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obby98 · 2 years

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We open this chapter in a monochrome town. Mainstreet is twenty-two buildings, population is more ghostly than spirited. Traveling players enter from the old road; the only road through this worn, quaint, straight, break of the bend.

The players may find themselves awakened by the clanking of keys against the cell bars of a drunk tank. Or by the bustling of the innkeeper through the hall outside the door of their room. One could have simply spent their night in the wagon at the expense of their back rather than their coin. But not long after would the rest of the town be awakened by the screams of parents in utter disbelief. The child you remember seeing entering the town covered in soil by the alley, searching for something to eat that week. The barber's daughter that was painting flowers on the rail, and every single other child in the town are (in their stead), scarecrows with dirty patched versions of their dressings. A father woke to find a stick filled, copy of his son mid eating porridge at the table. A mother finds a leaf bound impression of her baby daughter in the crib.

The road leading to the square erased from beyond the town line. The fields overgrown, and overrun by the birds of the air. The earliest field hands bound to posts. Their skin missing, and their spirits in addition.

A once quiet town now in uproar, made up of few voices. The few sounding like many. The travelers now resident by circumstance. The residents now lost without homes. Merely left their buildings.

And at nightfall, all will see the children again. And again... and again... once the sun sets, the scarecrows rise. The wolves howl, the hounds whimper, and the dead rustle, the remaining cry...

What has caused this to happen? What has been done for them to deserve this? Perhaps the sins of the town? Perhaps the blood spilt long ago? Perhaps the devils are due for what the travelers have brought with them? But two things are true, blood has been spilt, and more is owed.

The streams have all become rapid. the fog fills the land outside the square. The sun only shows the time left, and no longer provides the warmth it once did.

This is the town where some hearts stopped beating, and where simply all hearts stopped.

And every heart that stops, is another one of them; only to be seen again,.. and again,..

The scarecrows are reaping. A 5e idea

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corbinite · 8 months

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Not me taking inspiration from fucking unbreakable kimmy schmidt when planning ttrpg villains

#mine #in which I am cringe #I wanna get into running stuff in other settings and like adapting modules and stuff #I don't expect it to be less work but I think it could at least be less of a barrier to things being finished #still wanna maintain my own campaign world but I wanna start pulling from other stuff soon #and having diversions into entirely different stories #I wanna run some ravenloft/domains of dread campaigns #and I just think it would be so fun to run Ivana Boritsi in a way modeled after Dierdre Robespierre #she was the other rich wife who Jaqueline was in competition with #who got like Really Intense about it and kind of obsessive #all 'this will be my greatest challenge you might be the one to actually take me down'#tina fey writes a lot of misses but the Robespierre arc was such a vibe #if you read through the Boritsi's description in the guide to ravenloft you can see where I'm coming from #she's written as being extremely skilled at subterfuge and intrigue but also being very bored of it #and I feel like if I ran a campaign of courtly intrigue in that setting and had a pc or party who stood to threaten her position #she'd probably end up absolutely relishing in it and might even have the same reaction to being defeated that Robespierre did in UKS

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darkblessed · 1 year

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HOOTING ABOUT RAVENLOFT MUSES

#ive been in three ravenloft campaigns and have one of my own planned. this setting has me in a fucking vice grip.#always gloomy in barovia / ooc.

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thefruitypebblescastleoftorment · 3 months

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"What's the name of that village in Barovia?"

"Barovia."

"Yes, what's the name of that village in it?"

"The village of Barovia."

"I know it's of Barovia, I'm asking what it's called! Forget it, I'll look it up later. Just tell me what the campaign setting is called. You know, the gothic horror one with that spooky castle."

"Ravenloft?"

"I know the name of the castle, I need to know the campaign setting!"

"It's Ravenloft, Barovia is in Ravenloft."

"Don't be ridiculous, a whole country can't be inside a castle! Surely you mean that Ravenloft is in Barovia."

"Yes, Ravenloft is in Barovia, near Barovia."

"What?"

"You're confused, let me explain. Barovia isn't in Ravenloft, it's in Ravenloft. Ravenloft is in Ravenloft, Barovia is in Barovia, Ravenloft is in Barovia, and Barovia is in Ravenloft. I hope that clears things up."

#curse of strahd #strahd talking to adventurers he's just lured into the mists

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thechekhov · 5 months

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Hello! Just wanted to say I love all your content but I wanted to ask if you had any advice/tips for running curse of strahd? I'm working on getting ready to run it with some friends/my partner and while I've run a fair amount of homebrew stuff this is my real first attempt at a legit module so I was curious if you could share anything since I believe you also are running/had run that module as well?

Thanks for asking! This is a very fun question!

I have indeed run Curse of Strahd. It was my first foray into long-term DMing and my team and I finished that campaign a little under a year ago. It was awesome, and I'm always excited to talk about it. Curse of Strahd had be a great game if everyone is on the same page!

First of all, I'm gonna say

Having Experience with Homebrew will be a huge boon

When I ran CoS, I followed the actual module about... 60% of the time. It was good... as a baseline/blueprint. But the reality is that I changed up a lot of the details. Either because I didn't like the vibes of the story, or because the plot points were antithetical to my team's goals. I changed up an entire floor of Ravenloft. I threw away a whole storyline for a major NPC because I felt it was too boring.

I think most people who run Curse of Strahd do this, actually. I've heard countless tales of how others Homebrewed their own meat onto the skeleton, and still came out of the campaign with an awesome, Strahd flavored experience. So don't worry about that part.

Here's my advice:

1. Everyone should vibe with what Strahd IS as a game.

Strahd can be a lot of things - you can Homebrew your own motivations into him, or make him a her, or change the history of his castle if need be. But if there's one thing Curse of Strahd is... it is DARK.

The Venn Diagram of Parties Who Understand That Suffering Can Be Fun To Roleplay and Parties Who Had A Good Time Doing CoS is probably a circle. You cannot do this adventure with a group of people who just want to hit monsters a whole bunch. It's an inherently 'oh my god this SUCKS' adventure. That's the main theme. Your players need to be able to enjoy that sort of game, otherwise they will just be miserable.

One of my players, upon arriving in Barovia, immediately said 'I hate it here' and then continued to say it for the rest of the campaign. That is kind of the catchphrase of CoS. Your players need to be comfortable with that sort of bleak horror and overall misery. It makes the end and the potential to finally end Strahd worth it.

That being said, Strahd can also just be... a lot. It has death and torture and psychological horror in there. KIDS DIE. Please discuss this stuff with your table, and remove elements if they guarantee a bad experience for everyone!

(Yes, you can trim down some of the viscera if you need to, that's fine. But keep in mind it will still be tragic. It SHOULD still be tragic. I set some boundaries for myself, but I also killed a whole town in an avalanche. It happened to be the only town my players had grown to like. It was a dick move. It was exactly what you would expect to happen.)

2. Read ahead - A LOT AHEAD.

For a self-contained world, Barovia isn't actually that big. It's a very small map, compared to some that span continents. That means you have the ability to flesh it out, as it were.

To add to that... some areas are... severely underdeveloped plot-wise. Sometimes there are places your players will go where it FEELS like it should link up to another point in the game but it just... doesn't. There is room to expand there. Use your Homebrew skills to connect the dots that the module doesn't!

I greatly recommend taking the time to either read through the whole adventure OR listen through some video-essays. There IS some cool stuff that comes in in the later game that you can grab and put down breadcrumbs for from day one. Or add to your own story twists.

My recommended resource for this is the Curse of Strahd DM's Guide video series.

...and to that end...

3. Start living in Ravenloft Castle WAY before your players get there.

Listen..........listen. look.

Look at this, and suffer as all GMs have suffered.

Castle Ravenloft is unarguably the biggest, stupidest, most architecturally ludicrous hurdle when it comes to GMing CoS. And I am here to tell you - IT IS DOABLE.

You can understand the castle, you can grow comfortable with it. But you need to start early. Hell, I think I began to set up Ravenloft maps before my players even knew it existed. Then I stopped, because I was scared.. but then I went back, and I.... roleplayed SOLO on my off-days! I set up little scenes between Strahd and others and imagined him setting traps, and doing other things. It helped me understand which staircase led to where, and what floors were accessible from which angles.

A part of me actually thinks that there should be a mini GMs-only class where a more experienced Strahd GM takes some time with other GMs to guide them through a map of the castle. A CoS Learning Oneshot, if you will.

There's also a LOT of talented mapmakers that create beautiful, digital CoS maps! Here's one:

Even if you are playing analogue, at a physical table, I greatly encourage you to check it out for reference. The official CoS maps are bleak and a little bit more... rustic? Than they are gothic.

Anyway, in order to avoid talking your ear off, I will end it here.

My last bit of advice is... to have fun!

Yes I know I just said that Strahd is an inherently bad-vibes game. But it's actually GOOD to let your players goof off now and then. Don't be afraid to let them do shenanigans. It builds character, and allows them to regain the energy they need to role-play properly heavy elements later.

My group did a whole bunch of funny stuff. They felt so bad about losing Ireena that when they saw Ismark, instead of explaining themselves to him they cast Darkness and tried to scramble away. There was a running joke that the cleric was too good to know about sex, so they used the euphemism 'play cards' around her, much to everyone's amusement. They got kicked by a walking house once and never forgot nor forgave. And finally, they defeated some Flame Skulls by putting them into a bag of holding.

Anyway, the point is... have fun! I wish you and your party the best of luck. :)

#chekhov answers #curse of strahd #cos #ttrpg #dnd #5e #d&d #cos 5e

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springautumn · 1 year

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Hallways

Pairing: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

Summary: Eddie was expecting the usual scorn from Hawkins High but he was not expecting his very own guardian angel.

Warnings: none (I think?)

AN: I told @munsons-maiden that I was posting some stuff a whole month ago and I only just now found the guts to do it but I did it!

It should’ve been a good day.

It was very rare that Eddie woke up optimistic, ready to brave the hell that is Hawkins High if it meant seeing the beloved members of the Hellfire club and presenting the ending to his campaign that he worked on for three nights in a row. Imagining their excitement and inevitable frustration was enough to bring a wide smile to his lips, a giddy step in his gate as he entered the school.

Like he thought, it should have been a good day.

Eddie stopped in his tracks, standing in the hallway as his excitement instantly vanished, shoulders drooping an inch when he set his sight on his locker.

‘FREAK.’ Painted in bold red letters, surrounded by various satanic symbols.

He could hear the bolstering laughs of Jason and his crew a mile away. He could feel the stares around him- some amused, some anxious as they awaited his response.

Eddie clenched his jaw at the sight, his lips set in a tight grimace, umber eyes ablaze with fury. He was used to this sort of stuff for as long as he could remember, but he wouldn’t deny that he was tired of the snide remarks, the glares and the whispers behind his back that continued well into his third senior year. All the more reason to use it against them, right?

He forced the lump in his throat down before it could get any bigger and closed his eyes for a split second, forcing his mind to flood with the thoughts of the boys navigating through his excellent campaign in Ravenloft. Boy, they're gonna be pissed when they find their way blocked by the Boneless in the end.

Eddie was only stood there for half a minute, but his thoughts was enough for a cheeky smile to grow, the usual twinkle of mischief returning to his eyes as he paid the hurtful graffiti no paid, humming under his breath while he opened his locker to shift for the old marker he knew he threw in there. Letting out a small exclamation of triumph, Eddie closed his locker, his tongue poking out in between his lips as he got to work. He casually threw the marker over his shoulder before making his way to the cafeteria, smirking at the bewildered stares of everyone around him.

“Did he just add devil horns to that?”

The campaign was going to be a major hit. Well, it will be once he can find the damn dice.

Eddie rummaged through his papers and the set-up on the table, letting out a string of curses under his breath at the lack of dice. He stood straight, with his hands on his hips, letting out a defeated sigh. He would have to go all the way to his van, meaning that he will inevitably pass his locker. Fuck it.

He wasn't going to let those mouth-breathers ruin the adventure he spent three weeks building.

Back in the empty hallway, Eddie rounded the corner to find himself once again freezing in his tracks at the sight of his locker, his eyebrows rising in surprise. There you stood, furiously scrubbing at the red marking with a wet rag.

Eddie quickly shrank back into the shadows of the hallway when you turned to replace the now pink and rumpled rag with a fresh wet cloth, hiding in the corner he just turned from. You continued to mop up the graffiti, brows knitted together in focus as the music played through the headphones connected to your Walkman.

Eddie scratched the back of his neck, head cocked to one side as he watched you, his eyes quizzically moving back and forth over your form. He couldn’t figure out your angle– were you cleaning up his locker as a form of punishment or was it so you had enough room to vandalize his locker even more?

He remembered you from back when he was a junior—you were a grade below him, just starting out in the art club as the artist delegated to designing the logo for each school club, even the slogan for the school newspaper. He had designed a new insignia for the Hellfire Club- the very one he printed on the t-shirts- and approached you for the official design. The interactions he had with you were limited but the design looked way more skilled than his rough drawing—the details and colours blew his mind. He never got a chance to thank you, barely seeing you for the rest of the school year. Until now.

You continued to mop the paint until you could barely see what was on there. You then reached into your rucksack, letting out a small huff in triumph when you found your spray can, the beige colour not quite matching the colour of the lockers, but it was close enough to cover the faded red drawings.

Stepping back, you relaxed your shoulders when you finished, the locker looking good as new- no trace of the stupid drawings in sight. You wiped your hands over your jeans, a small smile lingering on your lips. You couldn’t stop the jocks from being assholes, but you could undo their work.

You shoved your belongings back into your rucksack, taking hurried steps out of the building, unaware of chocolate brown eyes lingering on your retreating form. Eddie retreated from his hiding spot and towards his locker, letting out a small huff in disbelief as a shaky smile slowly formed at your work.

You never liked spending time in the cafeteria. It was too crowded for your liking and the noises clouding your head, every sound like a microphone on full blast. You preferred the quiet; it gave you the peace you needed to work on your sketches without the paranoia of people staring and judging you.

So here you were, currently sitting in the hallway, your back to your locker as you worked on your latest piece, your head bobbing along to your favourite song playing on your Walkman. The music was loud enough to drown out the echoes of any background noise.

The click of the Walkman soon played, signalling the end of the song. As you turned to find another cassette tape in your bag, a pair of scuffed Reeboks entered your line of view. Glancing up, your eyes widened when you saw Eddie standing a few steps away from you.

“Hey,” his smile was kind, so bright it drowned out the sun.

“Hey,” you replied, nervously lifting the headphones to rest around your neck.

“You mind?” Eddie asked, gesturing to the space besides you.

You nodded, shifting towards the side as Eddie sat beside you, leaving a small gap in between, but still close enough you could feel the warmth radiating from him.

“Y/N, right? I gave you my Hellfire sketch last year.”

“Ye-yeah. I remember,” you replied, biting your lip. You were surprised he remembered you; it had been years since you met . “It looked pretty cool.”

“Pssht, it was nothing compared to your brilliant design,” he shot you a small smile.

You smiled bashfully, looking down to avoid his gaze. You felt a jolt in the pit of your stomach, the butterflies flying haywire. Little did you know, the same thing was happening to Eddie, lips parted into an affectionate smile, fidgeting with his hands as a pang of butterflies hit him.

He tore his gaze away from you, his eyes focusing on the pencil you twirled in your free hand, your sketchbook half open in your lap. “You working on anything now?”

“Oh, um..” you hesitated, clutching your sketchbook hard in your grasp. You never showed anyone your personal drawings. It felt private to show your own art, classed as a separate hobby from what everyone else requested. What if they hated it?

Sensing your hesitation, Eddie let out a chuckle, holding up his hands briefly. “You don’t owe me anything,” he offered.

You shakily let out the breath you were holding in. You looked at him with fond eyes, grateful for his compromise. Leaning your head back on the wall, you continued to stare, observing him-- Eddie really was beautiful. His wild mane of soft tousled curls hid his face, often sticking to his strong jawline, but up close you could see his enchanting round eyes, framed by his dark lashes that brushed his cheeks as he looked down at his hands, adorned by the chunky, silver rings he never took off. He was so much better than half the guys in school; his beauty emphasised in his kindness, his humour.

Eddie continued to fidget with his hands, oblivious to your gawking. “I, uh, I actually wanted to say thanks. For cleaning my- for cleaning all that up last night,” gesturing at his locker.

Your mouth parted slightly, sitting up straighter. You didn’t know he saw that, having waited until you were sure the hallways were cleared after school to clean up the horrible graffiti.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he continued.

“Yes I did. You didn’t deserve any of that.” Shouting at him in the hallways was one thing, but this was a step too far. It irked you how everyone was against Eddie, carrying on with their hounding, yet you found yourself admiring him over the years for never retaliating against their cruelty.

Eddie ducked his head in gratitude, growing silent. You bit your lip, your eyes flitting down back to your sketchbook. Glancing back to Eddie, you took a deep breath, steeling yourself. If Eddie could be brave every day in this hellhole, you could at least bite the bullet and be brave yourself.

You opened your sketchbook, flicking through the pages until you reached the first page before you nervously handed the book over, catching Eddie’s attention as he looked at the book, and then at you with questioning eyes. You lifted the object before him with a small smile, watching nervously as Eddie took the sketchbook from you, thumbing through the pages.

Eddie was impressed beyond words. All of your drawings were incredibly detailed, complemented by the lifelike shading. Eddie chuckled when he turned the page, his fingers lightly tracing your tracing of Hawkins High, his smile reaching his eyes at the depiction of Principals Higgins as a gargoyle.

“I love it,” he beamed. “If this was mine, I’d have it framed.”

“Here,” you ripped the page out carefully, handing the sketch to him without a second thought.

Eddie’s eyes widened, glancing from the sketch in your hand to your kind eyes. “Oh no, I couldn’t.”

“I insist.”

Entranced by your smile, he slowly took the sketch from you, inkling his head in thanks. Before Eddie could continue, he was cut off by the bell ringing, causing you both to briefly look up at the ceiling. You sighed, shoulders deflating as Eddie quickly stood up, clearing his throat as he took care not to crush the paper in his hands.

“I should uh- should check on the other sheep,” Eddie uttered, taking a few steps backward as you packed up your belongings. “So, I’ll see you around?” Eddie asked nervously, biting his lip.

You looked up, your eyes scanning over Eddie as he shifted his weight from one leg to another. He was nervous; he didn’t want this to be the last time you spoke. He already missed his shot once, he wasn’t going to let it get away this time.

You broke out in a smile, immediately nodding. “I’ll be here.”

You spent lunch the next day in the same spot, this time forgoing your Walkman in hopes that Eddie would visit you again--It was a gamble well made as Eddie joined you once again. It became a regular occurrence to spend your lunch with Eddie in the hallways before he invited you to Hellfire, bragging about your skills to the other boys the day you accepted his invitation to sit at the coveted table in the cafeteria. The more time you spent with Eddie, the safer you felt in the school. And when the opportunity arose to help Eddie with his campaign, you accepted, bringing a blank sketchpad to use solely for Hellfire from then on. And true to his word, Eddie kept the drawing you gave him, framed on his bedside table.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things fanfic #my writing

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vintagerpg · 6 months

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This is Creatures of the Night: Ghosts (1997). The cool thing about ghosts is that anything can become one — something that has mostly been overlooked in D&D up to this point. There are 13 ghosts (classy!) described in this book, with full backgrounds and a short adventure that, generally, culminates with them being laid to rest. Helpfully, they are arranged in order of threat, from least to greatest. While all of these are set in Ravenloft, there is very little here conspicuously tying the spirits to that campaign setting, so you effectively have 13 scenarios you can use for any D&D campaign. One a year, every Halloween, for 13 years?

Like the vampire book, there is a good deal of creativity on display (perhaps a bit more, since this book features a larger group of contributors), making for unusual and unexpected hauntings. Some favorites: the ghost of a kid who witnessed a murder and whose fatal headwound allows his spectre to say just three words; the ghost of a werewolf, who can be both phantom man and phantom wolf; there’s also the ghost of stone giant who is possessed by another ghost, which is kind of wild. My favorite is the unfamiliar, though — the opposite of a familiar, who is called forth as an aid, this spectral black cat is an unwanted guest that brings trouble.

Nice art throughout by Mark Nelson and Michael Sutfin.

#roleplaying game #tabletop rpg #dungeons & dragons #rpg #d&d #ttrpg #Ravenloft #Children of the Night #Ghosts

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daemons-and-deathrays · 3 months

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Peering Dreams from Mists

Deep into that darkness peeringlong I stood therewondering, fearing, doubting – The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe Author’s Note: I honestly thank Gabriel from Hour of the Raven for giving me inspiration here. Otherwise, this probably wouldn’t have happened. Likewise, I’m recycling ideas from pulled 5th Edition posts as well. Continue reading Peering Dreams from Mists

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#Demiplane of Dread #gothic horror #Ravenloft #Ravenloft Campaign Setting #the real Ravenloft #body horror #intrigue

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oldschoolfrp · 7 months

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This looks like a good choice to read out loud by the light of a single candle at midnight (Ned Dameron, A Guide to Gothic Earth in TSR’s 1994 AD&D campaign expansion boxed set Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales)

#D&D #Dungeons & Dragons #Ned Dameron #Ravenloft #gothic horror #Masque of the Red Death #dnd #AD&D 2e #D&D 2e #magic tome #magic book #spellbook #cobwebs #web #Dungeons and Dragons #TSR #1990s

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dndhistory · 1 month

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433. Gary Gygax - Oriental Adventures (1985)

A book which is really heavy on the text and light on the pictures (a characteristic of Gygax penned volumes, him being a man who never saw a word he didn't like), Oriental Adventures marks an important moment in the history of AD&D for a number of reasons.

In the first place, this is the first setting and set of rules not based on the Western European fantasy imaginary, drawing its inspiration from East Asia, particularly Japan but with elements of China and Korea thrown in, this also brings new mechanics to the game some of which (non-weapon proficiencies) would become staples of the game, while others (the honor system) would be pretty specific to this setting.

In second place, this volume gives birth to Kara-Tur, a campaign setting originally imagined as being part of Greyhawk, but which was published here as an independent setting, making it the fourth official original AD&D setting after Greyhawk, Ravenloft and Dragonlance (there were some non-original settings already such as Conan and Lankhmar and a semi-official one in Imagine magazine's Pelinore). Kara-Tur wouldn't last through the end of the decade as a stand-alone setting, eventually becoming part of the Forgotten Realms, later in the decade. A really interesting volume!

#adnd #dnd #ttrpg #ad&d #d&d #dnd art #dungeons and dragons #dungeons & dragons #gary gygax

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utilitycaster · 5 months

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You've talked a bit before about genre and genre-expectations. If you have the time/inclination, could you talk a bit about what classifies something as horror? More specifically, what makes Candela Obscura fall into the category of horror?

As a bit of background: I am a Travis-level scaredy-cat, but I love the supernatural - ghost stories, monsters, superstitions. I tend to rely a lot on genre labels to help me differentiate, and media labelled "horror" is pretty generally a no go. I starting watching Candela out of curiosity because I'd heard great things about the characters in chapter two, and was fully prepared to have to nope out. Instead I found that it sat comfortably within my "supernatural" bubble of tolerance, and I absolutely loved it! Obviously a person's tolerance for what is "scary" is deeply individualistic, but its got me wondering what exactly classifies something as horror? (and whether there is other media similar to candela that I am missing out on because my genre expectations are skewed)

So...genre boundaries are all very permeable and take a on very "I'll know it when I see it" quality when you get to the edges. There's a poll about horror tolerance going around right now and I actually found it completely unusable because, for example, all three of Jordan Peele's films are considered horror, and while I consider myself also kind of skittish, I loved Get Out and Nope whereas the premise of Us fundamentally is on my personal "absolutely cannot" list. Basically: defining horror is tough (though I'll make an attempt, with the understanding that I am the most amateur and there are actual media studies folks in the fandom who might be a better bet) but also a lot of people, myself included, who consider themselves bad at "horror" often, as you say, actually have a very specific personal list of tolerances and plenty of horror is fine for them (and plenty of non-horror might not be!) Basically this is a great question and multiple people out there are writing their PhD theses attempting to answer it, and they probably have different answers, is what I'm saying. I also, in looking up horror on Wikipedia in order to see what that definition is, found that it defines the genre differently for literature vs. film. Short answer: no one fucking knows; scary shit.

I think horror is most generally works that are intended to build a sense of fear or dread, and I recall (possibly incorrectly) someone on a podcast talking about writing define the difference between a thriller and a horror movie is whether the protagonist succeeds; I'd modify that to say "whether they succeed without a great cost (thriller) or whether the price of success possibly outweighs the win (horror)."

Anyway, I do have a list of horror subgenres here that speaks the language of TTRPGs, namely Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, and I find that horror subgenres are more helpful signposts than just the "horror" label, and I suspect you may find the same as well. I'm not going to run through them all, but, for example, "Ghost Stories" and "Dark Fantasy" are two of them, and those never bothered me and it sounds like you like those! Candela covers a lot of ground - elements of body horror, gothic horror, cosmic/eldritch horror, and occult detective stories, but it is absolutely in the supernatural realm. It is worth noting that a lot of not explicitly horror shows often dip into horror and I (and possibly you) are fine with it. The CR main campaign and D&D in general absolutely has horror elements. I only watched the Nine and Ten seasons of modern-era Doctor Who but that absolutely has episodes that are basically straight up horror (Midnight? Silence in the Library? Don't Blink? Even though, famously, everyone lives in that one set during WWII, the "are you my mummy" line is chilling.) Again: genre/subgenre lines are very permeable and hard to use as signposts.

What has been most helpful to me in finding horror works I can personally enjoy is understanding what I can't do. I don't mind blood and gore but I don't want that to be the point (I don't think I'm so much upset by slasher films so much as don't enjoy them) and I don't want to watch torture porn (which is pretty much exclusively within the realm of horror film, not literature). I have a lot of trouble with zombie films but a lone zombie in a D&D game is fine. The premise of a film like The Thing is intellectually fascinating to me but the idea that you can't trust anyone or anything is too unsettling...although also that was kind of the premise of the monsters of Candela Chapter 2 and I thought that slapped. Psychological horror is case by case; folk horror can be great or can mess me up; like Marisha I flat out don't do narrow tunnels in caves and I especially don't do caves with water in them. Cosmic/Eldritch, dark fantasy, and gothic horror are all almost always okay or if they're not it's because they take place in a water-filled cave. Honestly, I don't have a good answer of how to find things but I use subgenre, talking to people you know who watched the film/saw the show in question, and understanding your own personal issues - whether they're genuine triggers or just "this will upset me and I don't find it fun." I will say a lot of the tropes within horror that bother me bother me out of horror; the cave diving, for example, is part of a general hard line I have; I don't like zombie comedies even though horror-comedy can mitigate other issues (eg: I liked Cocaine Bear even though it's basically a slasher film with a bear because it's pretty funny).

Another really big distinction for me that might be true for you: audio horror, literary horror, and actual play horror (even if filmed), where the visuals are limited or only described, is much easier for me than visual horror. I don't know if that's the same for you, but it's very true for me.

Some other similar media I can personally recommend as someone who I suspect has similar broad preferences re: horror:

Of the Candela touchstones listed, will personally vouch for V. E. Schwab's Darker Shade of Magic series (dark fantasy books, wouldn't even classify as horror), Frankenstein (the book); Crimson Peak (gothic horror/ghost story film; I recall it having a lot of blood but not gore but I saw it in theaters so it's been a while); Penny Dreadful (is it good? debatable. Is it fun? absolutely.)

The New Weird genre is often thrown around and I don't think Candela per se falls into it, but it's certainly the same vibe of horror/fantasy crossovers that don't always fit into one or the other. Anyway: I have brought up the Silt Verses, which is a podcast solidly in that genre which I think I would not enjoy as a film but greatly enjoy as a podcast.

The Southern Reach Trilogy is...not Candela in vibes exactly but I just think everyone should read it, and it is in that weird horror-inflected sf genre space.

Twin Peaks and the X-Files which are very different stories in some ways, but are also investigations of horrors in a world where most people don't believe in that, and Spenser says his cinematic description style is using some of that lexicon, notably from the X-Files' cold opens. (The X-Files is very long and I only watched a few seasons but also while there is an overarching plot, from what I recall it's kind of ridiculous so you can bounce around; Twin Peaks is worth the watch through though I never watched anything after the original series).

I'm not going to lie, I listened to all of Alice Isn't Dead, which was a horror podcast from the Night Vale team, because the actress was so good, but the plot never totally clicked for me, but worth checking out. More worth checking out, while definitely New Weird and not horror, is Within the Wires, which I mentioned before, if you find the concept of Newfaire interesting on a sociocultural level. I am going to make a shitpost about Within the Wires in a second so just look at that. I also never finished Old Gods of Appalachia, but if you liked the Candela playlist Spenser and Rowan put out and are interested in the Bridleborne Mountains region/vibe with folk horror, it was pretty good; I just found it hard to binge, personally, and I listen to so many fucking podcasts it fell by the wayside.

Hope this helps!

#answered #Anonymous #what is horror: no clue lets get you some podcast #candela tag

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sunevial · 1 year

Text

Talvakri's Guide to Adar

Explore and defend the Land of Earth-Sky!

Far from the Five Nations and the dragonmarked houses of Khorvaire lies the continent of Sarlona, home to rich psionic traditions and the Unity of Riedra. It is also home to Adar, the Refuge, home of the kalashtar and one the last bastions standing against the tyranny brought by the Dreaming Dark.

Though first introduced in the 3.5 edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and expanded upon in Secrets of Sarlona, Adar as a nation has not been revisited since. Talvakri's Guide to Adar both expands on existing lore and introduces new elements to the country, painting a rich and vibrant picture of its people, traditions, and current struggles. A millennia of warfare has changed the fabric of the nation, and it needs heroes now more than ever to break the never-ending siege and free Sarlona from its ongoing nightmare.

Written by gold-best-selling author Megan Caldwell with platinum-best-selling author and designer Anthony Turco, Talvakri's Guide to Adar has options for DMs and players looking to tell and explore Sarlonan stories and characters including:

67 pages detailing Adar's people, cultures, religions, major cities, and adventuring sites.

2 maps produced by Vani Srinivasan

9 original player ancestries

2 original lineages in the style of Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft

7 new subclasses

7 new feats

80 pages worth of statblocks

New equipment, tools, magic items, and more!

Do you have what it takes to adventure in the nation once called the Land of Earth-Sky? Talvakri's Guide to Adar and its many mountains await!

---

Hi so I wrote a giant tome for the Eberron campaign setting and you should check it out. It has sad gays and explicitly queer characters and diversity in skin tones

And also it's basically a campaign setting for under $25 bucks

And also I lost my sanity in making it

You should buy it, it's great

#dnd #eberron #my books #talvakri's guide to adar

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howtofightwrite · 1 year

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My character learned to fight with staves and spears, what would it be better for her to take to a “DnD style” dungeon? (The world is similar to DnD world, although the spear is seriously underpowered in the rules)

So, I'm going to start with a couple nitpicks.

As someone with tabletop RPG experience, labeling it as, “D&D world,” is a really weird thing to read. D&D is primarily three distinct things. The rule systems themselves, and at this point we're up to the sixth or seventh major rules iteration. D&D as settings, except you'll almost never hear this one phrased that way. Finally, D&D as branding, which is extraordinarily nebulous, and tends to pick iconography out of the rules or settings. Simply identifying something as D&D could refer to any of these.

Officially, D&D has roughly 20 campaign settings. Any one of those could be categorized broadly as, “a D&D world.” Depending on the edition, the default setting is either Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. These are entirely different worlds. Greyhawk is more of the conventional medieval fantasy world, while Forgotten Realms is a setting with mountains (in some cases, literally) of fallen empires, and the world is filled with ancient ruins, in addition to the current civilizations. Both of these are extremely detailed settings with thousands of pages of background lore.

Beyond that, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape, Ravnica, Eberron, Spelljammer, and Urban Arcana, all come to mind as official TSR/Wizards of the Coast settings. And it's extremely likely that even players with an extensive familiarity with the ruleset missed at least one of the above names. This isn't even counting a lot of minor settings, or the fact that Planescape and Spelljammer are both multi-world settings, and the fact that a lot of these settings technically cross over. There are Spelljammer ports on Faerun (the main continent of Forgotten Realms), and races native to Planescape (in particular the Tieflings) have become a mainstay of the games, as they wander across the planes, to the point that Planescape's Tieflings and Aasimar exist in Pathfinder.

So, “The D&D world,” doesn't really say much.

With a lot of tabletop RPGs, the setting is analogous to the ruleset. When you're talking about running a Shadowrun campaign, or a Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle, those are specific worlds. The biggest ambiguity is which edition. However, when you say you're participating in a D&D campaign, that doesn't tell you much on its own.

If you're asking from a rules perspective, that's going to depend on the edition, and this is where stuff gets a little complicated.

If you're working with the idea of a D&D style dungeon, it's probably best to consider what era of game design you're looking at. There are a couple ways you can approach dungeons.

So, basic thoughts on dungeons.

Small dungeons are designed to be finished in a single session or two. You're probably looking at a few combat encounters. But, the main arc is that your characters travel to a dungeon, they do whatever they were planning to, and get out. You might have as many as four rooms, but generally these are pretty compact spaces.

Large dungeons can either be designed around the adventurers spending multiple days in the dungeon itself, or they may be traveling in and out and resting somewhere outside. (In some cases, you'll even have towns or inns set up over the dungeon. So your adventurers are all in one compact space.)

Additionally, large dungeons can be designed around the idea that the players will penetrate a few levels at a time, gradually working their way deeper over time (as they deal with other events and problems), or it can be a very long excursions, with adventures scavenging and hunting in the dungeon for days or weeks as they progress.

In the case of truly monstrous dungeons, they might even be bringing enough personnel and resources to set up various base camps and have a full supply lines running back to the outside world, as they gradually expand their control over the dungeon.

Sort of in parallel to this, it's worth thinking about what the dungeon is. The basic concept is often, as the name implies, some kind of semi-ruined castle prison. But, you'll also frequently see crypts, and caves as dungeons. Especially as small ones. At the same time, it's worth considering expanding your concept of a dungeon a bit. Ancient ruins, old fortresses, necropolises, abandoned mines, and sewers are common. (Sewers are a little unrealistic, as real ones don't tend to be massive underground pipes you can walk in.) What's less common are massive shipwrecks, overrun cities, entire islands with dangerous flora and fauna (or just pirates), fallen cities (where entire city districts collapsed during an earthquake and now exist below ground), plague ridden city districts (plagues can actually be a lot of fun, because it will let you transform familiar territories into hostile ones as the campaign progresses. Pathologic does this extraordinarily well.) In a rather famous D&D adventure (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks), one of the dungeons is a downed spacecraft. This is before we consider dungeons with impossible geometry, such as ones that leak over into another dimension (possibly as a result of magical experiments gone wrong, or ones that exist in the dreams or psyche of an individual. (For the record, I'm not a huge fan of psychic dungeons as a play experience, but they can be done well. I've simply had some bad experiences with the concept.) Shadowrun had a related concept, with cyberspace (called, “the matrix”), as a parallel space where hackers would engage in combat parallel to the events happening out in the real world. It's weird concept, but one that you might get some millage out of, and having a parallel battle on the astral plane wouldn't be that weird for D&D.

Moving beyond that, there are some semi-common dungeon settings that you don't often see in D&D, for obvious reasons, but might fit if your setting accommodates them. Abandoned research labs, abandoned industrial areas, abandoned villages or suburban areas at the edge of a city. Bonus points if the reason it's abandoned is related to why your players are wandering into it now. City districts under lockdown, usually this will either cater to a stealth focus, and might work if you have a group of thieves or something similar, (though, at that point, Blades in the Darkmight be a better RPG pick), this setting also works when the group enforcing the lockdown are acceptable targets, such as gangs or cultists, and for bonus points you can organize these setups with multiple factions and your characters may even be able to play groups against one another, all of this also works for feral cities (which also work as large area dungeons.)

With any dungeon, you probably want to consider how it fit into the world before it became a dungeon, and how long it existed as a dungeon before your players wandered in and started ripping the place apart.

So, ultimately, the question is about the spear and staff in the rules, as you're probably looking to approximate the rules to some extent. The problem is the rules have changed a bit over the years. One problem is that the default spear is not a reach weapon, meaning you can't use it to hit targets more than a space away from you. D&D splits that into the longspear, which is a reach weapon, and you can hit targets two spaces away from you, though you do need to use a 5ft step to back away from someone in an adjacent space before you can attack them. Both spears and staves are simple proficiency weapons though some editions do let you use the staff as a double weapon (meaning you can effectively treat it as dual wielding, if you have the feats.) If you do have a second attack with the staff, or you expect to be dealing with enemies that resist non-blunt damage (like skeletons) the staff starts to become a lot more attractive.

If you're using a different ruleset from standard D&D, there may be other considerations. I'm thinking of Total War's Anti-Large rules in particular, which do make spears very attractive against larger foes as they'll deal additional damage, similarly if you have some kind of homebrew piercing damage bonus against armor, that could make the spear conditionally more appealing. And, if your character is expecting to face down minotaurs or giants, then a longspear would be a much better choice with those modified rules. Though, this comes with another consideration, back in 3.5e the longspear was a simple proficiency weapon (just like the staff and spear), but was upgraded to martial proficiency in 4e, and seems to be missing in 5e (or it was replaced with the pike, which is also a martial weapon.) The longspear (and pike) do have special rules which allow them to be braced against a charging foe dealing increased damage. So, that might be worth considering for your choices. But, again, unless you're getting proficiency for the entire spear family, this might not be a practical option.

Usually, when you're arming characters for D&D, the primary consideration is going to be the overall thematic style of the character. Sometimes you do need to go out of your way to ensure a character gets the relevant proficiency (such as a rapier wielding wizard), but generally speaking, that theme is going to inform whether a character gets a spear or staff. If you've got a druid, then the spear might make more sense. If you have a wizard or sorcerer then maybe the staff is preferable (particularly if you can use it as an arcane focus.) (Though, wizards and sorcerers don't get spear proficiency in 5e, so, that's a factor.)

That said, you're not wrong, D&D has not done a good job with the spear. Part of that is because the default D&D spear is remarkably short. In 5e, the weapons are mostly interchangeable aside from the damage type, but the staff has more potential utility (specifically the ability to get staves crafted as arcane focuses, and a wider range of enchantments for staves.) Both are 1d6 with 1d8 versatile (if wielded with 2h the damage die is increased.) This is in contrast to 3.5 where the staff was 1d6, but was a double weapon, while the spear was 1d8, had the ready against charging characters action baked into the item (without the reach keyword), and had an increased crit multiplier (x3, meaning the weapon did triple damage on a crit, though it shared this with most axes), but it was a two-handed weapon.

I suppose if your character is a spellcaster, the staff is a better choice, as it gives you more options. But, when you're talking about someone who spends a lot of time out in the wilds, a spear might be a better thematic choice. If you're working within some version of 3rdedition, then the spear does look more valuable, but in 5e it is an underwhelming choice.

-Starke

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#howtofightwrite #D&D #writing advice #writing reference #writing tips #Starke answers

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