dmhaleu

[dmhaleu]

[dmhaleu]

grace & aoey second project???

[dmhaleu]

The LICHES method of descriptive text

A while back a friend asked me to write up some pointers for how I write descriptive text. You know, for dungeons and such. I gave her the LICHES method, which I'm posting here now. The primary purpose of descriptive text is to clue players in to what they need to pay attention to. When you ask your players, "What do you do?" think of that as less of an open-ended question and more multiple choice. Your descriptive text gives your players the potential answers. (This is, of course, a broad statement. Players will always pull something out of left field.)

Good descriptive text includes any applicable lights, interactables, characters, hazards, egress, and senses—LICHES.

Light

Characters should know how much light they’re dealing with, and what the source is. Sconces, torches, moonlight coming in from a window? Sunlight filtering in from the forest canopy?

Interactables

If there’s something in this room the characters are meant to look at or touch, put it in. If you want them searching in the desks, tell them there are desks. The opposite is ALSO true. If you put something notable in your description, players are going to expect to get something out of interacting with or studying it.

Characters

If there are people in this room, what are they doing? It's very helpful to give DMs a look at the "moment before" for any NPCs in your description. What were they up to before the characters interrupt their lives? This goes for monsters, too, if they’re readily visible.

Hazards

This one should probably come earlier on the list. Like if something's on fire, you either mention it FIRST or LAST. But lesser-noticeable hazards, like "patched-up holes" or "slits in the wall" can be mentioned casually, without drawing a gigantic verbal arrow to it.

Egress

Some people might disagree with me on this, but it’s very helpful to be told that there are doors, even if they’re already on the map. Some tables don't run maps, and sometimes your VTT's fog of war tool obscures what is and isn't a point of egress on your map.

Senses

A lot of LICHE is based on what the characters can see, but you can play with the other senses as well. Characters can smell “a foul odor wafting from the pile of corpses,” hear “the lazy whistling of a popular folk song,” or maybe even taste “the salt on the wind at the docks.”

Putting it all together you might get:

Fire crackles in the hearth, casting long shadows on the papered wall and the sturdy oak desk pushed against it. An orange tabby yawns and stretches out on the plush armchair, revealing for an instant her sharp claws. Two doors lead out of the room: the western door that leads further into the house, and the eastern door that opens into the porch.

L: Fire I: Oak Desk C: Cat H: The cat's claws (watch out) E: Door into the house, Door out to the porch S: The crackle of the fire, the plushness of the chair

Don't worry about making this stuff sound poetic. You just need to give the players a list of things they can interact with or react to. Role playing gets compared to improv a lot, and there are a lot of similarities! Think of an effective description as the thing your players say "yes, and" to. And you don't have to include every letter in LICHES if you don't want to, or if they don't apply. Sometimes a room is empty. There may be no hazards. But this rule of thumb has really helped me write up some descriptions for both published adventures and home games.

[dmhaleu]

[dmhaleu]

I was struggling to fit a specific element into the campaign I'm working on, and then today the podcast I was listening to at work gave me a sudden idea and fixed the issue! I had to stop to immediately write it down, and this is why you've gotta consume other media when you create

[dmhaleu]

DND character who accidentally becomes a paladin at their wedding bc they meant their wedding vows a little too hard and invents the Oath of Love subclass. Is this anything

[dmhaleu]

Also, you can only learn so much from these people. You cannot take and do everything that they do.

Take something small that you like that they do. That's a feasible goal! Work on that for a while, but know that ultimately the way you do it is not going to be the same as the way they do it. Perfect! You're you and only you can do what you do. And for your group it'll be amazing. Trust me.

Your friend is not Brennan Lee Mulligan. Your friend is not capable of being Brennan Lee Mulligan. They tried to be Brennan Lee Mulligan, and they got burnt out. Your friend. Is not. Brennan Lee Mulligan.

[dmhaleu]

Free PDF available on my Patreon

[dmhaleu]

Friends, can I share one of my favourite bits of 5e homebrew?

This system (specifically the concept of a depletion die) has been a FANTASTIC addition to my campaigns, as it really breaks players out of that habit of hording consumable items and never using them for fear of needing them more at some point in the nebulous future.

You know what else this system is great for? ADVENTURING SUPPLIES. Now rather than expecting my party to go shopping and fiddle with small change and encumbrance, I just say they have a group "supply die" that's split across all their packs and baggage. How large is that supply die? Tally the group's collective strength bonus and compare it to the "average remaining uses" section of the chart. How much does it cost to resupply? There's a handy-dandy "cost" chart that you can just multiply by 10.

Rather than tracking rations, we just roll the supply die once at the end of each long rest. Whenever my party needs a random doodad that they that they could've picked up in town, they can roll the supply die and take it out of their bag, after that it's added to their permanent inventory until they lose it. Beasts of burden and carts act as a separate strength tally, with a beast able to carry 2x it's base strength bonus by default, and a cart multiplying that number by 5.

I've been looking for a system this elegant FOR YEARS and and finally I have it. Enjoy friends, let me know if you end up using it in your own campaigns.

[dmhaleu]

Book of Scrying by Virtual Fantasy RPG

[dmhaleu]

Watched 'Haven' recently and there's a plot point that lasted maybe 3 episodes that after I finished the full thing I was like "Oh. That could actually translate really well to a game." So you bet that's my storyline now

[dmhaleu]

inspired by the scariest words my dm has ever said to me and the subsequent coolest (AND SCARIEST) scene of my life

[dmhaleu]

Image above found on pinterest

How about some more?

1d10 more plot hook ideas inspired by film

Groundhog Day. Escape a strange encounter that seems to keep restarting in slightly varied ways.

E.T. Help an otherworldly life form return to its own world/realm to prevent it from inadvertently causing escalating mass conflicts.

Jumper. Stop a powerful figure who is enacting a plan to control and prevent others from ever using their own gifts again.

Casino Royale. Covertly enter a high stakes contest to end a villainous plot conducted by one of its participants.

Spider-Man 3. Break free from the mind-altering influence of a powerful but consuming magic item and keep it from those who would enable it to achieve its dark purpose.

The Chronicles of Riddick. Stay out of the hands of an enemy looking to capture you long enough to bring down a genocidal tyrant.

The Dark Knight. End the crime spree of an agent of chaos whose elaborate plots risk vilifying the wrong people even if you succeed.

Watchmen/Civil War. Find out why heroes are being targeted and unite them in time before distrust and differences turns to violence between once-allied factions. 

I, Robot. Investigate a crime being blamed on an unlikely but far too convenient suspect before they and their entire faction face mob justice.

Apocalypto. Escape captivity, outrun and outfight an army of cultists long enough to disrupt their apocalyptic sacrificial rituals.

Care to reblog with a list of your own?

Let’s keep the community list going strong! And check out Tabletop Gaming Resources for more art, tips, and tools for your game!

[dmhaleu]

The Mechanics of Baldur’s Gate 3

As someone who’s constantly tinkering with the mechanics of my favourite RPG, I LOVE a lot of what Larian has done with D&D; not only accurately translating the base system but improving upon in ways I never thought of.

Playing BG3 feels good, and I want to see how much of their work I can adapt for my own table. As such, here’s a breakdown of a bunch of little tweaks they’ve made to 5e (taken from the bg3 wiki) and whether or not I think they’re a good fit for regular pencil and paper d&d.

Shove is not a part of the attack action. It is a bonus action available to all characters. Shove only pushes the target back an amount that depends on the shover’s strength and the target’s weight. It normally does not knock them prone unless they are shoved off a high ledge.

This might be THE best design Larian implemented and is instantly going in my games. Bonus action shoving is such a natural addition to combat, gives so many more tactical options. My one protest is that I am NOT calculating the weight of every creature and object ( mainly because I’m terrible at guessing weights for things) so I’d go with the distance calculation based on the creature’s size and con score.

Gaining inspiration based on backgrounds

Gee, a mechanical reward for roleplaying your character, one that’s way more straight forward than the DM arbitrated “ideals, bonds, flaws,” system. From now on I’m going to give each of my players an upfront “ You gain inspiration when you ______” note on their character sheet based on their backgrounds.

The party is limited to two short rests per long rest. Short rests restore each ally’s hit points by an amount equal to half their maximum HP (rounded down). There is no hit die rolling. Long rests require camp supplies, which are food items that must be looted or purchased. In towns you will be able to rest at an inn.

This is a mixed bag for me only because I like hitdie as a mechanical abstract and I don’t want to see them removed. Tbh I wish more mechanics interacted with them and they were called something abstract like “stamina” or something. That said I ADORE the camp supplies idea because it not only gives you something minor to reward exploration with besides GP. On the otherhand tracking all those supplies without the game’s inventory management would be tedious as hell so it’d need to be highly simplified.

I especially like the idea of limited short rests/supplies in larger survival based adventures where time isn’t at a premium like it is inside a dungeon.

If you hide while not in a creature’s sight cone, you automatically succeed. If you try to hide while in a creature’s sight cone, you automatically fail. If you are hidden and enter a creature’s sight cone, you must roll stealth against the creature’s passive perception. This may be a straight roll, advantage, or disadvantage, based on the creature’s senses and the level of lighting. Some creatures with different senses such as blindsight may follow different rules

Congrats on fixing stealth rolls Larian. No notes.

LOTS more opinions under the cut.

Keep reading

[dmhaleu]

So D&D black dragons are supposed to live in swamps, right? Pretty amphibious, live in swamps, lair in...

caves. With a main entrance and a back entrance.

In swamps.

I really have trouble with the idea that there's these dragon-sized caves in an area with such a high water table, y'know? We have to go through miles of swamp to reach this lair, it's not one little boggy place in a mountain valley otherwise filled with nice caves. And the cave has to have two entrances, too? I can believe in dragons, but not this geology.

So... maybe it's not geology. Because a lair in a marshy place with exacting design specifications sounds a lot like a totally natural thing --

A beaver lodge.

So now I have this new image of black dragons industriously gnawing down giant trees to construct their mighty swamp lairs, and I am so much happier.

[dmhaleu]

Random mechanic Idea: Boosted Rolls

It's so weird that pass without trace is one of the only spells or abilities that add flat numbers (and big numbers at that) to rolls, and that great weapon master/sharp shooter are some of the only ones that subtract. While I'm usually all for rolling more dice, I think there's a game design space we can play in where players are able to get more out of their rolls than just shifting advantage in their favor.

What I immediately thought of was research in libraries: far too often in critical role the party will seek out an archive of great learning and Matt will ask them to make a knowledge check as a form of research, but that isn't much different than them doing a knowledge check on their own. Imagine if you would that libraries added an automatic +5 or +10 depending on their size and selection, allowing a player's roll to clear additional hurdles of difficulty that they normally wouldn't.

I could likewise see bonuses to craft checks in well equiped workshops, or benefits to medicine while inside a hospital.

[dmhaleu]

FREE RPG MASTERPOST (2023 Edition)

So it seems like a good time to update the list.  Recent headlines in the TTRPG community may have folks thinking about torrenting products from some heavy-handed publishers.  Since I’d have to change my Tumblr URL if I condoned that sort of behavior, how about sharing free alternatives & quick start guides for some alternatives instead.  Let me know of any other good ones I should include and I’ll update the original post with them.

FANTASY

FANTASY - OLD SCHOOL REVIVAL (OSR)

Labyrinth Lord

Swords & Wizardry

Osric

Dungeon World

FANTASY - POST-APOCALYPTIC

Earthdawn

ICON

Mutant Future (Compatible with Labyrinth Lord)

HORROR

HORROR -  ELDRITCH HORROR

Call of Cthulhu

HORROR - MODERN HORROR /  URBAN FANTASY

Witchcraft

Neverwhere

World of Darkness

HORROR - TRANSHUMANISM/CYBERPUNK

Eclipse Phase

SCIENCE FICTION

SCIENCE FICTION

Lasers & Feelings

Stars Without Number

SCIENCE FICTION - ATOMPUNK

Lady Blackbird

GIANT ROBOTS / MECHS

Lancer

OTHER

SCIENCE FICTION / FANTASY MASHUP

Shadowrun (Fantasy / Cyberpunk)

Rogue Trader (Warhamer 40K setting)

SETTING-AGNOSTIC

GURPS

Savage Worlds

FATE

SUPERHEROES

Four Color System

Mutants & Masterminds

Prowlers and Paragons

MISCELANEOUS ABSURDITY

HackMaster