dorksndisasters

[dorksndisasters]

More snippets of the dnd stuff I am working on! Maverick is a bg3 Tav that has grown a separate story that will semi link in with the one shot lads (they end up living with Razmatazz)

Snippet Sunday 27/4

hi hello here we are with Mav having a bad time

It's all downhill from here babyyyy

~~

Maverick insisted on helping to clean up. They'd eaten more than they intended, and their host wouldn't take money. Not that Maverick had much left, after... after everything.

"Now, I have one last gift for you," said the old lady. She'd never given a name, when Maverick had asked.

"That's really not necessary," Maverick replied. "The meal was more than enough." They stepped towards the door, unease slowly trickling cold down their neck.

"Oh, but I insist. Just a little something," she said, that too-strong grip on Maverick's arm, holding them back, "just to help you see what everyone's hiding."

The tree's roots shifted and pulled free of the mud. They wrapped Maverick's legs, trapping them, and coiled higher.

"What-" Maverick stiffened and yanked their arm free, ice rising in their jaws, their quills glinting with gathered frost.

"Oh, hush. You ate my food, you're in my house." The lady stepped closer as the roots pulled Maverick back down and lower, so they had to look up at her.

She sorted in her pouch for something. "But because I am so kind and you did scare off that man-"

"What did you do to him?"

"He begged me to help, and didn't like what I gave him." She tutted, only half paying attention to them. "Ah, there we are." She drew out a needle. "Now. Left or right?"

Maverick tried to fight free, straining against the roots. Ice sparked across their scales, coating and layering up into spikes that cut and shattered against the roots.

"It will hurt more if you struggle," she said. "Left," she tapped the needle under the scaled ridge of Maverick's cheekbone, "or right?" There was something slick along the length of the needle, a droplet growing at its point. Where she tapped it against Maverick's scales, they started to go numb.

"Neither, I don't want-" Maverick pulled away from her, grasping at the roots to try and pull their other hand free.

A root looped up and caught about their free wrist, pulling it tight to their waist, just out of reach of where they could grab at the others.

She grabbed hold of one of Maverick's horns and held their head still. "Dealer's choice, is it? Too kind." She held the needle to Maverick's right eye.

Maverick froze, claws digging into the roots. "Please."

The needle slid into their right eye. It burned, biting, and then went numb in a widening circle. Maverick tensed, trying not to shut their eye on it. Their vision was blurring, fading to darkness.

The needle twitched in her hand, tapped something at the back of their eye, and Maverick felt bile rising in their throat.

"Just a bit longer," she said, baby talking them as if they were a child. She said something else in that language that flowed like water around tree roots, like autumn leaves falling to the damp ground of an old forest.

Maverick could only see from their left eye. They felt - so distantly - the needle leave their right.

"There." The lady let go of Maverick's horn.

They twisted their head sideways to snap at her, and almost threw up with the motion.

"Now, is that any way to treat someone!" She evaded their teeth with ease.

Maverick blinked as their vision shifted, the nausea growing.It was dark, blurry, sight slowly coming back to their right side.

The old lady was overlaid with a different form, one of mushrooms and mould and rotten treebark that held only the suggestion of a human under it.

"What are you?" Maverick asked. They strained against the roots and felt them begin to give.

"Never you mind," she snapped.The shambling form of mud constructs emerged from the dank depths of the house, unfolding from between the roots of the tree.

Maverick finally pulled free as the roots loosened, onto their feet, tightening their hands into fists. They'd seen the constructs but thought them merely decoration, but something had made the mud a home and it listened to the - "hag," they said, finally fitting the form and the action to a name. The man hadn't been hurling insults.

They backed towards the door, eye burning as the numbness wore off. Their head stung, an uneasy alertness coming back to them.

"Now, there's no need for name calling," she said, but that grin was one of delight.

Maverick touched fingers to the cheekbone below their burning eye and brought them away bloody.

They lunged to slip between the constructs, eyes on the hag as the last of her human guise fell away.

The constructs caught them and threw them out into the street as the door opened.

Maverick hit the mud and tumbled backwards, slipping through the rain until they caught themself on the cracked cobblestones of the street.

"Enjoy your gift," the hag said.

Maverick got to their feet. "I didn't ask for this." They started forward, growling.

The hag burst into raucous cackling as the door slammed shut.

The garden - already overgrown - erupted with thicker growth, blocking the path with dripping thorns and poisonous flowers.

"Karshoj," Maverick spat out, throat rough with ice.

Their eye was stinging. It was bleeding, diluting in the rain. Its vision was dim, fading to nothing the longer they stood there.

In the small window, Maverick saw one of the constructs watching them.

Maverick bared their teeth in its direction and stalked away.

Their - their fear left them slowly, draining away to tiredness and pain rising.

They needed to find somewhere to stay. Somewhere to try and fix the damage.

[dorksndisasters]

I have a small but growing list of potential future dnd characters I've dubbed "DnD Characters a DM Might Love or Might Shoot me for"

[dorksndisasters]

I might've added the BG3 Art Book to my dnd assets stash

It' 100% does not have things like the 5e players' handbook + 5e’s character sheet, several gm guides, critical role's explorer's guide to wildmount, baldur's gate and waterdeep city encounters, 101 potions and their effects, volo's guide to monsters, both of xanathar's guides, a bunch of other encounters, one shots, and class builds

In no way are there any pdf’s relating to any wizard who may or may not be residing on any coast

(Edit that I’ve moved the folder to the new link above! So if you catch a different version of this post that link won’t work anymore!)

[dorksndisasters]

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

[dorksndisasters]

[dorksndisasters]

Making a shitty one-page RPG called Oh Shit It’s the Killer. The premise is simple: you’re a high schooler spending the weekend in the woods with your besties. The Killer is there also. He is trying to the Kill you

[dorksndisasters]

Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book

[dorksndisasters]

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 :/

[dorksndisasters]

losing my mind at this amazing story from r/dndmemes some people’s dnd adventures are just. So Fucking Cool

here’s the link and the story, it’s Amazing

[dorksndisasters]

some oc orc silliness. sometimes i miss doing fantasy but unfortunately it just never paid the bills for me. it is what it is. i can still have some casual fun making ocs

[dorksndisasters]

Insults (Fantasy Edition)

They're as useful as a wet blanket in the middle of winter

I could talk to my horse and have a better conversation

She did love her family, but she'd rather have an ocean between her and them.

He was the kind of man to stumble across rational thought quite by accident and dismiss it as absurd

'Quite frankly, I'd rather eat Hemlock.'

I know the gods do not exist, because if they did, they would've struck you down by now.

Well, you're clearly got some troll ancestry.

That's probably the wisest thing you've ever said and yet still you are wrong.

Do you just sit there all day and hope some sort of sentient through floats in your direction

She was tolerable. From a distance.

They were often wrong but never in doubt.

[dorksndisasters]

Running D&D in 2024 is like, the player community collectively convinced each other that dungeon crawls, resource management and attrition are bad, so now everyone runs games where characters can expect to get into one or two fights a day and characters are never stretched for resources, and most Reddit threads about D&D are GMs asking for help challenging their groups because of said ignoring of the resource management aspect and getting told that a good GM could make it work so obviously they must be a bad GM.

[dorksndisasters]

My betrothed is DMing and they said we see a “house on a fluffy hill.”

I started vibrating with excitement. The rest of the players were not suspicious.

Our warlocks imp started approaching and tried to enter the cabin and I started whisper chanting, “Baba yaga, baba yaga!”

A giant chicken reared it’s head and promptly ate the imp.

My betrothed then rolled out a photo they made of this baba yaga hut, which was just a chicken with an MS paint cabin on its back.

I’m so stoked to be marrying this person.

[dorksndisasters]

RPG rules are bad, this much we know. Whenever you're using the rules that's not roleplaying, that's what I like to call ruleplaying. Or rollplaying if you're nasty. The most important part of roleplaying games is that the rules are bad and the enemy. And that knowing that you have to ignore the rules is the most important part of being a GM. We have to keep buying the rule books though so we can not read them. Just so we know which rules to ignore. There can be no such a thing as a good rule because rules means that you're not roleplaying. Asking for game rules to be good instead of bad and to be ignored is like asking me to roleplay while I am rolling the dice (rollplaying). My favorite game is D&D 5e, a game famous for not having rules.

[dorksndisasters]

Like Dungeons and Dragons? Looking for a fantasy adventure novel to sink your teeth into? Look no further!

Tales from Aurea is a long-running web novel based on a homebrew Pathfinder campaign. It features a cast of queer characters, a premise steeped in eastern European mythology, and a world modeled on the fall of the Roman Empire.

Synopsis:

The Aurean Empire, once the dominating force at the heart of Calthia, is crumbling. Those who have been waiting for their chance at greatness will seize power at any cost. As political chaos erupts across the continent, four unlikely companions come together with a humble goal: helping a mysterious young girl named Kaja find her way home. But when it comes to light that Kaja’s lost people have the ability to turn the tide in the power struggle gripping Calthia, suddenly all eyes—friend and foe alike—are turned towards her.

The Party:

The Wizard: Sakrattars Mistwood, the fourth son in a prominent Imperial family (that he no longer speaks with), cringefail loser, in it for the fame and academic redemption, has a useless toad named Bartholomew as a familiar The Barbarian: Jo, former elite warrior turned lone wolf, de facto leader of the group, dotes on Kaja and is highly protective of her, can shapeshift into a giant sabercat The Sorcerer: Kaja, lost child, traumatized, has some connection to dragons, kinda ditzy, very gentle... until you threaten her friends, low-key the strongest one in the party The Fighter: Leif Hjalmarsson, mercenary who loves wine women and song, enamored with heroism and glory but kinda sucks at fighting (maybe due to all the wine?) The Ranger: Amale Inyoni, the party's dog (literally), strong silent type but his wagging tail gives away his game, hates violence loves sticks

Start reading Tales from Aurea on Royal Road

Content warnings: violence and blood, character death, discussion of topics including imperialism, genocide, and slavery

Current Progress:

Arc 1 - Ordo Draconis: 10 of 10 chapters uploaded, ~60,000 words

Arc 2 - Iron and Ice: 10 of 10 chapters uploaded, ~67,600 words

Arc 3 - Echoes of the Past: *begins November 29th*

**updates every 2-3 weeks**

Cover art done by the lovely @isthiseva

[dorksndisasters]

honestly elves SHOULD be over represented in adventurer groups. like, what, you're gonna live 700 hundred years and NOT do an adventure? not even once? not even on accident?

[dorksndisasters]

Hell yes