#3E-Social

[aqours]

3E Ireena: Who are you? 5E Ireena: I'm you but weaker. 3E Ireena: 5E Ireena: 3E Ireena: Take me to the castle right now so I can kick his fucking undead ass right this instant.

[twotommyolivers]

Rolling up an Exalted 3E character who is mostly Chloe Bourgeois at Beacon Academy (so Coco I guess? I don't watch) and if it wasn't for already existing lore I'd be so tempted for her to try and get over (and fail) a sobriquet of The Scarlet Lady.

[thequicksilverfox]

Planning an Exalted campaign has me absolutely DRIPPING with blorbos. I've got so gottdamb many fucked up little bitches scrambling around in my brain to the tunes of various songs I use for inspiration. You dont even know. You dont even KNOW. Ask me about my exalted oc's. Unless you're in my campaign. YOU will find out soon enough.

[igorlevchenko-blog]

Morrowind: The Burden of Nerevarine

Somewhere in vicinity of Dagoth Ur, the Building. Year 3E 427

P.S: This picture is in no way a condonation of false prophecy in question. Morrowind sure does need saving, but not through the dint of exertion of some reincarnated elven superhero. That's just childish.

P.P.S: There are four bodegas in Balmora, but only one bookshop. Try Azura-Plot your way out of that social failure.

[magical-grrrl-mavis]

Games you can play instead of D&D

Pathfinder/Pathfinder 2e: Same concept as D&D but by a better company. You are an adventurer in a high fantasy setting. Character creation combines a race and class.

Mutants and Masterminds 3e: Action-focused superhero RPG, uses starting points to buy equipment and skills and build powers by combining effects. Character creation can take a bit to get used to but there are many sourcebooks with helpful examples to use, there are countless pre-built characters online, and a slew of official books containing just about every DC Comics character you can think of to play and interact with.

Vampire: the Masquerade: You are a vampire in the shadowy gothic underbelly of modern society, struggling against any number of threats, kindred or otherwise, while trying to keep the existence of vampires a secret and struggle against your own bestial nature. Will you retain your humanity? Or give in to the beast. High focus on roleplay and social intrigue.

Monster of the Week: A rules-light game based on the Powered By the Apocalypse system that recreates the experience of shows like Buffy, Supernatural, X-Files and Warehouse 13. You play as a Hunter investigationg supernatural mysteries and fighting monsters. Player characters are based on archetypes from this genre (Professional, Monstrous, Spell-Slinger etc) (this one's my favorite! :D)

Masks: A New Generation: Play as a young superhero finding their place in the world. The game creates a coming-of-age story as you grow and change in response to your actions and the people and events around you. Character creation reflects this by focusing on your characters personality, struggles and strengths while being more loose about your actual powers.

Girl by Moonlight: Magical Girls (boys, enbies etc) through a queer lense. You play a magical guardian grappling with destiny, love and the heartbreaking duality between who you are and who the world says you are. Split between four genres you can choose from-classic magical girls, dark magical girls, psychological conspiracy and... mecha. I guess. (I'm gonna be honest I haven't looked super deep into those last two yet). Characters are based on archetypes from magical girl stories, some with very obvious inspirations.

Scum and Villainy: Play as a roguish outlaw in a galactic society run by an oppressive force. You are the Han Solo of this story, smuggling and doing crimes and mercenary work aboard your own starship.

Killer Ratings: You and the other players are the insufferable cast of a cheap ghost-hunting show and have found yourselves in over your heads as you've wandered into an actual haunted location. Play as you explore the site and are most likely taken out one-by-one, returning as vengeful spirits to further terrorize your former cast-mates.

[ladiemars]

I love Nor and her giant sad puppy eyes, I would love to know more about her

thank you!! have a hastily drawn nor ft. her giant sad sopping wet puppy eyes:

+ a giant nor lore dump below the cut જ⁀➴

➸ her whole character was inspired by that one textpost that’s like, “characters with both the abject terror and desperation of an animal that knows it is cornered and destined to be eaten. you just can't get that kind of angst out a successful hunter” and this quote by james harriet: “if having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”

➸ she’s is the product of a union between a drow woman and a deep imaskari man. for those who don’t know, the deep imaskari are a human subrace (from 3e) that have stone-like skin and hair that’s white or black. because that’s nor’s human half, most people assume she’s completely drow upon meeting her, since did not inherit any features from her father that would make her look less like her drow mother.

➸ the deep imaskari live longer than other humans—up to 550 years—so nor ages at a rate more akin to drow and elves than half-elves or humans. nor believes she’s currently around seventy years old, though she could be off by a decade or two. she’s not sure when she was born and has long periods without human contact. she really isn’t sure how much time has passed.

➸ she has no given name, but eventually ended up going by the name ratcatcher, which is what the locals in baldur’s gate called her. halsin is the one who names her nor shortly after they meet, which is the elven word for “passion” and also “run.”

➸ this excerpt from one of my fics sums up her urchin/orphan to urban ranger/beastmaster pipeline pretty well:

➸ around the age of twenty, nor grew to resent humanity so much that she decided to leave baldur’s gate and live in the forest with only animals for company for half a century. (this is when she lost track of time completely.) in the forest, she became an expert in survival, attuning her ears to the slightest twitch in the air, to every noise and smell. she lived in a cave and slept curled up beside velvet on a bed of willow leaves. the events of baldur’s gate 3 is the first time in decades that she’s had social interaction.. and it shows.

➸ she has a little wolfdog companion named velvet. (i’ve drawn him and her and halsin and scratch here). he was another half-breed who didn’t quite being anywhere, so they bonded very deeply. (fun fact: velvet killed the elder brain in my first playthrough as nor. he’s a legend in faerun now.)

➸ laezel is her bestie. they are ride or die. neither of them understand a damn thing about faerun or its inhabitants. but that also means they don’t judge each other for anything, cause they both just kind of assume what the other is doing is normal

➸ a big part of her character is her dynamic with the emperor. she gets manipulated by him so bad because he tells her everything a forgotten, unloved creature wants to hear: i need you, i’ll protect you, you’re not like other people, we’re a team, you can trust me, i want you to join me, you aren’t alone. it’s not until he begins to pressure and compel her to become illithid against her will she starts to fear him and his power over her, and after certain revelations she realizes he was using her and turns on him altogether.

➸ obviously she romances halsin. i love the dynamic of beastmaster/druid. they’re extremely well suited because they’re both such inherently good people and they bond a lot over their love for nature. they are also the only two people who can really understand each other’s animalistic quirks.

i’ve written some fics with her that you can read here if you’re interested. >:3c

[thydungeongal]

"Rollplay vs roleplay" started to be a big thing people talked about mostly with the advent of 3rd edition d&d and characters having social skills that you would roll for. Previously, although ad&d 2e included some mechanical use for charisma outside of "how many followers can be attracted," social interactions were generally acted out by the players, maybe using the stats of the character as a guide.

But when you could roll for "persuasion" or "deception," a chunk of players called that "roll-playing," based on the idea that if you could just roll to see how charming your character was, you weren't actually deciding anything about your character

Yeah, that's definitely when I personally started seeing the dichotomy pop up in those exact terms, and I do feel that 3e was the time it suddenly became a big, contentious topic within D&D. Like, as stated, the argument has been around for a long time, but I do think it entered the mainstream with 3e, since it was the big return of D&D to absolute market supremacy but also the one edition of D&D that codified social mechanics.

Anyway, it's really funny to me that the arguments that have been used to denigrate D&D in general have since become, like, a feature of D&D's internal community discourse. Like, we the players of the dungeon game feel very strongly about the fact that dungeons and combat are bad for roleplaying and there should be none of those in real roleplaying games,

[lazytoufu]

“Class, this is Asano Gakushuu-kun, he’s transferring into E class as of today.” The agent introduced, and Gakushuu bowed politely.

The secret version of dear 3E Shuu!

Kitty Cat and 3-E ver.

I have been thinking about it while putting too many colouring layers. His smile could really thinking to a different way just about the light and effect. Also I can’t find the author social acc (if anyone knows pls message me)

here’s the work💜

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33254509?view_full_work=true

[fantasyfantasygames]

Beyond the Shield of Time

Beyond the Shield of Time, Titania, 2005

If you own entirely too many RPGs, Beyond the Shield of Time (BtSoT) wants to leverage that.

The basic premise goes like this: Someone is stealing major artifacts from across a number of worlds. Your characters have been drawn into their "slipstream", pulled from their own world into a new one where the thief is their only way home. The game hops from world to world as you track down the villain, they escape you, you fall through another portal, and you slowly gain what you need to get ahead of them. Eventually, you confront them and their secret is revealed, and the game ends soon thereafter.

The coolest and most difficult part of BtSoT is that it's not a game. It's a framework for running a campaign across multiple games. They provide a semi-universal character description template that works across a wide variety of fantasy RPGs, and you reference that in order to make new characters in each world you fall into. Your characters are changed in the process - someone built as an assassin in Burning Wheel might end up as a bard in Dark Sun D&D, because that's the role that bards have in that setting.

BtSoT has guidelines for conversion from their template into D&D (Rules Cyclopedia, 2e, and 3e), Burning Wheel, Dark Hammer, MERP, WFRP 1e, GURPS, HERO, and a handful of others. There are examples of suitable artifacts in each one, from the Silmarils to the Eye of Vecna. It's a shame Glasswork wasn't published for another two years, because it would have been a perfect world to pop through. It has recommendations for what other games will work well with this system and which won't. I appreciate that BtSoT isn't one of those books that claims to be universal even within the fantasy genre. For instance, it excludes Exalted on purpose rather than by accident, for reasons of power level. It's going to be a lot of work between sessions, but I feel like it would be a hell of a cool game. Then again, I'm the guy who's reviewed almost 100 games so far, so, grain of salt.

The art is fairly good. I think it might be Storn? There's more than one piece with the heroes walking through a portal and coming out changed, with two different worlds on the opposing sides of the page. There's another that's very reminiscent of the "Frodo reaching for the ring" image, but with a Dark Sun halfling reaching for what is still clearly the One Ring.

I feel like the reveal of the secret doesn't 100% work any more. Social values and expectations have changed since 2001, and people are familiar with different cultural touchstones. Much as I love the Amber setting (which is half of the reveal), I'd probably want to rewrite the ending for a more modern audience.

Titania was one of the first game designers to publish as herself (or even a pseudonym) rather than as a company name. Even Monte Cook was still "Monte Cook Games" rather than just his name. Now that's basically the standard if you're in the younger bracket of game designers. There were some rumors that Titania left the industry, but there have been some more recent books with her trademark writing style, so I think she's still out there somewhere.

[abracadav-r]

since i don't want to shit up op's tags: last post comments!

that post really focuses on what i like about the drizzt novels. when i was talking about them to dan and in context of felyn's relations with bregan, she was surprised jax wasn't a follower of vhaeraun. by now i forget exactly what i said during that conversation, but it focused on the fact that i think ra's writing in that series is intended to expand on the question of nature-vs-nurture in the species.

admittedly, i am entirely not up to date with the books, but i did read most of the older ones up to 3e a VERY long time ago and the overarching theme i got from them is that he starts off with a guy who hasn't gotten all the worst aspects of the species' socialization. he has people around him, even underground, that are not as terrible as they could be and can be contrasted against those who are. when he flees, he then has support on the surface. then it shifts to another guy, this time more mired in the city. from the big family. born with a blessing from the spider queen, even! and despite not having some of the things the first guy had access to, he still finds his own path. he too, adapts based on the people around him and the decision without reassurance from a god that things can be different. he chooses to be different, just like the first guy did.

and now, we turn to a guy related to the second one, who has done some genuinely terrible things. he's enabled the power structures of the city. done his part to enforce it, top down. he made his choices to be part of it, even when offered other choices. but now, he's removed from that environment. can he make different choices too, even after hundreds of years? could his mother, who might be described as the lynchpin of the entire system, the one who crafted it, begin to make diifferent choices? will everyone make those choices, if they're difficult? if there isn't any god to promise them a reward for all the pain and hardship? could anyone do this, actually?

[bethanythebogwitch]

Bee people in my D&D world

The Abeil are an obscure race of bee people from D&D 3e that I decided to make playable in my world and give some worldbuilding and lore expansion to. Stats at the bottom.

The Abeil line in the continent of Rakada, which was originally part of its own planet before a magical catastrophe ripped a piece of it off of its world and deposited on my main campaign world. The piece that ended up on my world, the Lost World of Alvestra, is only a fragment of the original Rakada, whose fate remains unknown. The region of Rakada the Abeil originate from is known in Rakadan as N’Zar NiTotalu-i (N'Zar = land, Totalu = bones, i as a suffix = people, also seen in the Tabaxi (cat people) and Tlincalli (scorpion people), and Ni as a prefix = without) and in common as the Land of the Boneless People, for its primary occupants are the Abeil and the Kreen, both of which have exoskeletons instead of endoskeletons.

The Abeil mostly inhabit the outskirts of the Land of the Boneless People where rain is abundant, massive flowers grow, and the mighty wasp dragons dwell. They avoid the arid interior of the region, which is inhospitable to them and the homeland of the Kreen. An abeil resembles a humanoid bee, with a very human or elf-like upper body and face (though their eyes are compound and they have antennae). Their lower bodies are much more insect-like, with four narrow legs and a curved, flexible abdomen that ends in a venomous stinger. Two pairs of translucent wings emerge from their upper backs and their hand have three fingers and a thumb. The wings allow flight and can produce a droning noise that triggers drowsiness and unconsciousness in those that hear it.

Abeil are innately social beings, even moreso than other sapient species. While a human or tabaxi could shun company and go become a lone wolf, the Abeil are so innately social that being alone is extremely stressful to them. Lone Abeil will instinctively seek company and become highly attached to whoever they find. They are also biologically programmed to place the needs of the group over the needs of the individual. This is not to say that individualism is shunned, it is just a secondary priority to the health of the group. There are Abeil artists, Abeil games, and other things that do not directly contribute to the survival of the group, they are just not as heavily emphasized as in the societies of other species. Abeil are raised to understand that they are all part of the whole that is the community and everyone needs to support each other. Abeil build hive cities with hexagonal districts organized by what purpose they serve. These cities can be very difficult to navigate for members of flightless species, so there is usually at least one district built for trade and diplomacy with outsiders that is built accordingly. Smaller outlying communities such as farming or mining villages help support the cities. Trade with the other residents of Rakada (and more recently, Alvestra) is common. As with the other inhabitants of the Land of the Boneless People, Abeil tame and domesticate native massive bugs, using huge beetles as beasts of burden, dragonflies as mounts, and cat-sized isopods as pets.

Like the bees they resemble, Abeil have distinct castes: queens, soldiers, and vassals. Queens are always female, but soldiers and vassals may be of either sex. Queens are also not the only Abeil to reproduce, all Abeil can. An individual hive city will usually have one queen, with 1/3rd of the population being soldiers and the rest being vassals. The primary visual difference is that soldiers stand about about a head taller than queens, who stand about half a head taller than vassals. Queens act as the spiritual and authoritative leaders of their hive cities, usually with a council of advisors from the other sects. Soldiers are bred to take up martial roles as the warriors that defend the hive and scout out into unclaimed territory. Vassals fill all other roles, from laborers to traders to artists to scholars to clergy and everything in between.

Abeil are born as larvae who hatch from eggs. All larvae will grow into vassals unless fed a special diet. Abeil larvae are raised communally in nurseries and spend about a year as large grubs before pupating and emerging six months later as a young adult. The tenders of the nurseries will select the largest and most aggressive larvae to be fed the diet to become soldiers. When they finish pupating, the young Abeil are sent off to learn the tools of their future profession based on their temperament and the hive's needs. For example, an inquisitive Abeil may be sent to become a scholar and if their is a shortage of farmers, young Abeil will be sent to fill those ranks. There is usually only one queen, but if a hive city is growing too large, new queens will be raised and sent out with a portion of the population to found a new hive city elsewhere. If new queens are needed, the current queen (or council of advisors if the queen dies) will visit the nursery and take the most promising larva with them back to the palace. This larva will be fed a special diet of royal jelly that triggers maturation into a queen. This young queen will then be trained by the current queen or advisors in the skilled needed to become a leader.

As with most of the sapient species of Rakada, the Abeil claim to have been created by one of the divine Animal Lords, the Bee Lord in their case. As with the other Animal Lords, the bee lord has many aspects or masks, each of which can be thought of as its own god while also being part of the greater whole. The Abeil worship the various masks of the Bee Lord, with the most widely-worshiped one being known as the Queen of Queens, the Lawful Neutral mask of order, leadership, and society.

The Abeil are generally expansionist and their hive cities can be found in most of the wetter, coastal regions of the Land of the Boneless People. Attempts to expand into the arid inner regions of the region have mostly been thwarted by the native Kreen, leading to a great deal of animosity between the races. So far, political infighting between hive cities and the threat of retaliation by Thri- and Tohr-Kreen have prevented attempts to expand hive cities into the southern Tabaxi lands, but this state of affairs may not last long. There is no central government for the Abeil, each hive city acts as an independent, self-governing city-state. Relations between the hive cities are complex, with rivalries and alliances. In addition, hives may form alliances or trade agreements with the Tabaxi to the south or (in more recent years) Alvestrans. In particular, Abeil-produced honey is considered a delicacy in Tabaxi lands and fetches a high price.

Homebrew Abeil race stats for 5e (note: this has not been playtested)

ASI: +2, +1 or +1, +1, +1

Size: medium

Speed: 30 ft. Have a flying speed equal to walking speed, but cannot use this speed if wearing medium or heavy armor

Languages: common and 1 other

Sting: you have a stinger which counts as a natural weapon with the finesse property with which you are proficient. When you make an unarmed attack, you can choose to deal 1D4 piercing damage. When you successfully attack a creature with your stinger, you can force them to make a constitution saving throw with a DC equal to 11 + your proficiency modifier. On a failure, the creature takes 2d8 poison damage and is poisoned until the end of your next turn. On a success, the creature takes half damage and is not poisoned. You may use this ability a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all uses when you finish a long rest.

Drone: you can use your wings to create a horrible, droning noise that can lull creatures who hear it into a deep sleep. As an action, you can force every creature within a 15 ft sphere centered on yourself that can hear you to make a wisdom saving throw (DC 11 + your proficiency modifier). Any creature that fails this check falls asleep for one hour or until they take damage or another creature takes its action to rouse them. Once you use this feature you may not use it again until you take a long rest. 

Caste: Abeil are born into one of three castes, which shape their physical features. When you choose this race, pick one of the following options:

Vassal: you gain proficiency with one set of artisans tools of your choice and one skill proficiency of your choice, picking from history, religion, medicine, or persuasion. 

Soldier: you gain proficiency in one weapon or set of armor of your choice and one skill proficiency of your choice, picking from athletics, acrobatics, survival, or medicine.

Queen: you gain proficiency in one weapon or set of tools of your choice and one skill of your choice, picking from history, persuasion, intimidation, or deception.

[itspapaz94]

Dump of the sketches of all the extraplanar entity with a name I put into the setting of my new campaign.

Fluff: While most people will call them demons, they define themselves as Vestiges and a skilled summoner who knows their names can call them from the Worlds Beyond. They talk of their distant world as an ended one with them as its sole survivors, but the apocalypse happened long before humans appeared in the real world. It is unclear what this means since it's apparently difficult for them to grasp concept like life and death and some scholars say that they talk in metaphores or that they cannot be trusted at all. They apparently have a system of social classes that divides them and are binded by language: they cannot act in the real world without a pact with an entity from the real world, even if the strongest of them can alter these rules slightly.

A little extra: they are all designed by me, but one of them follows the description of a D&D 3e splatbook (more or less)