#wotc feel free to take
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chaotic or unknowable dnd realm
limbo in and is the ever-churning chaos and is very chaotic. but in my opinion, its chaos isn’t chaotic enough. and the far realm is an unknowable and corruptive place from somewhere across the universe (i haven’t done much research on the far realm :/) so what ima be doing is creating an eldrich chaos realm
since this realm is alien or unstable chaos these are probably selectively or randomly active
well, first of all, you wouldn't expect chaos to be recognizable but limbo is churning matter and energy. this is probably due to the spawning stone and the lore around it but I just want more chaos. my solution to recognizableness is to make a chart of senses and types of feelings you can feel with those senses and contradict what can normally be felt/heard/seen/smelt/tasted and use senses interchangeably in descriptions (e.g: you taste that the creature is green. you can feel that there is a loud scent floating around you.) also perception is one thing. this will make interactions hard in limbo so I would recommend either using limbo or perception sparingly.
if you want some more understandability this realm could be shaped by thoughts and memories. I’m thinking it would constantly be described as nostalgic but uncanny or be built from scraps and pieces of buildings they have seen or been before but twisted and warped. also probably taken over by creatures of some kind of aberrant origin (think like the tentacles or really anything from stranger things upside down.)
since it’s a realm of mind, I’m thinking information can react in weird ways. maybe the world gets more sensical as the party gains knowledge from creatures somehow by maybe hearing their death whisper to them or something. I’m thinking the optional rule from limbo where you can manipulate stuff with intelligence checks would work well here but maybe with corruption to what they want like if they make the air around something into water it would be as deep as the ocean towards its center and would drag them in, or if they make a stone pillar it would create one with intricate unknowable carvings that you can enter and get lost in the world of if you aren't careful. maybe there's some kind of thing like with being able to feel words and or music so well to be able to use it to do things like building a bridge of music or something odd like that
of course, gravity would be relatively allowing everyone to non-magically but effectively is under the spider climb effect while they are there being able to walk along the relative floors.
maybe physical space is different. like everything has a singularity and beyond that lies everything they do not see. but in the singularity, they see all around them such as inside of people’s bodies, through walls the spin of every non-aberrant matter’s electrons. speaking of aberrant matter, I’m thinking the aberrant matter is unstable until minds bend it to a shape, and even said shape can be unstable unless the mind is powerful as I have sort of said before. aberrations can understand this matter for what it truly is and can make superior materials out of it (like indestructible materials and materials that can act outside of physics like passing through stuff or petrifying things that perceive it or maybe even turning things into fruit that decays swiftly into spider legged mini goblins that are suicidal before becoming a metal blanket soaked in radioactive starlight that softly cries in the tune of the universe. etc).
this all has a lot of potential but needs proper work so I would recommend listening to some cool cosmic horror stuff if you plan on making actual rules for this. maybe if you're good at science you can work in some time or reality bending shenanigans
#cosmic horror#dnd homebrew#dnd#d&d homebrew#d&d#wotc feel free to take#also feel free to take inspiration if you see this#long post#eldrich fuckery#have fun explaining the environment dms#great old one warlock#warlock#could also be used for transmutation wizard flavor#wizard
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Since Wizards of the Coast is torpedoing all the good-will they have with DnD to wring more money out of it, I want to make a guide for people who recognize they should jump ship, but don’t know alternatives.
If you’re deeply invested in DnD and want something as similar as possible, Pathfinder 2 is what you want. It’s the next biggest game in the tabletop scene (in the US), you can find physical copies in stores easily, and Paizo allows free resources online to exist without constant threat of being taken down like WotC does. It will remain free to play on any VTT while DnD will require you to subscribe to their proprietary one.
Most importantly, though, it improves on almost every aspect of DnD. Combat and class balance is extremely well thought out and makes all combats engaging and difficult in a fun way, requiring teamwork and clever thinking. Roleplay is integrated into character creation and play better, and you no longer have to choose between being good in combat or exploration or roleplay, you get to play and feel useful during all aspects of the game. It’s hard to emphasize how much better it is without just playing, if you still want something like DnD, play Pathfinder 2.
If you like high fantasy adventuring but are willing to get more out there, Fellowship and Dungeon World are good options. Fellowship is a more free-form adventure game focused on creating a cinematic experience over getting bogged-down in rules-heavy play. If you want to play a Lord of the Rings style campaign and have it feel like the movies, Fellowship is the way to go.
Dungeon World is called “Powered by the Apocalypse” which means it was inspired by Apocalypse World, an amazing ttrpg that revolutionized the scene and became the gold standard for interweaving roleplay and gameplay. Dungeon World is meant to be a bridge between DnD and indie rpgs, and it’s good for that, though there are better PbtA games. It’s a good introduction to principles like failing forward and playing to find out what happens (and hell, a good introduction to games having principles lol). There’s also an Avatar the Last Airbender licensed PbtA game that’s very good, if that’s your thing!
Speaking of licensed games, Free League Publishing sets the benchmark for rpgs built for existing intellectual properties, and while I haven’t played all of their games, I’m a big fan of what I have played. They also have independent settings, like Twilight 2000, a really good apocalypse survival game set in a collapsing warfront between an alternate-history NATO and Soviet Union as the two dying empires bring all of society down in their death spiral. I’m using it as the base for my Halo rpg, it’s very good.
Blades in the Dark is another big name in the indie scene, and for good reason. It’s a heist game that has been adapted to lots of other settings (games that say they’re “Forged in the Dark” take inspiration here) and it’s clear to see why so many have used it as a foundation once you’ve played, it’s an exciting crime procedural where you play a group of scoundrels punching above your weight and facing the consequences
There’s a million other amazing rpgs I could mention here, and I’m sure people will talk about plenty of lovely ones I’ve missed in the notes, but I think the most important thing I want to convey with this is that there’s a whole world of diverse and interesting rpgs at all levels of production, from big corporate teams to one girl with a laptop who barely knows how to make a pdf, and there’s no better time to start exploring them.
A common refrain is that DnD can be modified to do anything, but once you’ve played other rpgs you’ll see why that’s not true, and why those creative efforts would be better spent in other systems. Hacking rpgs is as old a tradition as rpgs themselves, but if the only tools you know are DnD, you’re being limited with what you can create more than you could possibly know. There’s no better time to leave this Plato’s Cave and see the beauty and wonder of the whole ttrpg scene
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A single design problem I have for each D&D 5e class
Made this a thread over on bluesky and figured might as well bring it over here. Not really big problems in most cases, but just, small things that I feel WotC should tweak in all current 5e classes.
Artificer: No clear weakness.
A single class that can make great a great support character, DPS character, tank, single target attacker, stealth character, etc
Obviously needs to be built spesifically for each of these, but every other class has at least one thing they can't do.
Barbarian: No force resistance
Slightly cheating because it's not inherently a problem with Barbarian, but recently more monsters have been using Force damage instead of B/P/S, and barbarians should absolutely gain resistance to it while raging at higher levels.
Bard: Full-casting
Bards are designed to be a jack of all trades, it's right there at 2nd level, but they seem to have missed the 'master of none' bit.
Full spellcasting up to 9th level, a pretty solid spell list, and spells they don't have they can take with Magical Secrets anyway, even 9th level ones.
Cleric: Turn Undead
A holdover from older editions, turn undead in my opinion just doesn't make for a good universal option on clerics.
I'd much prefer something like spirit guardians or spiritual weapon be reworked into their universal channel divinity.
Druid: Universal Wildshape
Probably controversial, but I have similar problems with wildshape that I do turn undead, it's good, but a weird universal option.
If I'm a druid getting my powers from stones, plants, or the stars, why can I also turn into a ferret? There should be a few options to pick from instead.
Fighter: Action Surge at Level 2
Action surge is such a good feature, usually it's just some extra attacks, but the fact you have the chioce is great....
That said, I think it coming online so early incentivises unintentionally incentivises multiclassing, casters dipping for 2 spells a turn mostly. They've somewhat fixed it by limiting what actions you can use it for in OneD&D, but I personally just feel it should be later level rather than limiting it.
Monk: Ki Dependancy
This doesnt' need explaining, everything for monks costs ki and it really doesn't need to, they should get resource free disengage and dash, or have ki recover faster.
I had an idea for a ki recharge of 1 min, but less points overall, so you have all points for every fight
Paladin: Oaths at 3rd level
You get your power as a paladin from a sacred oath you swear, so why do you only choose that oath at 3rd level?
That's like a warlock only deciding their patron at 3rd, or a cleric only deciding their god at 3rd (Yes 1D&D does this and I hate it).
Ranger: Spells Known
Why do rangers, the class that's meant to be about being the best prepared for the wilderness and natural areas not have prepared spells?
It just seems so obvious to me, and I've got no idea why it's not done like that already?!
Rogue: Is Pretty Good
If anything I'd say that I'm not a fan of skill floors like reliable talent, and expertise not letting you use it on other tools is a bit strange, maybe the large subclass level gap?
Yeah overall I'm a fan of rogues though, they're just solidly made.
Sorcerer: Spells Known
They tried to fix this in Tasha's with subclass spell lists, and I think that's good idea generally, but letting them swap them for (admittedly limited) options from 3 different spell lists is also weird
Just give them subclass spells they can't swap, or maybe can swap fron one list and you're good.
Warlock: EB is a Cantrip
Eldritch Blast is a good spell. Too good to be honest with multiclassing at least, it's one of the reasons PalLock is such a good combo.
EB should scale with Warlock level so be a feature not a cantrip, or cantrip scaling with warlock level like it was in that One D&D UA that they then reverted.
Wizard: Subclass Theming
Tying wizard subclasses to schools was a bad idea, and what we've gotten outside the PHB seems to be an attempt to go back on that.
It also means they don't have room to explore all of each school, I'd love a teleport or summon focused wizard but school of conjuration smashes them together weirdly
#dnd homebrew#homebrew#5e homebrew#d&d#dnd#dnd 5e#dnd5e#dungeons and dragons#artificer#barbarian#bard#cleric#druid#fighter#monk#paladin#ranger#rogue#sorcerer#warlock#wizard#magic#spells#subclass#dnd classes#dnd design#jay's design commentary
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what are your thoughts on Larian walking away from BG3/BG4/DLCs?
What a great question!!
So, first to acknowledge my own feelings as a gamer, as a fan of BG3, of the franchise, and, of course, of Astarion : I'm naturally a bit bummed. I would love to play more, read more, watch something, anything really.
Added to that, I also don't trust an outside team to come in to pick up the vision of the original team. I've seen it happen with other games, where the base game was one studio and the DLC was outsourced or they onboarded a new studio to take on it on as the main development team moved on to the next big project. It rarely, if ever, has worked out well.
My hope on the Hasbro/WotC side is that they leave BG3 alone to live on as a behemoth in the history of gaming... however, knowing how game publishers are, how much money BG3 made, the player interest in more content, etc -- there is no way that Hasbro is leaving money like that to the wayside.
Best case scenario I see on this side: they make auxiliary content, like books, toys, comics.
Worst case scenario: they outsource a new game team for DLC.
As for BG4, I honestly didn't expect that to be Larian's next project anyway (I was expecting Divinity 3, so feeling a different disappointment there haha). That being said, I don't think WotC or Hasbro know (and I mean this at the executive level of course) why BG3 did well. There are honestly a ton of factors on why BG3 did well, but that's for another post lol, but I don't think they could replicate that for BG4 with another studio. Doesn't mean I don't think it will be good-- it might be! It will just be very different.
Best case scenario here: they have a good studio make BG4 and it's still good, but it's different.
Worse case scenario here: they try to have a studio replicate what Larian did instead of tapping into their talents, and end up with a buggy, unfun mess. Also they bring back characters just to try to get people to buy it. 🥲
Now, as a game dev, what do I think of Larian's choice in all of this?
I LOVE IT. Wow, Swen Vincke is doing what every single developer wishes they could do if they actually had the power, money, and the influence to do it.
I have wished in the past for my studios to abandon projects, but sometimes it really was necessary to try to keep the studio afloat. As much as you want to work on a passion project, very rarely is it actually something that will keep the lights on. Oftentimes you will have to make that deal with Hasbro for a license or that deal with Epic for exclusivity just to recoup costs. Making games is expensive and, if you want to make anything at the scale that BG3 is, you usually need a lot of partnerships (a lot of their GDC talks were part of partnerships, like Dolby, Amazon, Adobe).
So the fact that they had such a success with BG3 to actually, comfortably follow their creative passions? Wow, wow, wow-- I am rooting for them so hard. I want them to make exactly the game they want and take all the time they need to do it.
Now, even knowing that Hasbro had something to do with this, was what he said about the developers not feeling passionate about the DLC true? Yeah, probably.
I've never seen something kill creative passion more (even if it's for a franchise you like or a game you've loved working on) than a directive from the top for something that's clearly just meant to make people above you more money. And with each partnership comes approvals, comes red tape, comes stakeholders that want to dictate what's in the game (oftentimes to the detriment of the game)-- and the game team can't even object because it's not their license or their brand.
The fact that Larian can say, 'screw that, I don't need more money from you' is truly such an anomaly in gaming. I am so very in awe of them as a developer-- it feels like someone breaking free of the system and paving the way forward for the rest of us. So whatever they do next, I will be there to support them.
BG3 is their most successful game so far, and I'm hopeful they will continue to push those boundaries. They've proven with each release that the core of their studio remains the same: immersive/massive RPG experiences, community-feedback focused improvements, and a well-balanced studio.
The tldr for all of this: I've loved Larian's choices so far and, while I'm bummed as a player, as a game dev I can't wait to see where this one takes them!
#cosmicchocomuffin#ask#bg3#larian#ty again for such a good question!!!#i love larian and their choices as a studio#i know people can and should be critical of some things they do#but i cannot stress enough how phenomenal it is to see a studio like them succeed
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Spelljammer is coming out soon, do you have any adventure ideas for Spelljammer? Or at least some open sea adventures you have that we could reflavor appropriately ?
Drafting the Adventure: Spelljamming
It’s been a while since I penned my initial thoughts on sailing the astral sea, and since that time, a few things have changed:
WoTC revived the setting with kickass art and not much else, disappointing just about the entire fandom and yet again requiring us the players to do the design work for them.
I binged all of @dimension20official‘s “A Starstruck Odyssey”, which not only got me really hype to run a space game but showed me a mechanical basis on which it could function ( seriously friends, go watch Starstruck)
My Friend group decided to rewatch Treasure Planet, one of the formative pillars of my love of fantasy, and it got me thinking about how amazing the concept of space-pirate-fantasy is. I am and always will be a slut for cosmic wonder and there’s just something about the combination of these concepts that makes my brain come alive.
And so, I’ve decided to take a crack at overhauling Spelljammer, partially to bring it in line with my own version of the d&d cosmos and partially because as a game designer I can’t help but stare at all the negative space WotC gave us and imagine various possibilities. Mine’s not going to be a be all end all, and just like every homebrew fix I encourage you to look at different options until you find one that feels right to you and your table.
Now, below the cut I’m going to go into things about the spelljammer setting and specific mechanics I think will be useful, but before I do I’m going to give you folks a little preview of my opinions by going off on a meaningless tangent:
WHY THE HELL ARE SPELLJAMMING HELMS CHAIRS? No really, think about it. Apart from the fact that “Helm” specifically refers to the wheel and steering apparatus of a ship, the fantasy that spelljammer is supposed to be pulling from is nautical adventure; steely eyed captains masterfully piloting their vessels along the edge of a storm, the ship and their body pulling as one against the elements. The decision to make the helms chairs that channel magic rather than a wheel that requires sill turns the act of cruising through the cosmos into a mostly passive act, which I suppose mirrors the design decision to not actually require any input on the part of the jammer’s crew in order to sail it. It’s not even that the designers were trying to emulate other popular sci-fi properties like starwars/trek, because despite the fact that people sit down while piloting in those settings, ships have an entire crew manning different stations and doing things. It’s almost like in trying to simplify a complicated game system, WotC decided that it would be better to remove ANY chance at interesting gameplay rather than put out a rules system that wouldn’t please everyone.
First off, I have to plug SW5E, The Dimension 20 crew used it as the architecture for their space game and after multiple hours of stress testing I couldn’t be more impressed. All the info is available for free online, and the more I dig into it, the more genius I find it:
Characters are given a second “deployment” class, which represents their position on the ship and the actions they can take in ship to ship combat. This not only means that ship to ship combat can actually happen ( unlike the limp pre-boarding actions of default spelljammer), but they get a chance to grow and customize their character. These deployments are synergistic with how their mechanics work, facilitating a feeling that the crew is actually working together.
Lost of gear and upgrades for ships, which make a great resource sync for a mid to high level party that’s sorely lacking in default d&d.
A well fleshed out “power” system for the engineer to tinker with. I’ve had lots of players who’ve wanted to fulfill this role before but I’ve never seen a better version of it in numerous other space games.
Actual timeframes for how long it takes to get places at both impulse and warp speed to provide a guideline for narration and adventure building
An actual navigation system for ships that’s so good I’m considering backwards engineering it into regular exploration rules. Simple enough to breeze over in non-hostile situations but perfectly tuned to be a centerpoint of mid combat drama for those characters who want to do more than shoot things.
A mechanical tug of war: Apart from other controversies with Spelljammer’s release ( which I’m not going to get into here), the main problem is that the audience for d&d has grown so large that they’re never going to be happy with one level of complexity. On one hand you have a casual audience who’s entertained with doing the yearly cinematic adventure module, and standing on the exact opposite side of the room from them are the people who are furious they didn’t get an update to the super clunky rules from 2nd edition. Between them are the ACTUAL core d&d audience, people who are into the game enough to want some mechanical complexity but not so much that they want their enjoyment of things choked out by having to refer to a chart every 10 minutes.
In my personal opinion, we are best served by remembering that 5e was built on the idea of having a streamlined core system into which rules modules ( which would hopefully be equally streamlined) could be slotted, dialing up focus and complexity as needed depending on the different campaigns you ran. 5e was never meant to be a comprehensive ruleset, and even if WotC has forgotten to do the actual work, we the audience can kitbash something together to get the game the way we want it.... not that we should actually have to.
It’s not space, and that’s the point: what makes the spelljammer setting so interesting is that it’s a radical departure from most other “realistic” scifi settings out there. It harkens back to Flash Gordon, Jules Verne, and Edger Rice Boroughs, the things that inspired starwars and the original d&d. Planets that are the forgotten colonies of long vanished empires, mad tyrants ruling haunted moons, smuggler ports built into asteroid fields, all these things are shlocky, pulpy, and/or campy as hell and we should lean into that when we’re considering spelljammer adventures in the future. Personally I can’t even think about the name without imagining vast reaches of stars and nebula matter resounding with the sounds of a sickass 80s inspired guitar solo. Where I think the reboot fails conceptually is that it’s ossified: the same weird but not too weird iconography and alien species from the original publishing without daring to make it any more wild. I’ve been hearing about the gun hippos since I got into the hobby 20 years ago, they’ve surely had more interesting ideas since then, right?
Here’s some kitchen sink ideas to help make your wildspace a little more wild:
It’s not a lack of air that’ll kill you in the astral sea, it’s a lack of coherence. If the astral sea is the realm of dreams and thought from which gods and worlds are born, it’s safe to say that the major threat to travellers isn’t the cold vacuum we’d expect from our own off-planet adventures. Instead, prolonged exposure to the astral risks a character becoming less and less real, slowly hollowed out into a barely-there concept of their former self. Ships, celestial bodies, and void suits assert a degree of reality in the space around them, not just providing an environment where characters CAN breathe, but an environment in which they MUST, in order to prevent their respiratory system from being forgotten. Similarly this is why you need to pack food and other supplies from a physical world (narratively encouraging trade and battles over resources), because eating nothing but imagined delicacies or simply ignoring your body’s need to eat is liable to make your digestive system imaginary as well
When I read the entry on astral elves, I couldn’t help but be horrified: entire empires of immortals who never slept, ate, or aged, existing in a perpetual state of emotional and chronological detachment. While the packed in adventure did paint some of these elves as the villains, I feel as if they didn’t do enough to follow through on the concept. Knowing how badly sensory deprivation fucks with the human mind, I couldn’t help but imagine the astral elves as twitchy, impulse driven wrecks existing only in the moment and carrying around tens of millennia of unresolved trauma. We’ve seen space empires before, but what we haven’t seen are derelict warships of maddened immortals hurdling towards conflict with eons of combat experience and an unquenchable desire to feel something, ANYTHING, even if it means ramming your ship along with theirs into an asteroid to ensure a confrontation. Elves as warboys, tell me that doesn’t rule.
If you want the age of sail/pulp scifi themes of spelljammer to be anything more than a surface level aesthetic, consider reading up on some of the underlying economics that fuelled it, namely colonialism, slavery, and the exploitation of the frontier. While it’s perfeclty fine to have a rose-tinted cosmos where people adventure for adventures sake, WotC’s own missteps with the hadozee show that its all too easy to step into fucked up territory if we’re not mindful. Suffice to say, if you’re going to have space pirates in the space caribbean, figure out who’s growing the space spices they’re raiding from the space merchants.
Also, for those who might want direct access to my catalogue of adventures:
Astral
Sailing
Spelljammer
#prompt postage#astral#spelljammer#drafting an adventure#dimension 20#sw5e#dm advice#dm tip#dm tips#dm tools#writing advice#dnd#dungeons and dragons#d&d#5e#5e homebrew#homebrew mechanic#d&d mechanics#setting
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Still poking my way very slowly through Act 1 of BG3 with my half-elf pally girl, Aravyn, and just had the best series of quests/encounters that hit me a little in the feels.
So, long long ago, when WotC was starting to play test 5e, I started to attend some D&D Encounter sessions at a local comic/game shop, where we'd use some random pre-rolled character sheets to play. And I got handed the following:
This randomized Paladin who, for some reason, was also a wandering minstrel. I got to play her for all of one session, and unfortunately never was able to attend any more sessions (for reasons). Yet this yodeling Paladin has lived rent-free in my head for years, but had never found a group to play with in the years following.
So when I realized that I might be able to bring a version of her to life in BG3, I leapt on the chance and gave her the Entertainer background, and despaired a little that I couldn't multiclass her into Bard in Explorer Mode (although there is a mod for that).
I found a lute on the beach, played it very badly in camp and got yelled at by Lae'zel for it. And then, I wandered a little bit outside of the Druid's camp, to find a Tiefling bard singing so badly a bunch of squirrels were wailing with despair.
Having failed so spectacularly in serenading the camp, it would have been smart for poor Aravyn to just talk her way through this encounter. But here she was, being offered a lute and a chance to inspire someone with music.
And she knocked it out of the park -- being gifted the lute of the bard's deceased lover mentor as thanks for helping her break out of writer's block. (I mean, I get it. I feel that pain Alfira)
Mood™
Right afterwards, because I refuse to take a long rest while still full up on spell slots, I kept the party exploring, and encountered the harpy ambush at the beach. And we died. A lot. Especially in a frontal assault. So finally as a last ditch effort before having to put off saving the tiny child being lured in as a harpy snack for a better leveled party, I just had Aravyn sneak up behind and yeet herself from the harpy nest straight at the beasty ladies on the rock where they were hiding.
As you do.
Anyway, Shadowheart joined her, because what else should a healer do but leap into the fray and harm's way? (there was no way this was going to work, so what did I have to lose but my pride, I told myself) And as both holy ladies started swinging away wildly while the warlock and wizard looked on from above, I found myself wishing I really had some levels in bard in order to use countersong* to nullify the crooning harpy below slowly luring a little tiefling child to his doom.
After exhausting all actions and bonus actions, and since I had Lihala's lute already equipped with nothing else to do in between rounds I was like "...fuck it, we rock", and started blasting a song.
My Paladin, apparently, while fighting a bunch of harpies.
And I don't know if it was just a quirk of the dice rolls, but it worked. On his next round, the tiefling child immediately was able to break free of the song, which was the first time that had happened in all five tries and started running the fuck away. And I was like "...wait what?" and so after kicking ass on the next round, played again. And he was able to resist again and kept running further away while the harpies were distracted tearing the party to pieces.
No one in the party got charmed while Aravyn was playing her heart out, and by guzzling a lot of healing potions, they were able to just manage to squeak out a win. Bloodied and burning through all of their spell slots, they were victorious.
Uh, so yeah. Apparently I unintentionally recreated the end of season 4 of Stranger Things (with less tragedy!), and saved a little kid with the power of rock and roll while using the lute of slain bard. And damn, if that's not a true D&D experience I don't know what is. So I think it's safe to say that Larian has been able to somewhat recapture some of that lightning in a bottle feeling of playing a tabletop RPG in this game.
(even if that was all luck of dice rolls and playing the lute did nothing, I'm headcanoning Ari was channeling Lihala's spirit, because that's a far better story)
#gif#bg3 posting#grey’s bg3 tag#* technically it's counterspell in game#but my brain thought “countersong” at the time#anyway i'm loving the game#even if i kind of stink at it#bg3 spoilers#oc: aravyn#ari's og campaign
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Let's try to get some perspective
Okay, let me quickly talk about it, because I saw this coming up again and again. And don't get me wrong, I absolutely do get the anger about Larian going: "Alright, we will start to slowly step back from further updates on BG3." I get it.
Because, yes. The companions, who are not Shadowheart or Astarion do deserve more work on their questlines (especially Karlach and Wyll, who very much are underwritten right now). There are some story threads left hanging, too. And yes, we all can name at least one NPC, for whom we would want a bit more content. Also, yes, there are still some bugs that make the game crash for some users, which sucks as well. (A friend of mine cannot play the game. It crashed as he entered act 2 last October and he has been waiting for an update that allows him to continue playing ever since - and it still does not work.)
But... Please also consider, that Larian already gave us a lot more in terms of support and updates, than most studios will do. Especially in terms of story and quality of life updates. I honestly have never been part of a game community with anything near the associated cost of a game like BG3, that did not only release several updates for story and characters after the game release, but did this for free. Like, sure, this is the kinda stuff I have come to expect from some Indie studios, but not a studio that is AA.
Basically no other big CRPG has ever given us so much in terms of updates and support. At least in a long, long while. Usually games get shipped out broken and unplayable (looking at you, Cyberpunk 2077) and then over months get fixed into a somewhat playable state, before support ends. But with not much in terms of story or quality of life updates.
And you have to see that the big issue with those big ass Patch updates is, that they do cost a lot of money, and do not really bring in that much. So the return on investment is not the best. And sadly Larian, too, lives under a capitalist system. They need to make money to keep existing as a studio.
Now, of course. Most of us (maybe not me specifically, but a lot of folks) would love some DLC for BG3. Let us explore the hells with Karlach and Wyll, visit the vampire spawn in the Underdark - or something like that. And given that Larian could absolutely monetize such a DLC and people would love it.
My personal theory is that due to WotC firing all the people working with Larian, they just are so done with the entire WotC thing. Which I get. Believe me, I get it.
But in general... They do not owe us and DLC. Just as they do not owe us BG4 or whatever.
Would I personally love them take on another DnD/Forgotten Realms game? Yeah, absolutely. But again: I get it, if they look at the burning dumbster fire that is WotC and go: "Yeah, no."
And they will still fix bugs for a while. That is the one thing that they do arguably owe. Given that for some people those bugs are gamebreaking, and who paid for the game should be in their right to actually play it. But everything else?
And don't get me wrong: I absolutely do have loads of criticism for them. Especially in regards to the lack of body diversity in the game, the lack of PotC characters, and how underwritten some characters are (again: Wyll and Karlach). There is tons of stuff to criticize. But... you know, it is still okay for them to move on. And yes, it sucks how underwritten the two PoC companions are (reminder: Karlach is Asian), and it feels at the very least like bias. And I do hope Larian will do better with PoC characters in future games. But... Let's be honest, it was always unrealistic to expect, that they would do the massive updates needed to properly flesh out those two storylines.
#baldur's gate 3#baldurs gate 3#bg3#wyll ravengard#karlach#larian studios#wizards of the coast#wotc#dungeons & dragons#dnd#game development#capitalism sucks#fuck capitalism
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Could you do me a favor and tell me literally every piece of info abt dnd you can? Asking for an aster
@amethyst-aster (just so you see it)
hello!
so. this is long which is why there is a cut. i feel i ought to foreworn you that i read the entire players handbook cover to cover the summer i turned 11 because i was lonely and autistic. i memorized it (mostly. little rusty on some of the magic rules but whatever). /not sarcastic so! this is EXTREMELY LONG.
first up! your basics:
dungeons and dragons is a tabletop roleplaying game first created in 1974 by gary gygax. that's not so important. what is important is this: it is currently in its fifth edition (shorthanded as 5e). that is the one i know the most about and it is personally the one i think is the easiest to play, but thats my own preference. my biology teacher thinks 5e is bloody stupid and he plays the second edition (2e), which i find much harder and more limiting.
There are three core rulebooks, and a number of supplementary books.
The most important of those three (and the only one you need to know, really, unless you're the one running the game) is called The Player's Handbook (PHB). It contains the rules for building a character and playing them.
Because it will run you upwards of $50USD per copy, here is a pdf of it on archive dot org.
The other two is the Monster Manuel (MM) (a book of all the monsters in the game) and the Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) (a book of how to run a game, but you don't need it as a player). They are here and here.
There are a number of d&d youtubers who have tutorial videos on this type of thing. my favorite is Ginny Di, but there are literally dozens out there.
BASIC TERMS
A Character sheet is the thing you have all the information about your character recorded on. It comes in several variations, but this is a free form fillable pdf version, and this is a free printable (both from the wizards of the coast (wotc) website, but the second is hosted on archive.org) (wotc are the company that owns the copyright to the game).
A class is the vocation of the character. its what they do with themselves, but its not necessarily a job.
A race is the character's species. this is also called their species, but in offical material you'll see it called their race.
A background is how their past shaped the character.
A backstory is that past.
Ability scores are the abilities of the character, they are determined with dice rolls. There are six of them, and many years ago someone explained them with tomatoes and that's still the easiest way to explain them in my opinion. You figure them out by rolling 4d6 and adding up the three highest numbers, for a total of 6 times.
ID in alt text. [I cannot find the original source, I am sorry, nor the graphic's source]
There are various types of dice, conveniently labeled with this image below:
ID in alt. [Source]
The d20 is the most important; its what you'll use to roll ability checks and saving throws and etc.
If you don't have your own physical dice (they are advalible online, at barnes & nobles, and at your local gaming store, but many people don't have a local gaming store (me)), you can roll them on many websites. My preferred one is this one, but any work. Google has its own built in, too.
MAKING A CHARACTER
So. You have your dice, now what?
Now you make a character sheet! there are many videos online explaining how to do this (there is a lovely one here and here), but i'm going to explain it here how I generally do it.
Step 0- OPTIONAL:
Take your character sheet, and come up with an idea. Who do you want to play? A gay disaster who can shapeshift? a hobbit? a chaotic ginger with too many cats and a habit of making deals with eldritch powers? You can be whatever the hell you want. alternatively, you can look at the options in the PHB first, and go from there.
Step 1- Pick a race/species.
There are well over 30 of these, and I'm not listing them all. But the ones advaliable in the player's handbook are as follows:
Dwarf. Your sterotypical mining, axe wielding, beared fantasy dwarf. ex: Gimli, in Lord of the Rings
ID in alt. [Source]
Elf. Traditionally depicted as tall, graceful, and living in the woods. Generally have pointed ears. ex. Legolas in Lord of the Rings.
ID in alt text. [Source]
Halfling. Literally just renamed hobbits, so they don't get sued. Known for being short and excellent cooks. ex. Frodo, Sam, Merry, & Pippin from Lord of the Rings. (I can't seperate them, it feels wrong)
ID in alt. [Source]
Human. We all know what humans are. Generally viewed as very adaptable species in d&d! also in real life. ex. Bill Nye the Science Guy.
ID in alt. [Source]
Dragonborn. A bipedal species descended from dragons. They're cool as shit. ex. I literally cannot think of one i'm sorry.
ID in alt. [Source]
Gnome. Known for being very tinkery, small, and causing mischief. Also, for some reason, for being in gardens. ex. Pike Trickfoot from Critical Role.
ID in alt text. [Source]
Half-elf. Half elf, half something else! They generally have a lot of angst, but not always. Sometimes people say they combine the best of both worlds (elf and human), and sometimes people say they have it really shitty. ex. Keyleth from critical role.
ID in alt. [Source]
Half-Orc. half orc, half something else! I dunno really how to describe them. ex. Fjord Lavorre from Critical Role
ID in alt. [Source]
Tiefling. A humanoid species with horns and a tail, and often brightly colored skin. Extremely Gender in my opinion.
Step 2- Pick a class.
There are 12 core classes, and one more added in a later book. I'll go over all 13!
ARTIFICER. A magical tinkerer. A bit like leo valdez in pjo? Their core stat is intelligence. In my opinion they're very complicated for a first character ever, but do what you want its your game i do not care.
BARBARIAN. If you want to wear no armor, have an axe (or other weapon), and charge into battle shouting, this is the class for you! its fun and decently simple for first time players, in my opinion. Core stat is Strength (and constitution).
BARD. Someoe who uses the magic of creation to do shit. Also known for seducing anything that moves, but that's optional. Core stat is charisma. Seems simple at first, but they have a lot of spells to manage at later levels, but they're not too hard. The main guy in the d&d movie is one.
CLERIC. They're healers and warriors. Generally have got some sort of divine magic, but don't necessarily have to. Semi-difficult? I haven't ever played one, so I don't know how easy it would be for a first character ever. Main stat is wisdom.
DRUID. Person who turns into animals and respects the enviroment. Basically, the lorax, but less orange and with more turning into animals (druid lovers out there i am sorry for saying y'all are the lorax please don't come after me with pitchforks). they're okay for a first character but they can be a little confusing. Main stats are wisdom (and constitution).
FIGHTER. Someone who fights things. The most basic of the d&d classes, and one of the simplest for first time players, probably, but I haven't ever played one so who knows. Main stats are strength or dexterity.
MONK. Person who punches people a lot. Like Aang from avatar: the last airbender. Main stats are dexterity and wisdom. They seem simple, but one of the mechanics is slightly confusing, but they're still really simple.
PALADIN. Your tradition knight. A guy (gender neutral) in plate armor with a horse and loyalty issues. I love playing paladins so much, they're great. Personally I think they're a little confusing. Main stats are Strength & Charisma.
RANGER. Someone who wanders through the forest and fights things, like strider (but not like aragorn) from lotr. Core stats are wisdom and strength. My first ever character was an elf ranger named Thia Nailo. She was awesome. Rangers can also have pet panthers and shit, and sometimes small dragons (not tiny dragons, though. Like horse sized dragons).
ROGUE. A thief. My second ever character, and the first one who I played for any significant length of time (thia's campaign died out) was a half-elf rogue named Enna Helder-Kromlin. Rogues are a really good class for first time players, I feel like. Core stat is dexterity.
SORCERER. Someone born with magic. Main stat is charisma. They can be a little complicated.
WARLOCK. Someone who made a deal with some sort of higher power (eldritch being, god(s), etc) for magic. they make bad decisions for a living and its awesome. my favorite ever character was an elf warlock named Mara. Her patron lived in a shield and she had a wisdom of 5 but a charisma of 20. Core stat is charisma.
WIZARD. Gandalf. Someone who studied magic and learned it that way. Main stat is intelligence. They can get really complicated, really fast, but they're still a viable option for your first time.
Step 3- Backstory
There are other things to do, but its late and i'm tired. What you need to do from here is figure out what your character's life was like before now. Or, if you dont want to, then get a vibe for their personality or something.
NOW WHAT?
When you have a character, your DM (Dungeon master, the person running the game, the ''narrator'') will give you scenario, and you roleplay your way through it.
Literally anything can happen. It's d&d. the rules are suggestions, not actual rules. Make it what you want it to be!!!!
If you have other questions please contact me I love them even if it takes me forever to answer them sometimes.
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Grailfinders Viewers' Choice #21: Deviljho
today on Grailfinders, we’re making more a grail eater. that’s right, it’s the Deviljho! one of these suckers can eat an entire ecosystem, so hopefully the grail can keep him full long enough to finish this build. he’s a Rune Knight Fighter to get to proper Deviljho size, as well as a Barbarian to put some extra power into his attacks. we have to make this guy able to beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker, so advantage on his strength checks really helps there.
check out his build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here!
Ancestry & Background
in order to pick a race for our big lizard, we first have to ask ourselves; what the fuck is “dragon” elemental damage? in Monster Hunter, this appears as a cloud of nasty looking black energy that hangs around the Deviljho and weakens your offensive power, which would likely be either necrotic or poison damage in D&D. this means that depending on your view, either the spell Spirit Shroud or the invocation Cloak of Flies would be the perfect addition to a Deviljho, but unfortunately the rest of the build only leaves us with two levels free, and both of those options require five to work. thankfully, there is a second-best option we can pick up as easily as a feat, so we’ll be calling dragon energy Necrotic in this build.
Now that that’s settled, there’s two options for the race. a gem dragonborn is nice, especially if you want a really impressive breath weapon, but wotc’s already provided us with a lizard that bites its enemies, eats them, and even uses them as weaponry, and I’d be a fool not to go with the Lizardfolk with all they have going for them. specifically we’re going with the Volo’s Guide to Monster’s version since that’s the only one with Cunning Artisan, which allows you to turn a dead beast, contruct, dragon, monstrosity, or plant creature into one of various kinds of weapons.
you also gain a Swim Speed and the ability to Hold Breath for fifteen minutes at a time. you ended up in the New World somehow, right?
and of course, the reason we’re all here, your Bite attack. instead of the normal 1 damage per hit, you deal 1d6 piercing damage. on top of that, once per short rest you can use your Hungry Jaws to tear into somebody as a bonus action, dealing regular biting damage on a hit and giving yourself temporary HP equal to your constitution modifier.
you also have Hunter’s Lore, giving you proficiency with Nature and Stealth because a) you are natural, and b) you have that kaiju-tier stealth- nobody notices you until you’re already eating them.
and you have Natural Armor giving you a minimum of 13+your dex and you can use a shield if you want- that fat bastard the great jagras can really take hits for you.
my god is the lizardfolk statblock a doorstopper. don’t worry, this is all balanced out by the levels themselves going by super quick, not using spells saves so much time.
finally, your background. like all monsters you are an Outlander, mostly because you literally could not fit into society if you tried. also people keep killing you for parts, which makes holidays awkward.
that means you have proficiency with Athletics and Survival, the latter because you’re a giant monster, the former because you’re a giant monster that throws other giant monsters around like ragdolls.
Ability Scores
we’re going with point buy on this build. sorry, but if you want to play a mindless boss monster you have to be willing to minmax a bit. set Strength to 15, I feel I’ve made why apparent by now, but it’s how you bite stuff and how you lift up your enemies to break their friends backs like a socialist Bane. Dexterity and Constitution are set to 14 apiece- you’ve got the bulk of a mid- to end-game boss and despite that bulk you can move pretty damn fast. sure, you fall into pit traps and get poisoned frequently, but it’s usually never more than once a fight. Wisdom is down at 12. I’m sure a literal animal is well attuned to nature- especially once all that nature is digesting- but you’re also kind of just rampaging all over the place. and all that means we’re dumping Intelligence and Charisma down at 8. once again, you are literally an animal. if we could knock intelligence below three I’d do it in a heartbeat. also, not a conversationalist. wild, I know.
Class Levels
1. Fighter 1: as a first level fighter you have proficiency with Strength and Constitution saves, as well as Animal Handling (in the style of Nero) and Intimidation.
you also get a Fighting Style, and strange as it sounds, we’re picking up the Throwing style so you can pick up a lot more crap. with this, you can draw and throw a weapon at the same time, dealing extra damage in the process. I’m not entirely sure if picking up a cool rock you found qualifies as “drawing”, but it’s close enough to make an argument. if your DM isn’t cool with it, the unarmed style is a good option for tail attacks, and sorry you can’t throw people at people.
you also get a Second Wind to eat your own tail as a bonus action to restore health. it doesn’t make the tail grow back though, as funny as that would be.
2. Fighter 2: second level fighters can make an Action Surge once a day for an extra action to do as they please. mostly biting people. it’s almost definitely going to be used to bite people more, Deviljho are a menace.
3. Fighter 3: by level three all Deviljho have become so scarred they’re now Rune Knights, making them Rune Carvers of their own bodys. flavor-wise. mechanically you still need actual objects to put runes in. each rune comes with two powers- one is always active as long as you are wearing or holding the object; while the other requires you to choose to activate it, usually as a reaction, once per short rest. to start off, you can carve a Frost Rune, which passively gives you advantage on animal handling and intimidation checks, and actively gives you ten minutes of +2s to all strength and constitution checks and saves. meanwhile, the Stone Rune gives you darkvision and advantage on insight checks, and you can react to charm a creature that ends its turn near you for one minute if they fail a wisdom save. have you ever gotten trapped in a stun animation in Monster Hunter? those things take forever to finish.
you also gain some Giant Might, letting you spend a bonus action to grow large, gain advantage on strength checks and saves, and you deal extra damage with your attacks once a turn. you can grow this way proficiency times a day, and each use lasts a minute. you can now reach ten feet in length, while even the smallest Deviljho you can hunt is… 60’. we’re working on it, don’t worry.
4. Fighter 4: use your first ASI for more Strength. bite harder. this is my final message.
5. Fighter 5: fifth level fighters get an Extra Attack each attack action to combo your enemies into the ground. or more likely into a little cart driven by a bunch of cats. the cats are unionized though, you can’t eat them.
6. Fighter 6: sixth level fighters get another ASI, but this time we’re going to get funky with it. grab the Strike of the Giants feat- now, once per turn, proficiency times a day, you can turn any attack you make into a Hill Strike, adding an extra d6 of damage and forcing what you hit to make a strength save or fall prone. basically every attack you make can knock a hunter on their ass, this is just the tip of the iceberg. hillberg. whatever.
7. Fighter 7: speaking of hill giants, at level seven you can make a Hill Rune, giving you advantage on saves against being poisoned and resistance to poison damage. you can also invoke the run to gain resistance to physical damage for one minute. Deviljhos aren’t actually that thick-skinned, this is more just a way to make your HP total look even bigger than it is.
8. Fighter 8: some people (especially those on the wrong end of an angry pickle) would probably call a Deviljho proof of a vengeful god, and I’d believe them. that’s why we’re using this ASI to make this Deviljho Divinely Favored. now you can cast Thaumaturgy as a cantrip to make your screams so loud people need HG earplugs to drown them out, and you can cast Augury and Hex once a day each.
augury’s whatever, but Hex is our breath weapon for this build. I know it’s not an Aoe attack, but it lets you deal extra damage over time like a rage mode, and besides that I usually play MH singleplayer anyway. don’t lie to me, we all know most MHs have weird online setups. that aside, when you Hex someone, they take extra necrotic damage every time you hit them, and they have disadvantage on one kind of check for up to an hour. on top of that, if you drop them to 0 HP you can move the hex over to another creature. that means you can also more easily pin and grapple someone while enraged, and once they’re carted away you can turn on their friends!
9. Fighter 9: ninth level fighters are Indomitable, letting you re-roll a failed save once per short rest. I’d make sure your concentration saves go well, you’re pretty good at them already, and dropping your one spell of the day would really suck. maybe that’s why they fall into pit traps so often, they’re just saving their rerolls for their rages…
10. Fighter 10: tenth level rune knights have a Great Stature, which makes you a little taller even while “normal” sized, and lets you deal even more damage with Giant’s Might. you can also carve a Storm Rune now, so you can’t be surprised and have advantage on arcana checks passively. Yes, Deviljho are quite practiced occultists. you’d know if you sat one down and asked it. and survived. you can also activate the run to enter a special state for one minute, allowing you to react to any check, attack, or save made nearby, giving it advantage or disadvantage. dragonblight weakens your offensive power in MH, and now you can do that in D&D too.
11. Barbarian 1: now that we have most of the deviljho kit down, let’s get a little wild. as a barbarian you can Rage whenever you’re not wearing heavy armor. you technically can as a fighter, but you’re supposed to be a giant lizard, so you shouldn’t be wearing any. while raging, you have advantage on strength checks and saves, deal bonus damage with strength-based melee attacks, and have resistance to physical damage. this lasts for a minute or until you stop fighting stuff, and you can’t concentrate on spells for the duration either. your runes only work once a short rest, so having a few rages to burn through each day can help keep your playstyle more consistent.
you also gain Unarmored Defense, which scales with constitution. right now, it’s the same as your usual lizardy skin, but that will change as we go. it’s a shame they changed your natural defense from the original flavor, a flat +3 on top of this would’ve been amazing for a Deviljho.
12. Barbarian 2: second level barbarians can make Reckless Attacks, gaining advantage on your melee attacks at the cost of giving your enemies advantage to hit you as well.
you also have a Danger Sense, giving you advantage on dexterity saves from things you can see. yes, you’ll still fall into pit traps, but when you’re angry enough you just kind of pop back out.
13. Fighter 11: another Extra Attack! the wombo combo is real. that’s three attacks per action, up to six with Action Surge, and possibly even a seventh with Hungry Jaws. with a turn like that, you could chew through anything.
14. Fighter 12: use this ASI to bump up your Constitution for more health and a better AC at long last.
15. Fighter 13: thirteenth level fighters are Indomitable again, so now you can re-roll two failed saves! it’s not complicated, but neither is a Deviljho.
16. Fighter 14: we’ve got enough flat buffs under our belt, let’s get real funky. nobody really knows where Deviljho come from, so technically making you a Scion of the Outer Planes isn’t the most out-there option for a wyvern we’ve seen so far. thanks to your connection to Chaos, you have resistance to Necrotic damage and access to the spell Minor Illusion. admittedly the spell isn’t that in-character, but you can use it to make your loud roars while raging or any other cool effects you want. this is mostly a stepping stone to our real goal. honestly, even the resistance to necrotic isn’t in character- you’re supposed to be weak to dragon elemental damage, and now you resist it. I guess this makes up for this build capping out at ¼ the size of even the smallest true Deviljho.
17. Fighter 15: at level fifteen you’re scarred enough to become a Master of Runes, letting you invoke your runes twice per short rest instead of once. you also get one last rune, and we’re running out of good ones. Cloud is the least egregious, you get advantage on sleight of hand and deception checks, and you can force another creature to take a hit you were supposed to as a reaction. longswords- not even once.
18. Fighter 16: with our final ASI, we get our true reason for the last feat- as a Cohort of Chaos you can finally even out your Strength score, and every time you roll a 1 or 20 on an attack or save you fire up a Chaotic Flare, which lasts until the end of your next turn. it’s like wild magic, but good! there’s four possibilities for a flare- either your Dragon Aura flares up and everyone within 10’ of you takes force damage when they move or start their turn in it, you can give a battle fury to a creature for advantage on their attack rolls and disadvantage on their checks, you can leap unbound to travel to any space within 30’ of you, or you can roar, giving all creatures within 60’ of you disadvantage on all wisdom saves for a round. you can even use this feature without waiting for luck proficiency times a day as a bonus action!
19. Fighter 17: the seventeenth level of fighter is simple, but powerful- an additional use of both Action Surge and Indomitable. being a Deviljho really is about the fundamentals. and also screaming so loud everyone goes deaf.
20. Fighter 18: at level 18 we get the reason we couldn’t dip into anything else- the final ability of your subclass, the Runic Juggernaut. now when you use Giant’s Might you deal 1d10 extra damage, and your size is bumped up to huge, and your reach increases by 5’! again, we’re still at 15’ to the real Deviljho’s 60’, but this is a good enough size to pick up the larger animals in a Monster Hunter world and start chucking them like footballs, even while they’re alive.
Pros & Cons:
Pros:
you can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time thanks to your multitude of bite attacks mixed with both the once per turn boosts of the Hill Strike/Giant Might, as well as consistent damage from either Hex or Rage. all in all, you can deal 1d10+8d6+28 piercing damage, plus 7d6 necrotic damage in a single turn for an average of around 86 damage, or even a little more depending on how big the creatures you fling around are.
you also take a lot of damage to bring down, with multiple forms of resistance to attack, a good health pool, and even ways to gain health by eating your own foes, all adds up to you being one tough pickle to crack.
your runes and chaos effects both give you access to magic-like effects that you can use even while raging, circumventing one of the biggest weaknesses barbarians have- restricted access to magical nonsense. with these you can teleport, stun people, and force disadvantage on their attacks, all without having to give up the damage and protection of rages.
Cons:
as far as damage goes, you mostly only have nonmagical sources. sure, you have Hex, but that only works once a day- if you have a second fight or drop concentration, you’re completely out of options, unless your DM rules hitting people with magic items counts for something. maybe that’s why you don’t qualify as an elder dragon.
Cohort of Chaos gives your build some much-needed variety, but it’s. y’know. chaotic. keeping the enemy from knowing your next move is a grand idea, but it would help if you knew what your next move was. still, at least you can use it yourself, unlike wild mages.
your wisdom saves aren’t great, and they aren’t helped by one of your own chaos effects making them weaker. that means it’s really easy for a smart enemy to trick you into attacking someone who’s on your side. hey, we fit turf battles in here!
#dnd 5e#D&D#Monster hunter#Deviljho#Fighter#Barbarian#ironic that you can make the monster hunters the monster hunted w this build
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Attention Everyone
We have decided, after much thought, to speak on the issue of the leaked OGL 1.1. For those unfamiliar, briefly and simply, it is a crack down on the Open Game License that allows 3rd party material, such as us, to freely operate within the DnD 5E system. The new agreement brings forward several issues that many find objectionable, but for our purposes, it is the clause demanding registration of all material, the removal or seizure of 3rd party material without consent, the ability to publish said material without crediting the original author and the bad faith arguments pertaining to it's "necessity", all in the face of just how much DnD, WotC and Hasbro have benefitted from material not originally its own, which it has used to build it's entire foundation. As content creators, we are terrified. We've put our hearts, souls and years of our life to this project we love. This love and care is shared by hundreds of thousands of creators the world over for their own projects. While we want to keep our project alive and well, and understand speaking up risks that, we cannot remain silent, for the sake of content creators and fans the world over. This change is motivated by greed from executives in a C-suite, and is an affront to the spirit of the game. It's original version was, quite literally, a few nerds in a basement trying to put something fun together for the enjoyment of others - a sentiment we identify with. WotC and Hasbro are taking these deliberate and hostile actions in the face of that spirit, and are alienating a massive portion of players in the process, for the sake of their bottom line. We believe, strongly, that DnD is an iconic institution, originally made by players, for players. With that in mind, here is our response:
We stand with content creators the world over, in solidarity against the active hostility we feel is being directed at us all by a corporation only seeking profit.
We object to the notion that WotC has the exclusive rights to 3rd party creation, an argument we feel is made in bad faith. Much of the WotC material was not made by them, and is the backbone of the very material they claim.
We have no intention of changing our material to the new version of 6e (referred to as One DnD) and commit to remaining within the original confines of the OGL 1.0a.
We call on WotC to reverse their course and cancel the OGL 1.1, in it's stead returning to and reinforcing the OGL 1.0a, abiding by it's intention and spirit, and to remember it's the enjoyment of the very fans they are alienating that fuel their success in the first place
We wish to reiterate our commitment to bring enjoyment, free of charge, to those who wish to use our material. This is a passion project, fueled by love for DnD and Hollow Knight. We would also like to repeat that we have no affiliation with Team Cherry, and that these opinions are in no way, shape or form connected to Team Cherry or it's employees. We also wish to thank them for creating games and worlds that inspire us so incredibly and deeply, and if you haven't yet, please support them however you are able
For our community specifically: we understand not everyone here shares this opinion. We believe in free speech and invite all voices to be heard as they see fit, where they see fit. We only ask in our particular server/forum, respect and courtesy be used in the discussion. We do not advocate or support hate speech, threats (to any party), false or misleading statements, or any other form of antagonism spoken without care and/or in bad faith
Finally, please understand we will take every step we can to protect and maintain Hollowed Kingdoms as it currently exists; however, we are small and do not have the ability to fight policies we disagree with. Should things end poorly for us, please know we have always operated only with love for 2 iconic games and to bring enjoyment to those who share that love. Our community is endlessly precious to us, and we want to thank each and every one of you for your continued support. We hope this can one day be a resolved issue we barely look back at. Until then, we feel the need to stand up for what we believe in, and encourage anyone who feels the same to do so too. Thank you all.
~Hollow Kingdoms Team
Again, thank you to everyone who has supported and will continue to support us. We appreciate you all, and wish you all the best. We intend to continue the project as best we can, and will continue to do our best to bring the world of Hollow Knight to the table top.
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saw a post earlier talking about how ppl dont have to play d&d they can play another ttrpg or even simply just roleplay with friends or larp, no dm or math required
i have mixed feelings abt it! like, i get where theyre coming from b/c i know wotc is uhhhhhhhh Bad and also not everyone enjoys/is into the whole math aspect of it (figuring out attributes, stats, skill sheets, weapon stats, etc.) so of course youre probably better off finding something that doesnt involve those things but is more enjoyable to you! but also i feel like there are those of us that enjoy the "math" aspect of it? and having a dm that has surprises in the story and lore for us and guides us on our journey? yknow? something about it hits different than just rping with a friend
im thinking about it honestly b/c i kinda do wanna find a way to do a sort of more "lowkey" version of d&d that involves way less of the math stuff but still involves rolling dice, just with simpler mechanics, yknow? what i myself love about d&d is the thought-out character sheet (minus the stats part--basically the backstory/ref pic, levels, moveset/weapons, and inventory, for the most part) and the added factor of a dm/gm guiding the story but letting me as a player take the reigns to an extent that goes with said story. if that makes sense
i cant quite articulate what im trying to find or get at but i hope it makes some sense what im saying here! if anybody has any input feel free to add :)
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@handbellanon, putting this here instead of in massive reblogs:
"Question (mostly because I know 👌 about IP law): for your second point about actual play being mostly unaffected, how does that work with shows like CR that are upfront about using D&D as a system (though with the homebrew setting as mentioned)? Is that something that would fall under this license for things like Twitch subs since they are making money directly off of the show (rather than strictly merch, etc)?"
I am also in no way an expert on IP law, so if anyone is, feel free to correct me, but from what I understand actual play does not fall under the terms of use in the OGL, which governs the SRD (systems reference document; available here). I believe it is comparable to, for example, streaming video games on Twitch or YouTube, and falls under Fair Use.
It is possible, actually, that Dimension 20 might be affected because their stream is strictly paywalled (vs CR: you do not need a Twitch subscription to watch CR live or on YouTube, and it is legal to have a premium subscription option followed by a delayed free VOD), but also D20 does often eventually post most of their content to YouTube, and some of it is also available for free in podcast format. But shows that are available to watch/listen to for free and use homebrew settings should all be fine, even if they also make money off the show through ads, Patreon, Twitch subs, etc.
I also, to be honest, suspect that given all the discussion, WoTC may provide a statement on actual play specifically, and I would be surprised if they took issue with any actual play, unless it was being wildly bigoted or using extensive amounts of WoTC-specific IP (like Ravnica) for the setting. It's well-known that a significant reason for the popularity of 5e is because it's appeared on major actual play shows like CR or TAZ.
Finally, it's worth noting is that CR has worked closely and extensively with Wizards of the Coast, and almost certainly has separate agreements that will take precedence. If you're concerned about specific shows, I would wait and see what their official channels are saying (with the understanding that they may not have anything to say yet; if they haven't made an announcement, please be patient and do not go bothering Travis Willingham or Sam Reich or whomever on Twitter).
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First Draft: Innovation Nation Examples
Hey folks! So this one is a weird contest, I know. Before we get into the examples, I would like to take this moment to stress a principle that is true for all of my contests- I'm just looking for you to engage with the prompt in good faith. I won't be trying to disqualify anyone on a technicality unless it's pretty clear that the submission is trying to subvert the rulings to be overly clever. As long as you are happy with your design, then I will have no problems seeing it in the submissions box! That being said, let's take a look at what some of our wonderful judges have given us as examples.
@loreholdlesbian gives us Sarkhan, Dragonspeaker. The uncommon planeswalker design is reminiscent of WAR, suggesting a very planeswalker-heavy set. The ability is nothing crazy, which again helps cement it as an uncommon support piece in a draft set, but the last ability is where things get funky. Oathbreaker is a format on its own, of course, but this ability seems to suggest its bringing Oathbreaker into Commander, but with a much more limited set of planeswalkers and Signatures to choose from- getting rid of the pesky Oathbreaker problems of "too many combos" and "not enough people to play with me". This would make for a fantastic draft innovation set, and a great place to cram a bunch of new planeswalkers.
@gollumni offers up Demensia, Madness Queen. Banneret is a neat ability that definitely hints at a commander-legends-style set, and the monocolor devotion theme makes for a very interesting design. What's the difference between this and the existing Commander Legends sets? Not much at all, and that's fine! "Commander Legends 3" is a perfectly valid idea for this week's contest, since it would be a new draft innovation set, even if it's a sequel. What's important here is that this is not a card that would slot into the original Commander Legends- this is a card that shows off a new set, with a new way of handling color identity draft problems, and new themes to explore. That makes it an A+ in my book!
Finally, @starch255 gives us a weird one, and I LOVE it. There's some callbacks to conspiracy here but with a more general twist- rather than caring about Draft specifically, it cares about any sort of Limited event. In fact, it's worse in draft! But that begs the question... what sort of Limited event would have more than 6 packs per player? Well, the glorious Sealed League of course! A format where you open 6 packs initially, but add additional packs as the league goes on. This asks for a bit of tracking, but not too much since it'll be a universal number. Apart from the neat design (oops, all uncommons this week), this card should also help indicate to you that I don't care about the realism of your proposed set. It doesn't matter if it's something that WOTC would never do in a billion years, because we're not WOTC! I can dream about a Sealed League set all I want!
Anyways, that's a solid set of examples to get you inspired this week, but feel free to ask questions, poke our judges, and use our workshop channel to throw spaghetti at the wall!
See you soon,
xoxo gossip girl @naban-dean-of-irritation
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hi! I'm setting up to dm curse of strahd with some pals - we're all pretty inexperienced (most of us have played before but only a little) which is kinda nice so we can figure things out together. I was wondering if you could share advice/changes you made for the vistani and for the dusk elves? I'm here to play a gothic horror game, racism has no place in that for me. Thanks for sharing so much amazingly useful resources already!
Hello! Sorry for taking so long to reply, but I'm here now :3c I actually just answered a question about how i ran the dusk elves (spoiler alert: i didn't lol) so I'll provide some advice if you're running a game anything closer to the module than I am, and go into what I did with the Vistani.
CW for talk of fictional genocide and fantasy racism and sexism, as well as spoilers for Curse of Strahd below!~
If you're trying to de-racist the dusk elves, your options are to either not make it a racial thing or cut the violence out together. Of course, I personally think the mass femicide and the vow of chastity the male dusk elves take as a result Super Mega Weird and I did not want it. Like I wrote in my other post, I chose to just make the dusk elves drow and make them part of the cultural landscape of my multi-racial Barovian Valley. Some of the people Strahd conquered were these drow, some were not. It was a regional military conflict, not a racialized one. I did this to tie in the pre-existing military conflict of my world though. In all honesty, I think this plotline is largely unnecessary. Plotwise, it's really just a vessel to show Rahadin is evil and traitorous while giving Strahd another notch on his belt to show the same. I think it is not remotely hard to show Strahd and Rahadin being evil without making them Do A Genocide, and showing them being evil in other ways makes them much more interesting anyway. I had Rahadin be in charge of the armies that stormed Argynvostholt instead of committing genocide, and the party is no less scared of his potential to betray him. That's all I have to say about that at the moment, but feel free to send another question if there's anything specific you'd like me to talk more about.
Now onto the Vistani. So the Vistani are really, really racist. Racist to the point that WotC had to release a whole errata removing the G-slur from several pages and changing Rudolph Van Richten's Racist Tiger TM. They did not do this well, though. Especially the tiger part. Good lord.
Anyway, I felt the need to keep a "mysterious" group of people in the campaign that could function as allies or enemies to the players depending on if they decided to listen to what people in Barovia said about them. I also wanted them to be able to pass through the mist the way the Vistani do, and I wanted them to do curses. I also have a character in the party who is a changeling, and it was important to the player that his character was immediately unsettling to people. I decided to combine these and create the Hexbloods (I did this before WotC released Van Richten's guide and made their own hexbloods. Yes, I am a little salty about it.) In my homebrew world lore, hexbloods are the distant descendants of the old gods of my world, who fraternized heavily with mortals and largely fucked off to live in the woods as nomads when people started building cities and worshipping the Faerun pantheon. They have innate magic, sorcerer style, and the more intense ones harness their innate magic to become bloodhunters. Their ties to the old gods allow them to pass through the mist unharmed, as their claim to magic is older than Strahd's mist. They're ostracized by Barovians for not being subject to Strahd's fickle ruling the way that they are, and fear that between their freedom and their magic, the only explanation is that they work for Strahd.
In reality... they're just Some Guys who live in the woods. Some of them are nomadic, and some aren't. There are a lot of aging elves who live amongst them, like Kasimir, survivors of Strahd's initial conquest of the Valley. They treat everyone as family, and culturally prefer to find reason to celebrate the small things in life, believing that joy is what will keep them safe from Strahd's misery. Unfortunately, without any real allies beyond themselves, they are very vulnerable to Strahd's manipulation. This is why Strahd can take advantage of characters like Arrigal. Strahd knows that Arrigal won't be able to say no if he threatens to harm his family, but Arrigal isn't about to go out of his way to help Strahd more than he has to.
This dynamic has made for some excellent conflict. The party found themselves loyally allied with the Hexblood encampment at Lake Zarovich, but felt betrayed upon finding out Strahd had information on them that only Arrigal could have known. Now they have to consider the risk of trusting people more seriously, and it also led to some A+ roleplaying between Arrigal and the party.
Most of the de-racist-ing of the Vistani comes by looking critically and honestly at the anti-Romani tropes it leans into. What traits do you think they need to have to keep their role in the plot the same for you? What parts are you going to be unable to play without falling into harmful stereotype? Which individual Vistani NPCs are you fond of, and how can you build a fantasy community that would have raised them? That's the starting place I came from when I reworked them, but full disclosure: I am a white trans guy with an ethnic studies degree, and I super highly recommend checking out Romani people taking about this. If you search "vistani cos" on TikTok, you'll find a ton of people expounding upon it in very accessible ways.
#curse of strahd#cos#cos 5e#dnd#dm tips#atsbb#vistani#rahadin#strahd#curse of strahd spoilers#another long post. when will i learn to shut up (never)#thank you for the ask!
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hello!! i just recently discovered your writing and i am really, really enjoying reading through it! ❤️ i have oodles of questions, but mostly i'm curious about: do you have unpublished/unwritten stories that you've been dying to talk/vent about? and what kinds of media do you take the most inspiration from?
Oooh I have so many things I wanna talk about!!
Firstly, I've been leaving tags and I have an excerpt that I've shared for my latest project Blood and Bourbon (working title) about the relationship between our MC Elliot who's a vampire, and his love interest Mathias, an immortal. Originally it was meant to be a oneshot, but 6k words turned into 10k, and then turned into almost 14k, and that's when I had a talk with my brain like, "Okay!! New project, you win!" Except now, when I try to dig for a plot within the chopped up remains of this oneshot, I look to my characters and they just. Shrug. I have the threads of a conflict in the works, but that's about it? The oneshot had a very specific, very contained, A-to-B storyline that was character specific, so now, trying to stretch out towards external motivations has been. Work. I don't have any plans to post it soon, maybe early 2024? I want to write a good buffer for once so we don't go another *checks notes* ugh, six months without a serial update. I also made a promise that I won't start any new serials without finishing at least one current one, so I'm going to finish up Into the Woods before anything else.
Next WIP has been in the background for nearly six months now, and it's the DND-based romantasy with mine and my roommate's characters. My temp title is Of Course, Darling but I'm not sold on it. It doesn't roll off the tongue. This is one I've been chipping away at whenever I have the free time, and...it's a beast. I love worldbuilding, I really do, but starting from the ground up (to avoid copyright issues with WotC as I plan to sell this) is very time-consuming and energy-draining, but I'm so excited for it. This is also an m/m novel between Nyx, a shapeshifter with a bounty on his head and a dead sister to avenge, and Kaivus, a tiefling* who joins Nyx to help, but his services have never come free, and he's strangely without his magic. It's an annoyance-to-lovers with a dash of romantic history, magic lessons, and found family as they pick up more adventurers their journey. I really like this one, I'm so excited to have this one going because it hits all the romantasy buttons that I personally haven't found in mldern novels.
*in name only, I've been calling them Fiends, but that still feels too close? I don't want to just call them demons
As far as inspiration, I adore the way tumblr user/not-poignant characterizes and slow burns and pretty much everything skfjsj. Their smut and BDSM is top tier as well. Heavy trigger warning for their content, though, it gets intense!
My next biggest inspiration is probably movies in general, horror in specific. I love the stories that can be told across the board and I love the different ways they can be told, even by the same person! Horror, for me, is a big mash of every movie that could be considered such. I love Blumhouse and A24 alike, I find joy both in the splattergore of the Saw series (it's a personal favorite tbh) and the slow psychological burn of Midsommar. But I love the different ways the genre as a whole can address the same issue in different ways. I like the catharsis that comes with a good, well thought out story.
I also used to watch a lot of youtube channels like Jenny Nicholson, Lidndsay Ellis, Folding Ideas, Nerdwriter1, LftS, basically any kind of academic-leaning analysis of media, particularly visual media and movies in specific. I used to consume how different movies did things effectively/not so much, and how to make it better, I even wanted to write my own story boards for an animatic at one point! I think a lot of that taught me to analyze media a little more critically and also in how I structure stories.
There's probably dozens more little things I'm missing, books I've read I want to emulate, other writers that haven't popped up in my mind, there's probably hundreds.
I'm so glad you're liking everything, though! Your comments make me smile every time I look at them :D
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Hey, so there's some crap going on about D&D and the OGL scandal.
If you have not been following along, the OGL (Open Gaming License) is a legal thing where, about 20 years ago, WotC (the company who owns Dungeons and Dragons, now a subsidiary of Hasbro) promised that anyone could use a bunch of their content (spells, classes, etc), by adhering to some pretty basic, loose terms, and nobody would come after you for calling that content "D&D" whatever [gross oversimplification].
Well now, Hasbro/WotC feels D&D is "undermonetized" (according to their CEO who doesn't know or care about RPGs, and their head of digital, who IS a gamer, but doesn't play TTRPGs and wants to make D&D more like the various video games he's worked on), SO they are trying to "de-authorize" the old OGL and replace it with a new one that takes away all the security 3rd party creators thought they had, and gives WotC powers to cancel content... mostly so they can kill off other virtual tabletops (like Fantasy Grounds, roll20, etc) and charge big monthly fees/microtransactions for their new admittedly cool-looking service.
Anyhow, a lot of people argue that even the old (non-trash) OGL wasn't really necessary for 99% of creators between Free-Use and the fact that you can't copyright game rules, and even with their army of lawyers, they might not win court cases trying to go after content created before the new evil license goes live, but with big corporations and algorithmic enforcement, I don't trust that being right is a good enough defense (and you'd be a FOOL to trust them when they promise "we won't go after X and Y" after they tried to pull this crap in the first place).
Will this affect TDDC? Probably not - in fact, I never claimed to be using the OGL for any of my stuff, even if its existence was a comforting indication of what USED to be WotC's philosophy. But since I happen to be starting a whole new series right at this moment, this is the time to strip out mentions of WotC's copyrighted names, just in case. I was actually already leaning that direction for Warforged (calling them Mechs/Mechanicals) and Dragonborn (Drakks), but I'm going to go a step further, and get strict about not using those terms, nor the name "Dungeons and Dragons/D&D". So when I use the initials TDDC going forward, I'm referring to "Tales From Demonac's Deathfin Campaign". But the official title in the videos (and when I say those dreaded words: "Next Time") it's going to be Tales From My RPG Campaign". Hopefully the change won't be too annoying, trust me, it bothers me much more to stop saying Kua-Toa/KTs (too similar to Kuo-Toa, which IS one of the "product identity" terms they have identified and guard jealously). It's easy to refer to them as Deluvians and Illud most of the time, though I'm still waffling on what term (if any, but there sure OUGHT to be one) to use for their shared heritage. I'd go Children of Baal, but that makes the Sons of Baal monitors really sound like dumbasses...
Anyway, that's the update; I'm still working on the first episode of SoS (and despite my "tight 15 minute" guideline, it's probably going to be closer to 20min); I hope to get some little music reveal videos for the PCs in collaboration with my music person, Cool Boy Shane, so stay tuned for those.
If you're one of my Patrons, though, I posted the cold open - the first few seconds of Sea of Secrets, to grab viewers' attention, so you can check it out here. It will answer ZERO of your questions: https://www.patreon.com/posts/77653972
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