It’s often asserted that Dungeons & Dragons started out as Tolkienesque fantasy and branched out from there. While the elements lifted from Tolkien are certainly very prominent, it’s less that they form the core of the game and more that Tolkien’s work is one of the relatively few sources D&D drew from at its inception that’s still independently popular – which makes those elements easy to spot. In truth, the game’s founding inspirations are basically a big vertical slice of 1970s pop culture, including a lot of sources you wouldn’t necessarily expect.

For example, aesthetically the wizard class owes a great deal to Gandalf, and if you’ve heard the slots-and-preparation spellcasting rules described as “Vancian”, you may have looked up the reference and found out that the class’s mechanics are borrowed from Jack Vance’s Dying Earth. However, unless you’re a big Vincent Price fan, you probably didn’t catch that a huge chunk of the basic wizard spell list is lifted directly from his 1963 horror-comedy The Raven.

Similarly, the rogue owes something to Bilbo Baggins, but much more to Fritz Leiber’s Gray Mouser, who in turn draws heavily from Lord Dunsany’s Nuth. (Whose story I strongly recommend you check out, if you have a moment – it’s a quick read at around 2000 words, and it will definitely change how you think about rogues!)

The paladin is taken verbatim from Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions (also the source of D&D’s spindly-limbed, regeneratiing trolls), the barbarian is Leiber again (the Gray Mouser’s partner Fafhrd), seasoned with R E Howard’s Conan and more than a dash of Cú Chulainn, and the cleric takes many of its cues from Stoker’s Abraham Van Helsing, of all characters – and that’s just the character classes, to start with!

Of course, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Tolkienesque fantasy. It lends itself well to the game’s format, and it’s a popular milieu for tabletop gaming for a reason. My point is that if we treat D&D as Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off, we’re missing out on much of what makes it tick – a big part of the reason many of the game’s tropes seem so weirdly self-referential is because we’re looking at them without any of the context they sprang from.

(I will grant that the game itself is partly to blame for being very, very bad at explaining its inspirations, particularly in the more recent editions. Seriously, would it kill them to at least include a proper bibliography?)

Inspiration is hard lately so, I decided to make smth fun! Here’s a simple character prompt sheet made by me! All you need is some time and a D20. Tag me, if you make a character with this sheet, I’d looove to see the results!!

I rolled and here’s my result: A smug firbolg knight with an otherworldly guardian at his side!

A new piece I’ve been working on these past few days!

Not a mug this time, but you’ll be seeing them pretty soon! Can’t wait for you to tell me what you think!

Happy weekend! 🍃🌳⚔️💚

Good evening! I present to you the Spirit of the Phoenix, a new subclass of the homebrew Witch Class that I created.This is the first of many subclasses I hope to add to my homebrew class for y’all to try out.

If you enjoy my work, you can gain immediate access to exclusive content on My Patreon!

Commissions

Hello, everyone. New post talking about commissions again. Like most people right now, My position was terminated due to COVID-19. So, my commissions are very much so open.

- Race/Racial Hybrid ($25 for just Racial Traits)

- Race/Racial Hybrid ($40 for full racial pages)

- Monster Stat ($30 or higher depending on how complex)

- Magical Item(s) ($15)

- Tier System Magical Item(s) ($35 or higher depending on how complex)

- Subclass ($25)

- Spells ($15 for one spell + $5 for additional spells)

To anyone that commissions in bulk which will mean all money up front, I will gladly give you a discount.

Alternatively, if you would like access to plenty of exclusive homebrew material you can pledge to My Patreon!

If you’re interested in a commission, follow this link to get to my Commission Form. There are more instructions there to follow. Just reblogging this is helpful as well.

⚔️ 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺! Caduceus Flail Weapon (flail), rare (requires attunement by a cleric or paladin) ___

This holy flail serves as a conduit for divine warriors and pulses with holy light, allowing you to fend off evil while protecting the wounded. You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. While holding the flail, you can use a bonus action to speak the weapon’s command word to cause it to to glow, shedding bright light in a 10-foot radius and dim light for an additional 10 feet. The light lasts until you use a bonus action to speak the command word again or until you drop or stow the flail. When you hit an undead with the glowing flail, that target takes an extra 1d8 radiant damage.

When you use your Channel Divinity while holding the glowing flail, hostile creatures in the weapon’s bright light take radiant damage equal to 1d8 + your spellcasting modifier, and friendly creatures in the bright light regain hit points equal to the same amount. This damage is dealt before any other effects from your Channel Divinity. In addition, if your Channel Divinity forces a creature to make a saving throw, any undead in the flail’s bright light that fail the saving throw are also blinded until the end of your next turn. ___

✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon’s Saddlebag on Patreon for only $1 to $7 a month!

Greetings!

On their travels the party of adventurers gets hold of a small boat. Not exactly knowing where their journey would take them, they use it to go down the river.

After a while the flora starts to change and the tall, green trees are replaced by a plethora of multi-colored giant mushrooms! Where is this strange place they now find themselves in? The wizard thinks they have somehow plane-shifted to the Feywild, but not everyone is entirely convinced.

Whatever the case, this new land presents a new opportunity for adventure!

You can see a preview of this week’s content by clicking here.

If you liked the map I’d be extremely thankful if you considered supporting me on my Patreon, rewards include higher resolution files, gridless versions, alternate versions, line versions, PSDs and more. Thank you!

I needed a reference for this guy a while back for a collab, so I drew this up really quick.

My sweet firbolg monk. I love him so much XD

He’s supposed to be a DnD character or NPC, but I don’t really have anything on him right now, not even a name XD So if you think of a name or story for him, feel free to comment! I might use it!

Random character creation in between commission work. Really wanna do more inventory typed character sheets I love them so much.

Just a fresh batch of bard spells inspired on Theros: I really like greek mythology, but it would be nice some new inspiring settings, like a mayan or african high fantasy setting...dude that would be good. Anyways, enjoy!

If you like the content I do you can buy me a coffee here or you can go to my patreon and donate! Reblogging is equally helpful!

Excelent homebrew content!

Here is a link to what I call my Homebrew Masterpost. It has everything that I have created and released publicly. Hope this helps finding anything you may be looking for that I have created.

Hi!

I'm Agus, a trans writer, game designer and homebrew content creator for RPGs. Dracolingua's objective is the author name for the materials I create, and that includes translation of RPG material and a service for content creator who wants to translate their work to spanish. One of the things I always thought about the tabletop-rpg community is that while much of the official content is translated, the juicy, homebrewed, interesting things are not, and this makes a knowledge breach between communities, being that the spanish-speaker much of the time only got the official sources as a reference and not much of their own peers. Also, much of the translated official content is directly influenced and targeted to European Spanish speakers and not really focused on Latin American Spanish speakers; Besides, wouldn’t be awesome to create more Latin American rpg content? Thank you for reading all of this, hope you like it and stay tuned!

¡Hola! Soy Agus, une escritor trans, diseñador de juegos y creador de contenido casero para RPGs. El objetivo de Dracolingua es darle un nombre al material que creo, y eso incluye la traducción de material RPG y ofrecer un servicio de traducción al español o inglés a creadores de contenido. Una de las cosas que siempre pensé de la comunidad de juegos de rol de lapiz y papel es que, si bien mucho del contenido oficial está traducido, el material casero, jugoso e interesante no, y esto genera una grieta de conocimiento entre comunidades, haciendo que les hispanohablantes tengan solo de referencia el material original y no tanto el de sus pares. Además, mucho del material oficial traducido está dirigido e influenciado a hispanohablantes de España, y no se enfocan tanto en los hispanohablantes de Latinoamerica; por otro lado, ¿No sería genial que se creara contenido latinoamericano RPG? ¡Agradezco que hayan leído todo esto, espero que les guste y estén atentxs!