creators wrote the "madness rules" by simply plagiarising a list of disorders and their descriptions from the DSM-II and turning it into a d100 lookup table, except the DSM-II still listed "homosexuality" as a mental disorder (it wasn't removed until the DSM-III), with the result that there are several published tabletop RPGs where there's a small but non-zero chance that seeing Cthulhu will make you gay.

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

If you’re wondering what the whole drama regarding tieflings is in the Dungeons & Dragons fandom: basically, capitalism ruined tieflings, and for once that’s not even slightly a joke.

Tieflings were first introduced as a playable species in Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, via the Planescape campaign in 1994. At the time, there were no particular rules regarding what a tiefling was supposed to look like. The text explicitly stated that their basic physiology could vary wildly depending on what their fiendish ancestor was, and one of the first major Planescape supplements even included a table for randomly generating your tiefling’s appearance, if you were into that sort of thing.

This continued to be the case up through the game’s Third Edition. However, when the Fourth Edition rolled around in 2008, the game’s text suddenly became very particular about insisting that all tieflings looked pretty much the same. Some campaign settings even provided iin-character explanations for why all tieflings now had a standardised appearance. Understandably, this made a lot of people very annoyed.

There was naturally a great deal of speculation concerning what had motivated this change. It was widely cited as “proof” that Dungeons & Dragons was trying to appeal to the World of Warcraft fanbase – which was nonsense, of course; nearly all of the Fourth Edition’s allegedly MMO-like features were things that popular MMOs had borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons in the first place, and to the extent that tieflings’ new look resembled a particular WoW race, it was in that they were both extraordinarily generic.

In reality, it was a change that had been lurking for some time. Though Dungeons & Dragons is directly published by Wizards of the Coast, Wizards of the Coast is in turn owned by Hasbro, and Hasbro has long regarded the D&D core rulebooks as a vehicle for promoting D&D-branded merch – in particular, licensed miniature figures.

This was a bugbear that had reared its head before. When the Third Edition received major revisions in 2003, Hasbro corporate had ordered the game’s editors to completely remove any discussion of how to improvise minifigs for large battles, and replace it with an advertisement for the then-current Dungeons & Dragons Heroes product line. Implying that purchasing licensed minis wasn’t 100% mandatory simply would not do.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably already guessed where this is going: tieflings having no standard appearance made it difficult to sell tiefling minifigs, as any given minifig design would only be suitable for a small subset of tiefling characters. In the brutally reductive logic of the corporate mind, Hasbro reasoned: well, if we tell tiefling players that all of their characters now look the same, we can sell them all the same minifigs. So that’s what the game did, going so far as to write justifications into several published settings for magically transforming all existing tiefling characters to fit the new mould!

This worked about as well as anyone who isn’t a corporate drone would naturally anticipate – and that’s the story of how capitalism ruined tieflings.

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

One thing most people don't realize about Gazebos is how bloodthirsty they used to be until the 1930s or so. It used to be that in order to appease your average small town gazebo you had to feed it 4-5 marching bands a year, or roughly 2 dozen barbershop groups. Noawadays? Throw it a steely dan cover act every 6 months, maybe a bridal party every few years if you're actively trying to court its favor, and you're pretty much in the clear. And the crazy thing is nobody knows why they calmed down, or that their appetite for flesh won't return to its 19th century heights one day. It's actually an increasingly popular theory among modern Gazebo researchers that we're at the tail end of a period of dormancy and it's only a matter of time until they start howling for blood again. And if/when that does happen there's the question of whether our modern zeeb-keepers are really ready for the task of booking enough sacrificial acts to meet that increased demand. Guild policy has gotten lax in the century since the heyday of Dark Pavillionism and a lot of local keepers refuse to even look at newer research that threatens to upset their status quo. Kind of scary to think about

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

losing my mind at this amazing story from r/dndmemes some people’s dnd adventures are just. So Fucking Cool

here’s the link and the story, it’s Amazing

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

"emperor discourse" this and "do illithids have souls" that everyone shut up and stan IGNATIUS INKBLOT

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

no 'see results' option because i want you to vote for science

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

Hi, hello, writers? This is how you do a cyberpunk game.

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

Source video

Please reblog and share.

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

part 2 of trying to help GFMs that are close to being funded reach their goal. the previous GFM managed to reach and exceed its goal, but with ever rising prices and ongoing crisis in gaza they still need help! (click here to see tasneem's gofundme)

the hararas are a family trying to leave gaza to reach safety with the mother's niece, who is located in canada. at the time of writing this, they need under $4,300 CAD to reach their goal. if 860 people reblog this post and all donate $5 (CAD), they will reach their goal. if 1720 people reblog this post and half of them donate $5 (CAD), they will reach their goal. if you can give $5 please do, and if not, sharing will help someone else with five bucks to spare see it.

last time some people had concerns about legitimacy so from the get-go i am linking to @/el-shab-hussein's assessment of the fundraiser. like last time, i found this fundraiser on the operation olive branch spreadsheet.

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

One time I was DMing a campaign where the players walked into that tavern every campaign has and one of the patrons was a Mindflayer wearing a very bad human disguise who insisted his name was Johnald Humanman. And they were just like "Oh, okay. Well, that's his business" and didn't interact with Johnald Humanman at all.

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

Even if you’re not in the U.S. you can still participate!

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

Please tell me in the tags who's in the pfps and what you picked! If it's the same person/character think of one as a clone. What would they do to themselves?

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

Sorry to anyone this happened to (I would be fuming) but I am howling at EA incompetently creating cursed jewellery by mistake.

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

You should make zionists uncomfortable btw

Keep talking and bringing up Palestine

Advertise that you and everything about you is pro Palestine

Make sure nobody can even entertain the idea of ignoring Palestine

Are you part of a fandom? Draw pro palestinian fanart (and link resources)

Go to protests and wear pro Palestine pins (if it's safe for you to do so)

Buy and wear a keffiyah

Do not let genocide supporters find safe and comfortable spaces

Do not be a safe space for war criminals

Do not let people take comfort in your assumed neutrality

Do not allow people ignore genocide

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Edit: this is getting traction again so I wanna add a few resources to help you turn your anger into change

Daily click:

Free documentary about Gaza's Fight For Freedom:

I'm only going to link two since that's the limit for most people before they just scroll down and ignore it. Please give the documentary a watch whenever you have time

[definitelybeholderrpgideas]

U.S. people, if you bought cinnamon from Dollar Tree, Dollar General, or other discount stores, throw it out. It's got lead