aggressiveworldbuilding

[aggressiveworldbuilding]

[aggressiveworldbuilding]

Every time Sean Astin makes a statement on whether or not Sam and Frodo were indeed gay for each other in lord of the rings he’s always like “well we have to acknowledge that attitudes around sexuality have changed dramatically over the past several decades and since authorial intent is only up to speculation, the story is open to multiple readings, some of which might have different significances for different groups of people also they kiss on the lips because I said so”

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A few joking D&D achievements. 

( All images used are No-Attribution Required stock images. )

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Imagine a person who only consumes Batman-related media. That is, they only watch movies and TV shows that have Batman in them, only read books that are novelisations of Batman media, only play licensed Batman video games, and so forth. This is not so absurd an idea; Batman-related media is sufficiently popular, varied and widespread that restricting one's media consumption in this way is completely feasible. However, I trust we can agree that if you actually do this, you will be left with very strange ideas about what popular media looks like.

The next step in this analogy is undestanding that if the only tabletop RPG you're acquainted with is Dungeons & Dragons, you have the same grasp of the tabletop roleplaying hobby as our hypothetical Batman Guy has of popular media.

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You feel the cold wind rush through your hair as you and your dragon fight the bonds of gravity. Your dragon lifts off from the lofty warrens high above the rest of the world where you make your home.

Below you is a mountain of living stone set on snuffing out the small flame of humanity you are charged to protect.

But you are not in the fight alone. At your wing are other riders who will always have your back. You live with them. Train and eat your meals with them. Laugh and cry with them. Together, you are the Warrenguard. Had so much fun working on this piece for the TTRPG Warrenguard, where you can raise dragons and protect your warren! And it is now on Backerkit! It's already fully backed but I hear that one of the new goals is more art from someone coooool (me, it's me) So please reblog and share, and check out this cool game! 🐉Com info here! | Tip me? 🐉

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i return from the dead to deliver a small tidbit of lore

half-orc does not refer only to a creature that is genetically 'half' of an orc. it mainly is talking about a member of a community whose parents come from two separate cities.

orcs have a huge puritan culture, and travel is one of the number one ways to 'taint' yourself in their eye - to the point that wanderlust is seen as a sin. So, half-orcs are differentiated from their peers by the fact that they are somewhat marred from birth on account that they were born of two different (one likely tainted spiritually) individuals.

howwver, this means that half-orcs themselves exist in a liminal space, as they are immune to a lot of the cultural taboos on account of already having accumulated bad 'karma' from birth. Therefore they often act as mediators, merchents and diplomats between groups - and as a result often pass their title of 'half-orc' onto their offspring who are more likely than not to come from a different community.

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Here is a free pdf of the players handbook

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

For all your dnd purposes

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been doing a lot of worldbuilding for gnomes recently - so i did a lil doodle of their physical differences between gnomes and halflings.

these are both male individuals, so tumblr doesn't shoot me into the sun

gnome on the left, halfling on the right

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Think I'm going to start doing intermittent updates on my current projects on here in hopes some of you find them interesting, and to keep myself accountable because that really really motivates me.

At the moment, I'm working on a projects actively, with sooooo many more on the back burner. The big ones are:

- Salt, Steel and Alchemy: An early gunpowder-era fantasy ttrpg with an alchemy magic system. Hoping to release the game and keep updating it on a Legend keeper wiki, so people have free and instant access to the most up to date rulles. Currently finishing up the playtest draft.

- [Unnamed Worldbulding Game]: A system to help people simulate realistic world histories at a nation, regional, faction and individual level. End goal is to have a polished system to release for other writers and myself. About to start draft 2.

- Larocura: A collaborative setting I'm building with a friend, with a world based on medieval boardgames from all across Earth, with the end goal of making a narrative art book.

I love love love talking to people about these projects, and would really like this blog to be about them, so my Asks are open for anything related to these!!

(I'm going to put out a dedicated post for each of these three projects too!)

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i shall concede - yes milestone experience is there. I will then immediately pick back up my pitchfork bc milestone requires the DM to remember things like leveling up and can drag on a single level and make another seem like a complete joke.

also there is very little help in clarifying 'what should be seen as a milestone? how much time should pass in game, as opposed to ooc? those two things can be very different and that is important to remember.

side note: but dms; remember you can actually expedite a lot of plot things for dnd if you have a long break between sessions (like the effects of poisons, drugs, ect.) in game because to the player it feels a lot longer due to the real-life time they have had to think about it. don't worry about making the consequences realistic in game; let them be realistic in ooc time.

on top of that - still makes the game have no mechanical support for roleplaying! it honestly feels like pulling teeth if you have a roleplaying scene, and none of your players (or the DM for that matter) are willing to put themselves into their character's shoes.

Dungeons and Dragons is a terrible role playing game.

A thing that bothers me a lot about dnd is that people like dnd because it doesnt hinder them with things like 'rules for rp' and lets them make up their own, when in actuality that is a the halmarks of a Shitty RP game.

The reason its like this? Because dnd is a terrible roleplaying game, but a Fantastic dungeon crawler. Thats what it was designed as after all, a dungeon crawling game with very little character creation beyond crunching numbers - so your characters can be swapped and replaced as needed.

Another modern ttrpg that is like this is Cyberpunk Red (and cyberpunk as a whole) because your characters die super easily in those games. They have to be (relatively) easily replacable.

So when Dnd totes itself as the World's Greatest Role Playing Game (as they do on all their books) I want to rip my eyes out and eat sawdust.

The absolute best example of this? RAW (rules as written) never awards experience for solving problems with roleplay. They provide no guidance for social encounters and how to have meaningful level progression in diplomatic situation beyond "Roll Charisma" or whatever.

Roleplaying game my ass.

[aggressiveworldbuilding]

Dungeons and Dragons is a terrible role playing game.

A thing that bothers me a lot about dnd is that people like dnd because it doesnt hinder them with things like 'rules for rp' and lets them make up their own, when in actuality that is a the halmarks of a Shitty RP game.

The reason its like this? Because dnd is a terrible roleplaying game, but a Fantastic dungeon crawler. Thats what it was designed as after all, a dungeon crawling game with very little character creation beyond crunching numbers - so your characters can be swapped and replaced as needed.

Another modern ttrpg that is like this is Cyberpunk Red (and cyberpunk as a whole) because your characters die super easily in those games. They have to be (relatively) easily replacable.

So when Dnd totes itself as the World's Greatest Role Playing Game (as they do on all their books) I want to rip my eyes out and eat sawdust.

The absolute best example of this? RAW (rules as written) never awards experience for solving problems with roleplay. They provide no guidance for social encounters and how to have meaningful level progression in diplomatic situation beyond "Roll Charisma" or whatever.

Roleplaying game my ass.

[aggressiveworldbuilding]

Something thats always bugged me about dnd and pathfinder’s gods is that… they are basically monotheism in polytheism wrapping AND there is no actual religion present. The lore is so obsessed with these beings as people with their extensive histories and active presence in the setting that they completely forgot to actually create religions surrounding them.

What does casual worship look like for any of these gods? Could you tell me? What does prayer actually look like? Is there specific times of the day in which you must pray for certain gods? Is there certain attire you must wear to show your faith? Are there certain foods you cannot eat? Are there certain foods that are elevated above the rest for your faith? What kind of offerings are expected everyday? Do they expect offerings everyday or on a certain day of the week? Do they expect physical offerings at all? Do they ask for sacrifices of material goods, animals, people? Why? Why do you worship this deity? How does that actually affect ur daily life? How is worship different for a cleric, paladin, priest, or casual believer? What kinds of swears, curses, exclamations, etc are associated with this religion? Are there certain activities that are banned within your religion? How strictly does the religion police its worshiper’s actions? What kind of philosophies do they preach or disavow?

These and many more are the elements that form real world religions and are absent in most fantasy “religions” including popular ttrpgs. I cant even call these faiths religions because they really arent. One god in these settings should have 20 different religions built around them that all disagree on how the god’s domain, history, and personality should be interpreted. Maybe 2 or 4 of them would be main stream but there should be more than just one monolithic faith surrounding a god. And stop calling it polytheism. Please for the love of everything. Polytheism is a type of religion that worships multiple gods at once. Faith in dnd and pathfinder is largely monotheistic because the players choose one god they like and ignore all the rest.

I am not trying to put the responsibility of creating all these religions on gms - im pointing out that the creators of these ttrpgs did all of us a huge disservice. Religion is such an expansive and fascinating and diverse concept in the real world that it infuriates me to see it reduced to choosing a god you like and thats it. And im agnostic irl!

I was talking to my cowriter about this for the lore in my ttrpg and it got me really rilled up XD Religion can be beautiful or terrible or a mixture of both. It can save people from the world’s darkness or bring out their own inner darkness. It deserves more than a cliff-notes table of deities to choose from and half baked lore about the gods without examining the actual faith they inspire in others :/

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DnD players be like, "I don't get the point of solo ttrpgs" and then spend an entire afternoon crafting their ideal Loxodon Barbarian grappler complete with a fully fleshed-out backstory and NPC connections, who will never see an actual table because there is no plan in their rpg circle for a new DnD game and this like their 10th character they're adding to a library of unplayed PCs.

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A reminder that this generator exists! Blind Date with a TTRPG is great for discovering new games, such as Monster Care Squad and Mappa Mundi.

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Was talking about sandbox design in a ttrpg server, and though this is a bit tongue-in-cheek, I think these really are good things to consider when you approach sandbox design in a ttrpg (and elsewhere!)

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'the GM is also a player' is something every ttrpg writer should take to heart. just becase d&d treats their GM as (as i have often said) an unpaid game designer doesn't mean you have to

[aggressiveworldbuilding]

Haunted by a fantasy world where "adventurer" is handled in the same way as "assassin" in John Wick. An ifykyk secondary economy running on gold coins where everyone knows each other but no one acknowledges the elephant in the room because we have manners about our weird-ass line of deadly desperate dangerous work.

Rolling into town, looking immaculate. Checking into the Inn. Not an inn, or the coaching house, or the traveler's hostel. The Inn. The one that takes my ridiculous oversized coin and says that my room is ready, and will I need to visit the Smith today? Perhaps a meeting with the Vintner? Shall I send up the Gourmand?

"Good afternoon, Master Whicke," the Smith says, putting aside the barrel scraper he's been working on to flip a switch beside the forge. Racks of tenpenny nails and trowels and hammers fold back to reveal the glittering points and edges of a score of swords and axes and spearpoints lit with the flicker of finely-tuned enchantments. "Shall we tour what's new?"

"What sort of occasion are we hosting, Master Whicke?" The Vintner asks, pocketing the coin with a sigh. "A funeral," you say.

"Ah, well perhaps something light to start, then," she says selecting a straight-walled flask that glitters with contained starlight, proof against the touch of the undead. " And something for remembrance," she plucks a small crock of something evil-smelling and phosphorescent. "And then something to really bring down the house." She gingerly selects a double ampoule of energetic looking jellies.

The Gourmand carefully runs his knife through the salted flank of a cockatrice with a pursing of the lips. "So many neglect trail rations, Master Whicke, and it is their shame. Paired with goldenwheat pancakes and carrion honey, a mouthful of cockatrice--properly seasoned of course--will keep the mummy rot at bay, even post-exposure. I have been given to indicate by the Management that your current escapade may make such information useful to you. I will of course wrap your purchases exceedingly carefully. Rot will be your constant companion in the Black Pyramid."

There's something here.