#some things are homebrew but most of it is canon so that's pretty cool for an au :DDDD
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As stated in my last post, World Eaters have occupied the vast majority of both my 40k time and my 40k energy for a number of months now. I’m even planning on joining a local league with my Khorne army, which I suppose means they’ve usurped the Thunderbearers as my “main” army, even though I love all of my tiny plastic sons equally. But regardless of the fact that they’re not exactly my primary army, the Thunderbearers are still my little men. The World Eaters may be my favorite faction, but they’re not my fully custom homebrewed little men that I’ve been collecting, customizing, and writing for years now.
I think it’s a good time to start working on my Astartes again. GW has been releasing a lot of banger kits recently, and since the turn of the edition, my drop pod strats have been more viable than ever. I’ve got some plans for the army going forwards, so I wanna talk about some of those here.
The new Company Heroes box is one of my favorite Primaris kits ever released. Each one of these sculpts fucking rocks, but I’m particularly interested the two decked out Veterans. Even more particularly the dude with the heavy bolter. Thing is, the actual datasheet attached to the kit is kind of mid, so instead of actually using the squad, I’m gonna cannibalize the kit for bits.
The Captain and the Ancient will be used as their solo datasheets. Not sure what I’ll do with the Champion, but I’m thinking I’ll use him to build a Librarian. The two veterans, however, are both gonna get recycled into Captain models.
Zaraf Görefried “the Red Roar” Redfale, Lord-Captain of the 2nd Company, forgotten prince of Manticore
Each Thunderbearers Company is a semi-autonomous armada, a vast independent warfleet of such concentrated force that it resembles a microcosmic Chapter in and of itself, albeit one with incredibly diminished numbers.
Due to their high levels of operational freedom, each Thunderbearers Company contains unique cultures and subtle variances of the Chapter’s doctrines. As such, those leading the Companies—the Captains, known interchangeably as Lords—are the greatest paragons of their fleet, representing most succinctly in both character and action the ideals of their individual Company.
Because of this, I’m trying to kitbash an interesting and characterful model for each Captain. Their model should tell a tale about them as an individual, but it should also be the clearest visual representation of their Company’s tactics and culture.
Perseus Lahan, “the Thunder Hand,” Lord-Captain of the 3rd Company
So going back to the Company Heroes, the robot lad is going to get converted into Perseus Lahan, the 3rd Captain. Perseus is known as “the Thunder Hand” not only for his sick ass gilded golden arm, but for his ruthlessly efficient decision-making and his finely honed (yet seemingly endless) temper.
This model is a pretty simple conversion, but super effective as a Captain, I think. I may also replace the circular thang on his power pack with a better iron halo, but I’ll get there when I get there.
Lazarus Sicane, “the White Wind,” Chapter-Master of the Thunderbearers and herald of the great storm
Heavy bolter guy gets better treatment than the robot arm guy though, of course. He’s gonna get converted into my Chapter-Master.
This will be Lazarus Sicane, the savior of the Chapter. He wields Exaction, an ancient, hyper-artificed bolt cannon that may or may not contain a dominated Warp entity. Lazarus is responsible for a lot of things in the Thunderbearers canon, including but not limited to reunifying the decimated Chapter after the opening of the Great Rift. He is, for all intents and purposes, the Chapter’s greatest hope, and one behind which all of its fleets rally.
I’m really excited to get this guy built because he’s kind of the quintessential Thunderbearers model. Old mark armor, lots of robes, gothic shit all over, a gargantuan ballistic cannon, and a metric fuckton of purity seals. He’ll also be super cool for narrative purposes, and definitely a bit of a centerpiece model.
Accompanying him will be a squad of Terminators, the Storm Guard, whenever I pick up a squad of those.
2nd Company Specialist test color scheme, courtesy of a friend
Since Companies are their own autonomous things, it makes sense for them to have their own heraldry, as well. To add some visual variety to my army, I’ve decided that a few of my dudes (specifically my Gravis units) are gonna get some red coloring to denote them as members of the 2nd Company.
The 2nd Company has a large quantity of recruits sourced from the world Manticore, which is a big hostile ball of frozen red sands. The red ceramite is an homage to the red-colored armor that warriors would wear as camouflage in the sand dunes.
I’m not entirely decided upon what color scheme to run with. The red helmet and red shoulder pad are cool, I think, but a red helmet and a red weapon may also work just as well. I’ll do some coloring tests to decide on what works best, but that’s about all I’ve got regarding loreposting and planning for my Space Marines. Outside of the Company Heroes, I’m gonna grab a Gladiator Lancer at some point, as well as an Impulsor. Gotta get my armor up.
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Welcome and Tag Masterlist
hello and welcome! i love playing TTRPGs, and as it says in the bio, i have Too Many Thoughts about my PCs from my various campaigns to keep them to myself anymore. so i made this sideblog to infodump about my beloved PC blorbos!
as a general note, this is not a family-friendly blog. there's a lot of adult language, adult themes, and written descriptions of TTRPG violence that can at times get pretty gorey. i do tag potential triggers by the specific post and try hide more triggering parts of posts under cuts, but i am only one human. please feel free to let me know (either publicly or privately) if i missed a trigger tag or if there is something you would like me to tag for!
also please feel free to send me asks about any of the characters or campaigns, or even just TTRPG things in general. i love these topics and will gladly take any opportunity to chat about them!
finally. there's a lot of blorbos on this blog, and a lot of NPCs, and a lot of campaigns, and a lot of tags, so under the cut here is a handy little guide to help keep them all straight!*
*disclaimer: nothing and no one here is straight. i am incapable of making characters and stories that aren't queer and so are most of the people i play with.
without further ado, the campaigns! i will probably be redoing my campaign intros and character intros at some point, and will add the links for those once completed. these are listed as Campaign Title, System Used, in reverse chronological order.
Curse of Strahd, DnD 5e
my current obsession. this is a heavily homebrewed version of Curse of Strahd (like, we're talking a good 80% or more homebrew) DMed by my husband, @somethingclevermahogony. it's all of your dark queer gothic horror dreams come true!
this campaign is just absolutely chalk full of dead doves like body horror, child abuse and death (almost entirely off-screen), animal cruelty, body horror, gallows humor, cannibalism, oh my god so much gore, and body horror. but don't let that get you down; there's also a lot of very funny and very heartwarming moments in this campaign and the worldbuilding our DM does is so fucking cool.
this is also technically two campaigns, as we have both a present day game with two PCs, based on the Curse of Strahd book, and a prequel campaign with just me as a player, which delves into some of the history around when Barovia was first closed off from the rest of Faerun, roughly 400 years before the main campaign.
in the present day, i play a human tempest cleric named Cerris Dalca Tempescu, who is just so very very tired. our other PC is Shalden Broadfist, a purple half-orc paladin who serves a desert worm cult. our party is rounded out with a couple of NPCs; Vasillica, a flesh golem made out of pieces of the bodies and souls of at least a dozen different people by an insane angel, and Milo, an adorable little klepto halfling boy who used to be the Bagman and still has Bagman powers. in the prequel, i play Kire Dalca, a human eldritch knight fighter who came to Barovia as part of the original war effort against Strahd and then got trapped in Barovia. coincidentally, she's Cerris's many many greats aunt and she's also so very very tired (and maybe pregnant shhh).
the tag for the present day campaign is #curse of strahd homebrew, and the prequel is #curse of strahd prequel, and you can find them both or general CoS things under #curse of strahd. recurring character tags include #cerris tempescu for my cleric, #shalden broadfist for my companion PC, #ireena my beloved for (of course) the brilliant NPC Ireena Kolyana, #meow meow milo and #the bagman for Milo, and #kire dalca for my fighter. pretty soon there will also probably be tags for the secondary PCs we made as backup characters in case our first PCs die, as they have actually both been introduced in canon now.
Hot Gay Pirates in Your Area! Avatar Legends: The RPG
my other current campaign, with my college TTRPG group (which includes my husband as a player). it's set in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, during the era of Kyoshi. specifically, it's late summer in 250BG (Before Genocide). there are some promised darker elements, as well as a lot of enemy deaths, due to the nature of this campaign, but overall it's a very fun, chaotic, and queer story!
we play as a party of pirates/smugglers on a small ship called The Confusion, working for the Ruike clan, a coastal Fire Nation crime family. our total ship crew currently numbers 10, with four PCs, but it might very well get bigger given that we started with a crew of 9.
i play Aila Ruike, granddaughter of the head of the clan and heir apparent after her father. she serves as The Confusion's sort of second in command, and is a talented firebender and swordswoman, though she's much better at environmental control and defense than offense. she's stoic and stern and kind of mean in a hot way, and has two priorities in life: upholding her family honor and taking care of her team. my husband plays Bo of the Foggy Swamp Tribe, a waterbender who ran away from home to avoid the pressures and responsibility of leadership. he's flirty and silly and a little bit vicious in battle (his bending style is based on the US "boxing" style rough-and-tumble), and pretends to be a lot dumber than he actually is. we also have Onartok of the Southern Water Tribe, a sweet but naïve waterbender prince who, like Bo, ran away from home to avoid the pressures of leadership. before joining the crew, he was "roommates" with Aila's cousin Jai. and finally, the enigmatic Lì, a former EK child soldier who ran away from the army and is now a fabulous genderfluid pirate who goes off on violent side-quests with Aila while the waterbenders are doing nice people side-quests.
tags for this campaign include #hot gay pirates in your area!, #our ship is called the confusion for a reason, #atla, and #aila ruike.
Acquisitions, Incorporated: Cauldron & Kettle Questing Company, DnD 5e
this was our second campaign with our college TTRPG group, and was a fun romp set in the world of Acquisitions, Inc., an actual play podcast by Penny Arcade based around the idea of "classic adventuring parties but make it capitalism." it was primarily played out of the official Acquisitions, Inc., playbook, with some additional homebrew expansions and a nice little extra homebrew arc on the end that introduced us to the incredible chaos of the D10,000 wild magic table.
we played as the Cauldron & Kettle Questing Co., a subsidiary branch of the larger Acq Inc. corporation, based in Phandalin. at our branch, we also owned a tea shop named the Cauldron & Kettle Cafe, and we had a steam-powered teapot-shaped vehicle dubbed the Tea Trolley. this campaign accidentally ended up going very hard on the found family vibes.
i played Jun Vyardes, a half-elf light cleric/bard, travelling priestess of the fire and revelry goddess Vestia. she's very devoted to her found family, and after a life of wandering, is finally starting to learn how to settle down and grow roots. my husband played Tim Cobbletoss, a half-orc barbarian primarily raised by a blind halfling woman, so in personality he's basically a british grandma with occasional anger issues. he and Jun share a human father we affectionately referred to as Daddy Bard, who is such a terrible father that complaining about him is actually part of how these two started bonding. we also had Briny (played by the same person as Onartok), a goblinoid blood hunter who likes shells and the ocean and gambling even though they don't actually know anything about gambling; and Taku (played by the same person as Lì), a whooping crane aarakocra monk who is very smart and powerful and unfortunately also fragile, and whom Jun regarded as a little brother and became very protective of.
tags for this campaign include #acquisitions incorporated, #Cauldron & Kettle Questing Co., #bard is only one letter away from bad (for Daddy Bard nonsense), #jun vyardes, and #tim and jun.
The Orphic Uprising and The Amazonomachy, Cypher
these were two continuous arcs that together formed the first campaign with our college TTRPG group. they were set in the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, so we sometimes refer to them collectively as the PJO campaign.
we played as a group of Camp Half-Blood kids, all in their late teens by the end of the story. in The Orphic Uprising, it was a group of four of us sent on a prophecy quest to the Underworld to rescue Dionysus and prevent the children of Nyx's attempted takeover of Olympus. in the Amazonomachy, it was a group of five sent out to prevent the Amazons' attempted takeover of Olympus, because apparently Olympus just cannot catch a break!
i played Nina Grayson, daughter of Nike, a talented gymnast, dancer, and rock-climber lowkey obsessed with victory and willing to fight a little dirty if that's what it took to win. i had a lot of fun with her mechanically, as she was basically an unkillable damage- and debuff-dealing machine--she just, ya know, also didn't really have any social skills and was very much a himbo. iconic himbo acts of hers include solving a puzzle by punching a horse statue in the face, getting set on fire and then putting it out by drenching herself in monster blood, solving a locked door problem by punching the lock open, splitting the party to go undercover with the Amazons without telling her friends she was only fake-betraying them, and punching a bitchy goddess so hard it temporarily killed her. i love her. at some point she acquired the nickname Larry.
my husband played Chuck Hickey, an Italian-American son of Dionysus who lived on his grandparents' vineyard who really embraced the chaotic side of his godly heritage. silly and goofy but also a talented battle strategist, highly charismatic, and capable of turning into a fire-breathing leopard. cause, ya know, Dionysus.
the other character present for both arcs was Beatrice Starveling, a NY-based daughter of Apollo raised by her two gay dads. she was an incredible performer, a true bardic legend, and alongside Chuck, played a key part in helping Nina come out of her shell.
for The Orphic Uprising, our final party member was . . . i gotta be honest i don't remember his name, just that he was kind of an obnoxious Mary Sue type son of Aphrodite, who the rest of us all had a grand time poking fun at and complaining about when the player did not return for the second arc.
for The Amazonomachy, we welcomed two new players and their PCs, Bryce (played by the same person as Onartok and Briny) and Murph (played by the same person as Lì and Taku). Bryce was a dumbass (affectionate) son of Eros who was sweet and well-meaning but generally clueless, and somehow had really good game with the ladies. Murph was a son of Epimetheus (hindsight), a surfer bro and himbo extraordinaire with amazing luck and an incredible knack for having just the right tool for the job, somehow.
tags for this campaign include #confusion crew, #the orphic uprising, #the amazonomachy, and #nina grayson.
North Pines Camp, Monster of the Week, and Grovington College, Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terrors
these two campaigns were my first dives into TTRPGs, both with the same GM and both with slightly altered versions of the same PC for me, so the GM and i had a few fun inside jokes and callbacks during the second one. these were played before i met my husband and before i got good at note-taking, so my memory of them is very hazy. tbh any content posted about these two will be undetailed, completely out of context, and full of holes, but the basic shenanigans are still very fun to look back on.
North Pines Camp was a kids' summer camp in ?????, built on top of what used to be monster-hunter training grounds. our PCs were all camp employees, and our main goal was typically to keep the kids safe (or rescue them) from whatever ~monster of the week~ showed up to wreak havoc. there was a deeper mystery element running through it, about what happened to the old monster-hunter camp here, but we never got far enough into the story to really get anywhere with it.
Grovington College was a decently sized college with greek life located in Grovington, ?????, USA; it housed a chapter of the Brotherhood, a demon/monster-slaying organization. our PCs were all members of this chapter, tasked with taking care of various demon and monster problems around campus and the town as a whole, in between doing college student/professor things.
in these campaigns, i played Indigo Sullivan, a queer psychic with both a caffeine and an attitude problem. technically they were two separate characters for the two campaigns, but like, the version of him that continues to roll around in my head is an amalgam of both PCs plus all the additional things i've tacked onto him as time has gone on. most of those additions can be summed up as "he's now even more queer and has even more problems."
tags for these campaigns are #north pines camp, #grovington college, and #indigo sullivan.
and that is all of them, phew! that's a lot thank you for reading this all and please enjoy my blog!
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Hidan and Kakuzu d&d au!
Two more members of the Akatsuki Fellowship!! They are travelling around Khorvaire, in the world of Eberron!
au! Akatsuki D&D
Headcanons:
All the info related to places and clans is from the canonic lore of Eberron, or from interpretations that I’ve found here and there, and also a bit of my own homebrew lore. I’m gathering all the info and sources in my WorldAnvil page so you can check it out if you want :)
And this is the map with notes so you can pin all the locations.
This time I chose to put only the info relevant to the characters to make the post shorter. But still, this will be a LONG post so be prepared xD
Founding of the Akatsuki Fellowship
All the members of the party met in Sharn, the biggest city of the continent of Khorvaire. They were there for different reasons but ended up travelling together across the world.
Hidan the bloody warlock
Hidan was born in the warrior nation of Karrnath in the city of Atur, where the living and dead coexist in a daily basis.
His parents were members of the Blood of Vol cult, and actively participated in the life of the Crimson Monastery, the largest worship site dedicated to Vol in the entire continent.
From a young age, his parents instructed him in the faith of the Divinity Within and encouraged him to follow their path and become a Seeker of the Blood of Vol.
The Blood of Vol is a religion centered on the belief of Divinity Within, which means that they do not revere any deity but the blood that courses through their own veins. The followers of the Blood of Vol are called Seekers, and many of them are necromancers employed by the government of Karrnath to control their undead soldiers.
Seekers believe that death is a curse prevent mortals from achieving divinity, so by breaking the curse of mortality, humanity will be able to live a plenty existence. Necromancy is an attempt to fight the curse of mortality and prevent the loss of the knowledge and skills obtained by past generations.
Contrary to the popular belief, Seekers cherish life and do not want to become undead. Those who become undead are considered to be martyrs who have given up their own chance at divinity to help others, since they will become tools for the living.
The Blood of Vol cult is ruled from Atur by The Crimson Covenant.
At the age of twelve, Hidan showed signs of possessing magical abilities, which catched the interest of the Cult and welcomed him into the Crimson Monastery to train his powers in favor of their religion and ulterior plans.
Hidan had always been an avid follower of his faith, but soon after joining the Monastery he started to interpret it in his own terms.
His warlock status made him believe that his blood carried the divine will, and that his mission was to actively fight for the Divinity Within by converting all the misguided mortals to The Blood of Vol, or sending them to their deceiving gods to see for themselves how misguided they were.
The years passed and Hidan only grew more powerful and reckless, learning and crafting unique invocations to unleash his magic at its fullest potential.
His ever growing power mixed with his free interpretation of the beliefs of The Blood of Vol, marked him as an individual too independent and powerful to escalate in the ranks of the Cult.
In an attempt to channel his energy and give him a purpose, The Covenant prompted him to join the Order of the Emerald Claw, the paramilitary arm of the Blood of Vol, and sent him to Rekkenmark.
The Order of the Emerald Claw is an outlawed organization of Karrn patriots and Blood of Vol worshippers spread throughout Khorvaire. They continue to operate in a semi-terrorist fashion to this day, proclaiming their desire to see Karrnath once again rise to power.
Their connection to the Cult is only known by highest ranking members of the Order.
Hidan was sent to Rekkenmark, in the border with Thrane. His cell had the undercover mission to hunt down any paladin of the Church of the Silver Flame that entered Karrnath with the intention of killing Vol’s vampires and undeads.
The Blood of Vol is a forbidden religion in some regions of the continent due to the evil connotations associated with their practices, and many groups such as the Church of the Silver Flame actively works to destroy them.
His days as an Emerald Claw Knight were short, though.
At the beginning, Hidan thought that the Order was his rightful place, that surrounded by powerful patriots he will be able to bring the divine will to all the mortals and spread his faith to the edge of the world.
However, he soon started to feel disenchanted with how the Order handled their business and how little they cared about his divine will. He realised that like in the Monastery, the Order also lacked of determination, and so he began to make their creed his and reform it by his own standards.
The time passed and Hidan grew more reckless and discarded his superior’s orders more frequently, which caused friction within his cell.
By recommendation of The Covenant, when the situation became unsustainable, The Emerald Claw “prompted” him to take his own path and fight for the Order by himself in his own terms, far away from Rekkenmark.
Instead of going back to Atur, Hidan decided to travel the world, free from any restraints, finding misguided mortals to convert to the Blood of Vol and killing all those who didn’t want to achieve immortality.
Unsurprisingly for everyone but himself, his homicidal activities granted him the status of “kill in sight” in many cities, and soon the bounty for his head was high enough to buy a villa in the upper levels of Sharn.
So Hidan, a powerful warlock and Seeker, spent the following years running away from the law and inquisitors of every city he stepped on. He never bothered to hide his presence anyway...
After a near death experience with a Flame paladin in Sigilstar, he traveled to Sharn, where he knew he could hide from prying eyes and find refuge in one of the Order’s liars.
However, The Emerald Claw rejected to host him as he attracted too much attention, forcing him to hide in the lowest levels of the city, where he was told that there was a unofficially Vol-friendly tavern run by elves.
Little did he know, that in the Callestan district lived one of the most renowned bounty hunters of Sharn, who was currently drinking a pint in the same tavern he choose to spend the night in.
Kakuzu the bounty hunter
Kakuzu was born in the port city of Zarash’ak, in The Shaodw Marshes.
His father was a human from House Vadalis (beast tamers), while his mother was a human with a quarter of orc blood from House Tharashk with the Mark of Finding (bounty hunters).
He was raised within the Tharashk House and learned how to bounty hunt from a young age. Even though his training was focused on the ways of his mother’s House, he enjoyed spending time with his father and help him train and sell his imported beasts from the Eldeen Reaches.
Kakuzu spent his childhood proudly working for House Tharashk, dreaming of becoming a renowned bounty hunter and awakening a powerful Mark of Finding. However, his dreams would sunk when at the age of seventeen he finally manifested his dragonmark.
It was an aberrant dragonmark.
The dragonmarks are passed through bloodlines and when two members of different dragonmarked families reproduce it often results in aberrant dragonmarks. Originally aberrant marked were seen as outcasts and outsiders, often shunned by the houses and eked out a pitiful existence. Now they unite under their own House, House Tarkanan.
Kakuzu tried to hide his new mark, constantly covering his body as much as he could and not getting intimately close to anyone for fear of being discovered and casted aside. His mood soured in a couple of months, and he ostracised himself from his closest friends and family.
But after a couple of years it had grown up so much that it almost took his entire back, and inevitably the House found out about his condition and expelled him from the clan.
Abandoned by his people, he traveled to Sharn in an attempt to join the Aberrant Dragonmarked House Tarkanan.
House Tarkanan is a house only formed by aberrant markeds, from any race and clan. They are usually bounty hunters, mercenaries and accountants.
When House Tarkanan first established itself in Sharn, the halfling Boromar Clan attempted to assimilate them, but the offer was turned down. This resulted in the Boromars attempting to destroy the House. When this proved too difficult a deal was struck. Since the Boromar clan doesn't traffic in assassinations, it was agreed that so long as House Tarkanan doesn't take contracts against the Boromars, they would be permitted to stay in Sharn without paying a fee.
Despite being shunned away by his family and now working as a bounty hunter for a bunch of criminals, Kakuzu found his place in Sharn. He also worked as an accountant for the clan from time to time, a nice changes of winds from his usual, dirtier, business.
He made himself a name in Sharn, and over the years was granted the title of Baron, as a senior assassin of the Clan. Kakuzu was well known in the city, especially in the districts of Lower Dura.
He established his residence in the lawless district of Callestan mainly because the rent was cheaper, but also because his best informants also maraud those streets, inns and ateliers.
Kakuzu is a baron of House Tarkanan, and his main income comes from the clan’s dealings. However, he takes freelance work if the pay is good enough, and he usually doubles his fees if the contract is from his former House.
House Tharashk, despite expelling Kakuzu many years ago, is often interested in hiring his services in the big city, since bounty hunters that are not from House Tarkanan or the Boromar Clan are not allowed to make business freely even after paying a bountiful fee.
House Tharashk has deals and a close relationship with House Thuranni. The elven house team with them whenever they need to find artifacts or people, in exchange for influences and intel. They are currently working together with the Emerald Claw in Stormreach (Xen’dirk), seeking ancient artifacts for Lady Vol.
House Thuranni is involved in many dubious affairs and unofficially allied with many organisations, such as the Blood of Vol and the Emerald Claw. The Thuranni fought alongside Karrnath during the War, and they have an important presence in Atur with their True Shapers academy.
These unofficial affairs turn every Thuranni establishment into a safehouse for those allies who need refuge or a meeting point.
So Kakuzu visits The Shadowkeeper tavern whenever the Tharashk need something from him, to catch up with his informants, or just to drink a large pint.
...though cashing in a good bounty for a dumb Seeker, is also interesting.
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We have 6 out of 8 members of the party!! yeyyy!!! now i need to finish the other two ;)
#naruto#akatsuki#hidan#kakuzu#au! akatsuki d&d#d&d#Dungeons and Dragons#eberron#my art#there's only 2 more left to go!!!!!#now i need to update the info in the WA page and also the map#anyway! check the other two posts too bc their lore is connected in some characters and you may understand them better#i know this is A LOT of lore to read hahaha but i hope you find it interesting#i tried to stick with the canon as much as i could and build their backstories and characters based on the canon material#some things are homebrew but most of it is canon so that's pretty cool for an au :DDDD#hidan is always like: why nobody wants to join the BoV? why is everyone prosecuting me? i have never been wrong in my life#kakuzu is done with life in general#also! kakuzu doesn't like itachi bc he's a thuranni and thuranni are allies with the tharashk#itachi doesn't like him bc he's an aberrant marked and he has prejudices against him which is not nice#itachi helps in the tavern when he's not assassinating people for his House. but he really doesn't work there#sasori and kakuzu exchange intel very often. both visit the tavern almost daily and gossip about everything#first sasori only went bc of the intel. now he has extended rants with deidara about art and their academies and how much they actually suck#deidara lives in the garret so now he's neighbours with hidan who rented a tiny cheap room#kisame's there too. he has an orc sized room for him and his tiny orclet. so he's their neighbour too#now there's only konan and nagato left!! and if you haven't noticed. there's a bit of foreshadowing in hidan's story ;)#i hope you like their designs and lore!! and tysm for reading all this text xD i know it's long but i really enjoy sharing it with you!#and as always if you have any question just send me an ask!
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Campaign 3 Predictions - Compiled
So, as a fan of compiling statistics, I've been keeping track of race/class predictions for campaign 3 for the past...at least a year, from tumblr, reddit, and twitter. with EXU over, and my spreadsheet hitting 400 (?!), I figured I'd share the fandom's current predictions
Travis
Human (30), Dwarf (29), Elf, Shifter (11), Half-Elf (10)
Cleric (103), Bloodhunter (63), Wizard (50), Fighter (49), Druid (46)
Lycan bloodhunter (41), Forge cleric (26), War cleric (16), Eldritch Knight fighter, Bladesinger wizard (14)
Marisha
Elf (16), Genasi, Tiefling (14), Dwarf (13), Dragonborn (11)
Paladin (112), Rogue (53), Fighter (43), Cleric (40), Warlock (37)
Eldritch Knight fighter, Glory paladin (14), Artillerist and Armorer artificer, Battlemaster Fighter (8)
Liam
Dwarf (25), Halfling (18), Tiefling (13), Elf (12), Warforged (11)
Druid (77), Cleric (72), Bard (71), Fighter (59)
Stars druid (16), Dreams druid (10), Eloquence bard (8), Alchemist artificer, Whispers bard, Twilight cleric (7)
Sam
Dwarf (34), Kobold (24), Goliath (17), Warforged (15), Kenku (13)
Sorcerer (106), Cleric (98), Druid (63), Wizard (47)
Wild Magic sorcerer (61), Wild Soul barbarian (14), Twilight cleric (8), Life and Forge cleric, Wildfire druid, Divination wizard (7)
Laura
Elf (21), Human, Tabaxi (19), Genasi (15), Gnome, Aasimar (10)
Barbarian (75), Sorcerer (74), Bard (64), Warlock (60)
Wild Soul barbarian (14), Wild Magic sorcerer (12), Glamour bard (10), Shadow monk (9)
Taliesin
Warforged (16), Elf, Changeling (14), Gnome, Genasi, Tabaxi (8)
Sorcerer (68), Rogue (65), Warlock (55), Bard (45), Wizard (43)
Aberrant Mind sorcerer (18), Whispers bard, Phantom rogue, Soulknife rogue (11), Mastermind rogue, Clockwork sorcerer (9)
Ashley
Elf (26), Human (18), Tiefling (17), Half-Elf (12), Dwarf (11)
Rogue (95), Bard (91), Monk (43), Ranger (41), Warlock (38)
Swashbuckler rogue (21), Glamour bard (13), Mercy monk (9), Drunken monk, Wild Magic sorcerer (8)
I also (although less consistently) collected continent/setting predictions. Marquet was the top (49), then Issylra (29) and the Shattered Teeth (22). For non-continent settings, some form of Spelljammer was the top (19), followed by the Age of Arcanum (17), and Planescape/Planehopping (15). Underdark, Ravenloft, Blightshore, and a return to Tal'Dorei were also suggested multiple times.
Much longer and rambly discussion (and my own predictions) under the break.
Top predicted races were Dwarf, Elf, and Human (~100). Dwarf and Elf haven't been played before, so that tracks, and I don't think it's out there to assume we'll get at least one human again. Also, post the whole thing with Essek and long rests, people really started jumping on Elves (which, fair). Warforged, Dragonborn, Tabaxi, Genasi, Tieflings, and Changelings all are pretty prominent (~50).
Of the races not yet established as existing in Exandria, Warforged and Changeling were the most popular (Warforged now dubiously canon post-Aeor, and Changelings dubiously canon with the LoVM bartender), followed by Shifters, Leonin, Kalashtar, Fairies, Grung, Ravnica races (Loxodon, Simic Hybrid, Vedalken), Van Richten's Races (Dhampir, Reborn, Hexblood). Locathah and the other Feywild/Strixhaven races are the only officially published races at 0 suggestions. The lowest previously seen race is Gobins at 2, one of which was for Sam again, and the lowest PHB race was Half-Orc at 17.
Class wise, Sorcerer was actually the most predicted class (which kind of tracks, as it's the one that hasn't shown up even as multiclass), followed by Cleric (generally assumed as compulsory), Paladin (only as a multiclass), and Rogue (also assumed as compulsory, but way less so. Not surprisingly, Bloodhunter, Ranger, and Artificer were the lowest.
Wild Magic Sorcerer was far and away the most suggested subclass, the only one to break 50, although it hasn't hit 100 quite yet (I think it will by the time the final characters are announced though). EK Fighter, Lycan Blooodhunter, Forge Cleric, Swashbuckler Rogue, Wild Soul Barbarian, Stars Druid, Glamour Bard, Bladesinger Wizard, Eloquence Bard, and Echo Knight Fighter are the other top subclasses.
Every official subclass has been suggested except for Berserker Barbarian, Grave Cleric, and Transmutation Wizard (previously played), Battlerager Barbarian and Banneret/Purple Dragon Knight (SCAG subclasses, which are widely unpopular), and the dubiously-official Planeshift subclasses. Open Seas Paladin is the only Matt homebrew to not be suggested at least once. For dead UA, Satire Bard, Brute Fighter, Giant Soul and Stone Sorcerer, and Raven Queen Warlock have all been suggested, usually only once, although many of the suggestions were collected while classes were in UA for Tasha's, Van Richten's, and Fizban's which is technically still UA but announced so...
With Travis, the predictions bounce between two main ideas - a melee spellcaster (Forge/War/Tempest cleric, Bladesinger/War wizard), or going back to a melee class (Bloodhunter, Fighter) but with a bit more mechanical interest (Lycan, EK/Echo/Rune/Battlemaster). I think those are both solid predictions, and while I really, really doubt we'll see a Lycan bloodhunter or a Forge cleric, I think the general vibe is probably spot on.
My own prediction is one of the more out there, but still in line with the general thinking - Artillerist Artificer. Travis is definitely a very tactical player, and it would be cool to see him get a turret for the battlefield, plus all the general utility/versatility of the artificer. Alternatively, I really could see a rogue, although more like what Mastermind or Inquisitive is trying for as opposed to how they actually turned out, if that makes sense.
Race wise, the top guesses are fairly plain, outside of shifter (which is mostly tied into the "werewolf" vibe). None of them would shock me, but I don't have any predictions.
I think that everyone's right on the money with Marisha as a paladin. Her next character being high charisma seems spot on, and I think moving to a half-caster also tracks. EK/Echo/Rune/Psi fighters would also fit, although they don't lean towards high charisma, or a warlock, maybe a more melee one.
Rogue seems unlikely purely due to the fact she's played one before, kind of. Matt and Marisha have both talked some, but her first game wasn't Vox Machina, but a previous game Matt had run where she'd played an assassin. You can do non-assassiny rogues, but still.
(Other fun facts about this game because it's wild: apparently the session she sat in on before playing involved half the party getting eaten by ghouls. the party joined up with another half-tpk'd party (marisha and the replacement characters) to get the raven queen to bring their dead friends back, and a fate-touched rogue swore service to the Raven Queen in order to bring the last party member back.)
My prediction for Marisha is also paladin, although I don't have any thoughts on the subclass, with genie warlock as a second because they are fun. No real thoughts on race other than I too would love to see tiefling Marisha.
Most people are going with a support caster for Liam, which I totally buy. Caleb definitely leaned towards support caster, even if he usually did end up played as DPS. Druid has taken the top given the polymorph->wildshape vibe, although it's still very yclose with Bard and Cleric. Suggestions for fighter dropped after EXU, and while Liam does play a lot of fighters, I doubt we'll see it for C3.
Honestly, Liam is the one I have no predictions for outside of 'support caster'. I'd lean away from Cleric and towards Druid or Bard, but it's hard to say. I also think Artificer deserves to be in the running, as it seems like something Liam would really enjoy, but also...might not want to go Int-caster to Int-caster. My only real thought on race is that I want to see whether Marisha and Liam choose the same again.
Top guesses for Sam is, far and away, Wild Magic Sorcerer. This was also the top guess for C2. I do not think Sam will play a Wild Magic Sorcerer. In general, though, the vibe is going back to fullcaster - Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid, Wizard. I think full caster is probably right.
Sam is so hard to predict because it isn't what he'd choose, but what Liam chose for him. I think it's either something really standard or something really out there, and since I can't guess the really out there, I'll go for the standard - Elf Wizard or Dwarf Cleric, leaning towards Dwarf Cleric, due to the support class and the fact that Sam's mentioned never playing a religious character.
The main vibe for Laura is definitely "DPS" which is understandable. I don't know if I agree with it, but I understand it. Aside from Barbarian, the rest of the vibe is spellcaster - and I don't think we'll see a completely no magic character from her either.
Prediction wise...I understand barbarian, but I'd actually go with Ancestor or Beast over Wild Soul. I could actually see a Bloodhunter from her too, although leaning away from Vex vibes. I think I'd want to go with Wizard, though I'm not certain on that. I would bet Tabaxi but idk, I could see her avoiding that for Travis' sake.
Everyone always names Taliesin as the hardest to predict (he had the lowest count at 354, under even Ashley at 365, to everyone else's ~380/400) but I don't think he's harder to predict than Sam. The thing that makes him hard to predict is that he likes to build characters to fit the party, which he (probably) won't be doing, same as with Molly. The other main thing he tends towards is mechanical complexity in a way that suits his characters.
The main driving influence in the top suggestions is Eldritch Weirdness. Aberrant Sorc, Whispers Bard, Phantom Rogue, Warlock in general. I don't disagree with any of the subclasses, but I really don't think he'd go eldritch for eldritch sake, if for at the very least being...he has always been this weird and it's yet to be a driving force behind any of his characters before. Like the Taliesin-is-an-elder-god thing, I think this is mostly people who don't hang out around occultists. Look, I've had multiple people sell me their actual souls, and you don't see all my characters being warlocks.
That being said, I don't think I disagree with the top classes, just the subclasses. I definitely agree with Sorcerer as a good choice for him, although I'd actually go Clockwork, as I think it has a fuck-with-the-DM vibe. Taliesin is the most heavily suggested for dunamancy subclasses, which wouldn't surprise me, but I think he might avoid on the sole point of not wanting something too tied with the last campaign. A lot of people also name the psionic subclasses, which I'd be more likely to second if they had kept the weird mechanic from the UA, but don't disagree with, excepting my issue with Aberrant Mind.
My out there guess is that he's going to choose a multiclass build. He definitely enjoys playing around with weird builds (Owlbear, he did a non-CR oneshot as a monk/stars druid). On the one hand, a lot of these builds work best for oneshots or starting at higher levels, as they can take a bit of time to come online, but with such a large party, I think it will still function.
(my actual prediction for Taliesin is that his character is weirdly reminiscent of either the aasimar echo knight or the elf blood cleric from the exandria game I'm running.)
Ashley is being predicted as a Dex/Cha build, and I'm totally here for it. Pre-Fearne, I was leaning Ranger, especially Fey Wanderer for a fey build, but post-Fearne, I'm going Rogue, especially Swashbuckler. I agree that seeing a high Cha Ashley would be great, especially to let her be more center-focused than Yasha had been, and swashbucklers are just...really fun. Also, the whole Aeor arc really left me wanting to see Ashley as the go-ahead-and-scout character, just to watch her push buttons.
For continents...I understand why people are guessing Marquet, since it's currently the most explored. I think that if they're going to do Marquet, then Matt will sit down with a cultural consultant. I say will over should, because I won't make any value judgements, but I think it's in line with what Matt and CR would do in that situation.
I can't really tell whether this is a prediction or what I'd like to see (the two are distinct but often difficult to untangle) but I'd actually go with Issylra, and specifically playing up the (at least initial) set up of explorers and adventurers heading out into the wilds. I will also place my bets on them having some sort of more steady home base, and my hopes on that they get an airship. My wildest out there guess is that the plot will move towards either planescape/spelljammer in the upper levels, tying into some of the seeds from the end of C2.
I have seen a handful of people predicting table seating order, which is both very minor and also the thing that I may be most interested in. A while back, someone made a post pointing out that the main romantic relationships were all cross-table, while the strongest platonic relationships were same-table or side by side. Because I am the sort of person that I am, I did statistical analysis on ao3 fics....and it's statistically significant. So I am trying to see whether or not, based purely on C3E1, I'll be able to predict what the top ships for the campaign will be.
This rambling has mostly gotten out of hand because I don't have much opportunity to talk about this, but, you know. If you send me predictions I will give you the current odds gambling style, so that you'd know how much you'd win if you'd place a bet, because I did the tables up as a joke for something else and now I kind of want them to be used for something.
#critical role#critical role campaign 3#cr campaign 3#critical role predictions#critcal role meta#cr meta#cr stats
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GREER LOCHNER
y’all asked for it and it is here :)
General Notes
He is a half-dwarf undying knight fighter! which are both homebrews i made for him and i also made him a homebrew feat at one point. I may have made him a weapon, I can't remember. I love him. Basically the schtick of undying knight is that you're just. really difficult to kill bordering on impossible to murder. and his twist on that concept is just. He's Too Stubborn to Die.
The youngest bastard son of a Lord whose wife slept with a dwarf and well, poof, Greer. HIs mother died in childbirth and so the Lord was left with realizing a. his wife cheated on him at some point, and b. now he has a half dwarf bastard.
Greer also has about 3-5 older brothers (maybe a sister? but he's def the youngest), and basically since he's been born his family has tried to arrange.. accidents that got increasingly less veiled until they straight up tried to murder him and he left.
He's around?? Late twenties early thirties vibes? Has no real interest being a Fancy Noble and has been making money as a mercenary/sellsword.
I'd say he's probably Neutral Good close to True Neutral Not really chaotic but also not big into the law as well and not above some murder tbh but his heart is in the right place and he has a tendency to look out for the little guy (badumtish)
Has a keepsake that belonged to his mother and I'm not quite sure what it is but I've always been leaning towards her ring on a cord that he wears as a necklace.
Fights with a mixture of warpicks, battle axe, or hand axe. Usually dual wielding two warpicks or a warpick and an axe. Can also use a warhammer but isn't as much into it
Because of his reputation as Unkillable, a lot of mercenaries, assassins, Fighters trying to prove their worth go after him see if that title is true. (it pretty much is.) This may or may not be connected to his Dad potentially having a bounty for his head? Unclear.
Appearance
Greer is canonically about 5'3 and of pretty solid, muscular build! He's got a scruffy, thick brown beard and choppy brown hair that hangs in his face. Sometimes when it gets a little long he puts it back in one of those little baby ponytails. It's totally professional. Brown eyes, a very hard, jagged face under the beard. He is constantly wearing blood & mud soaked leathers and furs and smells like shit lmao. He got no fashions sense. He has a lot of scars but I've yet to map out the important ones and the events that go with them. Gravelly voice.
Personality
Gruff and rough around the edges, mostly because people have treated him like shit for his whole life. Very very stubborn, hard-headed and obstinate. He does his job but he doesn't work well with others and doesn't fully trust anyone else. Very straight forward, not the best as social schmoozing and isn't a fan of lying, even if it would benefit him. He just doesn't see the point. Makes a habit of keeping his promises. Has a soft spot for good booze and a hot bath, but he's also prone to kicking it on the road and sleeping. Literally anywhere. Has deeply repressed insecurity issues where he thinks he's a terrible, scummy person who is incapable of being loved. Would be the most tender and devoted person to friends, family, and a partner if anyone ever showed him that care.
Fun Things!
pin board :^)
cool edit :^)
songs on his v short playlist and lyrics that hit hard
blame by bastille
Fall upon your knees, / Sing, "This is my body and soul here." / Crawl and beg, and plead, / Sing, "You've got the power and control." / Don't pin it all on me
aka Jesus Christ why does my family blame me for my mom’s death and my own birth and am i really that terrible
here comes the runts by awolnation
Here come the runts
this is just mostly like a Good Sound song and also haha Greer’s Short and Ready to Brawl
free by mother mother
Love, let my anger / Turn into peace / Love, let the doves cry out in the streets / Love, let the poison bleed out of me / Love, let my love inside go / Free
A bloody war / Behind my eyes / come out right on the other side
ALSO just has the VibesTM and just like. Yeah wanting to be a good person but just being so Angry at the world and not knowing what to do with it
come with me now by kongos
Afraid to lose control / And caught up in this world
I've wasted time, I've wasted breath / I think I've thought myself to death
ok that’s all, end post, take your grubby mans
#ch: greer#AHLGHKGHLg#I love him SO MUCHHHH#this is like#pretty much what i've got for him#he's just doing his thing#his family sucks#he has deeprooted anxiety issues#we get it#my gf is also currently making an oc to romance him asglkhgh she has ALSO decided to stan the grub boy
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About My Blog:
Name: Nate
Age: 29 (I’m bad at updating this, I was born in 1990)
Pronouns: he/him/his.
It’s been ages since I’ve updated any sort of info about myself or my blog, oops.
Dfab nb trans guy, genderfluid. On the aro/ace spectrum. Queer. Gay. Neuroatypical (ADHD among other things; possibly dyslexia or else it’s just my ADHD that makes reading The Worst). I have chronic pain. I’m chubby.
Privilege: I’m white, I grew up with financial security while I lived with my parents, I live in a liberal area of New England in the USA, I am able-bodied, I can pass as neurotypical. If I make false assumptions or fuck up because of any of these things please call me on it. I will do my utmost not to make this necessary, and to listen if it should ever be necessary.
I blog about social justice, social issues, whatever fandom I’m currently hyperfixated on, DnD, and plenty of other stuff.
My views have evolved since I started blogging, so if you go far enough back in my blog you’ll find posts that I no longer agree with.
I use my “likes” as storage for things I want to respond to later, or save to my computer when I’m on the mobile app, or research more thoroughly before reblogging when I have time/attention, etc. Do not assume I agree with everything in my likes. View my likes with caution.
I’m a writer and an illustrator, and am a Personal Care Assistant to a really cool lady. I play a lot of DnD and I love my dnd group. I’ve been in a relationship with one of my best friends since we were 15. We are engaged, live together, play video games and DnD, and have cats.
I post my thoughts here.
I post my art here.
These are my cats.
This is my face.
I am not always right. I am still learning.
Do not cite me as an expert or trust my implicitly. I am happy to give my thoughts on and discuss any issue, and I do try to research my points before I make them, but I am not an authority.
My ask box is always open. I will respond privately if you ask me to. If I respond publicly I will tag it with your URL so you can find it easily (unless you ask me not to). I tag all asks with “ask” and all anons with “ask” and “anon”. If you send me an ask and I don’t respond it might be because Tumblr ate it, and I never received it, or because I have ADHD and sometimes I forget to respond to things. In either case feel free to send the ask again. I do not consider this rude.
—
I am careful to always tag for things like racism, transphobia, ableism, etc., as well as death, blood, horror cops, spiders, etc., so people can blacklist them.
I am usually happy to add to this list if you have a phobia or trigger and need me to, just ask. If for some reason I’m uncomfortable tagging a particular subject, I will not be offended if you unfollow me (I’ll also just NEVER be offended by that; you do you)
Some navigation help for my blog:
current events - this tag is reserved for whatever the most recent important (and awful) thing happens to be.
Disney’s Frozen - this tag is referencing all of the problems with that movie (the first one), including general discussion about the sexism in how women are animated. It accidentally became my “misogyny in animation” tag, sorry!
Statistics - this tag is for all posts with specific statistics about social injustice.
real talk - this tag is for short posts that I feel most clearly and succinctly summarize issues of social injustice.
Boost - any post that involves petitions, fund raisers, sales, or other things I want people to not only see but interact with.
Fandoms:
I’ve been in fandom for a long time. I’m here to have fun, and am not comfortable with the current online purity culture of throwing shame at people who enjoy harmless things that you don’t. Fandom is not always about what we wish was real or canon; sometimes it’s about the opposite of that on purpose.
I’m a polyshipper and a multishipper, though I definitely have OTPs and sometimes don’t enjoy seeing those pairs with other people. This is personal preference, and not a judgment on others.
I try to stay out of fandom discourse and mainly reblog art I like. Occasionally, though, I do reblog criticism of fandom specific bigotry.
Just because I reblog stuff from a particular fandom doesn’t mean I necessarily like everything about the piece of media, where/who it came from, or the direction it went. I value fandom because of the power to make the stories we’re given into the stories we wish we’d been given, AND the power to turn stories we love into whatever we’re vibing with at the moment.
Harry Potter was a formative fandom for me, so despite hating JKR I will still engage with fanworks related to it. I tag anything Harry Potter with “hp”. I tag everything relating to JKR with “fuck you JKR”.
Anything related to Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories is tagged “lotr”, anything about the MCU is tagged “Avengers”, and anything related to Avatar the Last Airbender is tagged “Atla”.
I tag anything from the Tales of series with “Tale of” as well as their individual game titles. Anything from MOST Fire Emblem games gets lumped together under “Fire Emblem” but Three Houses is “fe3h”. Similarly, Most Final Fantasy games get “Final Fantasy” while 14 gets “ffxiv”.
Other media I particularly love off the top of my head (and their associated tags), or at least that I often reblog about, includes: Critical Role (and CR2), Phoenix Wright, She Ra (tag: “shera”), Saiyuki, Yu Yu Hakusho (tag: “yyh”), Undertale, The Good Place. Mad Max, Naruto, Miraculous Ladybug (tag: “miraculous”), Legend of Zelda (tag: “zelda”)
Personal tags:
My favorite meta (good meta makes the world go ‘round)
My favorite things on this whole damn site (I love this)
Stuff that’s purely positive (decency, and wholesome)
Things that remind me of my friend group (me and mine and ours)
Mron (things that remind me of and inspire me to work on my sci-fi story about androids)
Embalar (things that remind me of and inspire me to work on the fantasy story/video game/dnd homebrew setting I’m actively working on)
The Fog (things that remind me of and inspire me to work on my fairy tale story, which includes mermaids)
recipes
lifehacks
poetry
art refs (specific tags for: costume design, character design, god design, monster design, creature design, hands, feet, muscles, anatomy, facial expressions, hair, body types, clothes, dresses, fat art, etc., and specific tags for mythical creatures: mermaids, centaurs, vampires, demons, dragons, gryphons, sphinxes, harpies, etc.)
art (specific tags for: sculpture, painting, illustration, music, art history, installation art)
books, games, shows, and movies I wish existed (tumblr books)
furniture, appliances, and house stuff that I would love to have the money to have (want)
pretty jewelry that I want but would never wear because I don’t wear jewelry (for my dragon hoard)
–Nate
#this post is going to be linked to at the top of my blog so this info can stop cluttering up my blog#an update I guess
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Hm.... pick three that you want to answer. Burning "I must talk about this" topics.
D&D Asks!
4. Your current campaign.
Sure. Let’s do a Shameless Plug.Current Campaign is, of sorts, a direct sequel to the previous, featuring a cast(?) of wonderful players that I am honored and overjoyed to DM for. The “audition sessions” were a wildly successful endeavor, even if the end roster is “people who didn’t drop out” (except one. Hard decision to have to make, everyone who did end up playing in a session was really great to play with) and “almost the first people to respond to begin with”.We decided early on to record the sessions, and then stuff kept happening so now these videos exist. (The first one is long, working on making shorter ones?)The party consists of Veggrek, Goblin Paladin; Kiono, Aasimar Barbarian; Ondo ar’ Thond Tira, Warforged Warlock; and Lady Renn the Amazing, Changeling Sorcerer. A definite hodge-podge of potential(?) heroes that are just getting started. Session 3 is tomorrow. Cannot Wait.
9. Your favorite thing about D&D.
Everything! It’s the best game!
Or rather, Role-Playing Games are. D&D is the system that I’m most comfortable with. I’ve been playing it a long time, and a lot of concepts are pretty immediately familiar, even if I get some edition rules mixed up from time to time.
But it’s really the environment. The people. A good gaming group in my mind can’t not become friends. You can. You can try to just show up each week and play and say bye and see you later (a lot of module games and stuff like adventurer’s league is like this) But if that’s the attitude you take and your mode of experience with games like Dungeons & Dragons, I would maintain that you are pointing at a shadow and calling it the real thing. The depth and complexity and the Real Stuff you get up to is like nothing you can experience in any other medium.Like, don’t get me wrong, all stories about how your party dealt with the gnolls or thwarted the assassination are good, and your fun isn’t wrong. But if you and your players aren’t crying and screaming in hope, despair, joy, and sadness, you’re not really experiencing everything this ridiculous game has to offer.
As long as the table isn’t literally poison, D&D is still pretty good. But when it’s at its best, D&D is transformative.
16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?
Online!In person is vastly superior because people communicate in ways other than talking, and that’s really the biggest detractor to online, but If it wasn’t for Roll20, I wouldn’t be playing.A lot of people suck, and it turns out to find the venn diagram of “cool people” and “plays D&D” you have to cast a pretty wide net. A lot of guys at work play, but I have never engaged them on the topic, because they’re all that guy.I like some of the tools and resources you can get for online content, as well. But I really like busting out some paper maps and minis. Nothing beats a real, in-person mini.
27. Do you allow homebrew content?
So my campaign world is almost exclusively homebrew. There are some elements of Forgotten Realms and similar that are around, but for the most part, unique world with unique interpretations. I create a ton of items, and I’m pretty good at more-or-less balancing them to the campaign, and one of my players is playing a homebrew subclass. Third-Party homebrew content- most of Mercer’s stuff is an auto-include, but anything else requires Review, and is usually yes with some tweaking. While I am okay with Homebrew content, I also usually look for a way to get the desired result with canon content, if at all possible. A lot of weird homebrew ideas try to solve a problem that only exists because someone couldn’t divorce the crunch from the fluff. Additionally, a lot of OP homebrew content exists because it comes from a place of the mechanical concept belonging to a Main Character. Which isn’t a thing. Just. Kind of an aside, I guess.
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hey, can you break down the differences between the adventure zone and critical role for me? i haven't listened to either and now i'm curious
Oh gosh, okay. They’re delightful but… very different approaches to the same general idea (broadcasting a D&D game), and I think the fans of one show tend to have a sort of skewed impression of the other show, so here’s my thinking.
Just the basics, to begin with: The Adventure Zone started running in late 2014, and it’s an audio-only podcast in which the McElroy brothers and their dad start a brand-new D&D campaign from scratch. Critical Role started running in early 2015, and it’s a video podcast in which a bunch of best-friend voice actors started filming the D&D campaign they’d already been playing for years at home with the same characters. TAZ is (generally) prerecorded and lightly edited down, CR is 100% live. Both have a lot of howlingly funny and surprisingly touching moments, both get a lot more intense the more you get into them, and both are good shows that are a Good Time, especially when they make you feel things you didn’t sign up for. The main canon of TAZ is currently 56 one-hour-long episodes, with new episodes every two weeks, and CR is currently 85 four-hour-long episodes, with new episodes every week. Most of the reason for CR’s absurd length comes down to (a) three times as many players, and (b) no editing.
The DMs both put a ton of work into the world, but they also have very different approaches. Griffin (TAZ) is DMing for the first time, while Matt (CR) has talked about how DMing D&D games for the past 20 years is what got him interested in acting in the first place. The world of TAZ is much more of a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid, while CR sticks more to traditional fantasy.
TAZ plays fast and loose with the rules, which can be both a delight and a frustration for storytelling reasons—for instance, until the latest arc both spell slots and HP were not really tracked, which means (a) Griffin has had to come up with incredibly creative ways of introducing risk and limitations to the game, and (b) those incredibly creative ways can start to get pretty damn brutal. The mechanics of the game feel like an imposition on the story, most of the time—it’s rare that you get a dice roll that makes a huge difference to the plot (but when you do, as in the most recent episode, it’s pretty darn cool). As a result, the biggest spanner in the works of Griffin’s plans tends to be in the form of out-of-the-box thinking from his players, which they excel at; I think there is a tendency to railroad the plot as a result, but it’s a good story and it’s well worth a little bit of elbowing to keep everyone on track. Magical items also play a huge role, with viewers of the show submitting awesome new trinkets for the heroes of the story to use/abuse/completely forget about.
Because CR tilts more towards the rulebook (although Matt gets more than his fair share of shit for homebrewing and letting things slide and defaulting to the Rule of Cool), chance plays a much bigger role in the story. Matt’s simultaneously battling some incredibly creative players and dice that seem determined to roll as dramatically as possible. Entire subplots have been wiped out by a strategic roll, and in order to be able to adapt to that on the fly, Matt has to be hyper-prepared and have a lot of possible branching points. It’s absurdly open-world, especially now that the characters have the ability to travel instantly through different planes of existence, and Matt keeps pace with a story that feels more character-led than DM-led; railroading is practically nonexistent, which means you get incredible plot developments and super-deep characterization… but it also sometimes leads to long circular conversations trying to figure out what to do next. Because the players are all actors, there’s also a lot more that’s just straight-up improv theater: it’s not unusual (especially lately) to go for verrrry long stretches of riveting conversation without anybody rolling dice (I can think of a moment where Matt could’ve just had everyone fail a charisma saving throw against an NPC but instead just straight-up charmed them all in real life with words).
I’ll put it this way: CR is a basketball pickup game between friends who’ve been playing together so long that they kind of have their own home rules going and stick to them. TAZ is out there playing fuckin’ Calvinball. Both are great fun, but if you go into one expecting the other you’re in for a bad time.
Both shows have a lot of great NPCs, although Critical Role’s format gives them a lot more time and depth to shine (there are episodes where an NPC will have as much or more “screen time” than some of the player characters). Both shows have LGBT representation among player characters and NPCs alike that, while not perfect, is generally improving as the show goes on. For me personally, one of the more frustrating things about going from CR to TAZ was going from three female player characters and a metric fuckton of extremely deep characterization for all the female NPCs to no female player characters and many great and memorable female NPCs who nevertheless don’t get too much screentime or development just because of the the structure of the show.
TAZ is pretty shaky throughout the first arc (Griffin’s fighting a bit of an uphill battle getting everyone to sit down and actually play the game, which is funny in and of itself), but things slowly start to come together and the real potential of the show becomes clear once they break the heck out of the 5e Starter Set. I think the “Murder on the Rockport Limited” arc is what started to pull me in, and it’s not until the latest arc that I’m starting to get the character development I really crave in that show. Critical Role also takes a little while to find its footing, and to me the Briarwood arc (starting around episode 24) is where the mood of the show starts to solidify, with episode 40 and beyond really pushing from “this is cool, I’m enjoying how these interpretations of fantasy tropes are sometimes kinda unusual and off-the-wall!” to “how is this the most honest and genuine character development I’ve ever seen in media what the heck is happening here”.
So yeah. TAZ isn’t total chaos with no plot or effort put into it, CR isn’t a humorless wasteland of mathematical minutiae and rigid formulaic approaches. Both shows are great fun, both are IMO in an upswing and getting better and better as they go along, and I heartily recommend them both if you know what you’re getting into. Have fun!
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Numbers don't lie—it's an ideal opportunity to manufacture your own particular switch With more speed accessible and equipment that can't adjust, DIY fabricates offer pinnacle performance.
I've seen a pattern of late. As opposed to supplanting a switch when it actually quits working, I've expected to act before—swapping in new rigging on the grounds that an old switch could no longer stay aware of expanding Internet speeds accessible in the territory. (Note, I am properly grateful for this issue.) As the most recent case, an entire cluster of Netgear ProSafe 318G switches fizzled me for the last time as independent ventures have overhauled from 1.5-9mbps conventional T1 associations with 50mbps persuade (link).
Yes, urge—not fiber. Indeed, even persuade has demonstrated excessively for the old ProSafe arrangement. These gadgets didn't simply neglect to keep up, they failed on their appearances. As often as possible, the old switches dropped speed test comes about because of 9mbps with the old association with 3mbps or less with the 50mbps association. Clearly, that doesn't fly.
Nowadays, the appropriate response progressively is by all accounts remote switches. These have a tendency to be long on smooth looking plastic and splendidly hued Web interfaces however short on specialized components and dependability. What's a hired fighter sysadmin to do? All things considered, at its center, anything with two physical system interfaces can be a switch. What's more, today, there are parts and loads of generally quick, cheap, and (super imperative!) completely strong state nonexclusive boxes out there.
Along these lines, the time had at long last come. Confronted with maturing equipment and new purchaser offerings that didn't address my issues, I chose to fabricate my own switch. Also, if today's transforming network scene abandons you in a comparative position, surprisingly both the building and the manufacture are very quick.
Why do it the most difficult way possible
A great deal of you are likely murmuring, "right, pfSense, beyond any doubt." Some of you may even be considering smoothwall or unwind NG. I played with the greater part of the firewall distros out there, however I chose to go more essential, more old school: a plain, CLI-just introduce of Ubuntu Server and a couple iptables rules.
As a matter of fact, this presumable isn't the most handy approach for each peruser, however it seemed well and good for me. I have a considerable amount of experience finessing iptables and the Linux bit itself for high throughput at Internet scale, and the less sparkling elements and illustrations and clicky things that are put amongst me and the firewall table, the less lighten I need to escape the way and the less new not-pertinent in whatever is left of my-work things I need to learn. Any administer I definitely know how to make in iptables to oversee access to my servers, I additionally know how to apply to my firewall—if my firewall's running an indistinguishable distro from my servers are.Also, I work pretty vigorously with OpenVPN, and I need to have the capacity to keep setting up both its servers and customers in the way I as of now depend on. Some firewall distros have OpenVPN bolster worked in and some don't, however even the ones with constructed ins have a tendency to anticipate that things will run uniquely in contrast to I do. Once more, the more the framework remains out of my way, the more joyful I'll be.
As an extra reward, I realize that I can without much of a stretch stay up with the latest on my new and totally vanilla Ubuntu switch. It's altogether upheld specifically by Canonical, and it can (and does) all have programmed refreshes turned on. Add the intermittent cron occupation to reboot the switch (to get new pieces), and I'm brilliant.
Equipment, equipment, equipment
We'll experience the how-to in a future piece, yet today it's essential to set up why a DIY switch assemble might be the best alternative. To do that, you initially need to see today's broad scene.
In the shopper world, switches for the most part have itty-bitty little MIPS CPUs in the engine without a ton of RAM (to understate the obvious). These switches to a great extent separate themselves from each other in light of the interface: How sparkling is it? What number of specialized elements does it have? Could clients make sense of it effectively?
At the higher end of the SOHO showcase, you begin seeing some cell phone review ARM CPUs and significantly more RAM. These switches—like the Nightgear Nighthawk arrangement, one of which we'll be pounding on later—include numerous centers, higher clock speeds, and a ton more RAM. They additionally include considerably higher sticker prices than the less expensive rivalry. I got a Linksys EA2750 for $89, however the Netgear Nighthawk X6 I got with it was almost three times more costly (even on vacation deal!) at $249.Still, I needed to go an alternate course. A ton of fascinating and sensibly economical little x86-64 fanless machines have begun appearing available of late. The trap for building a switch is discovering one with different NICs. You can discover two or three genuinely sure things on Amazon, yet they're more established Atom-based processors, and I needed a more up to date Celeron. After some great out-dated Internet scouring and dithering, at long last I took the Alibaba dive and requested myself another Partaker Mini PC from Shenzhen Inctel Technology Company. After $240 for the switch itself and another $48 for a 120GB Kingston SSD from Newegg, I'd spent about $40 more on the Homebrew Special than I had on the Nighthawk. Would it be justified, despite all the trouble?
A challenger shows up
Before we kick testing off, how about we investigate the competitors.That Nighthawk is, by correlation with the others, HUGE and forcing (considerably more so than the photo makes it show up). It's quite bigger than my Homebrew Special, which is a completely utilitarian, broadly useful PC you could use as an impeccably skillful desktop. It resembles DC Comics asked H.R. Giger to help outlining a remote switch for Batman.
The Homebrew Special itself is kinda charming. It has one blue and one red LED inside the case, and around evening time, the light from both spills out of its cooling vents in a roundabout way, giving the system stack a happy gathering look. On the off chance that there were any fans to bring about a glimmering it would make me crazy, yet since it's a consistent state delicate shine, I really like it.The Linksys and the Buffalo, then again, look like precisely what they are—shoddy switches. Notwithstanding, it's important the styling on the Linksys is a major change over the brand's past. It looks more like something expert and less like a youngsters' toy. (Be that as it may, enough about the styling—it's a great opportunity to put these poor switches through the gauntlet.)
The undeniable first test is a straightforward transfer speed test. You put one PC on the LAN side and one PC on the WAN side, and you run a clever little instrument called iperf through the center. Straightforward, right?Well, that would make for a short, exhausting article. The system itself measures gigabit, the three gigabit switches measure gigabit, and the 100 megabit switch measures 100 megabit.
In reality, a test this straightforward doesn't start to recount the story. The main motivation to do it might be to show how trivial it is. Switch makers are winding up noticeably more mindful that individuals really test their item, and no producer needs its item to be anyplace however the highest point of something like smallnetbuilder's switch graph. In light, makers are effectively pursuing details nowadays.
The issue is, details are simply details. Having the capacity to hit a high number on an unadulterated throughput test is superior to nothing, yet it's a long ways from the entire story. I discovered that lesson the most difficult way possible while working for a T-1 merchant in the mid 2000s. Their to a great degree costly Adtran modems could deal with 50 to 100 individuals' ordinary Internet utilization fine and dandy, however a solitary client running Limewire or some other P2P customer would bring the entire thing down instant. (The settle in those days: put an economical yet wonderful $150 Netopia switch before that costly Adtran modem. Issue tackled.)
Notwithstanding for generally straightforward directing—no profound bundle assessment, no gushing malware filtering or interruption location, no molding—the CPU and the RAM accessible to the switch are both imperative well beyond the capacity to immerse the Internet connect. Shared filesharing is about the most fierce action a system will see, nowadays (regardless of whether it's bittorrent, one of the Gnutella or eDonkey variations, or an amusement organization's distributed download framework). I was done playing WoW when Blizzard's P2P dissemination framework was presented, however my flat mate at the time wasn't. On its dispatch day, the new WoW peer download framework unhelpfully defaulted to no throttling at all. It happily attempted to discover and keep up associations with truly a huge number of customers at the same time, and my home system went down like Gilbert Godfried getting handled by Terry Tate. My flat mate and I had words.
In light of such past experience, I would prefer just not to insignificantly "test" my challengers and throw in the towel, I need to truly make them sweat. So to do that, will hit them with workloads that anxiety three issue territories: soaking the system connection, making and breaking singular TCP/IP associations truly rapidly, and holding huge quantities of individual TCP/IP associations open at the same Time.i have a botnet in my pocket, and I'm prepared to shake it
I quickly considered setting up some sort of ghastly, Docker-fueled giant with a huge number of Linux holders with individual IP addresses, all clamoring for associations and additionally serving up pages. At that point I woke up. To the extent the switches are worried, there's no distinction between keeping up associations with a huge number of individual IP locations or just to a huge number of ports on a similar IP address. I invested a tiny bit of energy transforming Lee Hutchinson's most loved webserver nginx into an absurd Lovecraftian beast with 10,000 heads and a hunger for demolition.
For every switch, I utilized ApacheBench to test downloading a jpeg with three diverse record sizes (10K, 100K, and 1M) at four distinctive simultaneousness levels (10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000 synchronous customers). This gives us 12 tests altogether, not including our underlying iperf test, and it merits seeing them all as a sort.
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Becoming a Dungeon Master
I feel like a fairly new DM. And most of my RPG experience is as a DM. However at this point I have years of experience, so I'm not sure how long I get to hang on to that moniker.
Getting started as a DM is pretty intimidating, foremost because there is just so much you don't know about — if your players know more about the setting or the canonical character/spell/narrative tropes than you, its easy to let them push you to make calls you wouldn't otherwise make. Trying to adjudicate for very smart, rules lawyering [fill-in-the-game] buffs sounds like an uphill battle.
Briefly, I got my start with 3.5e in college, subsequently played 40k, World of Darkness, a homebrew system, and DM'd two 5e D&D games. I've been a part of four different groups. I had some trouble running good 5e games, and this has directly resulted in a lot of research.
In my 40k game, the primary GM was tired of GMing, but whenever his apprentice GM ran a game, he was "corrected" on a number of things that the apprentice had pretty clearly thought out in advance. Having less experience in the setting, the corrections made no sense — "wow that's a cool idea! It doesn't even matter to the campaign, why is the regular GM nixing this?".
I toyed with the idea of running a few sessions, and studied the one rulebook I was planning on drawing from. 40k has shitty encounter-balancing tools, and I never managed to put something together before that game dissolved.
In the meantime, I was playing board games with a volatile and cliqueish meetup group. After D&D 5e came out, I thought I'd see if anyone in the meetup was interested in trying out 5e. I got a game together to play Hoard of the Dragon Queen. My first time DM-ing!
I had never played with a grid, and didn't want to. I'd forgotten most everything about 3.5, so I wasn't bothered by some of the major changes between 3.5 and 5e. Anyway 5e said all the things I wanted to hear — grid? Don't trouble yourself. Rules dispute? Make a decision, figure it out later. I tried to commit as much of the mechanics and guidelines to heart as possible — even waded most of the way through the spell list, trying to figure out each one — although I seem to have failed to pay attention to class progressions beyond a cursory glance (carefully read the class progressions your players choose, after they choose them! build the game to their abilities!).
I didn't realize that half my group were hardcore min-maxers. That half was there for the full RPG experience and the other half for a glorified tactical combat game. I was so focused on trying to memorize all the narrative and mechanical details that I didn't work on tactical scenarios. Not that I knew how to make combat interesting — for all my RTS computer games, I knew how to build tactics to the terrain, not terrain to tactics. Anyway, the group itself had some interpersonal problems that ultimately was its undoing, but we played for a while before that happened.
I was enthusiastically reading advice on hooking your players and running a good game. I put together an introductory email with some setting material, key terms and character concept ideas, and a map of Faerun (with a note that it was just for context, a character wouldn't know what Faerun looks like). One thing I stressed was creating bonds and flaws that you wanted to see happening in game.
So first session, after my little speech about bonds and flaws, including a half-thought one-liner about "not picking something really far away or irrelevant", one player — hereafter known as Bob — asks me — "can my bond be the grandfather tree?" — and talks a little about the grandfather tree. I thought — great! I was worried they might not go along with this. So I make a point of praising the idea. Meanwhile the players are ignoring me and laughing at me, passing around my map of Faerun pointing at a little dot labeled "Grandfather Tree", as far away from our starting point as the map allows. So I say — That map is just for context! I can put the forest where-ever I want! It can be next door.
Half the table stares at me incredulously ... "are you sure you don't want to look at the map?"
For Bob and his friend Byron, the game was completely about optimal positioning. Eventually it became pretty clear that the power gamers were unhappy, and I agreed to use a whiteboard to draw battlemaps. This time, HotDQ prescribed an ambush. As usual, the game ground to a halt during combat while Bob ran around sniping enemies — with no idea that eight covered leveled bad guys might be above their power-level. I tried to drop helpful hints, and the rest of the party eventually got it together and regrouped, but Bob's character continued kiting to the long drawn-out end, and finally! by fair tactical combat got chased down, knocked unconscious, and dragged off "to the rape dungeon!" as Bob energetically interjected.
It wasn't all bad, but it was a constant fight. Worse, while the B-men were most excited about gaming the system, they had no interest in making believable choices. HotDQ has a lot of leading questions (it's a railroad as written) — and I was ready to try to round-about recyle the chapters under different conditions to make the game flow, and I even said so when Byron commented something along the lines of "gee, I wonder where we're supposed to go next?". I wish they had tried at least *somewhat* to assert their will in the storyline. But those two didn't really care. And the other two bought the story hooks.
Those other two players (Bianca and Eadward) probably didn't get the game they deserved, either; in part because I was focused on dealing with the first two. Bob took the floor, but also completely ignored the will of the other players. During a hostage crisis, for example, he got all the hostages killed when the rest of the party could taste victory. But I had recently moved to a small town and didn't know anyone else who might play.
Anyway, to me, that first campaign (which we didn't finish) felt flat and the combats tedious. I doubled down on my efforts to figure out why. Some time passed, my two favorite players moved away, and I found another group of players: a DM, a soon-to-be-DM, a Pathfinder guy, and a newbie nerd who wanted to play a powerful necromancer.
I hear a lot of advice repeated over and over again. The internet is kind of an echo-chamber — maybe nobody knows what they're doing. So here's my thoughts on the systems, and process of becoming a DM —
The process of becoming a DM sucks. Maybe you've got a supportive group of players, or maybe you are working with what you have, trying to accommodate them. I had ideas and creativity, but I didn't know how to efficiently turn them into encounters, social situations, and adventures. For my second campaign, I homebrewed the world, a metropolis, the society, an underlying plot, the traditional world-building minutiae, and monsters, dungeons, ... almost everything. I put in so much work — almost every day, and a lot of my weekends I went down to the coffee shop, researched, wrote backstory, adjusted power levels or made up new challenges. And I still feel like it was easier than trying to learn all the details of an established setting I've never played, like Faerun.
Because Faerun doesn't make sense to me. I make up part of it, only to find when I look for a detail somewhere else, it's tightly coupled to the part I replaced! Without a model of how Faerun works in my head, I'm not sure how to move my chess pieces. I need someone to break it down at every stage into the simplest pieces possible — treating a nation as an NPC, identifying important NPCs and their relationships, NPC roles, propensities/motives, and power. And then breaking down organizations into some kind of organization-space, treating them as NPCs, building a web, and mapping organization-space onto a geographical map. And then breaking down cities into NPCs and organizations, and then districts, and then guilds, and then society. Because, otherwise, it's too vast for me to understand out of context, and it's too easy to break immersion, to give too much political power to the PCs (so that there's no point to strive for anything anymore).
So of course, I was excited when the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide came out. I figured — this is the ticket for me to understand the broad strokes of Faerun! But it most definitely isn't. I'm not going to hate on the book, if you have time and money, and it seems interesting, by all means why not peruse it? I appreciate WotC's intent — but the book is more like an encyclopedia and less like a novel. A novel?
When I started out my second campaign, I handed out a detailed questionnaire. I listed scifi & fantasy books, and asked players to order them by favorite theme. I had questions testing interest in various settings, playstyles, character goals, greyscale morality vs black-and-white, miscellaneous ideas I had, and possible responsibilities players might want to take on (food, side-quest DMing, writing, etc). After the first campaign, I wanted to gauge player interests. I had been doodling setting ideas for a while, and wanted to know if the players would care. I decided my setting was an important demiplane or whatever man, and that there were secret portals typically accessible by ship (a plot point) which I could use to plug it into another setting whenever I wanted (I planned to plug it into Faerun). Interestingly, I had more than enough material in my own world, and my players never got to Faerun.
What did those questionnaires get me? Absolutely nothing. One player nixed "Game of Thrones style" on his questionnaire, for all the good it did him (it just made me fret about my grand plans, I should never have asked — how is he supposed to know my world-building secrets anyway? Also, what is Game of Thrones style?). The rest of it was just idiosyncratic preferences, although it was interesting to look at. So while it's good to feel your group out, I don't think you need to go overboard here. "Will you bring the drinks?" "Do you have to get up early the next morning?" and "Do you like hack and slash?" "Do you like political power?" "Do you like experience points?" "Do you like dungeons and treasure?" or something similar will suffice.
A novel? The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (SCAG) isn't a novel? When I started out my second campaign, one player asked if the Elemental Evil supplement was allowed. I ended up with an elf, a half-elf, a drow (who I guided away from "drow, moon elf drow, because the elves can be subdivided up into sun and moon elves" — too bad I didn't think of half-drow half-moon-elf at the time), and a svirfneblin. Now, I had read the SCAG and PHB treatises on Drow. I was blissfully unaware of how crazily subjugated my Drow were, and how fanatically wrathful they must be feeling. Oh well, my world. But the EE supplement requester let something slip about the Legend of Drizzt books.
Obviously, I read the first 17 books in short order.
While these books helped fill out some understanding of Faerun, I only really feel like I understand the motivations of Icewind Dale. Possibly because it's a small setting, with easily identifiable factions, and a battle or two. It's also remote, and Drizzt didn't go adventuring to far off made-up dungeons while he was there every other day. And the underdark, which I now think is amazing! I'm going to keep reading these books, I am looking forward to learning about Neverwinter (the glosses I've read are so vague).
But I'm not sure reading those books are the right way to begin to understand Faerun.
One thing I've discovered recently is 1e and 2e settings books. The right settings books. Not even necessarily the Faerun settings books. Back when I was planning my homebrew campaign, I was researching mechanics for worlds which get very cold (and also seafaring). I did some research and bought some 2e and 3e pdfs from the DMsGuild which looked relevant. They were filled with irrelevant system-specific mechanics, outdated math, and segmented, wandering descriptions. It put me off reading anything published before 5e as labor-reducing material for my 5e campaign. And the adventures — I was building my own, I had no interest in those outdated railroads (HotDQ was the only published adventure I had tried to absorb).
But after continued research, I acquired 0e, 1e, Dark Sun, Planescape, and Spelljammer. These are amazing books, and I'm currently searching out the other best early books. It doesn't help that they're not compiled into a complete, chronological, and categorized list anywhere, and that it would cost a fortune to [legally] acquire the collected works (on pdf, no less). I'm going to come back to the fact that I bought 0e and 1e, but if I have to pick one of these books to recommend, it's the Planescape boxed set.
Planescape is the kind of thing I can pick up and read, and not fall asleep. It also is far superior to all of the DMG/PHB/wikipedia descriptions of the outer planes. I just had to remember to skip sections that didn't catch my interest. Basically, it's one man's account of the planes. He has a lot of colorful advice, much more narrative, to the point, and subjective than SCAG, which half-heartedly not-really adopted a subjective narrator. It's humorous, non-definitive!, and all-inclusive. It's also the source material which created the planes — everything else written is a revision. It's like a creative writing prompt.
Continuance
One source of DMing wisdom that has had a major impact on my thought patterns is The Angry GM. He might repeat himself and slowly elaborate on the same ideas he's been stewing on for years, but I only realized this after reading the majority of everything he has on his site. I could put together specific article recommendations if anyone cared. Also, support him on Patreon!
I like articles like Angry’s because he lays out his thought patterns while constructing the models you want to use. These are self-contained predictive (crassly, "generative") modules. How do you build a chase scene?
You deconstruct the idea of chase into its components parts, examine the theory of roleplaying, identify the important parts of roleplaying for various players, apply literature theory (I read a number of books on authoring fiction, I guess you could do that too), add tension, modularize, and reconstruct.
When you're done, you have either an encounter to play out with triggers and mechanics, or an encounter and encounter-mechanics building set of meta mechanics, or perhaps even meta-meta encounter-mechanics mechanics building mechanics, if you're applying yourself.
I really appreciate being able to read and understand an adventure or optional rule. By applying structure to some pile of text you hand me, I can start to compile your input into a useful program of sorts, that I can use to reason, and generate predictions for behaviors of various chess pieces.
After I read a lot of The Angry GM’s articles, I bought all the published 5e adventures, and set to analyzing them. There's a great variety. I wouldn't advise you to do this: maybe only one at a time.
I also watched youtube playthroughs of most of them (and some extras, on top of that).
In my opinion, Princes of the Apocalypse has the most interesting story structure, followed by Storm King's Thunder. Out of the Abyss turned into an amazing playthrough. And if I understood the Ravenloft better, Curse of Strahd might be my favorite of them all. But I don't understand it hardly at all yet. So I'd be more likely to run the other ones I mentioned.
The Angry GM mentions in passing a number of divides in the RPG gamer community, none of which should come as a shock to anyone who has used the internet to read about D&D or any other RPG ... storytellers vs tacticians, "improvisers vs railroaders" (a meaningless dichotomy, he explains), the choice of maintaining thematic integrity (think Dark Sun) vs allowing players any choice or capability they can articulate with their mouth-things (think Acquisitions Incorporated). I knew all the echo-chamber soundbytes about these divides before, but now they mean a lot more to me.
Most importantly. I watched a youtube video which talked about the evolution of D&D — and I was very surprised how 0e and 1e read. I had heard about the ebb and flow of mechanics vs DM intuition. But when I actually looked at the early D&D texts, they read like creative writing prompts, not rulesets or algebras. Eg, here is a system I made up. I wanted to do a thing, and so I hope you like it. Oh, and another thing might help you mitigate some problem — to the point.
I'm a scifi buff, and I thought it might be easier to run a science fiction RPG than a fantasy game like D&D. I tried to research the best scifi RPG, and the first time I searched, the jury cried out "Traveller"! I'm currently watching Babylon 5 for the second time (and honestly, I'm getting impatient writing this, I want to watch B5, but if I stop writing I likely won't continue later).
If you like Babylon5, you probably agree that Traveller has a pretty great premise. I unfortunately made a rookie mistake and bought Traveller5, which was supposed to be the ultimate be-all-and-end-all of Traveller RPGs. It's not, because it's an algebra book.
I can't stay awake reading Traveller5, no joke. It requires intense mental exertion to see and make sense of the unexplained patterns and arcane rules. It's very complete — with systems for social interaction (which I feel divided about), crafting, and detailed world-building. It doesn't provide a setting beyond a few pages (out of 700!), but instead tools to build a cohesive setting. It really is the distilled machinations of years of game design, but it's inaccessible to the layperson. And from some of the reviews I've read, that's not an uncommon opinion.
But the thing that really is the kicker — some people like Traveller5 style rules, and some people like 5e/1e style rules. And there's nothing you can do about it to change their minds. Some people like rules lawyering — this occurred to me while listening to Happy Jacks RPG — they like to sit down for their session, use their encylopediac knowledge of the rules to optimize and evolve their character and actions, sticking to every last convention — sitting down and debating the best course of action. Not quickly resolving actions and moving on with the action or story, not the excitement of battle, nor promise of immersion. Some people like tactically planning every move before execution, and won't hesitate to spend every moment of their time evaluating, debating. Because that is the fun part for them.
I've read flamewars on forums between these two camps — and anyone with a bone to pick will claim the buzzwords for themselves. My way is "immersive"! One bozo claimed that 5e was terrible because DMs weren't required to build NPCs using the same process PCs are built, so certain pregen NPC stat block abilities weren't accessible to his PC — because this inconsistency in *rules* breaks *immersion*. To me, this sounds like a bit of stretch — I think thematic (which heavily involves adjudication) inconsistencies break immersion, not rules inconsistencies. Or maybe he is immersed in something, and it's just not the story.
Anyway, this guy liked 3.5e better than 5e — not only, but he thought 5e was trash.
Is it? My final closing remarks here are going to be on 3.5e versus 5e, which is I think the question you have been waiting for — or maybe not, I don't know.
Most recently, I have been cross-referencing 3.5 with 5e. Some of it's coming back to me now, and some of the surprised questions my second group asked about rules are making more sense to me.
3.5e is better in some respects. It has more structure. It makes more sense, in a limited capacity. The rulebooks are much more poorly written. They are extremely repetitive. I appreciate the crafting system, because it unifies spells, magic items, and provides the ability to create new spells. In 5e, there's not really a difference between rods, wands, and staffs.
In my 5e games, I've been surprised at how useless the low level wizards have been. That statement is flamebait, and I've seen it in action
In 5e, magic users, and wizards in particular, have been nerfed hard. No matter how you phrase it (and I've seen people try), wizards are much much less powerful in 5e. Yes ... they got ritual spells, disposed of Vancian magic, and got some silly cantrip pseudo archery attacks, sure; but they have fewer slots, less spell selection, no ability to create magical items or bank spells, all the spells have been made less powerful, and no ability to create new spells.
As a DM, you can add all that back, but it will break 5e's balance. I've heard it said that in 5e, all classes are magic users. Well, I have to say, in 5e, all classes are fighters. Chew on that?
Full disclosure. I like 3.5e wizards. I feel that unfair level of power is appropriate — when you read Order of the Stick or other D&D fantasy literature, the wizards are 3.5e style powerful. It feels wrong and disappointing to me for wizards not to hold Earth-shattering power. (But, my first character was a melee tank, who once dealt ~150 damage in one turn.) Restricting a wizard to a supporting "role" instead of encouraging a supporting role seems like a loss to me. Who would want to play a wizard then? If you don't get earth shattering powers? Non-earth-shattering powers is mundane, and I'm playing a fantasy game.
Detractors will argue for the poor oppressed mundanes. As a DM, you have the power to make everybody cool. You can keep balance in check, allow wizards to be powerful in and of themselves, and keep fighters and the like out of their shadow. If a wizard is overshadowing a fighter, talk to the wizard, tell them to get off his toes.
And/or maybe beef up the fighter. In 3.5e you could add a prestige class. I'm sure you can figure something out in 5e.
Anyway, if you love balance and hate wizards and 3.5e, you're in good company with 5e. But if you love rules to the bone, you might like 3.5e better. Or if you somehow want to be involved in what I consider the DM's work, you might like 3.5e.
Regardless, 5e has easier to remember rules, is better balanced, easier to introduce new people to, is on the other side of the scales from the abstruse algebraic systems with idiosyncratic notations, and you can always modify it to make it imba. So I approve of 5e, but I have to say —
I had to do a lot of research to understand it. I feel like a 500 page, non-wandering, topical, focused essay on the art of DMing and RPG gaming would do wonders for a D&D 5e companion book. Because those missing rules — they are missing — it is good that they are not hard and fast, but it is bad that there are few well motivated optional functionality modules which you can pop into your game to improve it.
Long story short — make it up when you feel like something is missing, and find what inspires you — really inspires, not what you think inspires you or you think will improve your knowledge. Be fair, attentive, and pro-active.
PS
On the topic of good combats — Angry wrote an article titled something "Running Combats like a M#@&*^## Dolphin". Having an efficient style, having a style at all, to running a combat, as he describes, speeds combats up and makes them seem more interesting. I mean, it only speeds it up a little bit, but come on.
Just as useful — building good combats — if they're dragging on, get them over with as soon as possible. If you're employing good tactics for your baddies, and/or providing useful tactical features, you might be prolonging the battle. You don't have to stop doing that, but do be aware of it. So, you can just throw falling lava into the battle, and KAPOW, both sides take damage faster! Fight end sooner! And adding interesting features is standard advice, but *active* features — if the PCs don't use them, let the NPCs use them. That way even "passive" features are active — and I prefer to deal side-neutral damage than provide cover or healthy unrelenting reinforcements. There's some other advice out there, read Angry's long diatribes.
Also, standard DMG advice — use objectives. So what you say? How will that speed combat? Make sure to change the situation enough to cause a re-evaluation of how best to achieve the objective, and BAM, a properly applied change might reduce battle time.
And, what? You are doing nothing now but just attacking over and over again? Just call it. Unless your players rebel. "They don't stand a chance." "You guys are heading for TPK ... "
I guess I have had trouble running combats in the past.
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