dungeons-and-demiplanes

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Wild Eruption - A Fan D&D Novel

Just posted the first chapter of my fan D&D story, Wild Eruption! Check it out on my website, or on Ao3!

Kinna the halfling meets a new friend and uncovers a dark secret…

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Herne - the Warforged Circle of the Shepherd Druid

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Kane “The Volcano” - the Fire Genasi Berserker Barbarian / Valor Bard

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Newt, the Copper Dragonborn Graviturgy Wizard

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Adult schedules are difficult to coordinate, especially when it comes to D&D.

My roommate and I live together, though, and we both have an itch for D&D that is so constant that WotC might as well have given us an STD.

And we’re both Dungeon Masters.

... Who ever said that you needed more than two people to play Dungeons & Dragons, anyway?

We’ve been streaming live on twitch.tv/thecalicodragon every Monday evening at 8pm EST, for only about two hours per session (games don’t need to be 3-5 hours, if there’s only one player). Every week, Michelle and I trade the DM screen - She’s running Descent into Avernus for me, and I’m running Out of the Abyss for her.

We’ve been having a really good time with it so far. If you feel like catching up on our adventures, I’ve linked the playlist for all four games we’ve streamed thusfar above. We’d love for you to check it out!

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I did it, guys. I’ve been caught up on The Mighty Nein for a while now, but I finally also caught up on the entirety of Vox Machina.

“And every day that raven comes to visit.”

I’ve known just about everything that was going to happen for a couple of years now, and still - RIGHT in the fucking feels.

I just watched Matt Colville’s summary of the last episode of Critical Role, and even though I’ve never actually watched the show, GODDAMN. UGH. RIGHT IN THE FUCKING FEELS.

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Oh boy, y’all, I’m playing a Dryad-turned-Eladrin in my friend’s new Saltmarsh D&D campaign. 

Her name is Cassia, she’s a Nature Cleric of the Changebringer, and I adore her.

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“... What is it like to kill people?”

The Halfling Princess Katerina Ravenskar of Norfal - one of the NPCs of my Handryn Empire campaign - before and after the undead invasion of her kingdom, and the simultaneous coup which resulted in the murder of her family.

Despite her status, Katerina was never a particularly spoiled child; only recently forced to settle from their nomadic lifestyle and join common society, Halfling culture still focuses heavily upon resourcefulness, patience, and humility. 

Regardless, Katerina’s upbringing didn’t really prepare her for the hardships she’s been forced to undergo as of late.

Now, she’s beginning to contemplate the soothing burn of revenge that has started to fill her heart.

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The last one got me good

d&d spells as memes. i’ll start

power word kill

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“Can I trust you to keep your mouth shut?”

“I mean... Yes?”

“Good. Then you can trust me to keep MY mouth shut. For us to keep our mouths shut.”

My newest D&D character, from my friend’s Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign: 

Elias Sydio

(Or Silas Sydio, depending on when you talk to him. It’s complicated.)

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I may have gone a little bit overboard with the map for the big capitol city of my setting.

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Homebrew Roguish Archetypes by The Middle Finger of Vecna

Acrobat

Arachnoid Stalker (Redux)

Body Snatcher

Dirty Player

Ghost-Faced Killer (Redux)

The Brotherhood

Thought Thief

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Mitigating Metagaming

There’s a big problem with a handful of monsters in Dungeons and Dragons, and that problem is that even if the characters have never seen such a monster before - and even if the players have not read the Monster Manual or fought that monster previously in a different game - it is still possible for meta-knowledge to seep in.

I’m not talking about weird monsters that only really appear in D&D - if your players have never read the 3.5 Monster Manual, and have never fought one previously, they’ll likely have zero clue what in the fuck a Zelekhut is, for example.

But, consider the Hydra.

Everyone - even people who AREN’T nerdy enough to want to play D&D - know what a Hydra is.

Everyone who has watched that one scene in Disney’s Hercules knows how to kill - or rather, how NOT to kill - a Hydra.

And this means that if you - as a DM - throw a Hydra at a group of players, even those who are steadfast anti-metagamers will, in all likelihood, avoid chopping off the heads at all costs - even if their character would have no reason to suspect that something bad would result from doing so.

I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that can get rather frustrating. It means that there are some monsters in your repertoire that, despite how hard they are to fight on paper, will become a trivial trash mob in your game, and may not even be able to showcase some of their most prominent abilities that make them cool as heck.

I mean, come ON. Hydras have only ONE thing going for them, and it’s their ability to generate more heads when one is destroyed, thereby increasing the level of difficulty. That’s not something that’s going to happen, if the players recognize the creature as a Hydra, instantaneously.

All of this is to say that I learned a lesson this week, and that lesson is: 

If you want to run a monster that your players will absolutely know how to kill the instant they look at it, you need to mitigate that metagaming by finding creative ways to obscure your monster’s true nature... at least for a while.

If you want to throw a Hydra at your players, and you want to make sure that it gets to regenerate at least a few of its heads, you had better find a way to hide the fact that it’s a Hydra.

A good way to accomplish this is using dynamic terrain to your advantage. 

Hydras are native to swamps and marshes, so if your players are traveling through a swamp, why not make the water come up to their chests?

Why not have your Hydra hide on the swamp floor, obscured by the murky water the players have been kicking up in their wake?

Why not have the Hydra’s heads individually begin popping up out of the water, with the aforementioned murk masking their long-ass necks?

Hydras are Huge creatures - meaning that their body is 3x3 squares - and their necks can reach out and hit a creature that’s 10ft away.

If you can successfully keep track of the location of your Hydra’s body, without placing it on the battlemat (and thus tipping off your players to its presence right away), and if you can place down a little marker for the location of each head, in a 10ft radius around the body (in any direction), then I can tell you from personal experience that you can cause your players to focus their attention on the heads - at least for a while.

Now, this isn’t to say that you should keep your tricksy little secret the whole time - always give your players opportunities to perceive things that could give the creature’s true nature away. Maybe they see long necks, extending into the murk for several feet, before disappearing without any indication of a body. Maybe the water swells over the Hydra’s actual body as it moves forward, indicating that there’s something BIGGER in the vicinity. And, when the creature goes down to like 1/3 to 1/4 health, reward your players for getting so far by finally revealing the true nature of your creature. Maybe as one of the players lands a hit that brings it down to the appropriate level of health, the Hydra can rear up in pain, showing all of its heads connected to the body for the first time.

Sure, the fight might become trivialized at THAT point. But godsdamn, up until that point? Your players will be whacking heads left and right. And as far as they’ll be concerned, the appearance of more little reptilian heads from the water will just mean that reinforcements have arrived.

Which isn’t entirely untrue.

Happy hunting, kiddos.

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Accents 101

So if you’re a dm like me, you probably want to be relatively skilled in some typical fantasy accents for your game to make things feel that much more real. So i’ve decided to throw together a little master post of “how to” videos on some various accents. This is mostly for my own reference, but if you’d like to save this for yourself too, go right ahead. Feel free to add on to this, as well!

General Accent Tips

How To Learn Any Accent (1)

How To Learn Any Accent (2)

How To Do 12 Different Accents

US/UK/Aussie English Vocabulary Differences

One Woman, 17 British Accents

How To Lose Your Native Accent

How To Learn A Different Accent

Fun Tour of American Accents

Scottish

Scottish In Under 2 Minutes

How to Speak With A Scottish Accent

HOW TO DO A SCOTTISH ACCENT

Speaking Scottish 101

Scottish Slang

Gerard Butler Teaches You Scottish Slang

Scottish Insults

English or “British”

How To Do A British Accent

3 Ways to Sound More British

HOW TO DO A BRITISH ACCENT CONVINCINGLY (1)

HOW TO DO A BRITISH ACCENT CONVINCINGLY (2)

HOW TO DO A BRITISH ACCENT CONVINCINGLY (3)

Henry Cavill and Simon Pegg Teach You English Slang 

French

How To Speak With A French Accent 

How To Do A French Accent In UNDER TWO MINUTES

Tips on how to do a French Accent

French Accent Tip

Irish

How to do an Irish Accent

How To Do An Irish Accent

How To Do An Irish Accent

Guide to Irish Accents

How To Do An Irish Accent In UNDER TWO MINUTES

Russian

How To Speak With A Russian Accent 

How to Do a Russian Accent | Accent Training

How to speak with a Russian Accent

How Russians Speak English

How To Do A Russian Accent 

German

How To Have A German Accent 

How to do a GERMAN ACCENT?

Get the Perfect German ACCENT

Me speaking in 12 GERMAN DIALECTS!

How To Do A German Accent

5 Steps to a perfect German Accent

Canadian

How To Do A Canadian Accent

All aboot Canadian accents

How To Speak Canadian, Without Knowing How!!

Is There A Canadian Accent?

The Canadian English Accent

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Thoughts on Change

In the wake of last night’s episode, I keep seeing a bunch of posts discussing how profoundly Molly affected and changed both Beau and Nott, and though each of these posts do mention his affect on Caleb as well, it’s usually only mentioned offhandedly. For example:

“Yeah, Beau and Nott have gained a whole new perspective on life and the party in general, and it’s all thanks to Molly! And Caleb too, sort of, but to a lesser extent. SO ANYWAY--”

And I think that people are mistaking Caleb’s stoicism for a lack of deep and profound change in his character - which isn’t surprising to me, given that Beau and Nott are our only sources of comparison, and they tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves a lot more than Caleb does.

Sure, he didn’t stand up and deliver a speech about how good Molly was, and how he not only left every place better than he found it, but how he clearly left every PERSON better than he found them, too.

Sure, he didn’t effectively praise Molly for being the heart and soul of the team, the one that was the catalyst that bound them all together in Trostenwald.

But you know what Caleb did do?

He stayed.

He stayed, and not just with reluctance - with drive. Drive to finish what they had started, in recognition of Molly’s sacrifice.

Before this episode, I was convinced that Molly’s death was going to spook Caleb so badly that his anxiety (as expressed during his solo watch the night before) was going to get the best of him, and that he was going to bolt. I was sure that he was going to cut and run, after witnessing this: the first sign of actual, real, mortal danger.

But he didn’t. He stayed. 

And I think he did it because - whether or not he can or will admit it - Molly changed him profoundly, too. Between the past few episodes and today’s, Caleb went from still being anxious and super flighty, still ready to cut and run at a moment’s notice if the going got too tough- letting people take the lead so that he wouldn’t have to- refusing to acknowledge the rest of the group as being worth his time or effort, in any meaningful capacity--

To insisting - INSISTING - that they MUST go on, that they MUST continue to try to free their missing companions- to insisting on going deeper (if not more cautiously) into danger, not for his own sake, but for the sake of his friends- to taking charge and letting his colors shine, even though it terrified him to do so- to acknowledging - through careful words and even more careful silences, during his conversation with Nott - that he DOES consider the rest of the party to be extremely important to him.

Molly left Caleb better than he found him, too. He taught him that there’s time for anxiety and indecision later - but not when the lives of his family are at stake.

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“There is magic in this world – great and terrible magic – that none are truly fit to wield; whether evil or good, lawful or chaotic. No matter what, the effects would be beyond devastating. And so, someone must be charged with defending that power, from everyone and everything who would seek to misuse it.

You could say that my companion and I are engaged in such a business.”

Tain and Fylir, a pair of reoccurring NPCs from my setting.

I love these boys to bits

Theme: “Little Pigeon and Crazy Horse” - Cusco, Apurimac III

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I DID IT AGAIN, GUYS. DIFFERENT PLAYER, DIFFERENT VILLAIN.

I AM THE QUEEN OF GREY AREA MORAL DILEMMAS

Yesterday, I ran a solo session for one of my players and presented him with a moral dilemma in such a way that genuinely made him think for about 15 minutes about whether he wanted to go off and join one of the villains, or if he wanted to stay with his friends

and if that’s not an accomplishment on my part, I don’t know what is