theworldbrewery
The World Brewery
brewing settings, NPCs, items, monsters, plotlines, and pretty much everything else, with some tips and tricks mixed in. Support Me on Ko-fi
425 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
standardcalifornia
Standard California
twyisontheline
Title: not found
bihubby2
Bihub 2.0
e-in-stavel
E-In-stável
shesshire
To Watch or Not to Watch
Text
One of my players will be running a campaign set in a besieged city that sealed itself under a sort of magical bubble and has remained there for the last 500 years! That'll likely be our primary campaign for a while. I'm playing a drow fighter named Cordelia Nightengale Eskel who is based off of the early days of WWE.
Another of my players is running a hybridized Good Society/Teens In Space mini-campaign (4 sessions or so) that I'm really excited about! I'll be playing the Warpwoods, a socialite couple composed of 1 cyborg human and 1 brain parasite who are looking for a third.
And I have like 5 different mini-campaigns I'm hoping to run; the votes for which one to play first landed on a time-loop heist in the Eternal Circus, featuring themes of exploitation, pleasure vs. pragmatism, and second chances. This one will be in the Blades in the Dark system!
The other mini-campaigns are:
Noir mystery campaign set in a declining desert casino city with themes of social stratification, law vs. crime vs. moral fortitude, and urban decay. Probably D&D.
Science fiction/horror campaign set in the frigid depths of a magical research facility with themes of sanity, passion, and curiosity vs. fear. Thinking of running this one in Dread.
Political intrigue campaign set in a theocratic nation with themes of grey morality, scandal, and ambition vs integrity. Not sure about the system yet.
Swashbuckling adventure set in a colonialist nation with themes of high romance, liberty vs. society, and chivalric honor. This one's D&D for sure.
anyway I just finished DMing a 5-year campaign with 154 total sessions, AMA :P
20 notes
·
View notes
Note
Oh, shoot, I totally missed you mentioned NPC deaths! Only two allied NPC deaths worthy of note.
Firstly, Viv (revenant duergar paladin). She was a target of the party in their very first adventure together. They killed her without knowing she was a revenant. so she got better. They killed her several more times thereafter, and I also got to kill her off once or twice! She finally got Killed Off For Real in the epilogue, when she was released by the party's actions from the curse that bound her to life.
Secondly: Elliot. The party's specialest little guy, half-elf Elliot Vyltheris was Oggie's ex-hookup-maybe-more who he had betrayed, framed for terrorism, and sent to prison in Oggie's backstory. When Elliot escaped from prison during the third adventure, the tension was so great and the vibes were impeccable. The party immediately took his side. Later, Oggie was trying to make amends with him while they were wrapped up in political intrigue stuff in the capital city, and decided to "help him out" by using Dimension Door to teleport the two of them to their destination.
Little did they know they were teleporting directly into an assassination attempt. My assassin was closer to Elliot than Oggie and killed him in one hit immediately.
Oggie responded by polymorphing into a T-Rex. He did revivify Elliot after murderizing all the assassins.
in that 154 session campaign, how many pc and npc deaths? and how many of those were inflicted by pcs?
This party had a devoted cleric, a bard with Healing Word, and for a long time they had a ranger with limited healing magic, so it was pretty tough to kill them off. The final count:
Gadao, earth genasi monk (guest character): 0 deaths
Blue, aarakocra bard: 0 deaths
Oggie, aasimar cleric: 1 death, self-inflicted
Leap, tiefling ranger: 2 deaths, 1 of which was inflicted by the party (it's complicated) (the player retired the character, and I had the character possessed by an enemy solar and the PCs killed the solar + the former PC)
Nasseff, warforged fighter: 2.5 deaths (the .5 is when he was disintegrated into ash to be transformed into a devil after breaking a contract with an erinyes)
Coreopsis Lance, dragonborn paladin (temp character): 1 death
Gloria Sicklemoon, air genasi monk (guest character): 1 death
Alice, half-orc/wood elf sorcerer: 1 death in her backstory (reincarnated from wood elf into half-orc), 2 deaths inflicted by party members (2nd death led to reincarnation back into wood elf), 3 deaths inflicted by me (one was a death-by-mindflayer that I allowed her to bargain away at the last second based on Campaign Themes but she very much did die she just had divine intervention in exchange for giving up her wild magic abilities to manipulate luck)
Alice, after dying the second time, started calling herself 'Alice Twice-Dead.' Upon dying the third time she went for 'Alice Thrice-Dead,' and after the fourth death she switched to 'Alice Oft-Dead'.
3 of the above-listed deaths happened in the same evil fortress -- Alice died there, then when the party tried to rescue her corpse, both her temp character Coreopsis and her party member Nasseff died and were revivified.
5 notes
·
View notes
Note
in that 154 session campaign, how many pc and npc deaths? and how many of those were inflicted by pcs?
This party had a devoted cleric, a bard with Healing Word, and for a long time they had a ranger with limited healing magic, so it was pretty tough to kill them off. The final count:
Gadao, earth genasi monk (guest character): 0 deaths
Blue, aarakocra bard: 0 deaths
Oggie, aasimar cleric: 1 death, self-inflicted
Leap, tiefling ranger: 2 deaths, 1 of which was inflicted by the party (it's complicated) (the player retired the character, and I had the character possessed by an enemy solar and the PCs killed the solar + the former PC)
Nasseff, warforged fighter: 2.5 deaths (the .5 is when he was disintegrated into ash to be transformed into a devil after breaking a contract with an erinyes)
Coreopsis Lance, dragonborn paladin (temp character): 1 death
Gloria Sicklemoon, air genasi monk (guest character): 1 death
Alice, half-orc/wood elf sorcerer: 1 death in her backstory (reincarnated from wood elf into half-orc), 2 deaths inflicted by party members (2nd death led to reincarnation back into wood elf), 3 deaths inflicted by me (one was a death-by-mindflayer that I allowed her to bargain away at the last second based on Campaign Themes but she very much did die she just had divine intervention in exchange for giving up her wild magic abilities to manipulate luck)
Alice, after dying the second time, started calling herself 'Alice Twice-Dead.' Upon dying the third time she went for 'Alice Thrice-Dead,' and after the fourth death she switched to 'Alice Oft-Dead'.
3 of the above-listed deaths happened in the same evil fortress -- Alice died there, then when the party tried to rescue her corpse, both her temp character Coreopsis and her party member Nasseff died and were revivified.
5 notes
·
View notes
Note
Okay,so a tabaxi/elf
Would there be any long-term health concerns or things to consider?
on the level of Official Rules? no. there's nothing official about crossing D&D races having negative downsides other than the usual lifespan differences.
on the level of Roleplay and/or Worldbuilding? do whatever you want -- I'd personally have my player choose 1 or the other for their actual mechanical race and flavor the appearance to give that 'mixed' quality. frankly, the biggest health issue about crossing large genetic gaps is usually that the offspring is often infertile.
If a player wanted to have long-term health issues for their tabaxi-elf PC specifically because of their hybrid nature, I'd draw inspiration from existing species like ligers and mules. But personally, I don't care to depict humanoids as being that 'far apart' genetically -- I treat most humanoids as being as compatible as various human ethnic groups are in real life which is to say -- completely genetically compatible because it's all phenotype differences, not species or subspecies differences.
and so I wouldn't go out of my way to introduce health problems for a player that wasn't deliberately interested in exploring that angle. And if they just wanted to explore, say, a chronically ill or disabled PC, there are plenty of ways that don't involve a mixed-species or "mixed-race" ancestry.
and the mechanics I would build for a PC that wanted mechanical consequences for any malady, illness, or disability hinge so completely on the exact nature of the condition that I don't think I could go into details here on what that might look like.
If this is your table, I'd caution you against treating sapient D&D races as an exercise in genetic compatibility. there are interesting elements at play in this idea, but I just don't think most tables want to spend large amounts of time on their characters' genetic profile so unless you and/or your player have a unique passion for interspecies genetics it's super unlikely to come up in-game without feeling forced and weird.
and if you/your player does have a unique passion for interspecies genetics, far be it from me to instruct someone with more of an interest in how that should play out.
#tldr i simply wouldn't do this but if you absolutely must#just go get creative. look at real life examples. figure out what you/your player wants out of creating this situation.#i wouldn't penalize anyone for this concept but also wouldn't homebrew a new D&D race to accommodate the idea#and if this is for an NPC - i once again wouldn't apply the hybrid genetics as the reason they have chronic health issues.
9 notes
·
View notes
Note
how do the characters end up? any cool epilogue-esque ideas?
The characters, in session 147, completed a ritual to ascend three of them to godhood. Oggie, the cleric, had set out from the beginning to replace his father, the god Cyric. Alice the sorcerer and Blue the bard had joined him on his journey, severing their connections to their fates as well. Only the fighter, a warforged named Nasseff, was left behind.
Instead of breaking with his fate, Nasseff had chosen to make a deal with an Erinyes to have a successful company (because Nasseff was a shitty capitalist) -- in exchange for not sabotaging the Erinyes' plans. Due to some time shenanigans, he retroactively violated the terms of the contract and his soul was forfeit.
As the three ascendant engaged in their ritual, Nasseff was beset by the Erinyes who was trying to drag him to Minauros in the Nine Hells. Alice, Oggie, and Blue finished most of the ritual and did their best to help Nasseff survive the solo fight.
To finish the ritual required the sacrifice of a mortal life. Their planned sacrifice, a member of Oggie's cult, had been freed by Oggie like 20 minutes prior when he realized he didn't want to perpetuate the cycle of violence.
Oggie sacrificed himself instead. In the last moment before ascension, Blue used a ring of spell storing to Revivify him. Alice was livid -- she had assumed he would sacrifice her, and when he killed himself instead it felt like he was saying she didn't mean enough to him.
Alice became a goddess of spite and self-pity. Blue became the god of loyalty and betrayal. Oggie...was dead, but something of his essence still ascended thanks to the revivify, and he became the god of devotion. Cyric's re-mortal-ified soul was placed in Oggie's dead body, and the Erinyes fled the scene upon realizing that there were about to be 3 gods in that room.
Now, the thing is that Alice had missed her opportunity to drink the mead of the fey, a brew that would have prepared her body for ascension. She became a goddess on the verge of a nuclear disaster, unable to contain the power she held.
They went to the capital city of their country to complete their task: to kill Bane, god of Tyranny, and take his essence so he couldn't re-form.
There were some intermediate steps along the way, but Nasseff finally realized he couldn't run from confrontation with the Erinyes any longer, fought him, and won. He was brought down to Minauros by Mammon and promptly promoted for defeating the Erinyes, then returned to the material plane to wreak havoc.
He rejoined the party of gods, now a devil in his own right.
The four of them confronted Bane and his angels in a bloody battle. Nasseff was killed in the fight. The god that was Oggie contacted Mammon and exchanged a spell tome that held secrets of magically damning souls for Nasseff's life. The god that was Oggie restored Nasseff to life, and he finished the battle with them.
In the end, the god of tyranny was killed and the three new gods absorbed his essence as planned, but Alice had used all her legendary resistances, which set her on a path to full nuclear meltdown.
In the final moments of the campaign, they said their goodbyes and Alice transported herself to the ethereal plane to explode.
Our epilogue unfolded.
Alice re-formed, after a few hundred years, though there wasn't much of "Alice" left.
Blue wandered the material plane until the deaths of their former seafaring crew, and documented the story of their adventuring party and the method of ascension -- then hid it away in an ivory tower, a replica of the tower that was the party's namesake.
The god that was Oggie spent a long time trying to play politics with his fellow gods, to make them change how they interacted with the mortal world -- but he could not make them care. He couldn't make them act with kindness on the behalf of mortals. So, in the end, it is believed he will rise up against them.
At his side is the devil once known as Nasseff, a fiend in service to a divinity, always trying to push him a little closer to becoming some kind of tyrannical evil god.
3 notes
·
View notes
Note
Biggest "oh....fuck" moment in your game that your players didn't know was such a moment.
I'll set the scene: The player characters are level 15 and in the Feywild to awaken a long-slumbering archfey. They want to wake her so she can help them brew a potion that will prepare their bodies for ascension to godhood. While exploring the archfey's domain, they come upon an expedition of cultists of Bane, here in search of a book that will help them liberate their imprisoned evil god.
the party is split between two greenhouses. The cleric and sorcerer are alone with the Banite cultists.
Before the other half of the party reaches them, the sorcerer Alice is banished by the enemy to the Prime Material Plane.
She lands in a familiar city under siege by Banites and discovers that some kind of horrible event took place -- so she decides to go investigate it. Little does Alice know that the time-fuckery of the Feywild means that she's several hours behind her friends, timeline-wise -- for her, only minutes have passed in the Material Plane since she entered the Feywild.
The PCs in the Feywild try to break the Banite's concentration on Banishment. It takes them several rounds to do so.
I have to explain some timey-wimey bullshit for this next bit to make sense. Say the party entered the Feywild at 10am that day, and traveled for 6 hours up until the point Alice was banished. Because 'hours became minutes' when she was booted to the material plane, the local time for her is 10:06am and the PCs have a local time of 4pm.
Alice has about 6 hours before the time of Banishment will end.
Alice decides she has time to kill, and decides to invade a newly-constructed Banite stronghold in the heart of the city. She declines help from a revenant paladin ally who is also invading the Banite stronghold. She makes it up 1 flight of stairs and down 1 hallway before getting totally and completely Murdered.
She literally didn't even try to fight back. She spent the whole encounter opening doors to see what was going on.
When the PCs managed to take out the Banite concentrating on Banishment, Alice didn't return. Because she was dead. And her corpse was a captive of the cult, which had already been using the body of a former party member as the vessel for an angel of Bane.
I was freaking out. This was not in the outline. This was nowhere near being in the outline. The PCs hadn't even accomplished their goal in the Feywild yet.
So I did the only sensible thing I could think of, and had the Banites steal her soul so she could be possessed by another angel of Bane. The PCs' next quest was to steal her body back and try to figure out how to rescue her soul with the help of Alice's player's temporary character, a dragonborn heretic cultist of Bane. 🙃
6 notes
·
View notes
Note
Was it fun?
Oh, yes.
I won't act like it was flawlessly fun. At different times I had issues with DM vs Player mentality, aimlessness from the party, and struggles with balancing encounters to keep things suitably challenging as they got increasingly powerful.
But on the whole I left the last session feeling like I gave them a good time, and I'm satisfied with the story we all told. I got to be so creative with the adventures they had, build a world I loved to play around in, and find new ways to challenge my players and test their characters' limits.
It feels amazing, but the amazing of looking at a house you spent all day cleaning, or a quilt you've been making for a very long time. It's a labor of love, and the journey can be long and difficult and frustrating. And now, looking back at it, I can hardly believe it's over.
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
anyway I just finished DMing a 5-year campaign with 154 total sessions, AMA :P
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
I just finished a 5 year long campaign on Saturday. I would describe myself as a hardass on the rules, up to the point that something worked within larger thematic parameters in the setting.
In practice, this meant that the game began with me being very strict on rules. Some things, like carrying capacity, were not worth tracking (especially once they got a bag of holding), but other rules, both official and house-rules, I kept to very closely. As the PCs became more powerful, I started offering them brief opportunities when something important wasn't going to go their way. Memorably, when a PC was about to die by mind flayer and lose her brain and drop concentration on the spell that was holding the boss monster at bay, I asked how badly she wanted to survive, and allowed her to make a sacrifice: the goddesses of luck had a problem with her using her Wild Magic subclass abilities to manipulate her fortune, so she gave up her subclass in exchange for surviving the attack (and got a new subclass later obviously).
This type of scenario worked because I established the possibility of 'trading' a consequence for a desirable outcome -- borrowing from other systems a little bit, where you can succeed at a cost. It fit into the mechanics and flavor of the Wild Magic sorcerer's abilities, but it broadened over time to include anyone willing to make a deal and give something up to get what they wanted.
That practice brought us to an underdark adventure where they found the place where sacrifices 'go,' metaphorically speaking, and set the stage for the finale in which the PCs broke with fate altogether and ascended to godhood to fight Bane to the death. I worked with them to build divine statblocks and what mattered most was the exchange. The sense of loss, thematically, that comes from achieving great feats of power that should be impossible. It builds on the most basic ideas of making sacrifices to a god to receive their support, and of destroying components to cast powerful spells, and turns them into a larger framework of magic and power.
But I still expected them to use spell components, and take fall damage, and remember you can't stack advantage or temporary hit points.
Once they ascended to godhood I relaxed the rules somewhat, to let them savor the power they'd gotten. But as mortal beings those rules represent their vulnerabilities, their relative weakness, the risks and rewards of adventuring. I always considered it necessary for my own peace of mind to be clear on the rules and on the interactions of mechanics, from the limits of dark vision and which hexes could be affected by a spell, but it also empowered me to be more flexible with the rules when specific, thematic moments came into play.
Rule of Cool can get weak when you rely too heavily on it. It takes away the stakes, which kills the fun. But this version of "Rule of Cool" expected the players to open themselves up to risk and change -- trying and failing to wake up a cursed archfey led the group's cleric to give up all his memories before the age of 10, trying to force an enemy to fail her Banishment saving throw made the bard swear to protect the cleric with their life (and be compelled to do so). The losses they suffered weren't punishments, but opportunities: what new subclass does the sorcerer take, and why? Do you throw yourself in front of a blow that would kill the cleric?
The role-play moments that resulted, the twists in the tale, were worth it, every single time.
I didn't accept pure mechanical sacrifices: the gods don't care about your melee weapon attack modifier. They had to give up something that mattered to the character. To understand what sacrifice really is.
And they sacrificed themselves, in the end.
#and then they got cool divine statblocks and kicked ass! i should share some of those god stats tho it rips#the ivory collective#d&d#actual play#ttrpgs#dungeons and dragons
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
an adventure set in an industrialized city--
the air is thick with factory smoke, and the traditional craftspeople are being overwhelmed by big business. inchoate guilds and unions are beginning to form, but every day is a struggle for workers' rights.
it's become necessary, in a city where the sky is clogged with smog, for professional wizards to construct towers and spires from which they can track the heavens and maintain a link to the stars. but only the large, monopolistic wizard companies -- and the rare independently wealthy wizard -- have the means to build such a tower.
our heroes have a simple job: help a nascent working-class wizards' union scope out a site for their own tower, raise funds to pay for its construction, and ensure that construction goes smoothly.
why would you need a crew of adventurers to work a job like this? surely the wizardry magnates don't mind a little competition? surely the unionized wizards don't pose a serious threat to the companies' continued exploitation of the working class business model? surely the evocation barons wouldn't arrange a few assassinations or deadly explosion to sabotage this tower and the union, would they?
#i'm picturing an adventure for like 2nd-level D&D characters but you could use other systems too#could segue into a larger plot about corruption in the city's upper echelons#or just be a cool mini-adventure/intro to a campaign that unites the PCs#d&d#ttrpgs
106 notes
·
View notes
Text
new D&D PC concept: warlock pact relationship that is a Ph.D program. your patron is your thesis advisor. not in the sense that you are Doing Graduate Studies, more like in the sense that if you need more spell slots sometimes you get your patron's Out Of Office email autoreply.
you want to pursue a sidequest and they refer you to a coworker in another department to help you out since this isn't really their field.
you meet regularly to discuss your progress. you're preparing for your Thesis Defense and they need you as a research assistant in the Prime Material Plane. you're assigned to teach a class cult as part of your duties.
you get a tiny living stipend so you have to adventure to make ends meet.
i think the funniest patron option is Great Old One but tbh all of them would kick ass
65 notes
·
View notes
Text
more stuff about becoming a god being inherently dehumanizing pls
#d&d#my campaign has finally reached this point#the pinnacle of everything they've worked for (derogatory)#god of ghosts our lady of the sabotaged#god of devotion and obsession#god of loyalty and betrayal
61K notes
·
View notes
Text
While you’re out arguing whether necromancers or illusionists are more evil, the evocation caster just set 15 people and various nearby inanimate objects on fire, which is a clear breach of Protocol III of The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, thus constituting a war crime. In this essay I will —
18K notes
·
View notes
Photo
Abandoned church in the settlement of Budimilovo, Tver Oblast. Built in 1819-1827.
22K notes
·
View notes
Photo
A playlist for my current party: 4 idiots + their honorary cult grandma, four with new names and one with someone else’s–god I love them. they requested a playlist breakdown so i’ve placed it under a cut for brevity. I’m always soft for making fan content for the campaigns I’m in tbh.
Alice: an elf-turned half-orc after a reincarnate spell went awry, her wild magic caused her marriage to fall apart when she accidentally burned down her home. She’s looking for control over the magic that is ruining her life.
Remmy: a man of many names, Remmy is an aasimar cleric with more secrets than even the other party members are aware of. He’s untrusting and full of fear, but the party gets him to open up–against his better judgment.
Gadao: an earth genasi from an isolated monastery, he’s looking for an identity of his own after realizing he may not be an incarnation of an ancestral spirit after all. Looking for his place in the world, the party’s fast-paced life contrasts with his steady nature.
Leap: an elderly tiefling ranger, she grew up in a cult of pain and left it only by good fortune. Her taste for adventure–and a need for closure–keep her on the road, though she looks forward to seeing her family again.
Blue: an aarakocra bard, Blue awoke with no memory and promptly joined a shady merchant vessel as a good-luck musician. They’re always down to fight, curious, and ready to hoard as many items as they can get their hands on.
Keep reading
#this playlist has evolved a lot#but oh. oh it's fun to look back on it now. i made this about a year after we started playing this campaign#and 4 years later i feel So Vindicated
12 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Remmy Highcliffe, at your service ~
Testimonials:
“Are you exercising empathy right now?” - Gadao
“Yeah, he’s a bastard. There’s something sort of nice about it, though.” -Alice
“I’m a one-trick pony, this is what I got.” -Remmy (in a Southern accent)
Remington “Remmy” Highcliffe, aka Jamie Clearwater | Aasimar Cleric
am i biased because this is my partner’s character? yes. absolutely. I’m always biased about Remmy Highcliffe. But look at him! My one regret is I forgot to give him heart-shaped sunglasses, as per his day-to-day Look.
#this is so old it doesn't even have his real name on it#oggie blythe my best boy killed himself as the sacrifice in a divine ascension ritual and has been brought back as an incorporeal deity#This Is Fine
11 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Oh, I don’t know about that ~
Testimonials:
“What you’re saying is that we should ditch Leap, because Leap has become a loose end.” -Remmy
“Well, I don’t know why they would want to kill her. She was special to them.” -Gadao
“I’m not that good at [converting people to the cult].” -Leap
Leap Trivotion, (elderly) Tiefling Ranger
We love an old lady who makes tea and deals the most damage out of anyone in this party, hands down.
9 notes
·
View notes