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maxsbird2 · 5 years

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Spiral Isles is an OSR pointcrawl adventure for both 5th edition and Swords and Wizardry. The adventure is designed to give dead characters a chance to return to life, or as the framework for a campaign into the underworld. The result of this crowdfunding effort will be a 50+ page, landscaped module, mostly black and white with select, thematic, colors.

Death, the close of the final chapter. For most, a final destination was set in life; paradise or damnation- either, a proper course. But an unnatural force claimed you, pulling your spirit into an eerie, shadow realm. In the Spiral Isles your fate is placed back into your hands.

One. Last. Time.

There is a way out- a way home. The Boxthorne Door is rumored to return those with radiating life force back to the land of the living. The journey is long and the route through the vast and dreary abyss is fraught with perils-even for the dead. Fiendish monsters and malevolent spirits seek to rob what little life you have left.

Make deals with bizarre, twisted Ferrymen to cross the treacherous void between the islands. Manifest weapons, armor and items from your life force. Strategically wind your way through the vying factions, gaining power and life points.

The setting of Spiral Isles is in a pointcrawl format.

A pointcrawl is an adventure format that lies somewhere between a linear narrative and a sandbox hexcrawl.

It combines the best of both worlds, retaining some narrative and story elements, while also having nonlinear options for players.

Over 20 islands, each with several points of interest, create an immersive setting for the Spiral Isles.

Map of the Spiral Isles

22 keyed locations

Nonlinear adventure

Npc’s and npc generator

Rival npc party

New treasure

New monsters

2 Mini Dungeons

4 Die Drop Tables

Random tables

Chaos Index System

Sample Monster Pages

Sample Location Pages

Die Drop Table

Pointcrawl adventure in a Land of the Dead.

Turn a total party kill into a new adventure.

Start an expedition to the underworld, seeking lost knowledge or allies.

Players can face off one last time against vanquished foes, nemeses.

Unique game mechanic for simple, level-neutral, class-neutral, ethereal play.

An ideal environment for crossovers between games/worlds.

Spiral Isles

Softcover, Landscaped 11"x8.5" Trim Size.

Intuitive navigation.

Easy-to-find tables.

Low prep for DMs.

Black and white content with select color.

Approximately 54 pages.

PDF bookmarks and hyperlinks.

Both 5th Edition and Swords and Wizardry compatibility in one book.

*Because Spiral Isles is a wide-format, landscaped adventure it may not be compatible with smaller devices like Kindles and tablets.

Woodfall

A dark fantasy mini setting for OSR.

A modular hexcrawl with 12 keyed locations.

Graphic heavy, gameability focused.

92 page softcover or hardcover book.

Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, April 4 2019 2:17 PM BST

Website: The Spiral Isles

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maxsbird2 · 5 years

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These

Tables

Are

Freakin

GOOD!

Shoutout to Lady Tiefling for being kickass.

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maxsbird2 · 5 years

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The Old Gods are no more. The battles have ceased. The titans have fallen.

From the age of reverence, only myths remain. From the age of sacrifices, the citadels of brass, the Sister-Blades of obsidian, and the divine heralds, only ashes remain. Lost rituals, forgotten graves, faceless frescos, and broken idols. Yet, all stones someday crack, and all sleepers must wake. Your time has come.

You are a Chosen One, a flame bearer, a hero in the Wildlands.

Which god will you wake? How will you forge your legend?

This is GODS. Welcome to the Wildlands!

The Tomb (Art by Sergey Vasnev)

GODS is a dark fantasy tabletop roleplaying game created by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme and Julien Blondel.

Designed by long time friends, roleplayers, and Dark Fantasy fans, GODS is a love song to the legendary writers and artists who defined the genre, such as Robert E. Howard, Karl E. Wagner, Michael Moorcock, Glen Cook or Frank Frazetta.

The game invites the players to play heroes seeking high adventure in the Wildlands, a brutal land abandoned and forgotten by the gods. From one-shots adventures to massive campaigns, GODS will offer a variety of game modes and provide a modern and adult gaming experience, supported by a d10 system that favors gameplay, narrative and fun without leaving simulation and realism aside.

GODS is, above all, a game based on adventure, epic quests, and exploration: a journey to the far reaches of the Wildlands, its lost cities, titanic scenery, primeval forests, and forgotten ruins. Attached to the standards of Dark Fantasy, the game is full of action, magic, rituals, and epic battles. It will satisfy players with a taste for atmosphere, mystery, and diplomacy, with a subtle dose of poetry: a brutal world, epic and dark, where fighters, shamans, thieves and other heroes often have to write their legend in blood.

Avhorean Rider (Art by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

A land so vast no cartographer could ever map it all.

A land that was once the playground of giants and fantastic creatures, and where humans are now building empires and civilizations.

A land forgotten by its own gods.

From the small villages to the cities and capitals, men are left to fight for their survival. Their fate is in their hands, and civilizations seem to collapse faster than they grow. The grim Cult of the Black Sun is spreading like the plague, preaching the Words of the One, and providing insights to the men and women in need of answers, in exchange of their allegiance.

Untamed, the Wildlands call for heroes. Men and women chasing their own destiny. Adventurers brave or crazy enough to take on the roads and uncover the dark secrets left behind in the ruins of a forgotten world.

The Wildlands (Art by Gary Jamroz-Palma, Blake Rottinger, Sergey Vasnev & Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

The old and forgotten gods are preparing their awakening.

To do so, they need the men and women of the Wildlands to remember them. To believe in them once again. They are choosing their heroes. They are choosing the men and women who will become their voices and their hands among the mortals.

GODS invites players to play exceptional people – characters who all have this little “something” special that make them step out of the ordinary. Whether they are the most talented hunter of the village, the warrior who never gives up, the blacksmith whose craft makes people travel from long distances or even the weirdo of the town who claims that she can hear voices, they all have this energy that makes people wonder if they might have been chosen by the gods…

And you are one of them.

You are a Chosen One.

Sevire La Rouge (Art by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

To reach the humans they have chosen, on the spiritual and physical level, the Old Gods infuse man-made objects with a fragment of their spirits. Weapons, tools, jewelry or any type of artefacts. Those manufactured objects invested with a piece of a god’s soul are called Shards. They are the vectors of the divine favors, providing the Chosen Ones with a physical symbol of the god, a tool, an emblem, a link, a companion, that will help them fulfill their destiny.

On their path, the characters may encounter and wield one of these rare and precious objects. Through the Shards, the Chosen Ones develop a link with their gods, receive favors and powers, to help them forge their legend and wake their gods.

In game, the Shards will evolve and accumulate powers in accordance to the choices of the characters and the strength of the link built between the Chosen Ones and their gods.

Confusing Faces (Art by Nekro & Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

Samples of Shards (Art by Nekro & Bastien Lecouffe Deharme)

There are several types of magic in the Wildlands. One of them is “sacrificial magic”.

The relationship between humans and gods have always been built on exchanges between services and favors, pledges of reverence and signs of recognition, forbidden thoughts and encouraged acts. Priests and believers used to find communion with their gods through rituals and ceremonies.

Since the gods disappeared, the link between the divine and humans was broken. But recently, men and women have found a way to reconnect with the gods. The odd ones, the shamans and the druids, the seers and the oracles, they all feel the energy of the gods rising. Where the Chosen Ones receive divine favors through the Shards, these address to the gods through the practice of sacrificial magic.

Sacrificial magic requires rituals that vary depending of the gods they are made to. From blood sacrifices to destruction of valuable materials, they sometimes require specific actions to be performed. The few who receive answers from the divine energies through those rituals are also considered Chosen.

Ool Necromancer (Art by Pierre Raveneau)

Throughout the Wildlands, the Cult of the Black Sun spreads like black ink on blank parchment. Its fanatical priests preach the arrival of a new Prophet, the Word of the One and the advent of his dogma. Through the weapons of his Priest-Soldiers, the Cult prepares the Wildlands to the return of the Black Sun.

For the cultists, the sun is the “Eye of the One”. When men are finally worthy of the trust of the One, only then will the One God close his eye, and the sun will become black, and men will find the way to their creator, in the comfort of the “Primordial Darkness and the Holy Trust”.

The Chosen Ones are considered enemies of the One God, and the Cult is actively tracking them. Any form of magic performed by anyone other than a priest of the Black Sun is considered heretical. This includes the use of the Shards, and the individuals who build any type of link with the Old Gods.

Priest of the Black Sun (Art by Anastasia Balakchina)

The rules of GODS are based on the TOTEM SYSTEM and use 10-sided dice to manage gaming phases. Combat, magic, negotiation, enchantment of objects or simple travels and adventures: all technical aspects use the same mechanics. Characters are defined by Traits associated to a number of dice. When a character performs an action, the player simply rolls a number of dice equal to the score of the Trait used, generally a number between 1D and 3D. Whenever a character undertakes an action where the outcome is uncertain, the player rolls a number of 10-sided dice equal to the score of the Trait at hand and compares the result of each die to a Difficulty ranging from 1 to 10. The more results that are equal to or higher than the Difficulty, the more successful the character is.

To shoot with a bow, the Accuracy Trait is used. Let’s say that the character’s score is 2D, meaning that the player rolls two dice against a Difficulty of 5, 7, or 9 depending on the distance, size, and speed of the target. If at least one die rolls equal to or higher than the Difficulty, the shot hits home. If both dice are successful, the shot may hit a vulnerable area and inflict more damage, reflecting the higher degree of success.

In accordance with their background practical experience, and chosen Profile, the players’ characters will also have Skills and Specialties that will grant Bonuses to their actions, as well as dice pools called Reserves from which they can draw to improve their chances. However, these Reserves represent the characters’ innermost resources, and drawing from them will be exhausting. As they travel together and grow used to each other, the characters can strengthen the unity of their Party and acquire new collective abilities, from simple Bonuses to innovative storytelling options such as save points.

Game Options

In addition to these basic rules, GODS includes voting phases, options, and advanced rules that let the players customize their gaming experience and directly influence their universe.

The Divine Influence also adds an extra dimension to the game. It makes use of dice of three different colors that the players will blindly draw from a pouch. Depending on the color of the dice rolled and kept, the results of the action will have different consequences and will alter the characters’ relationship with the world.

Just like some video games offer various levels of difficulty, GODS lets the players choose their Game Mode and decide how realistic, supernatural, and dangerous their characters’ world will be. Some players will crave action, bigger-than-life events, and titanic fights against gigantic creatures, while others might prefer a realistic, mysterious, fantastic atmosphere. After all, why limit oneself to a single playstyle when several are equally suited to the same universe?

GODS proposes three main Game Modes, which will influence not only the universe and its atmosphere, but also the rules, options, and abilities granted to the players and gamemaster.

REGULAR EDITION

The Core rulebook (est. to be around 460 pages) and the Gamemaster book (est. to be around 180 pages) will be printed in US Letter format, on a high quality paper in full color, with a hardcover and printed endsheets. Each book will have a black ribbon and head and tail bands. The Gamemaster screen will have three pannels printed in landscape format on a heavy board, and will have a glossy varnish on the outside, and a matt varnish on the inside to prevent light reflexion.

DELUXE EDITION

The GODS Deluxe edition is an upgrade to the regular edition and will be printed in limited numbers. The Core rulebook, the Gamemaster book and the Gamemaster screen will all benefit from the deluxe treatment.

The Deluxe edition will have a matt varnish finish, with spotted UV on the design, gold foil, brass gilded edge and two brass ribbons for each books. The Core rulebook, the Gamemaster book and the Gamemaster screen will be include in a slipcase to finish this deluxe set.

Deluxe version of the Core rulebook, and the slipcase for the Core rulebook, the Gamemaster book and the screen.

The Low Market (Art by Sergey Vasnev)

The Purple Guard (Art by Pierre Raveneau)

Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, March 28 2019 2:59 PM UTC +00:00

Website: [GODS-RPG] [Arkhane Asylum (french)]

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Like D&D? Want to build your own Magitech, Steampunk or Sci Fi Mech? Check out the Greasemonkey’s Handbook on the Dmsguild!

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Today we have another installment of hero tokens! You can custom-color them yourself in our Token Editor, and there’s a mobile-friendly version coming soon. :)

Read more: https://2minutetabletop.com/hero-character-tokens-3/

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Market Stalls

Produce Offers: Fruit, vegetables, tubers, leafy greens, fungi (legal and otherwise) Character: A drunkard

Butcher Offers: Fresh meat, jerky, smoked meats, tripe, soup bones, mystery sausage Character: Wants his son to take over shop so he can go adventuring with the adventuring guild

Farmer Offers: Eggs, milk, chickens, some cheeses Character: Promised to marry daughter to butcher’s boy when they both come of age

Jewelry Offers: Mostly brass, some gold and silver, a few gems (discount on cursed items) Character: Obsessed with the popular theatre performace of the season.

Hawking and Hunting Supply Offers: Arrows, bowstrings, hoods, jessies, feather repair supplies Character: Nearly half her business comes from cartographer. Will kill the next person who makes a joke about “hawking her wares”

Blacksmith’s boy Offers: Horseshoes, nails, daggers, helms, knife sharpening, etc. Character: In love with butcher’s boy

Fortune telling Offers: Tarot, dowsing, palm reading Character: Sleeping with cartographer

Astrology Offers: Daily horoscopes, crop suggestions, marriage counselling Character: Hates the fortune teller with a passion

Cartography Offers: Maps, rumours of treasure, letter reading Character: She is usually out mapping, only stays in town for short stints. Avoiding fortune teller.

Adventuring guild Offers: Glorified mercenary guild. Provide roster of swordsmen for hire Character: Plans to recruit the butcher.

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The God Mine (Part 1)

THE GOD MINE

The bones of god-beasts, even aeons dead, still remember their own potency. A useful material for mage-craft and industry.

The smell of effluvia marks this place. The music of picks. A great open pit. Damaged, silent men clamber over each other, worms in a wound in the earth.

A DEAD GOD

Titanic ribs jut like the shell of a bombed-out temple. Brushed by the ghost of divine terror – you shiver.

What was this thing?

Portfolio – this was a god-beast of:

1: Artifice. 2: Ambition. 3: Fate. 4: Fire. 5: Hunger. 6: Healing. 7: Plagues. 8: Pleasure. 9: Madness. 10: Murder. 11: Beasts. 12: Battle. 13: Visions. 14: Virility. 15: Lies. 16: Law. 17: Thunder. 18: Tyranny. 19: Disorder. 20: Darkness.

In the presence of its corpse, all actions according to this god’s idiom are done with advantage.

Form – it was:

1: Humanoid. Hair, fingers, hooves. 2: Saurian. Scales, sauropod gait. 3: Piscine. Fish mail, fins, fish tail. 4: Mantid. Exoskeleton and ungues. 5: Birdlike. Feathers, sickle talons. 6: Serpentine. Coiling, coiling, coiling.

With the limbs and qualities roughly appropriate to that morphology.

Additional features – godliness made it extraordinary. Roll twice in each category. Parentheses indicate special properties in the remains:

Heads (d12): 1: Head of an ant. (Antennae cells sense life.) 2: Head of a mastodon. (Tusk ivory explodes doors.) 3: Head of an owl. (Brain matter chatters random secrets.) 4: Head of a crocodile. (Wounds inflicted by teeth enamel do not staunch.) 5: Head an icosahedron. (All rolls equal to the result of the die face you stand on.) 6: Eye a window to the starry void. (Portal to the vacuum of space.) 7: Eyes of molten iron. (Still molten.) 8: Unicorn horn. (Keratin a universal panacea.) 9: Adamantine tusks. (Unbreakable.) 10: d4 faces, all on a single head. (Roll d4 for each face, above.) 11: Mane of wise serpents. (Ghosts. Bored. Want to see the world. Will grant you powers, to this end.) 12: Fig forest on the crown. (Fruit reverses aging, seeds still viable.)

Torsos (d12): 1: Tortoise shell. (Individual scutes indestructible.) 2: Godzilla ridged plates. (Electrified.) 3: Actual-gold fur. 4: Glass scales. (Easily shattered.) 5: Nacreous sweat. (Seams of pearl.) 6: Psychedelic musk. (Pockets of hallucinogenic air.) 7: d4 vaginas to pocket dimensions. (Still open.) 8: Pregnant with a god of opposing idiom. (All actions according to the stillborn god’s idiom are done with advantage.) 9: Pregnant with a miniature sun. (Burning.) 10: d100 eggs of demi-divine spawn. (Will hatch undead horrors if cracked.) 11: d4 outsized priapic penises. (Endless gushing ichor, if punctured.) 12: Testes bursting with flying sperm. (Black, undead, aims for fertile wombs.)

Arms (d12): 1: Pair of arms, simian-handed. 2: Pair of arms, scythe-ended. 3: Pair of arms, crab-pincered. 4: Pair of arms, ghoul-clawed. 5: d12 arms, barbed, tentacular. 6: Two forearms on every elbow. 7: Hands performing flaming mudras. (Radioactive.) 8: 2d4 disembodied, flying palms. (Counts as slumbering, independent monsters.) 9: Wrist a stump, leaking disease. (Primordial ancestor to bone-break fever.) 10: Hands solid, articulated silver. 11: Touch that drains blood. (Negative-energy galleries.) 12: Touch that freezes tissue. (Frozen galleries.)

Wings (d12): 1: Pair of eagle wings. 2: Pair of bat wings. 3: Fan of peacock tail-feathers. 4: Two pairs of lace wings, fore and hind. 5: Two pairs of moth wings, staring-eye motifs. (Stuns on sight.) 6: Pair of lionfish spike-fins. (Excruciating pain on touch.) 7: 2d4 wings, detached, independent. 8: Wings in multicolour flame. (Galleries of flammable gas, as yet unignited.) 9: Wings that hum hypnotically. (Listeners will obey all spoken commands.) 10: Wings burnt, shrivelled away, useless. 11: Wings of solid jade, a burden. 12: Wings that eat light. (Blocks all sight.)

Legs (d12): 1: Pair of legs, simian-footed. 2: Pair of legs, eagle-taloned. 3: Pair of legs, goat-hoofed. 4: Pair of legs, frog-webbed. 5: 2d4 pairs of locust legs. 6: Slug foot, corrosive slime. (Acid lakes.) 7: Two calves on every knee. 8: d4 knees too many. 9: Footprints of diamond. 10: Footprints of fungal growths. 11: Footprints of screaming faces. (Seams of skulls.) 12: One leg a stump, bleeding leukocytes. (Lake of predatory leukocytes.)

Accoutrements (d12): 1: Trishula of frozen lightning. (Actual lightning.) 2: Belt of amber beads, a demon imprisoned in each. (Smashable.) 3: Garland of angel skulls. (Vengeful ghost angels. Will grant powers to those who would topple gods.) 4: Lotus-flower-shaped seat, made of lotus flowers. (Vein of still-fragrant petals.) 5: Turbined interstellar chariot. (Mangled star-metal technologies.) 6: Crown of thorns. (Made from sharpened dragon antlers.) 7: Mystic astrolabe. (Shattered. Repaired, able to manipulate the firmament.) 8: Smooth, featureless mask. (Shrinks to human size. When worn, assume form of any living entity you previously met. Magic cannot detect this deception.) 9: Winged slippers. (Capable of flight.) 10: Giant bow. (Broken. Repaired, drawn by somebody of divine lineage, its arrows will slay any entity.) 11: Abacus. (Missing beads. Repaired, able to fundamentally reconfigure a mortal soul.) 12: Arched harp. (Unstrung. Repaired, its vibrations freeze time.)

Attendants (d12): 1: Sentient giant ticks. (Genteel, philosophical, vampiric, starving.) 2: Ancient outang-men. (Insane albino outang-trogs.) 3: Great cockerel. (Kaiju-sized chicken skeleton. Will animate if unearthed.) 4: Great python. (Enormous intelligent tapeworms.) 5: Eight-legged horse. (Incorporeal hooves thundering through the tunnels. Tramples.) 6: Thirteen bronze dwarves. (Invented bone-marrow beer. When they mined out the marrow their camaraderie collapsed. None left.) 7: Shoulder angel, shoulder demon. (Spirits. One benign, one malign. Both compete to further their god’s idiom.) 8: School of angelfish. (Submerged warrens. Fleshing-eating swarms.) 9: Fairy slaves. (Now a nightmare cannibal autocracy.) 10: Marble automatons. (A mega-automaton assemblage, always looking for more parts.) 11: Life-giving rainbow wisps. (Fungus-spreading negative-rainbow wisps.) 12: Octahedrim. (Eight-sided floating polyhedra that shoot lasers and eat luck.)

SO YOU WANT TO QUARRY A GOD’S CORPSE

Imagine your god-beast. Imagine it fall.

+++

( Image sources:

http://www.barakasamsara.com/location/kawah-ijen-sulfur-mine-java https://www.pinterest.com/pin/328833210262526871/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book) https://factsprovidence.wordpress.com/moore-lovecraft-comics-annotation-index/pantheon-variant-covers/ https://medieval.tumblr.com/post/71758580115/eyes-on-wings-on-wheels-with-eyes-ophanim )

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Fun with Feats 6: Consumable Item Creation Feats

Magic items represent many things in fiction or gaming. They might be tools of great power for either the forces of good or evil. They’re the part of the treasure list that gets the party most excited. The presence of magic items can really set the tone of your setting.

While most people think of magic items in terms of arcane weapons, wondrous items, and the like, few can deny the value of the more humble mystical fare: Potions, scrolls, and other things that are meant to deliver their power once, and then be spent up. By the end of the adventure, most parties will have gone through dozens of these things.

Make no mistake though, these minor magic items are very much part of the aforementioned setting tone. If potions and scrolls are widely available, everyone and their grandmother might be able to afford them. Meanwhile, in settings where they are rare treasures, suddenly even a simple potion of cure light wounds is a precious commodity in a low-magic setting.

The classic option, of course, is the creation of consumable fluids with the Brew Potion feat, allowing anyone to use some lower-level magical effects. The exact specifics of how said potions are brewed will vary by individual, caster type, and so on, but the result should be the same.

What most people forget is that the feat creates not only drinkable potions, but also oils which can be poured and rubbed into objects to achieve similar effects, such as temporarily enchanting a weapon, blessing a container to be hard to open, and so on.

Scrolls, on the other hand, have a much wider variety of spells, able to be created for any level of spell. The downside, however, is that the user must possess enough magical knowledge to decipher and use them. Still, the ability to Scribe Scrolls is quite useful, both for prepared casters who want to have a useful spell on hand without preparing it, or spontaneous casters looking to diversify their arsenal.

One of the most fun thing about scrolls is that, despite the name, they can be made from pretty much any material that can be written on, and multiple individual scrolls can be inscribed on a single piece of material if there is room. However, obviously parchment, papyrus, paper, or the like is most common due to its light weight and portability.

Another fun thing is visualizing how different spellcasting types write scrolls. Arcane scrolls may be filled with complex formulae for channeling the arcane power, while a divine scroll likely also includes prayers to the god the writer worships, invoking their name for aid (I imagine that other divine casters substitute the name of their own god when using them), while psychic casters may simply be instructions how to visualize and unlock the magical power stored in the scroll.

Of course, that’s not the only magical single-use item out there. Some spellcasters learn to combine the potion brewing arts with poisons to Infuse Poisons, adding a spell effect to those that are afflicted. This could be an additional harmful effect to increase the lethality of the poison, or you could use it in more subtle ways, such as adding delay poison to make the initial attack seem harmless until later, or, if the creator is a druid, hunter, or ranger, add a neutralize poison spell, adding to subterfuge if the user needs to convince someone else they are actually poisoning a target without actually killing them.

A relic from when Pathfinder was just a setting using 3.5 rules, we also have the Brew Fleshwarping Poison, which could temporarily or permanently grant a creature an ability of another creature. As written, the poisons still cost experience points, a holdover from 3.5, and seems dangerously unbalanced, even with the multiplicative cost for monster challenge rating. I recommend using the Fleshwarper feat, which we will cover in some future special, for your fleshwarping needs.

And that does it for today! These magic items may be of low level compared to others, but their use is undeniable!

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People love it when two characters of different races fall in love with each other. When they have children. The official rulebooks provide some options for characters that have parents of two different races. But if you want 11 more, you should pick up my Mixed Races Homebrew on Dms guild! I just updated to version 1.1, where I fixed some typos, improved the wording on some abilities and gave the dwelf a more interesting racial ability. Also I got some wonderful cover art by @zelda-and-princess-hyrule

So if you want to play a

Dragonhold (Dragonborn + Kobold)

Dragonkocra (Dragonborn + Aarakocra)

Mixed Genasi (Smoke, Magma, Ooze, Ice)

Elf-Orc

Elemental Tiefling or Aasimar

Nephilim (Tiefling + Aasimar)

Dwelf (Dwar + Elf)

Half-Orc (Halfling + Orc)

Half-Elf (Halfling + Elf)

Check out this great homebrew on Dms guild! It’s PWYW so you can pick it up for free, but I would be very grateful if you actually paid something, a lot of work has been put into it.

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Attention, DMs! #2

There’s a user on r/DnD that created a wonderful script for weather in your D&D games. The post is here and the website is here. While weather in D&D games isn’t usually a huge factor- barring natural disaster- it’s a neat concept that I wanted to share.

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Dungeon Crafting Master Post

image credit: Noah Bradley

Here is a list of links to my recent (and one less recent) posts on mapping dungeons! I hope these help you when brewing your own adventures. I will hopefully update this post whenever I write more articles on dungeon design.

The Three-Act Dungeon

Environmental Factors

Mechanic-Driven Design

Puzzle Dungeons

Dungeon Tempo

If you ever have ideas on dungeon design or want me to write about something in particular, feel free to submit a post or leave an ask!

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We’re fleshing out our FREE hand-drawn asset collection with the new River & Water Assets pack. Please share your creations on my page, I love seeing them!

Free download: https://2minutetabletop.com/river-water-rpg-battle-map-textures-assets/

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they did what

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We stand on someone else’s dirt. Every day we search, we scrape, we scavenge, and we fight for an opportunity to maintain our lives. Humans were never meant for this world, and I often wonder why we even exist. This world was designed for the Titans — the massive, mythical beasts that roam the land… their land.

Reach of Titan is a tabletop role playing game designed to emulate fantasy style battles with giant creatures. Players take on the roll of Titan Hunters, special members of their tribe who are responsible for the safety and growth of the community. These hunters are tasked to go out and fight the giant creatures that roam the land, to feed their families, and protect what they have built. The world is dangerous, the Titans are an incomprehensible threat, but those with the will to survive, can use their talents and skills to eek out an existence.

Reach of Titan will have a familiar feel for anyone who has played Shadow of the Colossus, Monster Hunter, or watched the Attack on Titan anime. The battles are designed to be half-puzzle, half-combat, where players must use more than their die rolls to bring down these behemoths. Encounters are challenging, as you must solve the puzzle of killing the Titan, while also working with the resource management system of traditional RPG combat. This combination of systems will provide play groups with a very unique game experience.

Reach of Titan is a tabletop role playing game that has been in development for over 3 years. The original idea of the game came when Jim McClure wanted to have interesting, giant creature battles, but he could not find a system that really supported this kind of play experience. So Jim starting working on his own game!

The initial play tests were very promising and showed that this unique play style, combined with the custom system designed to support it, were a hit. Over time the game expanded with each new series of play tests. Just fighting Titans, while a deeply engaging experience, was not a complete game. Jim added in game elements of settlement building, cultural creation, hunting, and world exploration to flush out the original concept into a complete RPG experience.

Reach of Titan is designed to be a modern game that incorporates the various ways people currently engage with RPGs. The game fully supports both long term campaign play and quick one-shot adventures. During this traditional style of play, the characters will increase their skills and abilities, they will establish and grow a settlement, and they will explore the world while hopefully unlocking the secrets of the Titans. The game will provide everything you would expect and more from a long term campaign experience.

Additionally, the game can easily be played in a more episodic fashion. If your group is looking for a quick couple of hours of fun, the game master can pick up the book, choose a Titan encounter, and within a few minutes have everything they need for a night of Titan hunting. The book and the encounters are designed to do all the heavy lifting for the GM, so for those that want a minimal prep game, Reach of Titan will perfectly satisfy this need.

The game book itself will be a 300-400 page (depending on stretch goals) full-size, full-color, illustrated Hardcover. The first half of the book will contain the rules of play, character classes, character advancement, settlement building, item inventories, culture growth, and Titan hunting. The second half of the book is a bestiary filled will all the known Titan’s that roam the land. This bestiary includes information about the history of each Titan, all the stats needed for the GM to run an encounter, information about how they fight, and their weak spots. In addition a full illustration for each Titan is presented in the book which can be used as a battle map for the encounters. Our hope is that through the funding of stretch goals we will be able to make a considerable expansion to this Bestiary, by including new Titans from our contributing writers.

In addition to the hardcover book, the game will also be offered as a traditional PDF, and on the Roll20 marketplace. The Roll20 format is discussed in more detail below.

Reach of Titan has its own mechanical system designed by Jim McClure that is specifically made to emulate Colossal style fantasy combat. The interesting design challenge for this game came from the imbalance between player characters and the Titans that they will fight. Unlike many RPGs, the player characters and the Titans they are fighting are so different that the mechanical nature of both sides needed to be asymmetrical.

Mechanically, the Titans themselves consist of multiple parts. Arms, legs, body, head, tail, wings, etc. Each part of the Titan will have its own stats, health, and abilities. As the players fight a Titan they will climb the creature, attacking the various parts in an attempt to kill it. How each Titan is killed is unique to that creature, and the players will have to discover the win condition through game play. The Titan will react to the player’s movements and the battle will change as sections of the Titan are damaged.

The core mechanic for the players is every character has a pool of 6 d6’s that are used to complete their actions. These dice move between two zones on the character sheet: Available and Exhausted. Players can use any dice they have in the “available” zone to make actions, and once the dice have been used, they are then moved to the exhausted zone. Each round of combat all the players dice are moved back to the Available zone. When a player takes an action, they can spend any number of available dice on what they want to accomplish. The dice are rolled and the result is summed against a target number as determined by the Titan’s stats. Players can take a number of actions each turn, based on the amount of dice they have available and how they choose to spend them.

The concept of this mechanic is to put all the power of success and failure in the hands of the players. If a player wants to guarantee their success in a turn they could spend all their dice on a single action. However, the more they want to try and accomplish in a turn, thus optimizing their actions, the greater risk there is for failure. While play testing Reach of Titan, this core mechanic has resulted in fantastic game play because failure in this system is not a result of swingy dice rolls or characters not having good enough stats, failure is a direct result of players choices.

While fighting giant creatures is a core part of the experience of Reach of Titan, the game also incorporates settlement building and hunting as key aspects of the game. You are members of a small village that is trying to survive in the harsh world. If you are successful, you will be able to watch your village grow and prosper. Failures will result in watching your settlement dwindle. Every Titan hunt comes with risks and rewards that must be weighed, and the results of these encounters will shape your community.

Settlement Building

Human settlements are small villages scattered across the land, appearing in places where shelter could be found from the Titans. You will find villages in deep forests, caves, mountain hideaways, anyplace that will keep unwanted giants from roaming in and destroying what people have worked so hard to make. Most settlements are very small, and few ever see a population above several hundred people. To grow a settlement, it requires a tremendous amount of effort and danger on the part of the inhabitants.

In a game sense, settlements are the homes of the Titan Hunters. It is where the players will have most of their interaction and role play. When characters are not hunting Titans they will oversee the settlement working to improve it, expand the culture, and make connections with their tribe.

The settlement will start off very small and weak. However, players can actively work to build and grown the settlement into a proper village, town, or with enough work, a city. Each Titan that is killed will provide materials used to make new buildings, establish defenses, improve farming, and make the settlement a better place to live. Players will have to manage the precious resources they collect to help grow the town.

Titan Hunting

When more resources are needed, or if the settlement is in danger, the Titans Hunters will need to go out into the world. Hunting a Titan is a very risky prospect as the world is dangerous, the lands are uncharted, and the characters never know what they will find in the wild.

When players go into the “Titan Hunt phase” they will have to risk aspects of the settlement or something personal to them. The longer the hunt takes, the more things are risked and the higher the danger grows. Ultimately, if the hunt fails the things what has been wagered will be lost.

Titan Killing

When a Titan is finally confronted, combat will ensue. Players will use all their knowledge, skills, and resources to kill the beast. If they are successful, they will be rewarded with a number of resources they can take back with them. If they fail they must return empty handed, and face their settlement.

The Lore of this world, and the reason humans came to exist in the land of giants, is presented in a very specific way in Reach of Titan. There is not a lore chapter to read through with a chronological timeline about past events, instead the details about the true nature of the world, are spread throughout each Titan description.

Humans have little to no understanding of why they are here or how the existence of Titans came to be. The game will let the players discover this for themselves by having the history and truth of their existence be wrapped up in puzzle that needs to be solved. For those that want to unlock the full mystery, which is present in the game, it will take time and research to find the truth.

When running a game of Reach of Titan this scattering of the lore concept serves as a player aid. After a successful Titan hunt, the players can bring back a piece of the Titan to their settlement’s Seer. The Seer will then reveal to them the lore of that Titan. As players encounter more and more Titans, they will be able to start to piece together an understanding about the world they inhabit.

There are secret aspects to the world’s Lore that will be known by only a few people. For those that back the Kickstarter at the “Settlement Leader” or the “Seer’s Story” levels, you will receive a unique piece of the worlds lore that is presented to you alone. It is up to you to unlock the history and discover how the Titans came to be.

If you are interested in seeing more of what Reach of Titan is about, you can check out the play-test document of the game. It includes 36 pages of rules, 4 sample characters, 3 Titan encounters, and everything you need to play the game. The document has been out since December of 2018 and is getting rave reviews.

There are two places you can download this document, on the Third Act Publishing Website, and on DriveThruRPG, both links are provided below.

Third Act Publishing - Reach of Titan

DriveThruRPG - Reach of Titan

Reach of Titan is going to be released in the traditional formats of PDF and hardcover, however we are also working in conjunction with Roll20 on this project. Roll20 is the world largest Virtual Tabletop with over 3 million users. Virtual tabletops are an ever increasing part of the RPG community with millions of people that have their game experience solely on these platforms.

Third Act Publishing intends to be at the forefront of this style of gaming and Reach of Titan is our first game that will have complete incorporation into the Roll20 platform. This includes Roll20 specific character sheets, in-platform rules compendium, and Reach of Titan campaign laid out with graphics for ease of use. The Roll20 version will be a seamless digital product that will provide the best possible online play experience for Reach of Titan.

For the duration of this Kickstarter we have the play test version of Reach of Titan on Roll20 for FREE! If you are a Pro or Plus subscriber you can go to Roll20 right now and see what the experience is like. We have all the play test information already laid out in the format and working character sheets for players and Titans. If you are a Roll20 subscriber, head on over, and check it out now.

Kickstarter campaign ends: Fri, March 1 2019 3:00 AM UTC +00:00

Website: Third Act Publishing

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maxsbird2 · 5 years

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BAD NEWS: none of us who create anything in any medium will ever as long as we live have a single better idea or even as good of an idea as what I’m about to show you

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maxsbird2 · 5 years

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Subsystems and You 6: Haunted Spells

Following the cue of yesterday’s entry on an obscure subtype of spell, today we’re looking at another, specifically associated with the necromancy school of magic.

Despite their name, haunted spell do not have any association with actual lingering spirits, but they do manipulate the spiritual makeup of the ethereal plane to create a long-lasting, superficially-willful manifestation that in many ways resembles a true haunt, manifesting in a location or attached to a victim to torment or slay them. Unlike true haunts, however, they do not return, lacking the true emotional link tying the soul to the location.

They also have a few weaknesses, namely in that they can be destroyed by positive energy like a real haunt, cannot be placed together with other haunted spells in an area or subject, and prevent the recovery of the spell energy that created them as long as the spell remains latent and untriggered, which typically is a week if the haunt does not get set off.

Just like yesterday, I’m going to list the spells that fall into this category to help folks visualize how these spells work and what they might to do homebrew their own.

Besmara’s Grasping Depths turns a section of a deep body of water into a deathtrap as an unearthly force drags a victim towards the bottom.

Crafter’s Nightmare is a spell of sabotage, something that someone might cast into a rival’s workshop to bring misfortune to whoever attempts to do any sort of work within, not only making it harder, but causing a variety of painful accidents therein.

Favored by icy mages like the winter witches of Irrisin, Frigid Souls withers defenses against cold magic and makes establishing new defenses difficult, leaving most foes without protection.

Grim Stalker curses an object to mark the next person to touch it, manifesting a shadowy mastiff to stalk the target, inciting nightmares, adding to their mortal fear when they are injured, and even attempting to slay them outright when near death. Interestingly, there are rituals to cause the hound to manifest in fully corporeal form, so that the victim can attempt to slay it and be free of it at last.

Another punishing curse, Horrifying Visage causes a foe to gain a deep-seated phobia, the nature of which is determined by the caster.

Infusing malevolence into the shadows of foes, Mischievous Shadow causes the shadow of its victims to become distorted and come alive. Though mostly harmless, they occasionally move to interfere with the actions of others nearby, grasping at the shadows of others to disrupt their corporeal counterpart.

Commonly used by those seeking to mark another for later torment, we have Skin Tag, which involves casting the spell into food and drink, which later manifests a face-like blemish or mark on the target who partook of the ensorcelled meal. This allows the caster to keep tabs on them, disrupt their focus with unpleasant skin sensations, and even cast various forms of magic on them from afar.

Mirroring the tendency for undead to unsettle the living, Unsettling Presence causes all creatures to be disturbed by the target’s presence, and vice versa, leading to animals panicking, and all number of misunderstandings.

Finally, Urgathoa’s Beacon may as well be called Urgathoa’s Dinner Bell, as it marks the victims as being especially enticing to the ravenous undead, who become able to sense the victim and attack all the more vigorously in order to get at their sweet sustenance.

While some are directly useful in combat, many of these spells require to be set up ahead of time, and so are most likely to be used by villains under the GM’s control. However, in some games and situations a spell like these can be helpful for setting up an ambush, turning the tables on the big bad or their minions, or perhaps laying down a magical trap in the party’s sanctum to prevent enemy access, and so on. I’d definitely give them consideration for more subtle casters that prefer to deliver long-lasting torment to foes.

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