mrmcfeelme

[mrmcfeelme]

YES

Are CGI trailers like those for War and Eldraine going to be the norm going forward?

Would you like them to be?

[mrmcfeelme]

Born of Two Bloods – Personal plot for half-elves

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Ever since I read about Elrond Half-Elven back in Tolkien’s works, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of half-elves. When I graduated into Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I found half-elves waiting for me as an option. They seemed to be relatively common, and I played a few in my day.

Role-playing a half-elf provides a player with a unique opportunity to straddle two worlds. While you can definitely take some of the advice from my previous articles about personal plot for elves or humans, this article will focus specifically on half-elven specific plot.

Before you even contemplate plot for a specific character, you should probably ask the question of what your campaign’s attitude towards half-elves are. By the D&D default, half-elves are seen as valuable go-betweens for elven-human relations. They have a natural charisma that attracts members of both races, and they’re often treated as natural diplomats. This doesn’t have to be the default, however. In Eberron, for example, half-elves have become essentially a race unto themselves, complete with their own dragonmarks. In the Dragonlance setting, half-elves are generally seen as objects of distaste (as evidenced in the way elves treat Tanis Half-Elven). Looking to Tolkien, half-elves are incredibly rare, and they’re almost always the product of difficult and strife-filled situations (as seen in the difficulties that Beren, Luthien, Aragorn, and Arwen face). You might decide to emulate one of these ideas, or you might go your own way altogether.

The first question to ask when contemplating a half-elf character’s intrinsic plot is what the circumstances of the character’s birth were. Was the PC a wanted child? Unwanted? An accident? Do they have one parent each of human and elven race? It’s suggested in earlier supplements that the child of half-elves is half-elves, as is the child of a human and a half-elf, or an elf and a half-elf. All of these are possibilities, and they may influence the story elements. Does your half-elf know both parents? In one game I ran, the half-elf knew his elven mother, but not his human father, and his personal quest was to meet his father, or learn about him. It made for some awkward moments when he later met his fully human half-brother. In my current campaign, the half-elf knew his human mother, and he knew an elf who visited her often. He assumed this was his father and treated him as such. Much later he learned that her visitor was his uncle, who had been betrothed to his mother. His real father was a thoroughly evil warlock that his uncle pursued. Much later, his father began to appear as a recurring villain, one who was very satisfied to finally destroy.

How does your half-elf feel about elves and humans? Do they favor one over the other? Do they try to balance the two halves of their nature? Also, what do humans and elves feel for each other? If the two are at war in your campaign, perhaps the half-elf will be the diplomat to help make peace. Perhaps the rift between elves and men stems from something that each side believes the other side is keeping from them, something akin to the Arkenstone or the Nauglimir in Tolkien. If the half-elf makes it their personal quest to restore the McGuffin to its rightful place, they can bring peace between the two peoples, thus balancing the two halves of their heritage.

One half-elf trait that probably doesn’t get the love it deserves is Skill Versatility. Gaining proficiency in any two skills is quite a potent trait, almost as powerful as the Skilled feat. Depending on which skills the player picks, this could help dictate some story as well. A character who choosing Acrobatics and Survival, for example, is likely a very different person than someone who picks Arcana and Religion.

I hope this article has helped spark a few idea for your half-elf players, or even the nature of half-elves in your campaign. Feel free to share your own ideas for half-elf plots!

[mrmcfeelme]

Warlock Patron: Norville “Shaggy” Rogers

As challenged/requested by @justmaghookit

(Author’s Note: this Warlock Patron was made via a challenge to replicate having Norville “Shaggy” Rogers as your Patron deity, both from the memes and from the canon. The “weaker” of his abilities are more aligned with the canon (i.e. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level spells, as well as the 1st and 6th level abilities) while the “stronger” are more based off of what I could comprehend from the memes about his great power. That being said, it could also be argued that even the latter powers are entirely canonical, depending on how you interpret them. Please, though, enjoy! Let me know what you think and what I could do to tweak it!)

Your patron is… Oh, gods. I’m sorry, this can’t be… No, no, no, there must be something wrong…

Your patron is a being of legend, even to those such as the Archfey. The Prince of Fools even dare not speak his name, lest he invoke his wrath. His motivations are fairly straightforward, yet demand high accountability and the ability to follow orders to the letter. Do this, and he will be pleased. Don’t, and… Well, we don’t like to talk about Jimmy. Strive to be your best, in his image, and maybe, someday, you, too, will have even 0.05% of the power of… “Shaggy.”

Expanded Spell List

Shaggy lets you choose from an expanded list of spells when you learn a warlock spell. The following spells are added to the warlock spell list for you:

alarm, animal friendship

enlarge/reduce, magic mouth

haste, water walk

dimensional door, polymorph

telekenesis, teleportation

Graced with His knowledge

Shaggy has given you insight as to the experience he received in his life… That we know.

Starting at the first level, you may add half your proficiency bonus, rounded down to any ability check that doesn’t already include your proficiency bonus (minimum 1). This feature doesn’t stack with the Bard’s “Jack of All Trades” ability or any similar ability.

Like, Run Like the Wind!

Shaggy has run from a great many foes… Or has he? In his omnipotence, he has cunningly led them all into traps in the most humorous way possible: a cartoonist chase sequence.

Starting at the 6th level, you gain an additional 15 feet of movement speed. This movement speed increase goes up by 5 feet every four levels after 6th, to a maximum of 30 additional feet of movement at 20th level.

In addition to the movement speed granted by this perk, you may also take the Dash action as a bonus action, rather than a move action.j

Eating All This Has Only Made Me Stronger

Shaggy has ingested a great many things in his life: sandwiches, salad bars, even planets if he so chose… Which he doesn’t. Often. Because of this, he has granted upon you his iron stomach and liver… Or as close a your mortal body can have to his.

Starting at the 10th level, you can choose one damage type you haven’t already chosen in the past 24 hours with this ability whenever you finish a short or long rest. You gain resistance to that damage type for a period of 24 hours afterwards. You may not have more than four damage types selected this way. This increases by one every level past 10th, for a maximum of 14 active resistances at the 20th level.

Why you would need more than 13 is beyond us, but Shaggy has decreed it, and so it shall be.

All I Can Say Is “Like, Zoinks!”

Shaggy has graced you with a mere fraction, nay, a molecule of his total power. While his power is infinite and yours is finite, he has given you the power your mere mortal body can behold… And as you feel it surge through you, you feel as is now, you may carry out His true message…

Starting at the 14th level, you may choose a class feature of any other class, and treat it as your own. You may use this a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier per day, and you may not select a class feature from a level higher than yours, only less than or equal to.

This feature may not be used to gain hit dice, armor proficiencies, weapon proficiencies, saving throws, spell slots, or any abilities that require a resource pool, such as the Monk’s Ki. This feature may also not be used to use any feats or any other such extraordinary abilities.

—-

If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post, thank you for reading! I just kinda threw this together (flavor and all) in the span of about 3 hours in total, so I know it could probably be better/more balanced (which I tried to do off-handedly, but I don’t make the rules.)

Thanks!

[mrmcfeelme]

Children of a Kinder World – Personal plot for Halflings

Hullo, Gentle Readers, and welcome to the first of our Personal Plot articles for 2019. Unlike last year, when they were issued sporadically, I intend to produce these articles once per month, each time looking at a different Race, Class, or Background, and giving ideas for plots you can run that’re aimed at specific characters in your own campaign.

Halflings, some of you may be aware, are directly responsible for me playing D&D. I spotted a mention of them as a character option on the back of the old Holmes-edition of basic D&D, and, having just read The Lord of the Rings the summer before, I snatched it up eagerly. My first character was a Halfling, shamelessly ripping off Frodo Baggins, who I later retired to be an NPC in my own first campaign setting.

It can’t really be said that halflings were “inspired” by Professor Tolkien’s works, because that word doesn’t properly convey to what degree Tolkien’s books shaped the Halfling race. It might help if I told you that, in early editions of the game, they were literally called hobbits, until the Tolkien estate’s lawyers came knocking. They’ve evolved since then, and they’ve taken on many role, including a stint as cannibals in the Dark Sun setting, tribal dinosaur-riders in Eberron, and kleptomaniacal looneys (a.k.a. kender) in Dragonlance. At their core, however, they remain a small, unobtrusive race who generally would prefer to be left alone to farm and eat mushroom pie. And these are the kinds of halflings I’ll be looking at.

Some halflings, however, just like Bilbo and Frodo, are seized by wanderlust or find themselves thrust into the middle of great happenings, and then who knows where their feet will take them? Most likely into adventures where they riddle with dragons, find magical artifacts, and go on great quests that shake the counsels of the mighty.

When working with a player playing a Halfling, it’s a good idea to see how they intend to roleplay that character. Are they a reluctant homebody who’ll be concerned about having forgotten a pocket handkerchief, or are they a wanderlust-filled explorer who wants to see what lies off the edges of maps? A lot of that will dictate what kinds of adventures you should provide them with.

For someone playing the classic homebody Halfling, you might make a lot of their adventures harken back to their return home. I always think of Bilbo keeping thoughts of home in his head to lighten his heart, like his pocket handkerchiefs and his comfy hobbit hole. And I think one of the most poignant moments in Lord of the Rings is the Scouring of the Shire, when the hobbits have to come home to all the evil they’ve been fighting having taken root in their own backyard. I think this part of the books is heart-breaking, and, while I understand why it doesn’t happen in the films, I think it’s very important.

Someone playing a Halfling in the throes of wanderlust is much easier to write adventures for. Perhaps their great grandmother kept her own adventure journal, and the Halfling PC wants to follow in her footsteps, seeing all the things she saw, and then surpassing her exploits. Maybe there are family friends among the elves, dwarves, or dragonborn that the Halfling PC wants to meet in person instead of just thinking of them as characters in a story.

Either character presents a great opportunity for a family heirloom, a la Sting. In fact, retrieving such an heirloom could be the impetus for an adventure in the first place. If Grandfather’s magic bow was locked up in the local museum, and someone breaks in and steals in, it might fall to the Halfling PC to go out and find it, as well as to seek justice for innocent halflings who were hurt during the break-in.

Halflings are naturally resistant to fear, so, when you want to highlight a Halfling PC, monsters with fear effects are a good way to do it. They’re also naturally lucky, and you might want to think about why in your campaign setting. Perhaps one story would be to renew the well that all of the Halfling luck comes from.

In my own campaign, halflings live in swampy, bayou-type areas, and my Halfling PC created his own nemesis, a gigantic gator called Limba, who I’ve discussed in other places. A “boogey-man” for your halflings is a decent idea. Perhaps an unnaturally intelligent wolf, a creepy ghost, or a legendary goblin chief figures in local legends as having a particular enmity with halflings, and it becomes your Halfling PC’s quest to rid his people of this entity once and for all.

I hope this article helps show you how many rich possibilities there are for Halfling characters. With a little work and cooperation between player and DM, you can end up with a character having adventures that would make a Baggins proud!

[mrmcfeelme]

Shapeshifter Quest Hooks

Here’s a list of 50 quest hooks involving creatures from both the Monster Manual and from the content I created during Shapeshifter Week. New creatures have links to the posts that contain their statistics. Existing Monsters can all either change their shape naturally, cast polymorph, or cast disguise self.

Quest Hooks (d100)

| 01-02 | A group of Doppelgangers are getting into trouble all over the city. Everyone wrongly blames the local paladin hero who the Doppelgangers have taken the form of.

| 03-04 | A Therianthrope is capturing and replacing the creatures in a certain city district with younger Therianthropes.

| 05-06 | A covey of Green Hags disguised as three humans have started a bookstore and is selling books that trap their readers in their stories.

| 07-08 | A Doppelganger has taken the place of a town’s wizard even though it can’t cast spells. Now it has to cleverly imitate the spells that the locals pay for.

| 09-10 | An Oni has taken the form of an innkeeper and is devouring the guests it deems the most “appetizing.”

| 11-12 | A Hagunemnon has appeared in a populated city and is massacring citizens like a wildfire. Everyone is in a panic but no one can determine the cause thanks to its ability to shapeshift.

| 13-14 | A Tula Hag’s mud creatures, in the shape of parents whose souls she has trapped, are going back to town and bringing their children to her river.

| 15-16 | A kraken is demanding worship from a cliff-side village of Kuo-Toa. The kraken is actually a Doppel-Gang that lives in a cave at the base of the cliff.

| 17-18 | A Monopod has accidentally gotten itself into a situation where a dwarven kingdom thinks it’s their lost king. Now it is having the dwarves raid for treasure which it hoards in its new “home.”

| 19-20 | Children have started playing relentless pranks throughout a village. When questioned, they all say they got the idea from a talking animal; really a Puca in disguise.

| 21-22 | A Doppelganger has fallen in love with a humanoid and keeps taking new forms in hopes of wooing them, but keeps getting rejected.

| 23-24 | A dwarven guide offers to guide the party through a complex cave system. In truth, it’s a Monopod that is leading them to a trap to steal their loot once they are dead.

| 25-26 | A Bouda is posing as a blacksmith in a small village. The items it makes are cursed.

| 27-28 | A damsel in distress is rescued. However, she has been replaced by a Succubus that wishes to take advantage of the damsel’s wealthy noble husband.

 | 29-30 | A hunter has offered the PCs the chance to hunt a powerful monster in return for gold. In truth, the hunter is a Weretiger that wishes to hunt them.

| 31-32 | A Sea Hag pretends to be a woman trapped on a desert island, flagging down passing ships and offering them a tropical banquet laced with Midnight Tears.

| 33-34 | A Swarm Shifter is “bugging” the offices of diplomats, and is blackmailing them using the information it has gathered.

| 35-36 | A magic item’s blueprint calls for a certain type of flower. It turns out that the flower described is actually a Blodeuwedd that knows the secrets of the item’s creation.

| 37-38 | A Doppelganger is using its talents to lift heavy pockets and get away clean.

| 39-40 | A Phasm has killed all the monsters in a dungeon in order to pretend to be all of the monsters by itself. As heroes “slay” one monster, it retreats in the form of a ghost only to impersonate the next monster that would have been in the next room.

| 41-42 | A Quasit has decided to convince young women that he is a prince disguised as a toad, and they need only to kiss him to return him to his true form.

| 43-44 | A Werebear has snuck into the ranks of a military encampment in the forest. Angry at the newcomers in its territory, it is picking off the soldiers one by one.

| 45-46 | Creatures travelling a certain road report strange surreal sightings or experiences. A Puca is to blame.

| 47-48 | A Green Slaad disguised as a dwarf mage is looking for the control gem of a Gray Slaad who hid it within a lost dwarven mine. It intends to use the gem to force the Gray Slaad to reveal its secrets of ascension.

| 49-50 | A Deva has taken the guise of a street urchin to investigate an evil cult growing in a city.

| 51-52 | A Couatl senses its impending death and seeks out another Couatl to mate with in a dangerous land. Disguised as an elven druid, it looks for heroes to help find another Couatl.

| 53-54 | An Incubus has seduced a member of the royal family and is now convincing their partner to introduce unfair laws and taxes on their people.

| 55-56 | A popular gladiator in a tusked helm is actually a Wereboar intent on spreading its curse to other pit fighters.

| 57-58 | Leshies warring over territory have led to each taking on disguises and recruiting wandering heroes to slay one another.

| 59-60 | An Aswang’s true identity has been discovered by a group of people. Now it’s trying to clean up the mess by either erasing the memories of witnesses or killing them, one by one.

| 61-62 | A Mechadaptor Titan has been built to protect a city’s vault, but the construct will no longer follow commands.

| 63-64 | A Hamrammyr has found its way near a dragon’s lair and is trying to devour more and more powerful creatures until it thinks it can kill the dragon. Powerful monsters’ corpses litter the surrounding wilderness.

| 65-66 | A Yochlol has infiltrated a group of drow rebelling against the matriarchy to tries and dismantle the rebellion from within.

| 67-68 | An Aranea seeking a certain magic item has disguised as a noble to task heroes to quest for it, promising wealth it does not possess.

| 69-70 | A Leyak is committing arson throughout a town while trying to frame other creatures for the deed.

| 71-72 | An entire forest is overrun by one gigantic subterranean fungi that is spawning Sporiforms to spread itself elsewhere. 

| 73-74 | A Doppelganger has replaced a local hero for the fame and fortune. When a great monster threatens the town, they turn to their “hero,” who wants nothing to do with it.

| 75-76 | A Silvermaster has appeared in a palace decked out with plenty of reflective decor for it to move through. Now the palace’s attendants are disappearing one by one, seemingly slain by their own weapons.

| 77-78 | A Lamia attends noble banquets disguised as a noble themselves, beguiling the rich into divulging their trade routes and shipments for it to disrupt.

| 79-80 | A mischievous fey disguised as a repairman is replacing people’s broken furniture with Mimics.

| 81-82 | A gang of Wererats are recruiting new members by spreading their curse to unwilling civilians.

| 83-84 | Imps in the form of rats are transporting hidden messages to members of a thieves guild throughout a city.

| 85-86 | A Rakshasa is selling demon-possessed magic items while disguised as a merchant.

| 87-88 | A Silver Dragon has taken up residence in a town as a kindly old woman who claims to be a historian. Their horde of artifacts is left proudly on display, with surprisingly low security.

| 89-90 | A Vampire has risen from a church’s catacombs thanks to an ancient curse. A strange mist or swarm of bats can be seen leaving the church each night at dusk and returning before each dawn.

| 91-92 | A Mimic ate a moneylender and spawned in their office. A stack of papers is a horde of Mimic Larvae.

| 93-94 | An Ultraloth has taken the guise of a guild leader for a monster hunting company. It’s tasking heroes to bring back living monsters which it then sells to evil buyers.

| 95-96 | A farmer’s wife was cursed with Werewolf lycanthropy. She tries to keep up her normal life but she awakens each morning next to dead livestock. It’s only a matter of time before she turns on her family.

| 97-98 | An ambassador has been replaced by a Doppelganger to incite war.

| 99-00 | A strange outhouse keeps appearing for those that need it. In reality, it is a Mimic stalking its prey.

[mrmcfeelme]

Depths Domain

For those priests that worship deities of the oceanic abyss, the depths domain grants the cleric power over water, darkness, and the fear of the unknown.

Domain Spells

1st: armor of agathys, cause fear

3rd: darkness, hold person

5th: fear, wall of water

7th: control water, shadow of moil

9th: commune, maelstrom

Bonus Cantrip

When you choose this domain at 1st level, you gain the Shape Water cantrip if you don’t already know it.

Kraken’s Grasp

Keep reading

[mrmcfeelme]

An ice golem, because I’m stuck home after it snowed a ton last night. At least we still have power. Like the other manuals to create golems, the Manual of Ice Golems is considered Very Rare. It follows the same time and cost as a clay golem, since they’re so similar (30 days and 65,000 gp).

The artwork is ‘Ice Golems’ by Shuty9. 

[mrmcfeelme]

To Drive the Cold Winter Away – Ideas for winter festivals

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Well, as this posts, it’ll be Christmas Eve, so it seems super appropriate to have this article about winter festivals appearing today. Although I personally celebrate Christmas, this time of year is super significant in terms of festivals. As the meme says, there are over 25 holidays in December alone, so we have ample fodder to explore!

With the world getting cold and dark, it’s no wonder that so many celebrations in winter had to do with fire, lights, and greenery. As the days counted down to the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, it seems like everything is darkening and closing down. Yule logs, burning candles, evergreen trees or boughs brought into the home…all of these symbols of life and renewal were meant to push back this darkening time and bring joy into homes that might otherwise have been quite somber.

This was a time when the Lord of a Manor would give his vassals time to themselves, as well as offering gifts of food and alms. In fact, the “Twelve Days of Christmas” were the longest holiday that was celebrated in medieval Christian lands, and most people did not work during them. Mystery plays would be put on, often by the clergy, to teach stories from the bible to people who could not read them (not because of illiteracy, but because the bible was usually only written in Latin in medieval times.) The day after the last day of Christmas was often associated with plowing, and men would race to plow the common land, seeing how many furrows they could make, helping prepare it for the planting season ahead.

Other common practices during this time were feasts, gift-giving, and holy day observances. Even today, many folks who don’t often attend a church will go during these very important days. If your campaign setting has a major religious holiday in winter, you can mimic some of these elements, having your own version of a pageant or mystery play to illuminate an important story in your campaign’s religion.

Holiday markets are very common in Europe, and they might be in your campaign as well. Perhaps merchants make one last push to travel to town and sell their wares before the snows make roads impossible. OR perhaps farmers come from their farms into “winter quarters” within the walls of town to seek safety from hungry animals. Either way, this gives the opportunities for shopping, encountering NPCs, hearing rumors, or hooking adventures when folks who are expected don’t appear.

In our own world, there are many treats associated with the holidays – roast turkey or ham, oranges, pumpkin pie, glog, latkes, rum punch, mince pies, candy canes, mithai…even the ubiquitous sugar plums! Keep this concept in mind, and decide if there’s a traditional food associated with your campaign’s winter holidays. If so, use this to drive the feeling that this is a real thing that people in your campaign world look forward to.

In some calendars, this time also brings the new year, which is often a major holiday in and of itself. In Scotland, for example, the New Year is associated with the festival of Hogmanay, and there’s great importance placed on the first guest who enters the home after the turning of the year. It becomes something of a divination, with the first person entering setting the tone for the rest of the year.

Because this is your campaign world, and D&D is a fantasy game, you can have all kinds of elements that’re particular to your world. Maybe your campaign has a “remorhaz parade” with a large, segmented, multi-dancer puppet like a Chinese lion dance. Perhaps winter is when will-o-the-wisps are more prevalent, adding a sinister echo to the candles being lit in town. Maybe everyone dreads the coming of winter, because that’s when frost giants come down from the north in longboats, and people huddle indoors in fear.

In my own campaign, winter brings the two day New Year festival. The last day of the old year is sacred to Oldorin, the god of death. According to tradition, the god himself wanders the streets of town, and people light lanterns on their porch to ask him to stay away. The first day of the New Year, however, is a lavish festival, with feasts and gift-giving.

I hope this has sparked your thinking on ways to incorporate winter festivals in your campaign. They can be a source of much role-playing and adventure hooks, and they make your world feel like a living one where time is passing by.

[mrmcfeelme]

D&D Dungeon Design: Contrast

image source: map from AD&D Tomb of Horrors module

Using Contrast

When building a dungeon for your campaign, keep contrast in mind. What is contrast? Well it’s pretty black and white: it’s just a juxtaposed difference in two things.

High contrast draws attention to those differences, each one becoming stronger. That’s why complementary colors, light and dark values, or sharp and blurry edges near one another draw your attention in a piece of artwork. If you want to draw attention to an encounter, area, or concept in your campaign or dungeon, sharpen that contrast! Deviate from the norms and standards you have presented your players, and their emotions and brains will snap alert and focus on exactly what you wanted it to.

Low contrast does a few things. First, it sets a standard of comparison. Areas of low contrast in a dungeon would be the approximate challenge rating of the dungeon, so when easy or difficult encounters are juxtaposed next to it the players realize how different it is. If the majority of rooms are symmetrical, rounded, and neat, then once that is contrasted with an asymmetrical, sharp-edged, rough room will be a huge eye-opener. Without low contrast, we cannot have high contrast to compare it to.

Low contrast in a dungeon also gives the brain a rest. After long periods of deliberation in combat or a puzzle, getting back to that low-contrast standard is a mental break an relief for a player. It’s sort of a recovery time that helps balance the pacing of a dungeon.

Lastly, low contrast creates anticipation. In our cinematic world we have been acclimated to, all of us today know how stories should work. If everything is the same for a long time, then things are more likely to change soon. This is that feeling of anticipation; we keep searching and exploring for that difference in design or mechanics and when it finally resolves we get that sweet, sweet rush of endorphins that says “yes you were right it had to change sooner or later.”

Here are some examples of how contrast can be used to psychologically guide and manipulate your players (boy that sounded a lot darker than intended):

Encounter Type

The type of encounters in your dungeon, when lined up in sequence, can be contrasted. A combat encounter has very different pacing from a puzzle or a skill check or roleplaying encounter. If you chain together a series of combat encounters, it will wear down the party and add tension and importance for whatever breaks that chain. A puzzle will suddenly carry greater weight. This contrast is sort of why in practice, when building encounters, you sprinkle a few puzzles or skill checks or roleplaying encounters throughout the combat in your dungeon. It gives players a break and lets them relieve that tension that’s built up from combat and lets them use a different part of their brain for a bit.

One the flip side, when you have a bunch of non-combat encounters chained together, it creates a sense of anticipation. D&D is a combat-focused system, so players are just waiting for something to just out at them. This holds true in “funhouse” dungeons like the Tomb of Horrors where actual combat is few and far between, but puzzles and traps abound: there is a sense of abject terror filling the dungeon as players become more and more neurotic from only solving puzzles.

Encounter Difficulty

Each encounter is always immediately compared to the encounter that came before it. You can use this to your advantage. For instance, if you want your players think your boss is even more powerful than the CR says, have them fight a few easy minions right before the boss. Suddenly, the Bone Devil hits seem far more dire and frightening compared to those Kobolds that they just faced, even if it’s normally an appropriate CR for the players. Contrast here acts as a psychological boost to the drama of a boss fight. On the other hand, a difficult encounter immediately followed by an easy encounter is a point to relax your players’ brain juices after a mechanically difficult encounter. Players need this or else they will start to feel as used and abused as their characters.

Left: Asymmetry, sharp corners, and tight spaces make players uncomfortable. Right: Symmetry, round edges, and open spaces are comforting.

Room Design

Visual design is also important (and my specialty). Visually, contrast is a means of showing the viewer what to focus on. Points of low contrast are less important while areas of high contrast are more important. I will go into further detail in a future post on guiding player movement, but for now:

Complexity: More complex rooms are more intimidating and take longer to explore while simple rooms are more approachable and take a mere moment to take in. Juxtaposing complexity of a room vs. the encounter within should ideally create balance to avoid either overwhelming players or boring them. Good practice would be putting a complex encounter in a simple room or putting a simple encounter in a complex space. This contrast will also bring attention and focus to the encounter, rather than the space (which is typically what you want). Symmetry could also be considered simple while asymmetrical would be complex.

Shape: Visually, sharp corners evoke conflict, while round corners create a sense of comfort. If you want your players to worry, add some additional angles to your room using alcoves or room dividers. Besides, adding angles to a room where a combat encounter is about to happen gives players more environment to play with. If you want your players to feel safe, like in a sanctuary area where no monsters are likely to enter, round out the room or add round objects to the room like pillars or statues. Placing these rooms next to one another will draw attention to and enhance this psychological difference.

Scale: A large room begs players to linger and explore and creates a sense of the sublime: something larger and greater than the players. An ideal place for a boss encounter. A small room or cramped space means players won’t stick around. It creates tension and unease and compels players to move forward; a good place for a trap or a surprise. When compared to a large room, the small room will look smaller and the large, larger.

[mrmcfeelme]

D&D Dungeon Design: Flow, Rhythm, and Pacing

image source: World of Warcraft instance map of the Naxxramas dungeon

My last post talked about the concepts of contrast relating to dungeon design. Here I want to explore how sequencing of contrast builds anticipation and then later resolves that anticipation. It’s basically a study in how to create drama in your dungeon. Let’s define a few things first:

Flow: The emotional movement of dungeon encounters/spaces in sequence.

Rhythm: Variation or lack thereof in the sequencing of dungeon encounters/spaces.

Pacing: The changes in tempo/emotion of the rhythm and flow of a dungeon.

When I say dungeon encounters/spaces, I mean that these can refer to encounter difficulty, encounter type, room design, monster types, or anything else in your dungeon that can be put into sequence. Use rhythm, flow, and pacing as abstract concepts when planning out all parts of your dungeon. Now let’s see how these can be used:

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Making your Players Give Up

image credit: Anne Stokes

This may be a misleading title. What I mean is how to let your players know when to give up. A far-too-powerful monster that you want them to run from as a story element. An NPC that you don’t want them to kill right away. A locked door that has a key elsewhere in the dungeon so they don’t need to spend hours trying to pick the lock. There are times when players will continue to press forward when they should go around or away. Here are some ways to nudge your players to make the right call.

Set a Precedent

Players are VERY tenacious when presented with an obstacle. Many assume that if it’s in the dungeon, then there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to handle it. Create a precedent early in your campaign that challenge rating is arbitrary. If players choose to enter a dungeon rumored to have a dragon in it at level 1, guess what? There’s probably a dragon in there and y'all are probably gonna die! To make such a precedent, don’t make the impossible obstacle an obstacle. If it’s in the way of the players’ goal, then they will try and face it. If it isn’t, then players might regard it as a sublime sight to behold, but not something they must face. Later in the campaign, when faced with a similar obstacle, they will hearken back to the previous example and can make more educated decisions. Since you have been shown to put a dragon in the level 1 dungeon, then you certainly aren’t afraid to put a Tarrasque in the level 5 dungeon. When they find this big threat, they will be more likely to run instead of assuming they can face it.

Narrate Effectively

Describe the circumstances so that it becomes apparent that this is not an obstacle they should deal with. Let’s take the example of an NPC that you don’t want the players to kill, make it obvious that the character is not a threat. Once I had to convince my players not to immediately kill an NPC that burned down their guild hall and tried to kill them with an assassin. The players, with the overwhelming force of a clay golem at their side, stormed the NPC’s mansion and broke through the guards and made their way to the character’s bedroom. Regular players would immediately kill the character, but I had set the stage that the NPC was a non-threat and may be able to give them more information.

For one thing, the mansion’s defenses were trash. Nothing had presented a difficult threat to the players. The NPC had mysterious motives and was non-confrontational when found. He was also acting strangely. This all lead to the Bard opting to cast Detect Thoughts instead of simply killing them (finding out they were actually a Doppelganger that was willing to bargain info with them). They had plenty of time and weren’t pressured into killing the person despite overwhelming passion to do so.

As the DM, you are the one who informs the players. Fill them in on the situation. Describe how impregnable a locked doorway is. Describe how powerful the enemy is. If you can do this effectively, you may not even need to use other clues to convince players to run away.

Provide an Alternative

Imagine you give the players a fork in the road and they choose to go down one path. Down this path they find a huge locked door made of reinforced steel. You don’t want them to care about this door until later but due to the dungeon layout, the door must be placed here. Normally, the players would try and force their way through using strength checks and thieves’ tools. However, there was another path that had no such door. Because of this, the players might give it one go at picking the lock or checking for traps, but the first time they fail they will likely just check out the other path instead. Sure, players are tenacious, but when you provide a clear alternative, they will take the path of least resistance. Besides, there might be another way around!

Compare a Known Value

Imagine the players have been traveling with an NPC that is maybe a level or two higher than them. Now imagine the players come face-to-face with a creature of unknown power. The PCs assume instinctively that the DM wouldn’t have given them a challenge they can’t handle. However, when the NPC is suddenly attacked by the creature and is immediately reduced to 0 HP, the players now have an idea that if that attack had hit them, they would definitely have died. The PCs will now know to run.

Give the players something that they are very familiar with to compare an obstacle’s difficulty to. At that point it becomes basic math rather than a storytelling cue.

Provide Mechanical Clues

There are several in-game mechanics that can be used to tip a player off to what you’re doing without flat-out telling them. As long as the players feel like they figured it out themselves, it won’t feel like a cop-out.

Ask players for Insight checks to roughly size-up a creature’s power level or drop hints as to how difficult the obstacle will be to overcome. I like to think of Insight checks as “common sense” checks in this way.

If players are facing a puzzle with a solution elsewhere in the dungeon, offer obviously missing pieces like a depression where an object should be placed or a broken tablet or a statue with upward palms like it was once holding something. If players suspect something is missing, they will be more apt to explore to look for the missing piece of the puzzle rather than beat a dead horse.

Players who aren’t immersed might not be able to grasp the gravity of a situation you put them in, but their characters could. If the obstacle for them to avoid is a creature, give it something like a fear aura like a dragon. Stress that it isn’t a supernatural fear, it’s just very frightening. If the characters are too afraid to face the creature, it might be a hint that the creature is very powerful. Dragons have that fear aura for a reason: they should be feared.

Use contrast to compare the obstacle with other less difficult obstacles to make the obstacle seem greater by comparison. For instance, if the players are level 1 and facing a series of kobolds and having a difficult time, when you give them a CR 6 Medusa to face they will suddenly run and hide. They might not know the exact CR of such a creature, but they would at least know the mythology and know to run from the at-will save-or-die petrifying gaze and find an alternative method of dispatching the creature.

//Fun fact, this was a real circumstance. I threw a Medusa at my level 1 group recently. I’ll admit it took them a long time before they realized that they could kill it using a reflective surface (several were scattered throughout the dungeon). One of the players even had a mirror in their starting gear and didn’t think of it until half the players were making death saves.

[mrmcfeelme]

D&D 5e Random Disease Generator

image credit: Noblecrumpet

D&D 5e is light on the number of diseases they have available, so I developed a series of tables that creates random, generic diseases. The main part of this table was actually taken from the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, but it works well for this purpose. This table isn’t particularly flavorful about the disease, so it doesn’t work well as a story element, but as a game mechanic it at least gives some more information for a random disease and lets you come up with one off-the-cuff.

The generator determines how the disease is caught and transmitted, so if it’s contagious the other players ought to be careful. Then you determine what part of the body the disease affects. Once you know that, you know what ability scores it weakens. Once you know the disease’s occurrence and severity, you can make a roll at each time interval. On a failed save, the prior-determined ability scores are affected according to the severity.

The duration of the disease determines how long it takes for the disease to pass. Some diseases will eventually kill the creature, while others might go away on their own. There is also a table for treating the disease, which here grants advantage on CON saves for the disease. You can also use it as a jumping-off point for coming up with a way to completely cure the disease, like finding rare reagents for a spell or potion or finding a unique herb. Of course, a Cure Disease spell will always come in handy.

D&D 5e Random Disease Generator

Transmission: Roll 1d6 to determine how the disease is initially caught.

1: Contact - Merely touching an infected creature can put you at risk of infection. Common for skin conditions and STDs.

2: Fluid Contact - Only contact with infected bodily fluids can spread the disease, so intercourse, blood, spit, or bodily waste can all be contagious.

3: Inhaled - Can some from being near spoiled food or festering filth or rancid corpses, and is transmitted through the breath of a diseased person. Common for throat/nose diseases.

4: Ingested - Diseased or spoiled food, usually a parasite of some sort.

5: Injury - Usually from diseased monsters like rats or otyughs.

6: Genetics - Sometimes a disease unfortunately just manifests as a result of a genetic mutation. Such a disease is always considered noncommunicable.

Contagiousness: Roll 1d6 to determine how contagious the disease is. Whenever a creature comes in contact with a disease, have them make a CON save to resist catching it. The DC is based on the contagiousness as shown below.

1: Noncommunicable - The disease is not contagious once contracted.

2-3: Weakly Contagious - CON DC 8

4-5: Somewhat Contagious - CON DC 11

6: Highly Contagious - CON DC 15

Disease Type: Roll 1d100 to determine the part of the body that the disease attacks. The ability scores that relate to the location of the disease are described are affected by the severity of the disease, as shown in the severity table.

Occurrence: Roll 1d6 to determine how frequently the disease’s effects occur. Roll a CON saving throw at each interval. On a failed save, the diseased creature is affected as determined by the severity as shown in the severity table.

1-2: Chronic - Roll a CON saving throw each week.

3-6: Acute - Roll a CON saving throw each day.

Severity: Roll 1d20 to determine the severity of the disease. The listed effect occurs with each interval listed in the Occurrence roll. This determines how the disease affects the ability scores associated with it (see Disease Type). The only exceptions are diseases of the eyes and ears.

1-2: Terminal - Each failed CON save reduces relevant ability scores by 1. When one reaches 0, you die. Eyes/Ears: You become permanently blind/deaf.

3-10: Severe - Each failed CON save reduces relevant ability scores by 1, on a successful save, heal them by 1. Eyes/Ears: You become blinded/deafened for the duration of the disease.

11-20: Mild - Each failed CON save reduces applies disadvantage on rolls involving the relevant ability that period. Eyes/Ears: You gain disadvantage on Perception checks involving sight/sound for the duration of the disease.

Duration: Roll 1d20 to determine how long it takes for the disease to pass through one’s system naturally.

1: Permanent: Make a CON saving throw

2-5: 1d6+1 Months

6-10: 1d4+1 Weeks

11-20: 1d10+1 Days

Treatment: Roll 1d12 to determine how to properly treat the disease. Each CON save is made with advantage if the creature is being treated properly between each CON save. This is assuming divine magic cannot cure the disease outright with a Cure Disease spell. A Medicine check will accurately diagnose the disease and its treatment, usually with a DC of 15 or higher.

1: Heal Naturally - rest, drink plenty of fluids, and hope it goes away on its own.

2: Herbology - mixing of medicinal herbs. Requires a WIS check with a Herbalism Kit with a DC equal to the disease’s Severity DC, otherwise it worsens the disease by acting as one failed saving throw.

3: Alchemy - Mixing of chemicals to help cure the disease. Requires an INT check with Alchemist’s Supplies with a DC equal to the disease’s Severity DC, otherwise it worsens the disease by acting as one failed saving throw.

4: Arcane Magic: Contagion - You combat the disease with one of your own; requires an Arcana check with a DC equal to the disease’s Severity DC, otherwise it worsens the disease by acting as one failed saving throw.

5: Arcane Magic: Necrotic Damage - You kill off the disease by expending at least a level 3 spell slot on a spell that deals necrotic damage; requires an Arcana check with a DC equal to the disease’s Severity DC, otherwise it harms the target.

6: Arcane Magic: Poison Damage - You kill off the disease by expending at least a level 3 spell slot on a spell that deals poison damage; requires an Arcana check with a DC equal to the disease’s Severity DC, otherwise it harms the target.

7: Divine Magic: Lesser Restoration

8: Divine Magic: Greater Restoration

9: Divine Magic: Cure Wounds

10: Divine Magic: Remove Curse

11: Divine Magic: Protection from Poison

12: Surgery - Requires a Medicine check to perform with a DC of about 15 if external or at least 20 if internal. A failed save worsens the disease by acting as one failed saving throw.

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More Cursemark Tomes, because I really like them. Oh, and a message about saving throws and cursemarks. I originally intended for them to be saving throw based, and then conveniently forgot to include that.

[mrmcfeelme]

Replace every monster in the monster manual with lobsters but keep the different stat blocks.

So a lobster with the stats and abilities of an ogre, or a young green dragon, or a lich! Keep your players guessing! Only consistent thing is they’re all lobster sized!

[mrmcfeelme]

First of the undead rulers, Kadir Maw, King of the Vampires. Pretty happy with how he turned out. Hope you enjoy! Ko-Fi 👍

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It Feels So Right - Capturing the essence of a setting without worrying about the specifics

Hullo, Gentle Readers. This week’s Question from a Denizen is a little different. I’ve had a few folks ask me about mixing D&D with various video game worlds, including Fallout and Mass Effect. I don’t feel qualified to specifically speak about either of those things, because, although I’ve watched my husband play them, I’ve never played them myself. I think they’re fascinating, compelling worlds, but I don’t know the ins and outs of them so well that I’d feel comfortable saying, “Here’s how you can simulate VATS” or “Here’s how biopics should work.”

(As an aside, as much as I love D&D, if I were going to run a game in a genre like the above, I would probably look at other systems. There are plenty of hard sci-fi and post-apocalyptic games out there that have systems specifically for the various needs of those kinds of games. A game like Traveller, Stars Without Number, or Starfinder would be good for Mass Effect, and games like Gamma World, After the Bomb, and Twilight 2000 are out there for Fallout type settings.)

Instead of addressing adapting those specific settings, I’m going to talk about what I think is the more important consideration when doing an adaptation of this nature - getting the *feel* of the setting right.

When D&D went from 3rd edition to 4th edition, Wizards of the Coast offered some incredibly useful advice. They essentially said, “If you’re going to convert a campaign from edition to edition, don’t worry too much about the specific mechanical elements. Instead, concentrate on finding a way to make your character *feel* the same as they did.” We didn’t need to worry about this, because I wrapped my 3rd edition game a year or so into 4th edition’s release. When I converted my Shattered Pact campaign from 4th edition to 5E, however, I used this same advice to great effect. For example, our party’s Warden became an Oath of the Ancients Paladin, because that’s what felt the closest in terms of theme and mechanics.

Likewise, when you’re trying to evoke a specific genre or setting in a game, it’s more important to capture the feel without overly getting bogged down on the specifics. As a whole, as I understand it, the VATS system in Fallout helps you target a specific part of the creature you’re aiming at in order to concentrate on weaker areas. This would be super easy to simulate in D&D. Give every player a certain number of “VATS” points that recharge through a Short Rest. Each time a player spends a VATS point, give them Advantage on an attack. Since D&D doesn’t have a “called shot” or “hit location” system (unless you want to make one), this would be the easiest way to simulate this increased accuracy.

Let’s say instead that you wanted to adapt a system like Final Fantasy’s “Materia” system for your game. At its core, materia is a system where items can be added to weapons to empower them and to give them various mechanical advantages. Because D&D doesn’t have a combat system as granular as Final Fantasy, there are fewer kinds of advantages that could be granted, and they’d tend to come in larger chunks. You could break this down into things like “to hit bonus”, “damage bonus”, and “damage type”. If you granted each weapon 3 slots, you could then give out materia as treasure, or let them gather materia from the weapons of enemies and apply it to their own. Someone could then have, for example, a sword that’s +1 to hit, +2 on damage, and does fire damage. If they then found an ice materia, they could pass the fire materia from their sword to someone else and do ice instead. This would give the players a lot of flexibility on magical weapons and capture the essence of the Final Fantasy system without making a ton of mechanical changes to D&D.

If I were going to adapt a system into D&D, my first step would be to sit down with a notebook and write down what I thought the game would need to have the right feel. For example, if I wanted to adapt Star Wars to D&D (I don’t…Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPGs are incredible), I would make some notes about what I think makes Star Wars feel like Star Wars. They might read:

- Jedi

- Droids

- Lots of alien races

- Lightsabers

- Blasters

- The Force

- Starships

Obviously there’s far more than this, but this is where I would start. Jedi feel an awful lot like the playtest Mystic class, so I might just do that. The Dungeon Master’s Guide offers rules for various laser weapons, so that’s good for blasters. For combat droids, there are always the Warforged from Eberron. Magic swords work well for Lightsabers…maybe all Jedi carry a sword that acts like a Vorpal Sword (but without the +3 magical bonus and giving the option to lop off arms, legs, etc.) I can use various races and monsters to be the creatures of D&D. Maybe Wookiees are Bugbears, and Jawas are kobolds, for example.

The two big tricky ones are Starships and the Force. I’d look at D&D’s vehicles rules (particularly vehicle combat) for inspiration and build a new system based on those for spaceship combat. For the Force, I’d want to create a kind of “Dark Side” system to represent the ever-present possibility of giving in to the Dark Side. Maybe it would be a system where you could take Advantage on rolls when you used the Dark Side, but at the cost of accumulating Corruption points that would slowly affect you in sinister ways until you fully gave in and became an NPC villain.

By concentrating more on feel vs mechanics, I free myself up to worry more about the story and flavor of the game. By doing so, I believe I could adapt about any genre or world to the D&D system. My one caveat is that, while D&D is an awesomely flexible system, there are some damned good systems out there that were written with the sole purpose of re-creating various fantasy and sci-If worlds to play in. A game made specifically to simulate something is often better than a D&D adaptation, because D&D was meant to capture a very specific genre - epic fantasy.

For example, the folks who created The One Ring RPG did a marvelous job of creating a standalone RPG that captures the flavor of role-playing in Middle-Earth. They also created Adventures in Middle-Earth, which allows for using the D&D rules instead. I’ve got both, and I’d be much more likely to run The One Ring if I wanted to run a game in Middle-Earth. (But that won’t stop me from stealing all kinds of stuff from Adventures in Middle-Earth for my D&D games.)

In closing, concentrate more on the feel of things when you’re doing an adaptation than in the nitty-gritty of the original game’s mechanics. And if there’s a game out there written for the world you’re interested in, take a look. You might find that there’s no need for you to reinvent the wheel. Whichever you pick, however, have happy gaming!

(As an addendum, when doing some research for this article, I found this link to Geek & Sundry…might be of interest to some folks!)

[mrmcfeelme]

Hi guys! I’ve decided to add more complex shading and illustrations to my commission options! n.n Please share and reblog!