#I even allowed players to use homebrews

[vexwerewolf]

The thing is, D&D is not a game.

I know that sounds insane, but hear me out: D&D is not a game, it is a games console. You don't actually "play D&D." You play "Dragon Heist" or "Tomb of Annihilation" or "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" or "your GM's homebrew campaign" or "the plot of Critical Role Season 1 reconstructed from memory" on D&D.

For quite a long while now - possibly literal decades - D&D hasn't even been the best games console, but it's been "the one everyone knows about" and "the one my friends have" and in fact it's "the one whose name is almost synonymous with the entire medium of TTRPGs," like how "Nintendo" or "Playstation" could just mean "games console" to people who didn't understand games consoles. They might not have heard of a "tabletop roleplaying game," but most people have heard of "Dungeons & Dragons."

For this extended metaphor, D&D is Nintendo back in the 90s, or Playstation in the 2000s. Sometimes you say "oh let's go to my house and play Nintendo" or "c'mon dude I wanna play Playstation" but you're not actually playing Nintendo or Playstation, you're playing Resident Evil or Super Mario Bros or Jurassic Park or Metal Gear Solid or whatever on a Nintendo or a Playstation.

Now, this metaphor is going to get even more tortured, but remember how when the PS2 and the original X-Box came out, they used a standardised DVD format, but the Nintendo console in that generation, the Gamecube, used discs but they were this proprietary tiny little disc format that they had control over? That essentially meant that it was really difficult to make third party titles for the Gamecube that did literally anything that Nintendo didn't want them to do, and also essentially gave Nintendo an even greater ability to skim money off the top of any sales?

So that must've seemed like a smart business decision in their heads. But the PS2 and the X-Box used DVDs. This was a standardized format which gave Microsoft and Sony way less control over who made games for their consoles, but that actually turned out to be a good thing for gaming, because it meant that the breadth of games that you could play on their consoles was massively increased even if some of them were games Microsoft and Sony didn't really approve of. (Also it's worth nothing that the PS2 and the X-Box could just play DVDs, which meant if your household was on a budget, you didn't need a separate DVD player - your games console could do it for you! This was actually a huge selling point!)

What Wizards are currently trying to do now is kinda-sorta the equivalent of Sony suddenly announcing that the PS5 will only accept a proprietary cartridge format they hold the patent on, will control the content of and charge money for the construction of. This possibly seems like it could be a moneymaker in your head because you hold market dominance (apparently the PS5 has 30 million units shipped compared to X-Box Series X 20 million units) and so many people make games for your console, but what it actually means is game devs and publishers will abandon your product. If it takes so much more work, the scope of what they're allowed to do is so much more limited and they're going to make less money off of it, they just won't bother. They'll go make games for the X-Box or PC instead.

To use another computer metaphor, D&D is Windows - it might not be the best system but it's the system most people are familiar with and so it gets the most stuff made for it, but there's is an upper limit on the bullshit people will take before they decide fuck it and get an Apple or learn how Linux works.

TTRPG systems are a weird product because you're not selling people a game, you're selling people a method to play a game. All the actual games are created by the community - even prewritten campaigns needs to be executed via a game master. Trying to skim money off the community will mean they'll eventually give up on you.

#open gaming license #dungeons and dragons #ogl #ogl 1.1 #opendnd #wizards of the coast #one dnd #d&d #dnd #tabletop gaming #tabletop roleplaying games #ttrpgs

[nykloss]

Ditching D&D Beyond or never got it in the first place? Here's some free/pwyw resources.

Dicecloud. This online app allows you to make and track character sheets for free! It does a lot of the calculations for you, just like dnd beyond would. Best overall replacement. (Thank you, @chryslerisdead)

PWYW Class Character Sheets by Emmet Byrne. These character sheets in my opinion, are easier to fill out and harder to mess up, with class-specific features built-in. You can easily edit them digitally, and there's even multiclass/homebrew options. Slap em on Google drive or something, share with your DM, lots of options.

Point-Buy Calculator. Easily automates character stat creation if you're using the Point-Buy system.

5e Level Up Tool. Select your class, select your level, get a digestible checklist of everything you need to do to level up. This one is SO GOOD and so slept on.

5e Spellbook. A quick way to reference your spells and build a Spellbook with a ton of filters.

Encounter Calculator. I know challenge rating isn't everything, but this is a good/fast way to see how balanced your encounters are, at a glance, at least in the eyes of the source books.

RPGbot. Lots of resources for DMs and players: encounter builders, dpr calculators, and lists of player options with sample builds and optimization suggestions, which may be helpful to folks new to the game.

Bonus: Online Tools (System Agnostic)

Here.fm. This is the alternative I use instead of roll20, because it's faster/easier. Drag and drop in maps and tokens in seconds, built-in library of stickers you can use for effects, draw right on the virtual tabletop, use temporary drawings to map out moves, built-in dice rollers, and options for proximity chat. I use it in combination with discord (just have players join your here room muted), but it could be used entirely on it's own, I imagine. Not built for ttrpgs, but works incredibly well for them.

Kenku.fm. A PWYW mini browser focused on mixing and sharing music to your dnd games through whatever app you use, with helpful discord support. This app also LEGALLY bypasses the issue that got all the YouTube discord bots shut down, so you can share YouTube audio worry-free.

Additional Resources (Aka, stuff I found out about after I originally posted this):

flapkan. Holy shit, this might be the BEST character sheet option on this list! Form-fillable pdfs with fully automated built-in prompts to auto fill features and spells, built-in Point-Buy and other automated calculations, and it generates a lot for you. Can be used digitally or you can print!

#d&d beyond #dnd beyond #dnd resources #5e #dungeons and dragons #roll20 #nyklos is typing #resources #also if you need the books and are ok with being a little jolly-rodger-core just add pdf to the end of your google search #oops! fixed typo in kenku.fm

[dailyadventureprompts]

Homebrew Mechanic: Fixing D&D’s Gameplay Loop with Item Degradation

Normally I have snappy titles for these, but in this case I wanted to be super upfront with what I was getting you all into. 

Some people are not going to like the idea of introducing item degradation into the game, and they’re ABSOLUTELY right to be hesitant. Just about every attempt I’ve seen (includig both RAW versions from previous editions, examples from videogames, and those I’ve put together myself in the past) have been horribly clunky exercises in beancounting that only ever existed to needlessly slow down gameplay for the sake of joyless realism. 

I’ve come at it from another angle however, but to explain we’re going to need to get into some game design talk. 

The basic gameplay loop of D&D is supposed to be: 

Seeking adventure leads you to face challenges

Overcoming challenges leads you to rewards

Rewards Help you get stronger 

Getting stronger allows you to seek tougher adventures

After a while this system starts to break down specifically with regards to gold as a method of reward. Even if you’re the smart sort of DM who flouts the rules and gives their party access to a magic item shop, there’s an increasingly limited number of things to spend gold on, leading to parties acquiring sizable hordes of riches early on in their adventuring career, completely eliminating the desire to accept quests that pay out in gold in one form or another. This is a pretty significant flaw because adventures that centre around acquisition of riches ( treasure hunts, bounty missions, busywork for rich patrons that will inevitably betray you) are foundational to storytelling within the game, especially early on in a campaign before the party has gotten emotionally invested.  Most advice you can find online attempting  to solve this problem tends to dissolve down to “let them pour money into a home base”,  but that can only really happen once per campaign as a party is unlikely to want more than one secret clubhouse. 

TLDR:  What I propose is the implantation of a lightweight system that forces the party to periodically drop small amounts of wealth into maintaining their weapons/armour/foci. The players will be motivated to seek out gold in order to keep using their best stuff,  giving value to treasure drops that previously lacked it.  Not only does this system act as an insulation against powercreep at higher levels, it also encourages a party to engage with the world as they seek out workshops and crafters capable of repairing their gear. 

The System: 

Weapons, armour, shields, and caster foci (staves, holy symbols etc) can accumulate “ticks” of damage, represented by a dot or X drawn next to their item entry on the character sheet. Because you get better at handling your gear as you level up, an item that exceeds a total number of ticks equal to its bearer’s proficiency bonus breaks, and is considered unusable until it is repaired. 

Weapons and Foci gain a tick of damage when you roll a natural 1 on an attack made with them, or if they are specifically targeted by an enemy’s attack.

Armour and shields gain a tick of damage when you roll a nat 1 on a saving throw or when an enemy beats your ac by 5 or more. A character equipped with both can decide which of the two items receives the tick

Creatures with the “siege” (or any “does double damage to objects” ability) deal an extra tick when attacking gear. 

A character with a crafting proficiency  and access to tools can repair a number of ticks of damage equal to their proficiency on a four hour work period. This rate is doubled if they have access to a properly equipped workshop.  A character with access to the mending cantrip can repair ticks on any kind of item, but is limited to their proficiency bonus per work period.  

Having an item repaired by an NPC crafter removes all ticks, but costs vary depending on the rarity of the item:    5g for a mundane item, 10g for a common item, 50g for uncommon, 250 for a rare, 1250 for a very rare, 6250 for a legendary.  The DM decides the limit on what each crafter can repair, as it’s likely small towns have access to artisans of only common or uncommon skill, requiring the party to venture to new lands or even across planes if they wish to repair end game gear.

As you can see, degradation in this system is easy to keep track of and quite gradual, leading players into a position where they can ignore obvious damage to their kit for the sake of saving their now precious gold.  It likewise encourages them to seek out NPC crafters (and potential questhooks) for skills they do not possess, and encourages the use of secondary weapons either as backups or to save the more potent items in the arsenal for a real challenge. 

Consumables

Everyone knows the old joke about players hoarding consumables from the first adventure past the final bossfight, it transcends genre and platform, and speaks to a nature of loss aversion within our shared humanity.  However, giving players items they’re never going to use amounts to wasted time, resources, and potential when looking at things from a game design perspective, so lets work on fixing that. 

My inspiration came from witcher 3, which encourages players to make frequent use of consumables by refreshing them whenever the character had downtime. The darksouls series has a similar feature with the signature estus flask, which provides a limited number of heals before it must be refreshed at one of the game’s checkpoints.  When the designers removed the risk of permanent loss and the anxiety it creatures, players were able to think tactically about the use of their consumables confident in the knowledge that any mistakes were just a resupply away from being fixed.  

My proposal is that while the party is in town they can refill the majority of their consumable items for a small per item fee. Just like with gear degradation, this encourages them to seek out crafters and do quests for the hope of discounts, while at the same time encouraging them to explore new realms in the hope of discovering higher level artisans. 

The price for refills is set at: 5g for common, 25g for an uncommon, 125g for a rare, 625g for a very rare, 3125g for  legendary.  I encourage my own players to keep a  “shopping list” in their inventory with prices tabulated so they can hand out a lump sum of gold and have their kit entirely refreshed. 

Characters with a relevant skill and access to their tools can refill a number of items equal to their proficiency bonus during a four hour work period. With access to a proper workshop, this rate doubles.   ( At last, proficiency with brewers supplies, carpenters tools etc become useful) 

I encourage you as a DM to check out this potion flasks system, which I’ve found adds a delicious factor of uncertainty back into the mix.  Attached is also my super lightweight rules for tracking gear and supplies, which I absolutely refuse to shut up about.

Artist

#5e homebrew #dnd mechanics #crafting #item degradation #mechanics #homebrew

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

Lancer RPG

pfft, your mech is your dead mom's soul? well MY mech is co-piloted by Cthulhu!

Touchstones: Armored Core, General Mech Media

Genre: Mecha, Tactics game

What is this game?: Lancer is a tactical TTRPG focused on mechs, and the folks piloting them, with a sturdy "Gameplay over Realism" mentality to its game design

How's the gameplay?: Lancer is a tactical RPG using primarily d20s for attack rolls and other problem solving, it's primarily based on the tactical combat rules of Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, however it is mostly its own thing, with new mechanics, simple but fun character creation, and a high focus on quick and aggressive combat rather than lengthy and Defensive combat. in effect imagine character creation as going to a subway (of mech parts) and picking your ingredients, with a mech's frame being your choice of bread, and combat as an SRPG of your choosing but everyone is in giant mechs

Out of Combat is a bit different, to the point where I didn't even bring it up during my first draft of this! the Out of Combat rules are deliberately bare bones, you can very easily insert straight up a different game in there, or mod it to be something else. But I wouldn't recommend it, as the rules by themselves are 100% useable, fun, and blend into the combat portions pretty easily, Lancer is fully aware of this, and the lack of out of combat depth is partially covered by the KTB book, which gives characters simple out of character skills

What's the setting (If any) like?: Lancer throws you into a world where mankind's either solved, or is close to solving, most of the issues back on earth... too bad we also colonized other planets 10k years ago! Now, while Earth thrives, planets outside of it struggle with poverty, imperialism, dictatorships, and human and non-human rights issues, Earth tries its best to help, but they're stretched very thin. Lancer also has many small details to its setting that are way too in-depth to get into right now, but a major one is the existance of non-human people, eldritch beings strapped to computers in order to create effective and fully sentient artificial intelligence

What's the tone?: Lancer's tone is generally speaking, hopeful. Empires are mighty, but there are people fighting, and they will be toppled, mankind's horrors have attempted to wipe out entire species, but survivors remain, and secretly thrive. While there is some doom and gloom and grimdark stuff, especially with how the highly unethical and wicked corporations are treated as necessary evils for enterprising pilots, but overall lancer is a setting where no matter how bad things get, there will always be hope

Session length: A few hours, it depends on how mean your GM is, generally speaking however combat heavy sessions will only run you around 2-3 hours, with RP sprinkled in between

Number of Players: I generally like to recommend around 4 or more, but I'm sure you can do it with less

Malleability: While lancer's mechanics are pretty hardset in its setting, the existance of Beacon RPG and how at its core its very much a Lancer hack does show that Lancer can be hacked into differing settings, a very popular one I've seen is Magical Girl Lancer.

Resources: Lancer's primary resource is Comp/Con, it effectively serves as a do everything tool for lancer, allowing you to manage characters, encounter, and homebrew, while also having a very slick and easy to use UI Lancer also has many pre-made modules, of... varying quality, Siren's song and Solstice rain are pretty good, Wallflower is very good but the encounters are of mixed quality, and it's not great for introducing people to the game in my experience

Homebrew is also fairly popular, new frames, NPC types, Bonds, and modules are all pretty popular, my personal favorite being Field Guide to Suldan and Field Guide to Iridia, I also enjoy Field Guide to Liminal Spaces though that one's a bit on the "Be Very Careful" side

Overall, lancer is effectively THE indie ttrpg, being quality, fun, and affordable, with the core rulebook being 100% free if you just wish to see the player-side content, it's a great time, and everyone who's interested in the indie ttrpg scene should check it out at least once

#weekly ttrpg

[dungeonmalcontent]

As a level 13 wizard, prepare for a fight in the following way. Step 1) Have a portable hole. Step 2) learn the glyph of warding spell. Step 3) cast glyph of warding onto the walls of the portable hole with spell storing. Store the following spells (requires multiple days): Tenser's Transformation, Tasha's Otherworldly Guise, Mirror Image, Blur, Haste, Mage Armor, Enlarge/Reduce. The glyph trigger is a special command word or phrase that you choose, such as "it clobbering time."

Glyph of warding allows spells with concentration to linger for their full duration without conflicting with other concentration spells. These spells are active until they end and the concentration cannot be broken.

Portable holes do not end glyphs of warding because the extradimensional space within a portable hole specifically has continuity (used as an inventory and can contain creatures while closed) and does not move when the opening to the hole moves after being folded up. It's a 6 foot wide by 10 foot deep cylinder that exists on a different plane that can be accessed from anywhere you put the door to it. For flavor, even if it's orientation changes relative to where you put it down (wall, floor, ceiling) the space itself hasn't moved though the shift in gravity might cause some objects within it to move when you open it. Even if you specify that the cylinder itself can't have a glyph inscribed on it, be ause it doesn't exactly have walls so much as spatial dimensions, objects within the hole can have glyphs and would be hard pressed to move beyond the glyph's 10 foot spell end limit in a space that is only 10 feet long.

Stacking Tenser's Transformation, Tasha's Otherworldly Guise, and Haste allows you to Make two attack actions on your turn, and each attack actions makes four strikes--each one with advantage when done with a simple or martial weapon, also dealing an additional 2d12 force damage. Also you make them using your spellcasting modifier. Transformation and Otherworldly Guise stack because the additional strikes per attack are are "benefits" not features or abilities; having written and edited homebrew for years now, there 100% is a difference and it does matter in the way you phrase things.

Combine this with all the ac buffs, blur and mirror image, plus damage resistances and temporary hit points; you virtually cannot be killed and you make 8 attacks per turn plus bonus actions and any reaction you make. This is also assuming you aren't wearing any magical items such as enchanted weapons and armor.

All you have to do is, before you fight, complete step 4) put down the portable hole and activate all of your glyphs at once.

The only balance to this is that setting up a portable hole this way requires multiple days with many hours of spellcasting, including using a 6th and 7th level spell slot every time you prep Transformation and Otherworldly Guise.

To be clear, this is not something I would ever do (perhaps not more than once) and not something I would let a player spring on me. And even if I did let a player get away with this, I would cripple them with exhaustion after the spells ended. This is a rules based thought experiment.

Edit: I hereby dub this strategy "the magical girl transformation chamber"

#d&d #dnd #dungeons and dragons #5e #ttrpg #i dare anyone to come up with a better way to break 5e

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hi! I'm looking for a game in the space opera genre, and I'd love some suggestions. More specifically, I'm trying to find something that's pretty easily customizable or setting-agnostic. Pretty soft as far as sci-fi is concerned, even science fantasy. (And my players have a very brief attention span when it comes to learning rules, so some degree of simplicity would be appreciated, too, haha!)

For context, I have a friend who loves worldbuilding and has fleshed out a whole galaxy, and I want to run a one-shot set in his world for his birthday. In the past, we've tried using a homebrew amalgamation of D&D, SW5e, and miscellaneous other bits, but I want to find a system that fits a bit better.

Thanks for the help! 😁

Theme: Simple Space Operas.

Hello friend, this sounds like such an awesome idea! I think I’ve got a few pretty good options for you to take a look at. Many of these games pull from Star Wars as their idea of what a space opera is like, but not all of them do. Also, don't forget to check the bottom of the post to see what I've recommended in the past!

Laser-Ritter, by Bad Quail Games.

Laser-Ritter is an analog adventure game about swashbuckling heroes journeying among endless stars to embrace their destiny. There are rendezvous in hazy tap rooms, chases across distant moons, and showdowns with the forces of galactic evil. We play to find out how our Laser-Ritters follow their passions and face their pasts to triumph over adversity.

Laser-Ritter gives space for you to create your own saga. There's no burdensome timeline of canon events or overwhelming lists of characters, spaceships, and alien species to be contradicted. Every group begins their saga by creating their own dramatic title crawl to establish what's happening when the adventure begins!

This is a game all about embracing your destiny, with plenty of space to build your own universe. The game can be played episodically, or cover a long-spanning story over a series of sessions. This means that if you just want to run a one-shot, it can be pretty easily self-contained, but there’s also room to expand the game.

Players in this game have 4 stats and a health track labelled Vitality. You also have something called a Pathos track, which represents how attrition and trauma affect your character. If you fill your Pathos track, your character becomes vulnerable to dying. If you want a game with dramatic action and tragic scenes, Laser-Ritter might be for you.

Galaxy Goons and A Goons’ Guide to the Galaxy, by John Erwin.

Galaxy Goons is a space fantasy adventure hack of the Ennies-award winning Tunnel Goons. If you want a light-hearted game about rascals just trying to make their way in the universe, this is worth checking out. Tunnel Goons is known for being pretty light-weight, and Galaxy Goons is true to this legacy. Your characters are rolled randomly, with stats used to add onto dice rolls to try and beat a difficulty level.

A Goon’s Guide to the Galaxy is made for the same kind of setting, but uses a different set of rules, namely the 24XX SRD. This means that instead of just rolling d6’s, your characters will have a few things that they have a d8 or d10 for, and there might even be a few skills that only allow you to roll a d4. 24XX games also tend to carry roll tables to help the GM come up with obstacles and goals, so that might help the GM decide what about this homemade galaxy might be interesting to follow.

Rebel Scum, by 9th Level Games.

REBEL SCUM tells the story of how scrappy, anti-fascist heroes can fight back against a government with unlimited power (including giant lasers and space magic). Inspired by a love for a certain line of 3 and 3/4 inch action figures, this is a fast paced, feel good, space opera of rebellion and adventure.

In this TTRPG, characters are all expressed as action figures, with their pertinent stats and abilities "on the back of the card." Choose your toy and get out into battle!

So Rebel Scum borrows very obviously from Star Wars, but of course the book can’t just put the game in the Star Wars setting, so they create their own. What this means is you can pretty easily throw out that lore and build your own world, although the expectation in this game is that your characters will be working to overthrow some sort of galaxy-wide power. The rules are very simple to learn - in fact the booklet is under 100 pages, and that’s including art, setting, and example characters. If you have a standard set of polyhedral dice (and I’m assuming you do, if you’ve played D&D) then you’ll be able to play this game.

Save the Universe, by Don Bisdorf.

Tyranny and cruelty have spread across the galaxy, and only you can stop it!

Save the Universe is a sci-fi adventure roleplaying game in which the players create their own great galactic menace and then portray the brave heroes battling against it.

I think the biggest pull for this game is that it encourages you to build your own galaxy. The game even comes with a number of questions for you to answer, and if you already have a world decided, you can slot in the answers according to your friend’s world. In fact, assigning world creation to one player is actually a recommended option in the game!

Even though this game is pretty open in terms of the details of your galaxy, there’s still an overarching theme of an Empire or large enemy that your characters will be resisting. Then again, I have a feeling that’s a common theme in space operas.

Plerion: Space Opera Adventure Game, by Zotiquest Games.

Intrepid spacers ply the vastness of the Five Galaxies in search of fortune and glory.

This is Plerion, a sci-fi hack from Cairn designed to play radiant space opera. Inspired by classic science fiction and the RPGs that emulate it, but with a more modern twist, winking at transhumanism and cyberpunk.

Plerion is an adventure game for one referee and at least one other player. Players act as hardened spacers exploring, exploiting and commerce through the vastness of space in the far future.

The author of this game cites Mass Effect, the Traveller roleplaying game and the Wayfarer series by Becky Chambers. Cairn, the game that inspired this one, is a game that makes survival difficult and daunting for the players, and asks them to put the fiction first. This means that combat shouldn’t always be the answer. Instead, players are encouraged to find ways to solve problems using their tools at hand, which is a common trend in many of the games that inspired this rule system.

What’s So Cool About Outer Space, by Jared Sinclair.

WSCAOS is a tiny little system for going to space no matter where you are! 

This is an incredibly tiny game, with just two pages to print out and use as a rules reference in any galaxy you like. It’s also the parent of a number of “What’s So Cool About" games that use the same philosophy - minimal rules, and plenty of agency left up to the group in terms of what possible backstories you might have, as well as what might be considered an advantage and what might not.

No-one Owns The Sky, by Free Radicals Press.

A band of misfits lives aboard a rundown starship, traveling from one frontier world to the next, hoping to make a name and a living for themselves. Along the way, things always seem to go sideways, but the crew holds on, no matter what.

NO ONE OWNS THE SKY is a sci-fi roleplaying game that is rules-light and relies on players to craft and flesh out the universe of the setting as a collective. This game was designed for two or more players. One player is always the referee (REF), a neutral arbiter and guiding force for the game. The others act and play as player characters (PCs). These players, with their REF and their PCs, will tell amazing, collective (and interactive) stories with the help of imagination, dice, roleplaying, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

This game uses a staggered success layout, which means that you could roll a failure, a success, or a mixed success during any given roll. Anything above a 5 is a success! It looks like the game uses more than just d6’s though, so the larger dice you roll, the higher your chances of succeeding. The setting is also up to the players, pretty good for folks who want to build their own galaxy.

Games I’ve Recommended in the Past

Space Fantasy Rec Post

Impulse Drive, by Adrian Thorn.

Syzygy, by Ostrichmonkey Games.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg #space #space opera

[ellimisms]

Concept: D&D homebrew oneshot based off Animorphs where you each play as one of the main characters of the Animorphs series.

The morphing system would be a modified Wild Shape mechanic, altered to two ends: first, to better fit the book's lore, and second, to make class factor into it more so each character is more unique. Probably each character would be able to use some of their class actions (just for an example, Action Surge for fighters or Rage for barbarians) while in morph, and morphing would restore hit points to 100%.

There would be a skill check associated with morphing--it'd be a Wisdom-based skill that you could gain proficiency in. Roll at advantage when using a familiar morph or becoming another human, disadvantage for things you're scared of or morphing while badly injured. Do a morphing check whenever you're in a new morph for the first time to see if you can get control of it; the actual number to beat is up to the GM based on what the animal is.

Also there would have to be some sort of mechanic to prevent TPKs--the main crew has a LOT of plot armor in the books because they can't die (until the end), so there'd need to be something to keep the PCs alive. Maybe if you "die" you don't actually perish, but instead something very bad happens to the party (you get infested, maybe?)

Infestation would be another new mechanic, though a pretty simple one; if a PC gets infested, the GM just starts controlling that character as the yeerk. The player can try to interrupt what the yeerk's doing, but has to roll a nat 20 with disadvantage (no bonuses from skill proficiencies)--it's supposed to be nearly impossible in the books so that's fairly lore-consistent.

In terms of the actual characters you can play:

Jake: Fighter, probably Battle Master subclass as that's more strategically focused. Not much else to say to be honest--I think he'd be proficient in persuasion, since he's supposed to be a good leader.

Marco: Rogue, maybe? Frankly his strengths don't match up with a specific class--maybe multiclass rogue/bard or fighter/bard because I know for a FACT he can and does cast vicious mockery.

Rachel: Barbarian for SURE, probably the Berserker subclass though I find the idea of her being a Wildheart pretty funny and thematically accurate.

Cassie: Probably a Druid or Beast Master ranger--I'm not sure where I stand on allowing caster classes since that doesn't exist in the real world but neither does morphing. Which one she is just depends on that.

Tobias: Who even KNOWS with this guy. Since he's stuck in morph it matters less, but I'd actually go with warlock--his patron is the Ellimist, since he's the one who seems to be able to argue with the Ellimist the most. It's either that or sorcerer, but he doesn't really gain any powers from his andalite bloodline so that seems less accurate.

Ax: Fighter, but it'd be different because he is an andalite. Just off the top of my head I'd make him be able to deal slashing damage on an unarmed attack (maybe just make his unarmed attack count as a sword attack) and increase his movement speed.

A group could also choose to discard these characters and play as a bunch of original characters if they so chose.

Anyways I'm probably the only person in the world that cares enough about both Animorphs and D&D to create this but oh well have fun.

#no im not sure this would work at all in practice but its fun to think about #yes im in my ttrpg hyperfixation era dont talk to me. dont #animorphs #ell.txt

[quietsnooze]

Info dumping about my homebrew DnD world ahead!

Eidholme is a low magic fantasy DnD campaign setting wherein magic is very limited, feared, and persecuted. The continent is split into 5 kingdoms & 2 empires.

Here's a visualization using Azgaar's fantasy map generator, then painted by me using Inkarnate to show the landforms:

Long ago, there were racial variations (many of the expected DnD races), but war and mistrust tore apart the continent and drove out many as humans struck down the remaining.

Now, there are heritages in the bloodlines of many current day humans that lie dormant as also magic does

(Basically my way of saying "this is an all human campaign... mostly." When the players get to higher levels, they will manifest traits from their heritages if they want to have that aspect included. Most left that up to me to surprise them!)

The deities are known as Guardians. There are twelve who are revered across the continent in different capacities - the kingdom of the Reamers is highly religious and worships all 12, whereas others pick & choose their preferred "endorsed" Guardians.

The Guardians' sigils I designed:

• Pandor, of Pleasure

• Lilabet, of Patience

• Elnos, of Creation

• Phiphine, of Growth

• Aisling, of Endings

• Cohara, of Mercy

• Bodhi, of Progress

• Llyr, of Dominion

• Niamh, of Hearth-keepers

• Keros, of Justice

• Ashtur, of Aggression

• Ryasis, of Curiosity

The event that caused the humanization of Eidholme was over a millennia ago, but the hurt caused by the End of Magic is more recent - a little more than 200 years prior, with fear and abuse of it at an all time high, magic was almost universally banned across Eidholme.

What was the straw that broke the camel's back? The population does not know, other than it was surrounding the tensions that broke apart the Mountainlands into two empires: Marboke in the north, and Oakham in the south.

(My voice game players know tho! They participated in it in prologue)

The continent shares the equinox and solstice celebrations, but have differing, more local traditions for them. Here’s a calendar I created that shows them! In Launlia for example, the Primavernal is celebrated as the Awakening Festival locally, for Niamh, Guardian of Growth.

Another fun fact about Eidholme: the vast majority of the continent's trees and its ONLY forest exist in Duskhollow. The kingdom is shrouded in mystery, in ancient Woods magic, in protections that keep any out who it doesn't want to be there.

The Woods is alive. It decides.

I have a lot of documents my players can comb through for information at their leisure. This one factually lists information that the PCs would know. It is not necessarily Wiki-level accurate, however, as propaganda is a heck of a thing.

Cantrips aren't exactly rare, but depending on where you are, you wouldn't even want to risk casting one. Privilege allows some of higher station to play around with magic in a badly kept secret. Otherwise, you are licensed or regulated by the governing body on your usage.

And that, of course, is why both of the parties who play in this world stumbled across Wanted posters for their questioning and arrest! "Wanted in connection to blasphemy and magic usage in Launlia", while their allies are "wanted in connection to actions against the Crown"...

For as much as I limited in character creation for lore purposes, I gave back through the same world building. Characters can interact with the world, seeking lost ways of old magics, ancient techniques, connections with the natural world… even be taught new (homebrew) cantrips

This is one of those instances where the PCs fit the trope of “chosen one” levels of power, as few ordinary people are powerful like they are and will be. The catch? That also makes them HUGE targets for backlash. Without the right support, they’ll be on the run… everywhere.

That makes it a very socially driven, political ties sort of campaign story. They also have befriended nomads, who can help them in their own way.

Nomads are, expectedly, nomadic people dissenting of law and homeland. They are expectedly hunted or outlawed for their magic use.

Some places welcome them as a novelty, others allow them under tentative circumstances for services granted (easy to locally wash your hands of it and assign blame to nomads who are long gone by the time you’re found out). Their trust is notoriously difficult to gain.

Why? Because they’ve been lured by royals to perform, only to be mass incarcerated. They’ve been promised sanctuary and found instead themselves given to their enemies. The groups do not inherently trust one another, either- friendship with one doesn’t mean friend to all.

As for beyond the continent… not many know what lies beyond. Those who travel out rarely come back, those who do are driven back by storms and critical failures of their ships. The Brackish Tears is the only kingdom who receives imports from beyond the vast waters.

There's a tale of a Tearsian prince memorialized in statue: Eóghan Griogal - a prince, second son to King Cian and Queen Siobhan, beloved by his people in the 17th century, about 200 years BME (Before magic’s end) or prior to the new age. His romance to the wispy foreigner - had many people talking, some excited in the chattering and others devastated by his betrayal. For he found love at sea, a man whose affinity with water was undeniably clear, closer bonded to it than even the water births of the Reamers would boast.

The lore creates a very interesting challenge for a fantasy world:

- wood is expensive and rare, so describing anything, from building materials to origins of fruit, is adjusted

- gemstones are extremely rare and not mined anywhere anymore as the source died with the elves

- magic is mostly outlawed

I'm currently running two games in this world. One traditional DnD via voice sessions who adventure across the continent, one written/play-by-post mixed with Good Society ttrpg, sandboxed in the Brackish Tears' capital.

Here is the star map and constellations. I have so many documents for my players to chew on, and I’m adding to them constantly.

#dungeons and dragons #DnD #DnD homebrew #fantasy #fantasy worldbuilding #worldbuilding #good society #ttrpg #inkarnate #my art #long post

[roserysttrpggarden]

Homebrew Class design For Dummies: Part 4: Class Resources

Hi there~! Hope you're having a lovely day. Welcome to the fourth-edition of Homebrew Class Design for Dummies, if you haven't read part 1, 2 and 3 click the links there. But in case you're new here, this is a series of write up i've decided to write to help anyone who wants to make a custom class for Fifth-Edition.

What is a Class Resource.

A class recourse, as the name implies is a resource pool that the player has to keep track off as they play that class. The most obvious example of this is Monks Ki points and Sorcerers Sorcery points,. Though these can also show up in other, much smaller ways. such as Channel Divinity on clerics and Lay on Hands for paladins.

If you don't wanna come up with an entirely new resource pool, then you can also look to other resources, such as spell slots, hit points or even hit dice as your classes resource if you really want too.

The Monk Problem

An issue that can come up with class-specific resource pools is that your class needs to expend it to do just about anything, this is most obviously showcased by 5e's Monk. Monk has several problems I might make a write-up on in the future, but for now i'll go over its Ki feature.

Monk has a resource known as KI, you gain an amount of ki points equal to your monk levels, which you regain on a short or long rest. You use your Ki points to fuel the following: Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, Step of The Wind, Deflect Missiles (To make an attack roll) Stunning Strike, Diamond Soul (To reroll a saving throw) and Empty Body. If you include the optional class features then you also can include Ki-Fueled Attack, Quicken healing and Focused-Aim. That's 7-10 features. Now add also add on top of that how you have very limited ki in actual play (1st-12th-level) and that you don't have a way to reliable recover Ki mid-fight, it leads to an overall bad play experience, no one likes to operate at half capacity for most of the adventuring day.

Solutions

An obvious solution to the monk problem is to give them a way to regenerate their resource in the midst of combat, maybe your class can regain their specific resource by dropping a creature to 0-hit points, or after a critical hit. Or maybe they can spend an action to recover spent uses of their resource. Though if you plan to use the former, make sure you put a CR cap so the player can't punch a couple rats to regain their resource. That's called the "Bag of Rats' If you're curious. Keep how your resource is used because a way to easily recover it might not always work depending on the class.

Using a Class Resource

Okay, so your class has a resource pool they need to manage, sweet. But now you have to figure out how your class uses said resource, is it used to amplify your classes existing feature similar to sorcery points or superiority dice? Or is it used to create new effects. Generally what your classes resource does should be used to enforce the playstyle you envision. Say for example you want your class to be a healer, allow them to heal and cleanse effects using said feature.

while this might seem obvious to some, your classes special resource should also be incorporated in some way into their subclasses, otherwise stick to PB times per day or X modifier times per day. Which nicely segways me onto:

Tracking

Something to look out for when making a class with a resource pool is making sure there isn't too much tracking involved. An immediate example that comes to mind is the UA Mystic, which could gain up to 71 psi point at the highest levels. Which is an issue cause no where else in D&D do you have to track that, but unlike Lay on Hands, it's not like you're tracking an even number either (5 per level) the result is that it becomes cumbersome to constantly look back at the document or your sheet to track how many you have. Another example of which is the Psionic Soul Sorcerer, which added a second resource in the form if PSI Dice to the Sorcerers kit, which leads to confusion since you're juggling two big pools at once.

In general it's a good idea to limit tracking where you can, you can even make your classes main resource unlimited use, which yes would require more to keep balanced, but it'll go a long way in making your class easy to pick up and play.

Summary

To summarize the points of this write up, when making a class resource you should:

Figure out how the resource pool manifests. (Points, die, etc)

Make sure it fits within your classes overall themes and playstyle.

Keep tracking as limited as you can (Or want)

Experiment with it

The Avatar

Last but not least, I will give a little update on the Avatar. Since I last posted I decided to scrap the radiance die because simply put, I couldn't think of how to make them interesting to use without treading too much on other features, much less how to incorporate them into subclass progression. And personally, epithets feel much more like an avatar thing than the radiance dice ever did.

In exchange. Avatars that reach 6th-level can now cause an epithet to ascend, which reads as follows:

The idea behind it is that if you have an epithet you really enjoy using, you can have it ascend and cause it to become stronger. It's also meant to help keep the epithets viable as you gain levels in this class, an example of this is the Mighty epithet, where if you cause it to ascend, as shown here:

Holy hell, I am so sorry for taking this long on the series. I got caught up with other projects + reworking the avatar itself, so this ended up being put on the backburner until now. Hopefully I can get the next entry: Subclasses out in a timely manner, but we shall see.

But that's all I have for today, make sure to like + share my content if you enjoy, have a nice day, go out and make some homebrew.

Homebrew Class design For Dummies: Part 1: The Foundation

Homebrew Class design For Dummies: Part 2: Getting Started

Homebrew Class design For Dummies: Part 3: Finishing the base class

Guide to Balancing Classes

#dnd homebrew #5e homebrew #dnd #dnd5e #homebrew 5e #5e #dnd 5e homebrew #dungeons and dragons #dungeons and dragons homebrew

[probablyevilrpgideas]

How to Play: Wayne from Letterkenny

Like Popeye, this is pretty straightforward, but also I feel like there are at least a couple ways you can go with it.

5e

Race

Wayne's a human (preferably Variant), let's be honest.

That said, Half-Orc is definitely a defensible choice with it's ability bonuses, Relentless Endurance, Savage Attacks, and free Intimidate proficiency.

Class

The main way to go, I think, is with some homebrew from DnDBeyond, because when I stated thinking about this build, Barbarian seemed the key way to go. Unfortunately, the normal Barbarian paths don't quite work, and 5e made unarmed combat even more of a "Only Monks Need Apply" thing than 3.X.

HOWEVER, there are of course multiple Brawler paths on DnDBeyond. This one is the highest rated one, and looking at the others, I can see why. It's just simpler and cleaner. It gives you an unarmed strike with improving damage as you level like the monk's Martial Arts feature, your fists are treated as magical weapons (an integral thing when playing a puncher in D&D as you level up), and some other nice abilities as you level up. Wayne's a pretty straightforward brawler, but I feel like he's not above throwing a fucker or using a beer bottle in a life and death situation.

Barbarian? Yeah.

Wayne's pretty stoic and quiet, but you can tell when he's angry, and he has a standard "preparing for a fight" action:

Background

In normal core 5e, there isn't a farmer background, but again, DnDBeyond of course has multiple farmer backgrounds in the homebrew. This one feels fitting, between the Advantage on Animal Handling and the "you know enough Druidic to say hello or ask for directions" if you call Druidic "Queebeckois" and druids Degens.

"My DM doesn't like Homebrew"

Ok, that's cool. I think Homebrew is much easier to allow in 5e because everything is so formulated, but, hey, there are valid reasons to not include it even then (like "I work full time and I'm not going to go look over every custom thing everyone wants to use.")

In that case, it's a bit weirder and will ask for more handwaving/refluffing, but I think a Kensai Monk/Zealot Barbarian could work. If you just want to dip a level or two of Barbarian for the rage and not hit third for a path, I feel like that's defensible, since it's the unarmed damage of the monk you're going to want to focus on.

For a non-Homebrew Background, you probably want to go with Folk Hero. I think Wayne definitely qualifies as a Folk Hero, and it's the closest published stuff comes to a "commoner who turns adventurer" background. It gives you Animal Handling and Survival (yes, Barbarian can get those, but you can then use your class proficiencies to take Athletics and Intimidation, or Nature instead of one of those). Rustic Hospitality also feels fitting.

Feats

Your first feat (assuming your GM is allowing feats, but my impression is that that's pretty standard) should be Magic Initiate.

Yes, I know, Wayne isn't a magic user. But take Magic Initiate and choose Bard, because then you can get the cantrip Vicious Mockery, and you can hurt people just by chirping at them, which is very in-theme for Wayne. Think of the cold open with the hockey players coming up the laneway. They are definitely taking psychic damage from Wayne, Daryl and Dan just verbally handing them their asses. For your other spells, I would take Mending and Speak with Animals. They just feel appropriate for Wayne, things that would be useful on a farm.

Other options

Ok, so, I'm saying Wayne needs some Bard spells.

Why not dip Bard?

Well... because multiclassing can already be brutal to your overall effectiveness. BUT, a level of Bard would be pretty fitting instead of the Magic Initiate feat. "Pitter Patter, let's get at 'er" is just so fitting as a way of giving your allies Bardic Inspiration. In this case, your 1st level spells should probably be Animal Friendship, Healing Word, Heroism and Speak with Animals.

Pathfinder

Pathfinder actually has a Brawler class, which a Fighter/Monk hybrid, and would be perfect. Dip some Barbarian for rage, and maybe use the Exemplar archetype to get some limited Bard-ness. But you could also go pure Barbarian with Improved Unarmed Strike and such.

#How to Play #Wayne #Letterkenny #Wayne from Letterkenny #Barbarian #Monk #Dungeons and Dragons #5e #D&D #DnD

[loosingmoreletters]

Take a snippet of a Sword Art Online AU for mdzs

Watching the teenagers talk among themselves, gesticulating wildly, Wei Wuxian figured they must have spent a lot of time in full dive systems, which was odd enough. After what had happened to Lan Zhan and his brother, it seemed more likely that their uncle would’ve shut down any association Lan Corp had with that tech. Then again, it had been over a decade. Maybe Lan Qiren wasn’t even CEO anymore, though Wei Wuxian couldn’t think of anyone to succeed him. Neither Lan Xichen nor Lan Zhan had seemed particularly suited for the position of a CEO when he’d known them.

“Sizhui,” the loud Lan - Jingyi? - suddenly interrupted the conversation, “is your dad gonna pick us up?”

Sizhui shook his head. “No, he’s at physical therapy.”

“He’s always at PT,” Jingyi muttered.

“It’s not like muscle atrophy suddenly goes away,” Sizhui reprimanded him as the Ouyang boy dug his elbow into Jingyi’s side, and Jingyi grimaced.

“Sorry, you know how I meant it. After all this time, is there really a chance it’ll get better?”

Sizhui sighed, proving at once that it couldn’t have been just Lan Zhan raising him for all that open sass. Had he gotten a real marriage? A proper spouse with benefits that weren’t the the highest spell stats?

“Father cares about it.”

Lan Zhan had been their high school and university’s athletics champion for years. The time spent comatose in game would’ve likely ruined all of that. If Wei Wuxian still had a body, it would probably break apart the moment he tried to move.

“We can catch the bus to my place then,” Ouyang kid said. “It’s not that far from Lan Corp and we can grab food on the way.”

So much for Wei Wuxian’s assumptions that the company wouldn’t have anything to do with Full Dive tech anymore.

“Are you all diving from Lan Corp?” Wei Wuxian asked.

“Yeah, it’s the closest,” Jingyi said. “What company are you playing at?”

“Jingyi!” Ouyang - okay, Wei Wuxian really needed to catch his name - exclaimed. “You don’t just ask a high level player from where they’re diving when in private! Sorry, Senior Mo!”

Oh, dear, did they assume Wei Wuxian was a pro gamer? He grinned.

“No, it’s fine. I’m diving from home!”

A blatantly lie as Wei Wuxian’s continued existence was a string of zeroes and ones, but he wasn’t about to tell a bunch of kids he was little more than a virus hanging onto the remaining Wen servers.

But instead of reassuring the teenagers, his statement just made them gape in horror.

“From home! How? With a homebrew system? Isn’t that illegal?”

Was it? It hadn’t been when Wei Wuxian was still alive. Most of them had dived from home over standard consoles.

“What server are you on? Even Sizhui isn’t allowed to dive from home, though it wouldn’t make such a big difference for him.”

“Father doesn’t want me to risk taking a less secure connection. I could suffer severe damages.”

Yeah, that did sound like Lan Zhan. Wei Wuxian laughed and ruffled the kid’s head. “Being supervised while diving is for the best. I’ve got my brother looking after me, don’t worry.”

Despite everything, Wei Wuxian was sure Jiang Cheng had claimed his body. His brother probably arranged a nice funeral too. Wait, was his name famous IRL now? Wei Wuxian mentally patted himself on the shoulder for sticking with Mo Xuanyu’s character profile instead of editing it.

“That’s good, Senior Mo!” Ouyang kid said.

“Are you diving on a regular schedule then?” Sizhui asked. “We took down that demonic arm quicker than I calculated with your help. You’d be a great addition to our party.”

The last tome Wei Wuxian had been part of a group, it hadn’t ended well for anyone. But without him there, the kids would’ve died and they obviously planned to stick around.

And if Wei Wuxian wanted to figure out who had hooked up the Wen servers to a new game, he ought to stick around living players.

“I’d be honored to join your party,” Wei Wuxian said. “Maybe I can teach you a trick or two!”

Not any of the gaps he exploited for his demonic cultivation, but one or two shortcuts that would bolster the kids’ chances. Maybe he could disguise hacking their stats as extra training. Obviously they wouldn’t die IRL if they died in game, not like the last humans Wei Wuxian had talked to, but he was incredibly selfish.

He didn’t want to witness anyone’s death again. Helping then was fir his benefit too.

#mdzs #the untamed #Wei Wuxian #lan sizhui #lan wangji #lan jingyi #ouyang zizhen #wangxian #fanfic #mdzs fanfic #snippet #aus and ideas #wwx: Lan Zhan probably had a REAL wedding and now has a REAL spouse and a REAL child #I cannot fucking believe I wrote a SAO au

[majickth]

Hold on to your seat bcs I have brain worms and you said u wanted to hear them so, in the end, this is mostly your fault /pos

That post where someone was trying to get all their bot followers together to teach them how to play dnd but it's Tango somehow getting Keralis, Bdubs, Zedaph and Scar in a steampunk campaign together.

No one dares call attention to it -the last person got a VIP tour-, but some of the taxidermied creatures in Scarland are straight up ripped from Tango's fucked up homebrew monster manual collection... mostly the ones he uses for the Friday night game, in which Scar proudly holds the record of "most deaths in a single session". (No one knows what came first, the taxidermy or the custom monster manuals)

Regarding the steampunk campaign, T had to start holding the game at his store. He says it helps the atmosphere -with all the machines and parts he has in the back and all that-, but in reality both K and B asked him separately if he could make an exception and not do it at the ranch. Keralis doesn't want to leave Princess the shop alone for too long and Bdubs told him that sudden extreme heat or cold can harm his moss coat.

(Calling back to v1 of decked out) Zedaph quickly took a liking to the chill DM and it seems to be mutual because Tango, usually very secretive about the citadel, started asking him to help playtest the different features he wants to add to the dungeon. They've spent many an afternoon sharing notes on how to tweak the "animatronics" Tango's using as enemies to make them feel more real while also allowing players to sometimes get out of the basement unscathed.

The first time Bdubs properly met Tango was one of those weird moments where the Pass n Gas' register got suddenly crowded. It wasn't the first time Etho had dragged his green friend to hang out at the outskirts with the old fisherman, but it was the first time he'd seen the blond man with big red glasses and a poofy coat come out of the 'employees only' door, ttrpg books balancing on top of the boxes he was helping move. And the rest is history.

Might have many more Thoughts(tm) abt your au but rn the Create brainrot is winning and I can't get a paragraph out that doesn't involve Tango, Zedaph, Scar, Bdubs o Keralis (but mostly Tango bcs I'm a nerd and I love his whole concept)

Putting you on blast, Shadow-formerly-known-as-Anon

I love that idea though, Tango just grabbing the most ominous guys he can find and asking if they wanna play DnD. Even better if he’s just completely oblivious to the weirdness of it all.

Also adds a nice bit of slice-of-life to the town too! Despite all its eccentricities, there are many who still consider Hermit’s Hollow home.

#hermits hollow au

[refined-narvin-appreciator]

Some Doctor Who RPG Homebrew

TLDR: TARDIS Stuff, and Humanoid TARDISes

So one of the things I really liked about Doctor Who RPG 1st edition was being able to create a TARDIS with the rules in the Time Traveller's companion.

The level of customisability and the like was a bit lost in 2e, as TARDISes were made with the same system as your run-of-the-mill time machine, so I decided to write up an alternative homebrew system that's based on the 1e rules that basically models TARDISes as NPCS. I also chucked in rules for playing humanoid TARDISes, which is actually shockingly achievable in 2e if you're willing to forgoe a lot of the more powerful aspects of being a ship.

Full creation rules below the cut

Step 1 - Choose a Template 

TARDISes are constantly being improved upon and designed, currently almost 130 “types” of TARDIS exist. Talk with your GM about the kind of TARDIS that’s allowed, and pick from the following list of templates

Ancient TARDIS (Types 1-30)

An old, wise ship, with millennia of experience. It may be a little run down, out of date, and hell it’s a surprise it can even fly - but it’s yours.

Attribute Points: 16

Skill Points: 20

Distinctions: Ancient TARDIS (+Telepathy, +Vortex, -Barely Functioning), Chameleon Circuit (+Shapeshift, -Fragile System, prone to breaking). 

Story Points: 10

Decommissioned TARDIS (Types 31-60)

A ship found decaying in an old repair bay, quadrigger station, or only used as an academy training ship. A decommissioned TARDIS can be bothersome and a bit old.

Attribute Points: 18 

Skill Points: 18

Distinctions: Decommissioned TARDIS (+Telepathy, +Invulnerable, +Vortex, -a flaw of your choosing), Chameleon Circuit. 

Story Points: 15

Modern TARDIS (Types 61-90)

Top of the line, but not as experienced as other ships, a modern TARDIS is strictly monitored and hard to come by. Modern TARDISes tend to be quite argumentative, and stubborn - they are quite young after all. 

Attribute Points: 20

Skill Points: 16

Distinctions: Modern TARDIS (+Telepathy, +Invulnerable, +Vortex, -Flaw of Your Choice), Chameleon Circuit. 

Story Points: 20

Battle TARDIS (Types 91-101)

Born for war, the battle TARDIS is a heavily armed time ship designed to be deployed en masse. Some are even equipped with the ability to remove entire planets from the timeline

Attribute Points: 22

Skill Points: 14

Distinctions: Battle TARDIS (+Telepathy, +Invulnerable, +Vortex, -flaw of choice), Chameleon Circuit, Armed (+Carries shipscale 4/L/L weapons, -personality is impulsive and battle-ready)

Story Points: 25

Humanoid TARDIS (Types 102-106+)

TARDISes with the ability to take on a humanoid shape, walking, and talking with their operator. These ships are very rare and still experimental. Humanoid TARDISes are made as player characters (although they may be an NPC), with the Humanoid TARDIS distinction. This distinction gives them the ability to travel through the Vortex, and Shapeshift. However, it comes with the drawback that they are incredibly sensitive to temporal distortion, and can often become seriously ill in their presence.

Step 2 - Concept and Focus

Now you have your TARDIS template, decide its concept (e.g. Ancient Timeship, Stolen Training Craft, Traumatised War Machine), and its focus (e.g exploration, battle, survival, knowledge).

Step 3 - Distribute Attribute and Skill Points

TARDISes are varied and unique individuals, so distribute the attribute and skill points that you see fit. TARDISes, particularly older models, may have very high knowledge skills, whereas younger models may have a more physical distribution. The TARDIS skills are used when the TARDISes sentience decides to pilot itself, or in symbiotic operation as described in the Time Traveller’s Companion.

Step 4 - Experiences

Like player characters, TARDISes learn and grow from their past. Decide one experience that your TARDIS has before the start of the game. 

Step 5 - Distinctions

A TARDIS template comes with a number of prepackaged distinctions (with its story points already including their cost), however each ship can be further customised. Perhaps they have a cloaking device, or a weapon that can remove things from the timeline, etc. 

Each Distinction costs another 2 story points, as a PC. PCs may further customise the individual distinctions working with the GM, I’m not the boss of you.

You may wish for a system to be significantly ‘broken’ and for the distinction to be lost, like the Chameleon circuit. This increases the number of story points a TARDIS has by 2, and fixing the system would involve purchasing the distinction with XP, and then reducing the number of story points again. Damage to an individual system within the main TARDIS distinction might instead be represented by an appropriate flaw. 

Step 6 - Finishing Touches

Decide what your TARDIS’s interior dimension looks like, if there are any particular rooms of note (each player may want to decide on 1 or more room to add), and you’re done. 

#dwrpg #doctor who #ttrpg #homebrew #house rules

[dailyadventureprompts]

do you have any advice for running and/or adapting prewritten modules?

DM Tip: Coloring outside the lines. 

A piece of advice that’s vitally important for DMs, especially newer DMs to recognize is that presenting our party with a fleshed out, vibrant world is a magic trick mostly reliant on us having enough easily adaptable world-pieces laying around. It’s a matter of building the track as they go, and though modules provide a box full of pre-selected track pieces that can be useful building that backlog, the process is still reliant on YOU to fill in the blank space and account for the odd directions your party might end up in. 

As such, it’s important for us to look at modules not as a recipe that must be followed to have a good time, but as a concentrated dollop of inspiration/jumping off point upon which we can create our own adventures. There’s a similar philosophy behind my own adventure prompts, as I seldom expect people to be able to use them 1:1. Even I have to adjust things and change details when turning a series of individual prompts into the material of a campaign. 

The first step when you’re thinking of adapting an existing work  (whether it be a module or a narrative you want to turn into an adventure)  is to ask yourself and your players if this is the right fit for what they want to play.  There’s no point in adapting an adventure focused around a heist if your party wants to be out exploring the wilderness, and there’s no point in adapting a wilderness exploration adventure if your party wants to do a political thriller/urban mystery.  Just like with creating a homebrew campaign, you want to match the story to the expectations of your players. Trying to build a machine without knowing what it’s for is an exercise in frustration, as is trying to build a story without knowing the general direction you want it to be going.  

Next is to read the work back to front, making notes as you go, specifically looking for: 

Interesting ways the narrative could spin off from this, and what adventures might occur if your party make different decisions than what the story allows. 

What emotional work you need to build into the party’s backstory/previous adventures/to have them make the decisions you NEED them to. 

What happens if the party fail at each major step of the journey. 

Ways you think you could do X thing better. 

After you’re done with that, read another work with similar themes/subject matter with an eye of salvaging it for ideas to improve the first. Most modules have a direct path in mind with a few major branching points. What you want is raw material for when your party zigs when the original writers expected them to zag, as well as extraneous details that can make otherwise thin plot beats into sturdy pillars of your story. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve averted disaster or disinterest in my games by importing an npc or worldbuilding detail from something I’d recently read/watched into a narrative I’d thought was fully planned out but was just failing to fire

Finally, sit down with a notebook and try writing out the adventure step by step. Any time you get fuzzy on the details, it means you haven’t internalized the story you want to tell, and would end up running things by the book. This isn’t bad necessarily, but it’s the difference between a musician who has to go slow and follow along with the sheet music vs one who’s practiced enough to be confident in their performance. Recreating it like this might also let you see narrative potential that wasn’t necessarily evident in your first attempts.

Art

#dm tip #dm tips #dm starterpack

[wearykatie]

The Journey Into the Wild Beyond - Introduction

In 2023, I ran my first full D&D campaign. K, a forever DM and the DM of three campaigns I play in, asked if I would be willing to run The Wild Beyond the Witchlight in place of one of those campaigns for a little while. The normal campaign is one we call Royal Flush, a 5th Edition D&D campaign set in a homebrew world where I play a Gunslinger Fighter who is an assassin for a holy order in the Erathis faith. 

She’s actually really well-adjusted.

K needed a break from Royal Flush, and the current storyline allowed for that because we were visiting a town called Magewood that was hosting a coronation at the same time the Witchlight Carnival was in town. My character, Ana’leth Firebrook was following up on a lead and was conflicted because her younger sister was going to the Magewood Academy. She tries to keep her work life and home life separate, you see. 

The pitch was simple: I would run Witchlight from the book, but tie it into the Royal Flush setting and K would be playing Elora Firebrook, aforementioned younger sister to my character. I would be running the game for five players: K and the Royal Flush players who would be playing new characters created specifically for this campaign. Our sixth player is on a hiatus for the game and wouldn’t be able to make this one either, but provided me with an NPC I could use.

I’d run games before. Typically one-shots or two-shots. A few months later in June, I would go on vacation with another of my D&D groups to play in person for the first time and run a one-shot there too. This would be my first long form campaign. Now, I figured K would want a few months break from Royal Flush but they and the rest of the group wouldn’t want to spend too much time away from our main game, so I’d run an abbreviated version of Witchlight. 

I mean, it’s one campaign, Michael. What could it take? Ten sessions? 

What Do You Mean Five Chapters?

So right away, I knew I was going to be making some changes to the campaign to get it to fit neatly into the setting and continuity of Royal Flush. I also like to make personal stories. I want to give player characters a reason for being there. Luckily, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight has a plot hook perfect for that: Lost Things

The basic premise is that the player characters all visited the Witchlight Carnival at some point in their past and snuck in without buying a ticket. Unbeknownst to them, doing so leaves you open to being stolen from by agents of the Hourglass Coven, three hags who pull the strings of the carnival. Now because these are hags and this is fey magic, it’s not as simple as getting your coin purse stolen. The things stolen could be nebulous concepts like a sense of direction, a sense of time, or even a name. The players are drawn back to the carnival some years later to find what they’ve lost and that’s where the game picks up. 

I had my players, now I had to get them to create their characters. Since we already had one in the form of 15 year old academy student Elora, I decided to give them the prompt that all of their characters were students at the academy, and they could be of various ages, but teens to young adults were preferred, though given that some races age differently, the equivalent of teens would also work. Now let’s meet our player characters. 

Elora Firebrook - 15 year old female half-elf Alchemist Artificer who lost a cherished stuffed animal. 

Rhin - 8 year old female goblin Death Cleric who lost her artistic creativity. 

Bjartur “Artie” Folur-Alfur - 75 year old male pallid elf Circle of Spores Druid who lost his sense of direction.

Hakewood - 18 year old male human Divination Wizard with a cool hat who lost his name.

Irlyhime “Early” Mystan - 17 year old female silver dragonborn Eldritch Knight Fighter who lost her sense of time.

When it came to the missing things, I wanted them to have a larger impact than what was described in the book. I think it gives an excellent start with a table you can roll on for your missing thing or pick your own, but I wanted to go deeper than the surface description. What does losing these things do to a person? How does it impact their life? 

Strangely, the easiest to start with was Hakewood. He only had his last name, he didn’t know his first. It wasn’t a simple matter of forgetting the name and replacing it with another, the entire concept of the young man having a first name was lost to him. I described his entry papers for the academy either having ink spilled over the first name or no first name field existing on the paper at all. Early on, the rest of the party would try to recall his name and couldn’t, so they tried giving him one but nothing came to mind. Hakewood was just Hakewood, even to his family. 

Rhin lived in a world of muted colors and rote tasks. She liked the newest season of the Simpsons, water without any ice, and dirt. Her only passion was for dead things, and Death Cleric kind of lent itself to ‘goth’ anyway. She was a loner, people thought she was weird, and she had long bangs that covered her eyes.

Artie couldn’t tell North from South. He got lost often, he’d forget where he came from and where he was going, and he required a sort of service animal to get to his classes. This service animal took the form of a white furred fox named Little Friend. Artie wasn’t just physically directionless, he’d also have trouble finding a path in life. 

Early was another that sounded simple at first. She’d lose track of time often, never knew what time of day it was, and couldn’t tell you how old she was if she didn’t have it written down. Seconds could seem like hours, days like minutes, weeks like years. She also didn’t know how long she had been at the academy, nor did anyone else. Some thought she’d always been there. She worried that if she got her sense of time back, she’d find out she was much older than she appeared and possibly become old age, or even die.

So with all of those lost things being so existential, why did K pick a stuffed animal for Elora? Well, they didn’t. I picked it for them.

Picking on the DM

Maybe it’s just me, but when my forever DM friend asks me to run a campaign they can play in, I feel an obligation to make the experience as memorable for them as possible. And since they were playing the little sister of my character from their game, I felt an intense obligation to pick on them.

I was already taking creative liberties with the Witchlight story, so I asked for permission to take some liberties with Royal Flush canon. I wanted to be vague, but because of a certain thing, I had to show my hand on one thing. K basically gave me free reign to do whatever, knowing that I wouldn’t do anything too drastic. 

So I killed Ana’leth. 

This made no sense because we would be continuing Royal Flush after Witchlight, and where we left off, there was no way Ana’leth could be dead. However, the morning of the Witchlight Carnival, Elora got a letter from her sister’s temple. She knew what this letter was. She was warned this letter might come someday. This was likely a letter informing her that her sister fell in battle. So Elora had a lot on her mind, but she was afraid to open the letter, so she went to the carnival with the letter in her pocket.

She didn’t remember the stuffed animal. She knew she’d lost something, but she didn’t know what it was. But she would learn the importance of it soon enough, because that stuffed animal was the last gift her older sister gave her before she left home for training when Elora was only five years old.

This would be an ongoing thread through the game that would take a few twists and turns and not really have a payoff until Chapter 4. We’ll get there. 

We’ve got the setting, we’ve got the players, now we need a story. Not just a story, an epic story. What’s the difference?

Presentation! 

Luckily for me, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight has a good story already, and because most of it takes place in a little pocket of the Feywild, I didn’t have to make too many changes to get it to fit into the Royal Flush canon. 

The Witchlight Carnival travels around the multiverse, offering fun, games, and prizes. It’s also closely linked to a Domain of Delight in the Feywild called Prismeer. I love fey myths and depictions in fiction. All of it from the cute and whimsical to the horror-themed stuff, and Witchlight offers a little bit of everything. The main villains are the Hourglass Coven who have taken over Prismeer by overthrowing its ruler, the archfey Zybilna.

The Hourglass Coven would be easy. Not many changes there. I divided the Lost Things up between the hags, then read up on their personal domains, personalities, and abilities. They consist of toad-like swamp hag Bavlorna Blightstraw, the doll-like Skabatha Nightshade, and the skeletal four-armed theater hag Endelyn Moongrave. 

The first major change I made was actually regarding Zybilna. This is where the major spoilers come in, so this is your final warning for that. Zybilna has a long and storied past full of different identities. This plays heavily into who she is, her motives, and will influence how the party feels about her. 

Much of this doesn’t really come out until Chapter 5 where the party is supposed to go through Zybilna’s palace learning about her past to eventually free her. We’ll get to Chapter 5 and my thoughts on how the book presents Zybilna, but I wanted to weave more hints about Zybilna’s true nature earlier in the story to make the party question whether she was good for Prismeer or not. I also wanted them to put together the mystery of her identity on their own rather than just being told near the end of the game. 

The other major component of my campaign was giving the players a choice about how they dealt with the world. Witchlight is absolutely a campaign you can murder your way through or go for a full pacifist route. I wanted my players to have that option clearly presented from the start, especially because they were playing young students and not adventurers. 

The campaign that followed surprised me. Not just in how much it challenged me creatively, but in how my players interacted with the world. We had many laughs and shed many tears along the way, and it’s an experience I’ll be thinking about for years to come.

#The Wild Beyond the Witchlight #D&D #d&d 5e #Journey Into the Wild Beyond #DM #GM

[dungeonmalcontent]

So, I'd like to showcase a few things that I've put on DMsGuild because there's a whole lot more now.

I want to start off with Grimdark & Dangerous. Follower turnover is pretty high on Tumblr, and people go inactive pretty quick. So many people that see this will not be familiar with G&D. It was a huge project for me and I am very proud of it.

Grimdark & Dangerous is a 5e d&d homebrew book available for purchase on DMsGuild for $19.99. It comes as a PDF (for now) and is 159 pages of content geared towards gritty aesthetics. You can follow this link to see my full post on the book or the DMsGuild page here. It has a lot of content and is more than worth the price tag.

While G&D is my biggest item on DMsGuild, I have a nice handful of middle sized docs as well. These are mostly pay what you want (PWYW) titles and quite old. They are also more prone to errors and unintelligible text (where I just started writing and went into a stupor and created something I no longer fully understand).

+ Ancient Artifice Primer for Modern Practitioners (PWYW) - A magic item crafting system which can allow players to create magic items with some degree of value based balancing. It doesn't cover as much as it should in my opinion and is one of those unintelligible texts. However, I do still appreciate my very limited world-building of early runic magic and early graphic design work.

+ Better Backgrounds: 5e Character Building Alternative (PWYW) - A short book on how players can build characters without relying on race based ability score increases. I built on this premise in Grimdark & Dangerous and I'm still quite proud of how I did it in Better Backgrounds. This is a much rougher document than G&D and the writing has a handful of errors, but still decent.

+ The Inheritor: An Artifact and Exploration Class (PWYW) - A homebrew class option. I always say that if you want to play in a game and have a strong connection to the setting, run vestiges (Critical Role), or have a complex backstory this is the class for you. Inheritor characters come with a prebuilt artifact which functions as a growing magic item. You get to customize the item and there is a lot of variability to what your item can do (also includes a modular builder if you aren't very creative). Still pretty proud of this.

+ Mystic Revised (PWYW) - A full remake of the mystic UA class using my own opinions of what it should be. It's based, roughly, on the Nen system in Hunter x Hunter. It's a pretty fun class, but is not very mystic/psionic-y.

+ An Outcast's Notes on the Plane of Pensos - A Planar Adventure Setting for 5e (PWYW) - Don't pay money for this one unless you really genuinely love it. It's an outline and not worth much (IMO). Technically, it can't really even be sold on DMsGuild because it constitutes a homebrew setting (which they don't allow). I created it because I ran (and still do run) this setting and figured it could be a fun thing to share.

+ Plague Pestilence Parasite (PWYW) - A disease book that introduces new mechanics for how contagious diseases spread and how they can be integrated into 5e adventure settings. It also includes a handful of new diseases of varying danger (not all of which are actually threats to player characters). Still a decent book, though I now recognize it lacks some clear writing and has a handful of errors (I may come back and redo this book at some point).

+ Plague Pestilence Parasite: Avolakia Overrun (PWYW) - I don't think I'm really fit to write actual adventure modules, and this book is why. It is an adventure module written to use the rules in Plague Pestilence Parasite. It is still technically an open beta test. It's not unplayable, but I don't think it represents an adventure that players would latch on to (feel free to prove me wrong).

+ The Emissary: An Extraplanar Class (PWYW) - One of my first docs. It's a homebrew class heavily inspired by the Fate/Stay series (has nothing to do with any of the core themes/tropes/abilities of any Fate title) and is actually way more fun than it may sound. The premise: you get a little pocket dimension to store things in and it gives you a variety of powers (the ability to make a little nature preserve, become an auto-crafter, or be Gilgamesh in UBW and launch items at people).

Then there are smaller docs. These are moderately more expensive than most of my short docs (will list those later) but have a significant amount more content than my short docs. These are more recent docs and I generally have higher opinions of them because I was more skilled when I made them.

+ Grimdark Puzzles ($5) - An extension of the themes present in Grimdark & Dangerous. This document contains three (technically 5-6 depending on how you think about it) puzzles that present unique puzzles with dark aesthetics. I really like this doc.

+ From the Dwarven Vault ($1.50) - An item collection themed for dwarven cultures. This does rely a lot on dwarven stereotypes in fantasy, but I did get to bring in some fun things (like burial armor and the DUBA) that I think most people would really appreciate having in their games for lore and aesthetics. Also includes some content for rune carving.

+ From the Elven Vault ($1.50) - Like FTDV, this is a collection of items themed for elves. However, this one is a bit different. While Dwarves are smiths and warriors, elves are crafters. Not just of metal, but most mediums and particularly with mediums that take a great deal of time. If you like crafting in campaigns (if artificer is your favorite class), you want to take a look here because I added in crystal singing and there are three new sets of artisan's tools.

+ Lich Minions: A Lair Building Guide ($2.50) - I really liked making this doc and I am very happy with it. This is a guide for making lairs when your BBEG is a lich. It includes a variety of undead themed minions and how they fit into a lich's minion hierarchy. Each minion has some unique difference from their generic variety or are outright unique, they all have stat blocks. This is a really good resource if you want to do a short dungeon run campaign or a siege campaign. I plan on making more docs like this and I really enjoy this format.

Finally, I have my short docs (there's a lot of these). For simplicity I'll break these into two sub-categories: "Encounter With" and "Subclass".

The “encounter with” docs are short docs that include information on a unique or updated monster, a specific NPC, or a type of NPC. Each is given a stat block, has an outline of what kind of hazards are in the same area as this creature, and lists what kind of loot you might be able to gather from encountering this monster. These encounters include:

+ Archchancellor Ensiid

+ Dracolich Gollryn

+ The Athach

+ The Beholdra

+ The Boom Goblin

+ The Chaos Beast

+ The Destrachan

+ The Drow Paleweaver

+ The Introspective Terror

+ The Lifeblood Magus

+ The Musclemancer

+ The Non-Phaneron Beast (note the cover of this doc is intentional, as the beast does not have a visible form)

+ The Pale Widow

+ The Silkscale Coiler

+ The Soliptic Nightmare

+ The Sunken Effigy

+ The Venomous Plesiodrake

+ The Werewolf Lord

(I feel like I'm missing one...). All encounters have a $0.50 or $0.75 price tag depending on if the encounter features an original or converted stat block.

The subclasses are just that, subclass docs. I really love making subclasses and I try not to burn out on them because I have so many subclass WIPs I want to do. These subclasses include:

+ Druid: Circle of the Grove (Plant druid. Why doesn't this exist already?)

+ Druid: Circle of Witchcraft (Discworld witches, love this one)

+ Fighter: Blade Drifter (I just want to link a song from the Sonic Riders franchise here, but they're all so corny)

+ Ranger: Hell Skulker (nine hells/abyss ranger, also really like this one)

+ Warlock: The Greatwyrm (DRAGON PATRON! Why doesn't this exist already?)

These subclasses all have a $0.75 price tag. I will probably be making a lot more of these, they just take a bit longer than the encounter docs.

#d&d #dnd #homebrew #dungeons and dragons #5e #ttrpg #fantasy #grimdark & dangerous #writing #masterlist