#and then later pathfinder

[inbabylontheywept]

Babylon's 6 D&D Tips

I DM’d D&D for ten years. I started in middle school, and I kept it up until my sophomore year of college. This is my mini-guide for what the game is, what it isn’t, and how to play it well. So. From the top.

Tip 1: Don't make your main storyline time dependent. 

D&D is an amazing open-world experience. You can pick at any detail. Nothing is a non-interactable part of the scenery. If there’s a sewer manhole, you can lift it up and climb down. If there’s a house, you can look inside and rob it. If there’s an NPC that you meet at the market, you can follow them home and see their whole life. Their parents, or their partner, their trade - all of it. It will be made up on the fly by some sort of reasonably skilled improv speaker, but it will also exist after that. That’s how the world is built. That’s the secret sauce that makes D&D beautiful.

If your plotline is too urgent, it kills those opportunities. The worst example of this that I have isn’t even from D&D, but FO4. The game is clearly built around exploration and adventure. The plot is built around rescuing your kidnapped baby. There’s a lot of tension between those goals. The plot does not work with the game mechanics, and it's really, really, jarring.

Be wary of doing that. It's surprisingly easy.

Tip 2: Don't set up giant, epic, fantasy battles between multiple armies. 

D&D is not a very good epic-battle simulator. There are games that have streamlined combat mechanics to allow for whole armies to fight, but D&D is very detail oriented, and trying to control too many people at once makes combat slow to a crawl. That very creative DM who can tell you every detail of an NPC’s life is also just not very good at multitasking. 

If you really, really want to - fine. But you should be ignoring standard mechanics when you do so. Move to a “cinematic mode” and just go by vibes. And generally, take a moment to “get” the game before modifying it. If the kind of plot you really want is urgent, and involves epic scale armies, maybe look into different RPG systems. D&D specializes in exploration and small, focused parties. Using it for things outside of that is kind of like hitting nails with a wrench. 

Tip 3: Don't prepare your plot like it's a book. Kill your lore codex. 

D&D is a collaborative storytelling adventure. That's the secret sauce. Writing out codexes and trying to crystallize the world before you start playing ruins the collaborative element. It’s genuinely better if you build as you go. It lets your players give input. And it saves you a lot of time. Why bother trying to write up who the Mayor of Snoresville is if there’s a good chance your party never even talks to him?  

(I would also apply this to writing in general. If you want to write all of your world's lore before starting your book, you'll never start your book. And you'll go crazy. Fear the lore codex.)

Tip 4: Prepare your combats and your NPCS rigorously, but generically. 

This ties in to Tip 3. If you spend a lot of time preparing the lore of the Bandit Leader of Redgrove, things like his family history, or his trauma, or his deep-down character motivations, and then the party never goes to Redgrove, it all goes to waste. D&D evolves rapidly and chaotically, so building things in a modular, reusable way really pays off. 

So. I tend to have two big pools for my NPC work. One is a character sheet pool. I keep it small and focused. I can generalize most melee classes ahead of time, so I can have an Archer, a Brawler, a Tank, and some Generalist Infantry. That’s like, 80% of your martial enemies, done. Spellcasters are a bigger pain in the ass, but a few pre-mades thrown into a campaign pays off if you know your themes. If you’re dealing with a death cult, make some death clerics. A dragon will probably have sorcerer acolytes. 

My second pool is a pool of character mannerisms. Some should absolutely be practiced ahead of time. Figure out what mannerisms make your villain really pop. And if the party skips that villain, just move those mannerisms to some new guy down the line and you’ll still be fine. Nothing wasted. A lot of the mannerisms are going to be picked with no heads up when the party does something weird, like following a random merchant around for a few days just to see how they live. You can get through almost all of those extremely well with just variations on the 4 humors, the 3 socioeconomic classes, and regional dialects.

Tip 5: Give your players permission to inject themselves into the world. 

It is common for people to over-formalize the rules and responsibilities of “being a player” vs. “being a DM.” I think the most common way to phrase it is something like “The Players are in charge of their characters and their backstories, the DM is responsible for the worlds and its NPCs, and both need to stay in their lanes.”

It’s isn't just better to mix it, it's necessary.

Failing to share these roles forces the world to exist in a crystallized state before the campaign even starts - at least if you want to integrate backstories into the plot. Groups that fail to do this can often feel like the characters were born the day the campaign began, and did nothing interesting beforehand. 

So, for DMs: Don’t be afraid of trying to inject NPCs and details of this world into your player's past. Imagine that your party rogue goes into a town and finds a fence for selling some stolen trinkets. Maybe, have the fence recognize the rogue. “Gods of fire, it’s McClellan. I haven’t thought about you since the candy-rat incident. You took a real beating making sure I got away that day. Glad to finally have a chance to pay you back!” 

Now, the rogue still has a choice here. They can say something like “Ah, this guy is mistaking me for someone else, but I can roll with it to get a better deal.” It’s their character, and their choice. But they can also go, hey, I do know this guy. I was apparently part of something called “The candy-rat incident.” I can decide how I know this guy, and where, and for how long, and what that incident was. That’s not less control - that’s more! 

And for players: Don’t be afraid of injecting your past into the world. Maybe you’re a fighter in a wartorn setting and you run into a group of deserters robbing refugees by the roadside. The DM has clearly planned this as some vindication, some enemies you get to thrash without feeling bad. But you have different plans. You take your helmet off, and you look the deserter’s leader in the face, and you say ��Jack, you saved my life back on Stone Ridge. You were a good man once. You could be one again. Ride with us.” 

Now that's powerful stuff. Do you even know what Stone Ridge is? Hell no. Are you gonna? Hell yeah. And what you just did was way better than the DMs plan of bonking bad guys to feel good. You changed the writing of the world, commandeered an NPC, and made the whole encounter far more interesting.  

Tip 6: Ignore all portrayals of D&D in the media. 

The best players that I get are people with no experience with D&D of any kind. The second best are those that are willing to drop their preconceptions at the door and just play. The worst are people that have seen D&D portrayed somewhere and are insistent on imitating the portrayal. The exact nature of the failure varies - at worst, they’ve seen some kind of tongue-in-cheek parody, like order of the stick, and then hyperfocused on all the worst parodied aspects as the whole point of the game. D&D is not about outsmarting the mechanics (which is trivially easy, and largely pointless - it just makes your own storytelling less fun), nor is about turning everything into shallow tropes about Horny Bards and Dumb Fighters and Insufferable Paladins. At best, they’ll have seen some kind of ultra-cinematic example of D&D played on a podcast, where the DM has a theatre degree and ever party member is a professional actor. Those people are nice, but they often have unrealistic expectations.

[mayasaura]

Guessing Dungeon Meshi character classes, just for fun! Marcille is obviously a wizard, and Chilchuck is a rogue. Senshi seems to be a fighter with one (1) level in ranger, favored terrain: dungeon. Falin functions as a cleric, but in a system without divine patrons.

Laios..... Laios is a paladin, but he's a pathfinder paladin. A tank with some limited healing capability. All his points slam dunked into animal handling to compensate for his charisma modifier.

[bite-the-bloody-hand]

In the dream, a great danger was looming over you. But I was there for you, ready to help you no matter what.

After about 100 hours of work, it's finally done! Full version feat. Non-explicit nudity & my thoughts on the piece under the cut.

Ah, I'm very happy with how this turned out. There are more things I would have liked to do, but are a little beyond my skillset for right now.

I wanted to capture the post Not-A-Date dream if you're really going for that True Love ending. The sense of being trapped by an unseen force; the sense of being together but still yearning. Daeran somewhat adrift, yet still clinging to his lover. The symbolic halos in the background eclipse together, enhancing the light between them. Meanwhile the presence of The Other seeps into everything, poisoning what should be a pleasant dream into a nightmare.

I wanted to keep their poses just ambiguous enough that you can't tell if they're laying in bed or dancing; I think I managed! I hope I did anyway, lol.

Basically I wanted to be self indulgent, so I was :3. To everyone's benefit, I think.

[nvmbersix]

i'm sorry pathfinder but your parents are stupid

[sadruru]

I drew Camellia for my friend for his birthday. It was very beautiful 🌺

[sualne]

post game clothes!

[agathaarts]

I gotta level with y'all, folks. I was like "wow, Baldric's exactly my type!" and then I was like "wow, Tannhauser's exactly my type!" and

Victrix is a fucking laser-targeted tactical nuke to the part of my brain that's activated by mean fucked-up bitches. I gotta figure out how I want to draw her, how to really push her proportions to be a little off in the best way.

Everyone send prayers to my husband for getting a lot of messages like this lately.

[crab-milk]

sporting some cloud dragon-hide armor :)

[wingedcatastrophe]

Welcome aboard The Pathfinder! Come in, enjoy the new ship smell, find your quarters and settle in! We'll be taking off soon, off to see the wonders of the universe up close and personal!

Hello, hello! I have learned that I very much vibe more with a smaller writing server community than I do in larger group servers, but have also not had much luck with finding smaller servers that remain active. So! I decided to make one of my own to go with the ones I have found to vibe in.

About the Community:

The Pathfinder, while sci-fi themed, is not a sci-fi only community! You're welcome to join us no matter what genre you write. I just really love sci-fi stuff lol

To keep to the smaller community size, I'll be limiting this to a maximum of 15 members.

The community will be an 21+ only community! This is just my personal comfort, sorry.

I love love love word crawls. There will likely be regular word crawls ran in server, but participation in them will never be mandatory.

The core of this is just to have a small group of writers who want to talk with each other and hype each other up as we all work on our projects. Writing is hard, life is hard, so let's make it a little less hard by helping each other out!

Sounds like something you want in on? Shoot me a message or an ask! I look forward to talking with you more!

[honourablejester]

Sticking with Pathfinder for another minute:

Pathfinder Deity Spotlight: Cayden Cailean

Once a mortal human, Cayden Cailean is now one the few deities known as the Ascended. In his mortal years, Cayden was a sellsword of no small fame, known for his boisterous manner, skill with a blade, and fearless resolve. During a particularly rowdy night of drinking, a series of escalating dares led the wandering mercenary to attempt the Test of the Starstone. He emerged from the Starstone Cathedral 3 days later, laughing, a fully realized god. Divine responsibility did little to change Cayden’s attitude from what it was in his mortal life. He continues to crave adventure, drink, and pleasurable company while abhorring bullies, tyrants, and cowards.

Cayden has no formal churches or structure clergy, but simple shrines to him appear in almost every tavern and roadside inn. Many of his priests own such businesses and offer healing to patrons, some of whom may have been injured during a drunken brawl. While Cayden’s faith is a charitable one, Caydenites still seek payment for such services— at the very least, the injured party is expected to purchase a round of drinks for the house. Only in places where worshippers of the Accidental God are in direct opposition to the local powers, such as where a rebellion is forming under a tyrant’s nose, is his church out of the public eye. Caydenites can bring themselves to be quiet in the face of oppression only for so long, however, and once a rebellion reaches full bloom, the god’s silver tankard is often proudly displayed across every bar.

As a mortal, Cayden often found himself at odds with the work he was hired to perform and abandoned jobs that went against his conscience. This gave him a reputation for being unreliable among his more unscrupulous employers, but it garnered significant respect from clients with stronger morals. Legends tell of him taking contracts to free entire crews of slaves, undoing the operations of predatory business owners, and other rebellious deeds for the good of the common folk. His worshippers often involve themselves in similar matters: safeguarding the freedom and prosperity of working-class people, overthrowing tyrants, and helping the oppressed to relocate to freer lands. His champions, in particular, embed themselves in nations with harsh laws and stir up rebellions— often from the back room of a tavern.

--- Lost Omens: Gods and Magic (2020)

Cayden Cailean, the Accidental God. God of alcohol, pubs, and freedom fighters. One of the things that the 2e source doesn’t mention, and one of the reasons that I love him, is a little tidbit I found mentioned on a wiki (so I’m assuming it’s from a 1e source). And that is that he’s called the Accidental God because he doesn’t remember how he did it. The Test of the Starstone. He doesn’t remember how he passed it. This mad lad got black out drunk, took a lethal test with a 99%+ failure rate on a dare, and then woke up three days later as a god with no idea what happened in between. Which is just. I mean. You’ve got to admire it? Exactly three people aside from Aroden have ever passed the test of the Starstone. In all of history. Three. Iomedae, goddess of paladins, Norgorber, mysterious god of thieves and murder, and this man. Cayden Cailean, the Accidental God. Who got drunk and did it on a lark, and became a god to his own surprise, let alone anyone else’s.

And who then woke up, abruptly an unplanned deity, and went right. I can do something with this.

And, okay. He’s a fairly typical Robin Hood type god? Rebel looking for a cause, champion of the little guys, an adventurer who stumbled into a lot more power than he ever could have expected. He’s the sort of cheerful, boisterous adventurer who you probably do want to punch sometimes, who has power in some ways because he lucked into it. But. But. In some ways, also, not because he lucked into it. Because he may have been drunk at the time, and he may not remember what happened, but he did pass the Starstone Test. A test that people have been attempting for four thousand years, and that killed everyone that attempted it except this man and three others. So there was skill there, as much as luck, and there was depth as well.

He's a cheerful, boisterous adventurer, an accidental god, the god of alcohol whose temples are all pubs, but he had principles even as a mortal sellsword, and he stuck to them even at the risk of his business. And he sticks to them still. He woke up from a bender as a god, and went, okay. I can help people like this. I can fight so much bigger tyrants, and protect people on so much bigger a scale. And I do respect that about him.

I also just enjoy his public house temples as well. It’s a fun sort of echo and reverse of how many medieval European breweries were in monasteries. Sometimes holy ground is the local pub. Heh. And the little detail that you can get healing services there, at the cost of at least a round of drink for the house. Like, that’s just a fun set-piece? You and your party get badly injured in a fight in the woods or the dark alleys of a city, and you drag yourself a nearby pub, and then scrounge up the coin to buy a round to get your guts put back in. A pub which, incidentally, may also be the meeting place and headquarters for the local resistance movement, with the full blessing and support of its divine patron.

There’s just. There’s a reason he’s a popular god? Even if his personality might rub you the wrong way a bit on occasion. There’s a nice thread of something genuine running under it, as well as a banger origin story, and some fun trappings to his faith.

[lizzorasaurus]

Gorum.

[ariannadi]

….and only now do I actually want to live. With you.

[bite-the-bloody-hand]

Daeran: You do look rather fetching in the firelight

Me: *imprints on that line like a baby bird*

[thatratgo]

Just finished Kingmaker and am in chapter two of Wrath of the righteous and I find it funny they take place so close in time.

[sadruru]

And now there's going to be some tiefling sketches!

It keeps me from losing my mind at my cursed job...

✨A little bit of Melissa sleeping and Woljif playing with her hair ✨. Because of her normal and sound sleep, he doesn't want to wake her up. I heard somewhere that cats prefer to sleep with those they are more comfortable and safe with. Well, the fact that Melissa always and everywhere sleeps with a knife under her pillow and immediately grabs it when she wakes up abruptly already speaks volumes ;D And he's not happy about it at all o___O And now the unexpected ModernAU. I like imagining the Pathfinder guys in the modern version, thinking about what they would do and who they would be… It gives me even more options for jokes, hehe. I HATE designing, but it turned out pretty good. Melissa as usual, and I gave Woljif more loose and comfortable clothes with pockets (the more pockets, the better!).

Oh yeah, I have a headcanon that Woljif would have started smoking in such a case. Well, street and independent life from childhood doesn't always teach good things ;D At least he does it much less often than Melissa. And Fluffy became a little kitten!

Melissa azata? Maybe... I don't know why that image came to me one day. Could it be Ascension by Azata's path? Or was it how Arueshalae saw her when she was imprisoned in Drezen? I don't know.

[agathaarts]

Extremely crunchy doodles of some problematic yuri hobgoblin wives from Oprak because I'm deep in the Golarion mines right now.

Staakka and Vashakara!

Staakka is very normal and chill about being an Aiuvarin Sorcerer (which, given the history between Hobgoblins and Elves in the setting is...complicated. Her mom was a Hobgoblin adventurer who had a brief but clearly very eventful fling with an Elven bard) and Vashakara is a leech-clipper, so she's basically a bounty hunter and military police who breaks legs and tries to keep her wife from exploding things with her brain.

Tries being the operative word.