#dragon age tabletop

[exhausted-archivist]

The Deep Roads are Complicated, and I am in too Deep...

I've been working on and off at mapping the Deep Roads for a while now and after writing 4 pages explaining my methodology of why I think it is mapped the way I put it and then moving on to orienting the ttrpg thaig map, I realized something while taking notes on the directions mentioned and cross-referencing it to the description of Horrors of Hormak thaig description.

You can't map the Deep Roads from a top-down perspective because sometimes the roads change directions and aren't actually going in a straight line.

They need an orthographic map. Or a map that essentially bisects the mountain. The literal map in the corner of both the Origins and ttrpg maps. The maps... that have increments of depth.

Now, I knew that the deep roads had to change elevation, especially considering how they're described and the way they're supposedly below sea level for most thaigs.

But somehow, despite knowing that, I never considered that thaigs and the roads themselves would essentially be stacked on top of each other. Don't know why that never crossed my mind up until I was checking my notes and the passages of the ttrpg and Horrors of Hormak to confirm directions. To which it finally clicked as they both explain how there are galleries/antechambers and staircases/pathways that change directions.

How do we get to the thaig? This tunnel leads to a series of galleries. Think of them as interconnecting wide flights of stairs linked together and occasionally switching direction. We head down these for a few hours and we’ll be on the outskirts of the thaig.

-- Dragon Age Tabletop RPG, Buried Pasts p. 18

Beside him, Lesha muttered a word and her staff began to glow. She pushed it inside the entrance to the hole, giving light to the darkness within. The edges of the circle cast by Lesha’s spell revealed a small staircase that descended into an antechamber slightly larger than the clearing above, carved with a skill and delicacy that rivaled the works of Orzammar, or even Kal-Sharok. At the other end of the chamber, a doorway and a second staircase beyond that which spiraled into the darkness, the entire space lit by the glow of lyrium. And above the entrance, written in dwarven runes, a single word—Hormok.

-- Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights, Horrors of Hormak (p. 86)

Which then gave me pause and had me rereading and looking back at the map. Because the maps looked like they were straight and didn't initially give the impression of any verticality to them. Until you look in the corner. That's when it clicked for me and the mountains suddenly made more sense.

And now I'm screaming about it here. Because both maps are depicting a small chunk of mountain(s) in the Frostbacks. Which, for reference, my wip of the Deep Roads looked like this.

If you follow BioWare's scale of 1 square = 15 miles / 24 km - if the Deep Roads were in working order the journey to the anvil would only be roughly around 2.5-3 days journey. However, we know to get to the anvil and back to Orzammar is a month-long trip. So, with the darkspawn and collapsed tunnels it becomes a 2-week journey there and 2 weeks back. Which is quite a large jump in travel times.

I have a personal scale based on population size, megafauna, and the fact that it is supposed to take over a week to get to the Circle from Orzammar on the surface, among other travel time increments. Which makes each square 38 mi / 61 km. A 4-5 day journey from the anvil to the void when functioning.

Now, I think this map still holds up in terms of placement considering that mountains can have a wide footprint and the map on the Origins Deep Roads has at least two major peaks and a plateau, whereas the ttrpg just has one major peak and a couple of smaller ones. The ttrpg map also speaks of ravines and such so it fits the geography.

But yeah, long story short I need to revise some of my methodology; and maybe rescale the map, so things aren't super tiny.

#dragon age #dragon age maps #deep roads #dwarves #thaigs #dragon age origins #dragon age tabletop #dao #da ttrpg #long post #no cut because if I'm here you're here lost in the deep roads with me #archi is yelling

[ohmyarda]

Wanted to draw an old idea for a Dragon Age RPG Tabletop character - she was clearly Orlesian

#dragon age #dragon age rpg #dragon age tabletop #da #or Laos #orlesian

[7seasalcyon]

This is Derin (He/She/They). A character from a Dragon Age rpg one-shot DMed by the amazing @athenasplaneshift and hosted in the Table Heroes youtube channel back in 2021. We had an awesome time while filming this episode, it had been a really long time since I had last played DArpg and I loved it

The episode is available to watch in the channel in Greek. (x)

#dragon age inquisition custom tarot card #dragon age #da oc #dragon age tabletop #original character #my art #digital painting #elf #tevinter elf

[fenxshiral]

I kind of want to write out my Dragon Age tabletop game as a module that could either be used with the DA ttrpg or with any other rpg. It’s story is effectively based upon what I would want DA4 to be, as well as a prospective DA5. The story of the tabletop game itself starts in 9:84 dragon.

I might actually do it and post it on AO3 and DMs Guild as a module. For backstory, the prospective DA4 that makes up a good portion of the history of the game includes a “Great War” where Orlais attempted to conquer Thedas to recreate the Orlesian Empire of eld. The great war started in 9:63 dragon (where it started as a cold conflict and went hot in 9:64) and lasted through 9:74, where the war was ended with the signing of the Treaty of Minrathous between Orlais, The Inquisition, and Thedosian Concordant (a united force made up primarily of Ferelden, the Anderfels and Tevinter, with forces from the other nations of Thedas).

For those interested, this is the “canon” inquisitor in the tabletop game (based upon dice rolls) as well as the biography of Empress Celene (which gives more context to the great war), and the biography of Alistair: Inquisitor Mahanon Lavellan was the famous pivotal figure of the reborn Inquisition during The Breach Crisis in 9:41 Dragon. Born a Dalish elf in 9:07 Dragon, Inquisitor Lavellan rose to prominance in 9:41 Dragon when he was the only survivor of the Conclave Disaster at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. After the Exalted Council of 9:44 Dragon, Inquisitor Lavellan helped the Inquisition transition into the new military arm and peace keeping force of The Chantry. From 9:63 Dragon to 9:71 Dragon, he was the leader of the Inquisition's military campaign against Orlais during The Great War. He died in battle at the Battle of Wildervale in 9:71 Dragon. He was succeeded at the post of Inquisitor by Lord Hiram Birch of Ferelden.

It was no great secret that Divine Victoria and Mahanon Lavellan were lovers, although the Divine was never able to marry him. Many Orlesian ballads were written about their romance in the interim years between The Breach Crisis and now. Servants in the Grand Cathedral of Val Royeaux said that she was devastated by his death.

Mahanon eventually married Viretha Istimaethoriel in 9:48, youngest daughter of his clan's keeper, Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan. But it was no great secret that while he greatly adored Vira, he never loved her as did Victoria. He had a daughter with her in 9:51 that they named Mirae. He adored Mirae greatly and spent as much time as he could with her until his death in 9:71. Mirae fought by his side during the battle of Wildervale, and Mahanon died in her arms.

Celene I is the Empress of Orlais, having succeeded her uncle Florian in 9:20 Dragon when she was just sixteen. An extremely pragmatic and politically savvy ruler, Celene has become embittered and imperialistic in her twilight years. Her plans for Orlais apparently include a one-world order, in which Orlais rules all of Thedas. She initiated The Great War in 9:64 Dragon, which caused a civil war within the Orlesian Chantry when she appealed to Divine Victoria to declare The Great War to be the Sixth Exalted March. When Divine Victoria refused, Empress Celene declared herself to be the New Divine, which caused a schism in the Orlesian Chantry, and also caused the Chantry proper to declare Celene a heretic. Celene has since retracted her statements of being the New Divine, but the schism within the Orlesian Chantry still remains. Celene never married, and never produced an heir. Despite her attempts to name an heir outside of the royal line, The Council of Heralds has not bowed to her demands, and the royal line of Orlais remains as it always has. King Alistair Theirin was crowned the ruler of Ferelden after the end of the Fifth Blight; his people consider him a hero for fighting against the darkspawn as a Grey Warden. Few Wardens have ever left the secretive order, and he is the only of those who went on to rule a nation; Queen Anora, daughter of the legendary Teyrn Loghain, ruled at his side.

Although Ferelden prospered under their reign, it was greatly weakened by the Blight. Tensions with neighboring Orlais were high, and many believed a renewal of their long-standing conflict was inevitable. However, such a conflict did not occur until 9:64 Dragon, during the reign of King Duncan, Alistair's Eldest Son.

Despite leaving the Grey Wardens, the Grey Wardens never left Alistair. He still suffered from the taint, and in 9:56 Dragon the taint began to overtake him, and he had no choice but to go on his calling. He was declared dead in 9:57 Dragon (one year after, as is custom). In 9:62 Dragon, Queen Anora abdicated the throne, and their eldest son, Duncan, was crowned King of Ferelden.

#dragon age #dragon age tabletop #dragon age fanfiction

[thorgans-guide-to-thedas]

Music of Thedas

A collection of spotify playlists I’ve made over time, filled with ambient and instrumental songs that you can play to set the mood for your campaign, based on various locations in Thedas!

If you’re wondering what this project is, consider reading our introduction.

Fereldan

Nevarra

Tevinter

The Silent Plains

The Free Marches

The Frostback Basin (Horror-campaign style)

Seheron (Horror-campaign style

The Anderfels

I will add more playlists as they are made! :)

#playlist #world of thedas #dragon age #ambient music #table top music #dragon age tabletop #dragon age ttrpg #dragon age rpg #masterpost

[spndaemon]

I’m really happy with how these came out! 

I’m running my first Dragon Age Tabletop RPG and here are my wonderful players’ characters. They all gave me their idea and references for their characters and I did my best to create them how they imagined it. 

The DA world is such a fun world to play in and I can’t wait till we really delve into it! 

#dragon age #dragon age tabletop #tabletop rpg #OCs

[erandir]

New campaign, same tree

I’m so excited to be starting another Dragon Age TTRPG campaign and getting to play Aspen Woods again. I missed him a lot.

His backstory is slightly modified due to this campaign taking place at a different point in the DA timeline, but he’s still a Denerim city elf and Blight survivor out here pretending he doesn’t have PTSD and sending all his cash back home to a gaggle of younger siblings and cousins because he is a Good Tree.

#oc: aspen #dragon age #dragon age tabletop #darpg #dragon age oc #my art #sketch

[fantastictalesofadventure]

Oooooo...I like this!

JeromyTV does something like this on SpellShots but since my character has amnesia we learn a little bit more about Key's past whenever they're near death (which ends up being quite a bit)!

#dungeons & dragons #d&d #d&d 5e #dnd #dnd 5e #ttrpg #spell shots #spellshots #new age geeks #key #tabletop roleplaying games #d&d memes #dnd memes #memes #meme #funny #lol #good ideas #death saving throws

[joelchaimholtzman]

This is a painting (top) I made a few years ago as a tribute to John William Waterhouse's work named ''The Magic Circle'' (bottom).

The mood, stortytelling and simplicity of the scene really caught my attention, and I wanted to take those elements and add more dynamicism to it when working on my interpretation.

I hope you like it!

Best,

JCH

#dungeons and dragons #board games #concept art #fantasy art #tabletop games #digital painting #magic the gathering #character design #ancient history #witch #occult #sorceress #wicca #gothic #pagan #dark art #the witcher #dragon age

[thecrowinggriffon]

Nightmare material

#Witch #hag #annis hag #mutation #chaos #warhammer #warhammer fantasy #the old world #age of sigmar #aos #the ninth age #the 9th age #dungeons and dragons #dnd #d&d #pathfinder #tabletop #wargaming #miniature #minipainting

[2minutetabletop]

The Kingdom of Scalecrown, Part 1 – The Capital

The people of Scalecrown have allied with a dragon in a desperate attempt to prevent further attacks, but not everyone is happy under the rule of their scaly overlord...

→ Read the full article here!

#ttrpg #tabletop #dungeons and dragons #dnd #dungeons & dragons #d&d #d&d5e #pathfinder #gurps #rpg #top-down #battle map #map #cartography #encounter #dragon #kingdom #medieval #middle ages #fantasy #OSR #old school revival

[anim-ttrpgs]

Show Questions from the Storyteller Conclave Episode on Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

During the show we were on, which you can listen to here, here, here, or here, we didn't have time to get to all of the audience questions on-air, so @ashweather and I went and answered them in the discord server.

Here they are.

Remember, the kickstarter is still funding until May 10th! We need your help to hit those stretch goals! Tell your friends!

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

#eureka: investigative urban fantasy #rpg #ttrpg #roleplaying #eureka #tabletop #coc #monsters #vampires #vampire #vampyr #vampcore #gothic #fangs #vampire aesthetic #goth #vtm #vtmb #vampire the requiem #vampire the dark ages #vampire the masquerade #ttrpg tumblr #ttrpg character #dungeons and dragons #dnd5e #dungeon master #ttrpg community #indie ttrpg #ttrpg art #5e

[evanreichel]

Well, I'm running a dragon age campaign and I've drawn my players' characters

This is a mage Adalis!

#dragon age #dalish #da art #da fanart #tabletop rpg #da rp #artists on tumblr #art #my DM shit #my art

[badtusk]

Vell, who very much started out as a DA:O/DA:I OC x3 she is half elf / half qunari 

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age inquisition #fantasy #tabletop #dnd #Dungeons and Dragons #elf #tiefling #qunari

[dasedconfuzed]

Hi guys!! I wanted to post and let you all know of a discord server you should join! Come hang out with us over at Feral Gaming!! A hub for all your favorite games and a community to promote streams and hang out with other fans in!! We have fans of everything from Baldurs Gate 3 to Zelda and Pokémon! Anyone is welcome!! We would love to nerd out with yall and make friends!! This server is 18+ so please keep that in mind. We hope to see yall soon!!

#baldurs gate astarion #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #pokemon #pokeblogging #legend of zelda #zelda #stardew valley #nintendo #nintendo switch #xbox #playstation #gaming consoles #pc games #steam #steam games #steam deck #bioshock #dungeons and dragons #tabletop #ttrpg #dragon age #animal crossing #anime #twitch #streaming #twitch streamer #mortuary assistant #phasmophobia #gaming

[thorgans-guide-to-thedas]

Do you think the Chasind were influenced by Mongolia as well?

So there's two different breakdowns I could do for this: what WE running the blog think the Chasind could be influenced from, and what the evidence in the Bioware lore (BL) presents to us. I want to stress again that we are NOT cultural experts , but we try and research and provide accurate information as much as we can.

This got REALLY long so I'm dropping it below the cut

The way our funny little group interprets and pulls inspiration from cultures in Thedas is basically just a blueprint or a road map. You'll see in some of the posts and definitely in things as we continue to post them that we use a lot of vague language when describing people. We want to avoid force-fitting players into certain roles or making people feel that "oh, well this region is inspired by this culture, so I guess I'll have to play that". Thorgan's Guide aims to spread out more opportunities for players to see themselves in this world and feel safe as they play.

So, right now, we are looking at the Chasind as a mixture of different cultures coming from early-colonial America and the Caribbean. That doesn't mean that Mongolian influence can't be added, and that is where we want there to be freedom for everyone playing the game.

Our drafts for Avvar/Frostback Basin cultures have definitely pin-pointed cultural inspiration from Inuit/Sami/Mongolian cultures, so even in our silly little home-brewed re-imagining, the geographical locations of the Frostback and the Kocari wilds are not far from each other, and it would totally work and would definitely be worth exploring for us. But I want to stress this again: our homebrew isn't meant to be law and we want everyone to have fun with it.

As for Bioware evidence, I have so many issues with it. My interpretation of the BL around Chasind features a lot of negative stereotypes associated with "uncivilized cultures," which basically translates to non-eurocentric. There is already a blatant lack of diverse ethnicities in the BL, but if I were to name a few cultures that were meant to be non-white representations, they all have antagonistic qualities to them - Chasind included. Tumblr user @dalishious talks a lot about how Bioware codes their people and cultures based on what suits them and how this can be damaging to real-world people [1]. (Dalishious' resources and research into this matter is a wealth of information, and I would highly recommend checking out their other work).

The Chasind are described as barbaric and "primitive at best". Based on pre-existing stereotypes of Mongolian culture (keyword stereotypes), it follows a similar pattern. With many minority cultures, they are placed into the ideas of "nomadic" and "simple", having technology seen as under-advanced in the face of Western civilization - so this, in its own twisted way, falls into the category. We are encouraged to see the Chasind as simple-minded and aggressive, told that they raid the swampland and cause harm and strike fear. Many brown-skinned cultures are subject to similar treatment depicting brutal warriors and merciless attacks, and of course, the antagonistic coding of Thedas cultures fits the Chasind into this role.

One thing that stuck out was the line "some Chasind are reputedly so barbaric that they even consume the flesh of the dead." The cannibalism stereotype was present in almost every dark-skinned representation at some point in time, using the "disgust" or "savagery" of the practice to separate civilized from uncivilized [2] [3]. Though appearing across the globe, these stereotypes intensified in mainstream media and specifically in films involving South American, Caribbean, and Pacific Islander cultures [4] [5].

In another line, we see "Chasind are known to decorate their hair with pierced copper coins; these are tied into the ends of their braids." This in itself is vague and, in reality, could reference dozens of different cultures around the globe. Many Slavic cultures had hair accessories and braids, but so did many African regions. It does not help that the Bioware games choose to darken the Chasind skin in their depictions. This usually leads our mind into thinking that they are meant to portray a certain culture or people based on our inherent beliefs and subconscious biases.

Bioware's writing is confusing at best and utterly racist at worst. Most of their regions are either blatantly European or a melting pot of so many minority cultures boiled down that you can hardly tell where the original inspiration came from. Is it Mongolian, Slavic, African, or something else altogether? I don't even think Bioware knows this. Just looking at the wiki page makes my head spin at how many contradicting and overlapping things there are in Chasind culture and how many elements they've taken from all over the place. All I can really say on the matter is that the wiki is doing a lot of harm with it.

From Thorgan's Guide, we totally encourage the addition of cultures to the game, and if the Chasind have Mongolian influence for the players, awesome! From the Bioware standpoint, Mongolian cultures were another target of stereotyping and "othering", not only from the Western world but from China as well, and it is completely possible that those cultural elements could be reflected back in Bioware's ignorant writing.

I may have gotten a bit carried away in writing and completely BLASTING negative stereotyping. Hopefully, this was still an interesting take on it all and at least kinda makes sense.

Here are the sources if anyone wants them:

[1] Dalishious. (2019). Coding Does Not Inherently Equate to Representation. (Source)

[2] Pyleyev, M. (2016). How the Feeling of Disgust Went From Life-Saving to Dangerous. (Video)

[3] Selvam, A. (2018). ‘Black Panther’ Challenges a Bogus Food Stereotype. (Source)

[4] Moore, R. B. (1973). Carib "Cannibalism": A Study in Anthropological Stereotyping. (Source)

[5] Conklin, B. A. (1997). Consuming Images: Representations of Cannibalism on the Amazonian Frontier. (Source)

#answer #chasind #reimagining thedas #thorgans guide to thedas #world of thedas #dragon age ttrpg #dragon age tabletop