loreignav

[stirdauntsandrehaunts]

trying to gently explain to someone that you do not make an oc for a decades-old thing that has one of the most autistic and lore-entrenched fanbases without being willing to do either 1) a cursory wiki skim beforehand about the extensively well-established canon you're supposedly building your character off of, or 2) prepare for people to Not Like Or Understand What You're Going For, Here

tl;dr if you wanna do an alternate interpretation of a d&d god (and llolth??? being a sad misunderstood and distant power who didn't want any murdering done in her name????? and Personally treats a *male* cleric well???? is Definitely an alternate interpretation) then...make your own setting and write or DM for it?? instead of being mad that other people would share lore with you bc what you've come up with directly contradicts the canon that everyone else is going by???

[chaos-burst]

Hey! :) I’ve wanted to play d&d for a while now, and after getting into critical role i finally decided to convince my friends to play with me. None of us have played before, so im both exited and a bit nervous since i’ll be the dm. We don’t know anyone who plays, and i’m not very comfortable with palying with strangers, so we’ll be diving right in together! Do you or your followers have any tips or good resources to recommend for new players and/or dms? Any tips would be greatly appreciated! :D

Hey there!

I’m very flattered that you would ask me for DMing tips, but I just have to preface this saying that I am a first time DM myself and I am currently on session 13 of my campaign. But I can see if I can list some things that I found useful building my first campaign :) And I totally feel you not being comfortable with strangers, I play with a group of friends and we were all first time players when we started!

Let’s start with resources! (I will put the links in a reblog bc tumblr is a dick about posts with external links in them. Sry for the hassle!)

Probably a bit redundant, but nevertheless very helpful: The core rulebooks for D&D. Which is to say The Dungeon Master Guide, The Monster Manual and The Players Handbook. Bc those are expensive as fuck, check out this lovely thing (1).

Then, depending on whether you play online or live: Roll20.net (2) You can invite your players to your campaign and make maps for encounters with minis on them, you can insert music that plays in the background and it also rolls dice for you if you have to roll a big amount of dice and don’t want to do math ;)

There is an encounter builder on kobold-fightclub (3) that can help you balance encounters according to your party’s level! I have found it quite helpful and it’s also an easy way to filter monsters for a specific terrain when you know that you’ll be running through a swamp/desert/cave etc.!

I also found this this cheat sheet very helpful, esp regarding the different conditions that I can never seem to remember.

Then, ofc, one of CR’s sponsors: dndbeyond (4). Me and my friends bought a subscription bc damn is it useful to be able to click on anything on your character sheet and see what the hell it means. It also helps you track your spellslots/HP etc. during combat. 

Something I also did was watch Matt’s videos (5) on how he DMs. Altho it bears to say: Don’t compare yourself to Matt Mercer. It will only stress you out. 

You like maps? So do I! Check these out (6/7). 

You want to keep track of your npcs and important lore and places and everything? You could try worldanvil (8)! It’s like building a wiki for your own world!

And then about tips. It is probably easier to give tips when you have specific questions than it is to give general tips, but I’ll do my best! I’m sure many experienced DMs want to chime in and add to it :)

Communication is (as with most things in life) key to everything. Get together with your players for a Session 0 and just talk about what kind of game you want to run and what kind of game they want to play. There are people who like combat more than roleplay or vice versa. There are people who want to play an evil campaign or they want a lot of political intrigue or they are soft marshmallows like I am and don’t want permanent character deaths and so on and so on. Just get together and talk about what you guys want to create. Also talk about the characters with each individual player.Ask them about triggers they have, so you can avoid topics. Ask them how they feel about an NPC flirting with their character. It goes the other way around as well! Tell them about your boundaries and your expectations. One of my friends wanted to make a character with a neutral evil alignment. I told that it’s fine, as long as there’s the prospect for the character to evolve towards a neutral or good alignment, bc I have no interest in dm-ing an “evil” campaign. 

Something that might make running a campaign easier for you is if your players’ characters already know each other before the game starts. If you’re like me you will sweat bullets thinking about how to get them to work towards a common goal. If they’re already friends/rivals/lovers/colleagues/members of the same adventuring guild you will not have that problem. And they can give you some notes on how they envision the relationships to be/how they met.

You can start your adventure with one of the official adventures that are out there if you want to! You don’t have to do a whole ton of worldbuilding like I did bc I’m a crazy person and have my whole setting homebrewed. If not, you can always make life as easy as possible for yourself and start small! Build a small town with a few key NPCs, put a small assortment of possible quests there and then only roughly sketch out what you want the “outside world” to look like. I as a player love some context when I build characters, so if you want to give your players a small introduction into the campaign setting, I think that would be helpful and also helps creating characters who fit into your setting! If you want to run a campaign that has tons of dragons and poisoned oceans that cannot be crossed by mortals it would be sad if a player came to you and gave you the character sheet for a sailor.

If you do a whole campaign, I found it helpful to have a rough idea about different factions and two or three major events that shape your world. Ideas for later quests will eventually tie into big world events when the players get higher level!

Draw yourself a map. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or anything, but at some point there will be a question about “where is the next big city, we need to buy healing potions” and you will feel much safer if you just have a piece of paper (analogue or virtual) with like... a rough outline, some landmarks and some cities on it. At least that’s how it was for me!

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Don’t beat yourself up if your first quests are “standard” stuff like “Take care of this giant rat infestation in the cellar of the tavern.” or “My purple dragoncat has been abducted, please get him back for me.”. I started my campaign with small quests before getting to a small arc and then I want to work towards bigger arcs eventually. But for new players and a new DM I found it very helpful to keep things low stakes to not stress anyone out too much. If you fuck up the giant rat infestation, the world will not end, you know? That is nice. Also works well as a tutorial for everyone! Combat is intimidating! So many rules! Take your time to figure out how stuff works with some nice, small quests and some not-too-complex-combat encounters!

You don’t have to follow every rule. There are so many rules for everything and that can be helpful but it can also be stressful. You don’t have to do everything by the book and if you notice that some rules annoy you and your players, you can always change them as you go along! (Cats have nightvision. Sometimes the rulebooks are dumb.)

Don’t get hung up on too many details. I love worldbuilding, but I get obsessive easily. Sometimes I think my world isn’t ready enough bc I tend to think like a writer who has to have everything figured out. That is not the case with d&d! Sure, It’s good if you know stuff. But d&d is not only about planning, it’s also about improvising. And the world will grow while you play in it! Before you know it you’ll go like “I want to have an encounter with this cool ice monster. I need an icy landscape.” and then you will make one. And maybe it wasn’t there before, but who cares. Your players will be excited and you can make up the lore as you move along! 

Did I mention communication? 

If you have specific questions about certain aspects of DMing or how to start, feel free to message me anytime :) I hope this helps a little bit! I’ll reblog in a second with the links!

[pixelgrotto]

Remixing a tomb plus a highway to hell

Last month I finished DMing Tomb of Annihilation for one of my D&D groups. It’s a campaign that sees heroes adventuring to the land of Chult to stop big bad lich Acererak, who’s made a device known as the Soulmonger that’s emanating a Death Curse and screwing up the world’s resurrection magic. It’s also a spiritual successor to Tomb of Horrors, one of the classic deathtrap dungeons of tabletop RPG history that came about because D&D creator Gary Gygax wanted to screw his players over for opening doors wrong. In short, it’s certainly one of the more memorable adventures for D&D 5e, but the version of Tomb of Annihilation that I ran for my players was actually extremely remixed and hacked apart, as is the case with every official Wizards of the Coast module that I run. 

There were a few reasons for this - my players were coming into this campaign fresh out of Curse of Strahd, and everyone was level 8. One of the players had died early on in Curse of Strahd - in the very first session we played, hilariously enough - and was temporarily sustained by the mists of the Shadowfell only to collapse upon returning to the material plane. With this in mind, I felt that it would be a great twist to have the party venture on a quest of resurrection only to learn that resurrection magic throughout the world had stopped working due to Acererak’s nefarious plans.

Additionally, I wanted to give my players the chance to try out alternate characters if they so desired. In the name of grand ambition, I decided to have my players create two sets of characters, and wove a homebrew story, dubbed “Fiends in Waterdeep,” that would run analogous to and eventually intertwine with Tomb of Annihilation. The first set of characters - consisting of some of the veterans who had survived Curse of Strahd - would investigate the streets of Waterdeep, which was suffering from an invasion of devils and demons that seemed unconnected to Acererark’s dark doings. The second set, consisting of new level 8s, would venture to Chult, the vaguely African-inspired landmass in the south of the Forgotten Realms, to track down the source of the Death Curse. After progressing through seemingly unconnected storylines, at the end of the campaign the disparate plot threads would mesh. The Waterdeep explorers would travel to the Nine Hells only to learn that the fiend invasion was caused by the abduction of the Queen of Hell’s newly born infant - a soul-devouring mass of flesh that could open portals into other worlds with its burps and farts - while the Chult expedition would delve into the jungle to find Acererark, smash the Soulmonger and free the aforementioned child. 

In short, I basically made a complicated D&D adventure even more complicated by layering my own story on top of it and running two campaigns at once. I think I was looking for a challenge, and oh boy, I got one. I probably won’t be undertaking something like this ever again, because it required a lot of planning hurdles on my part. For instance, my players and I usually gamed for about 5-6 hours at most, which meant devoting 2 and a half or 3 hours to both sets of characters. If one battle lasted too long or a social interaction went south, I’d have to adjust this timeframe accordingly, and every DM knows that players will always defy your expectations in one way or another, so there was a lot of improv on the fly to make sure that our sessions stayed well-paced. 

In the name of pacing, I also stripped much of the fat out of Tomb of Annihilation, which is largely composed of a really long hexcrawl. D&D 5e’s hexcrawl exploration and survival rules have never been particularly good, in my opinion, and the rules in the book expect you to roll LOTS of random encounters and deal with stuff like inclement weather, mosquito attacks, hunting, getting lost, etc. I incorporated some of this stuff (the hunting, since we had two rangers in the party), but I pre-rolled all of the random encounters and potential locations the party could go ahead of time, getting rid of some of the ones I didn’t like, and largely handwaved stuff like getting hopelessly lost. Reddit explorations have revealed that by far and large, everyone running this campaign does the same thing - particularly for higher level players trying to get through the jungle without feeling like they’re wasting time. (And from my firsthand experience with Out of the Abyss, there’s nothing worse than going through multiple D&D sessions and feeling like you haven’t accomplished much.)

My approach to streamlining Acererak’s deathtrap lair at the end of the campaign was similar. I skimmed through the entire dungeon with all of its bajillion floors (which could take an average group months to get through) in favor of using the 10 rooms that I liked the most, which was more than enough. Tomb of Annihilation, while probably fairer than Gary Gygax’s Tomb of Horrors, is still in my opinion full of wacky stuff in the final dungeon that just isn’t my cup of tea for D&D, including one trap that can get characters stuck in real-world Victorian London. (Okay, that’s cool on paper, but to actually run it as a DM, especially when your players are in the final hours of their adventure? I’ll pass.)

Additionally, I made Ras Nsi - the warlord-turned-yuan-ti - into more of a developed NPC who was actually willing to help the players slay Acererak. In the book, he’s very much a Darth Maul-type bad guy who looks cool but has a minimum of characterization. This is because Tomb of Annihilation leans into the stereotype that Ras Nsi and the rest of the yuan-ti are all merciless bastards with inscrutable plans, and while this may be fine if you’re familiar with the Conan the Barbarian serpentfolk tropes that inspired the yuan-ti, it’s not great if you’re trying to build a believable world with compelling characters. Much has been written about how Chult stumbles at portraying a fantasy Africa - largely by depicting the characters as foreign saviors and the Chultans as relatively helpless - and while some of this was alleviated in my game by the fact that one player’s character actually was Chultan, I still felt it was necessary to give some of the indigenous races a chance to help undo the curse that, after all, was first and foremost affecting their land.

Switching gears, when it came to the accompanying Fiends in Waterdeep homebrew story, I recycled some material from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, which I’d previously run for two different groups, and also took inspiration from the Wizards of the Coast module Descent into Avernus. At the time of planning, Descent Into Avernus was the most recent D&D hardcover, and all the reviews I’d read painted it as cool in concept but a major pain in the butt to run in reality. So, I decided to use only the nifty bits - a journey into the first layer of the Nine Hells via Mad Max-style tanks powered by souls - and mixed it with my own tale that was influenced by a profile of Fury, the dragon queen of hell, that I’d read in the third-party 5e supplement Legendary Dragons. It turned into a mildly amusing story about Fury warring against her ex-husband Asmodeus, and the players ended up serving as therapists in what amounted to an interplanar lover’s spat. I’d recently started therapy when I came up with the campaign concept, so this is probably one of those unique instances where real life truly influenced art. And hey, the unpredictable whims of all-powerful, world-shaping deities make for great adventure hooks, and judging by how Greek mythology seems to have re-entered the modern zeitgeist these days (I’m thinking about Hades, one of the most popular indie rougelikes out there, as well as that Netflix series Blood of Zeus) it seems like I was on the nose!

In the end, this two-tiered campaign lasted roughly 70 hours and climaxed with all sets of characters reaching level 10. Acererark’s Soulmonger was smashed, the feud between Fury and Asmodeus smoothed over, and after enduring the eerie mists of the Shadowfell, the hot temperatures of Chult and the flames of Avernus, the story of these motley players - who’d started questing with me back in 2018, and endured a move to online games in the era of COVID - came to a gentle end. I’m a believer in the reality that campaigns don’t necessarily need to last forever, and with real life throwing some of my players (and myself) a few recent curveballs, this seemed like a solid finale point. A consistent campaign running over two years is in many ways a dream for a lot of D&D players and DMs, and I’m glad I got the chance to make it happen.

[princehoneytea]

it is time... to answer a couple of recent asks... speedrun time

Anonymous said: IM SO HAPPY TO SEE FLORENCE AGAIN!! how is she!!!

thank you for caring abt her!! ;_; i used her as an npc in an rp miniplot murder mystery (non-canonical to her actual story) and like... *sonic voice* long story. she’s better now.

aegishjalmur said: i love loooove your character designs! could you tell me about that angel oc more? they're so cool omg

thank you sooo much!!! here’s his character card:

yellowmellow25 said: Is that obsidian after all this time. I didnt think she would be seen again

YUP, sure is!!! i’m really clingy with my ocs so once you see them they’ll probably be seen again at some point, LOL. way back when i made obsidian and eudialyte, none of the diamonds or homeworld had even shown up yet, so it was difficult to write those two as su homeworld ocs without world lore... but now its wayyy easier since all the lore is just out there, so you can expect to see her!

Anonymous said: hi! i dont know how loaded this question is but how did you go about with creating your magical girl campaign?? ive seen your art and i was interested into doing my own!

hihi, thank you so much! ; ; the campaign i DM has multiple moderators, so its not all me- i was the second person to hop onboard so the majority was written by my friend, though i made a lot of subplots and settings for a portion of the campaign with a lot of travelling... anyway, i think basically anything can become a campaign, nothing is stuck in traditional dnd setting! mine is in a fictional world and is based more on the world than the fact that the characters are magical girls. i think it’s just like creating any other campaign; get your friends, create a system (the one we use is homebrew), and you can do anything really!

jellhound said: where are the lyrics from in the third picture of your latest post? they dont know whats best for you like i do? it sounds familiar

that’d be Great Influence · Pouya! it’s very crude and has a lot of abusive language so warning for that, i just really like sinister music LOL

Anonymous said: hey! i was wondering if it would be alright to use one of your Touko drawings in a background on my blog! i'd link back to you, ofc!

it’s always fine to use my fanart for stuff like that as long as there’s a link back to me somewhere visible! :) 

---

i got a looot of asks along the lines of “do you still like ___?” and the answer is usually yes! of course i still love sam and max and bandori and all that, i just have a very limited amount of time to draw and don’t have insp at the moment, but i’ll be back eventually xP a few things are exceptions to this, but everything within like the last year i still looooove and will draw more of eventually

ok that’s all for now, thanks for all the msgs with kind words, sorry i dont get the chance to reply much!!! ;__; they mean a lot to me n brighten up my day!!! ty!!

[shanghai-ohmy]

Mao Mao: Heroes of... Holomyr? (MaoMaoctober day 20: Game)

In this fic, King Snugglemagne summons Mao Mao, Badgerclops, and Adorabat to guard and entertain him on a rainy day. What better way to pass the time than to play a little Dungeons & Dragons together?

Snugglemagne, Mao Mao, and Adorabat play. Badgerclops DMs. Mao Mao learns to let himself have fun and be vulnerable through roleplaying.

This is day 20 of my daily fics for the MaoMaoctober prompts! As with all other days, it’s totally independent of the previous ones and can be enjoyed on its own! I’m proud of this one, and it’s full fic length (3.2k words), so I thought I’d post it here like a standalone. Thanks to my boyfriend @htodinth for his help with scene and dialogue ideas, as well as editing.

Read it on AO3, or under the cut!

The rain pounded on the intricate stained glass windows of King Snugglemagne’s palace, slipping down the colored panes in thick rivulets. The king had sent most of his retinue home before the rain began, leaving the large estate almost entirely empty. He’d even sent his guard detachment away. But that was fine; he had the utmost confidence in their temporary replacements.

“So you see,” King Snugglemagne said, posing dramatically in his throne, “with this horrible rain I simply cannot entertain myself! There can be no croquet, no outdoor galas, and no hastily-produced reality TV shows! And since the rest of my court has been sent home, and you’re here to act as my guards…” He gestured with a flourish. “...that duty falls to you three!”

Mao Mao’s eye twitched. “So you called us here… in the middle of a massive rainstorm… to be your jesters?!” He took a step towards the king, who immediately began to cower.

Badgerclops grabbed him by the neck of his cape and pulled him back. “Chill out, man! We just have to entertain ourselves and include the king, that’s all.”

“Yes! Quite right!” Snugglemagne agreed nervously.

Mao Mao groaned. “With all due respect your highness, this is a waste of our time!”

“Excuse us for just a moment, King Snugglemagne.” Badgerclops walked towards a side chamber, dragging Mao Mao with him. “Adorabat! Keep an eye on the king for us!”

“Roger!” She sounded excited.

“Dude, what’s your problem?”

“This is ridiculous, Badgerclops! I’m a legendary hero! Not a babysitter!”

“C’mon man, just suck it up and help out! It’s one night! And besides, it’s your sheriff-ly duty to obey the king or whatever.”

Mao Mao crossed his arms. “Ugh, fine! But I’m not going to enjoy it!”

An idea came to Badgerclops. A really good idea. This might be the moment to do something he’d wanted to try with Mao Mao for ages. “Hey Mao Mao… what if you could go on a really cool adventure, keep the king safe, and entertain him all at the same time?”

Mao Mao looked intrigued.

“I’ve got a great idea. Just trust me.”

They returned to the throne room to find Adorabat finishing up a magic trick. The king gasped with delight and clapped as she produced a bouquet of roses from thin air. She threw it to him and took a bow.

“Okay y’all,” Badgerclops said, “I’ve got a game for us to play. Have any of you ever played Dungeons & Dragons before?”

Mao Mao stared at him blankly.

“I have a dungeon!” the king offered, confused.

Adorabat had stars in her eyes. “Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh YES!!! I LOVE that game!”

Badgerclops was surprised. “It’s… a lot of rules for someone your age, Adorabat. Who have you played with?”

“Well…” She looked embarrassed. “I might have… snuck out to play it with the sky pirates…”

“You WHAT?!” Mao Mao yelled, turning to her.

“I’m sorry! They’re just so good at imagining things! Even their food is imaginary!”

“Adorabat, we’ll talk about this later. Mao, run to the aerocycle and grab my bag, okay?”

Mao Mao nodded and strode away.

“I’m terribly sorry, Sheriff Badgerclops, but what exactly is… happening?”

“Oh, nothing major, I’m just saving the day. This game will keep you entertained for hours, dude. It’s kinda like… you, Mao Mao, and Adorabat will make up your own characters with cool moves and stuff, and then I’ll narrate an adventure for you! You get to make choices about where you want to go and what you want to do, and I use some dice to help decide how it all goes.”

The king seemed uncertain.

“You get to come up with an outfit for your character~” Badgerclops said enticingly.

Snugglemagne leapt out of his throne. “Oh! Oh! Let’s begin at once!”

---

A few minutes later they were gathered around a table. Badgerclops had printed off several blank character sheets from his arm. Mao Mao, Snugglemagne, and Adorabat were poring over the race and class selections. A platter of tiny bite-sized pizzas sat on the table between them.

“I say, this bard seems like a saucy fellow!” King Snugglemagne announced, raising the class guide for everyone to see.

“Ooh, excellent choice!” Badgerclops said. “What’s your instrument?”

“Keytar.” He replied without even a moment of hesitation.

“Atypical, but I like it!” Badgerclops jotted down some information on Snugglemagne’s character sheet and then handed it back to him. “Now you have to pick out a race.”

“I shall play the fighter,” Mao Mao announced, indicating a sheet of paper.

“Shocking,” Badgerclops said sarcastically. “Hand me your character sheet, and pick some moves.” He filled in the appropriate fields on Mao Mao’s sheet.

“Um, Badgerclops?” Adorabat said.

“Yeah dude?”

She motioned for him to lean down, then whispered into her ear. He looked surprised, then nodded. “You got it.” Another sheet printed from his arm.

“I’m playing a homebrew alchemist class!” Adorabat announced. “We’re gonna BLOW SOME STUFF UP!”

They continued setting up their characters, taking moves and choosing proficiencies. Badgerclops looked up at them brightly once everyone had finished. “Okay, why don’t we introduce our characters? Adorabat, would you mind starting?”

“Okay!” She straightened up her papers and cleared her throat. “I am Rirkarg Shrapnel, the gnoll alchemist! Once I was a maker of medicine for my people, but an evil duke and his army razed my homeland and killed all my friends! So I turned my skills to destruction, and seek to destroy him!”

Badgerclops nodded approvingly. “What’s the duke’s name?”

“Um,” Adorabat rubbed the back of her head, “I couldn’t come up with one.”

“Let’s just call him something generic for now, then. Duke… free… water. Duke Freewater.” He took down a note. “Mao Mao?”

“Can you…” Mao Mao looked embarrassed. “Can you come back to me later?”

“Okay, sure. Just let me know if you need any help, okay?”

“I don’t need help playing an imaginary game!!” He snapped.

“Right, okay, I got it. Jeez, dude. Snugglemagne?”

“Yes, very well.” Snugglemagne put on a smooth voice. “Yes, hello my adoring fans! I am the one, the only Gilwyn Goldheart! The most handsome elf in all of…” He turned to Badgerclops. “What are we calling this place?”

“The whole world is Holomyr, but we’re focusing on the Green Reef Coast.”

Snugglemagne nodded. “The most handsome elf in all of Holomyr! Or at least… I was.” He placed the back of his hand to his head, dramatically. “You see, a horrible curse has befallen me, and cracked my beautiful face like a porcelain mask! I have nothing but my music now! So I wander the world in search of a way to undo this dreadful affliction!”

“That is SO COOL!” Adorabat said.

Snugglemagne looked bashful. “Oh, my! Thank you! I thought your character was excellent as well!” He beamed.

“Alright Mao Mao, whatcha got?”

Mao Mao shifted nervously in his seat. “Um, hello, everyone, I’m… Mercutio. I’m a human fighter.”

When Mao Mao didn’t continue, Badgerclops stepped in. “Mercutio, that’s a good name! Does he have a surname?”

“I, uh… It was…” Mao Mao fumbled for an answer. Coming up with one name had been hard enough. “Umm…”

“It’s a mysterious secret,” Adorabat chimed in, “that only his absolute closest companions may learn.”

“Yeah! It’s that!” Mao Mao looked relieved.

“I love it! Good job, Mao Mao.”

For a moment, Mao Mao’s eyes filled with excitement.

“Any backstory you want to share?”

Mao Mao nodded. “I was a… my village…” His face reddened as he stumbled over the words.

“Hey,” Badgerclops whispered to him, “you can talk about your character in third person if it’s easier.”

Some of the tension eased out of Mao Mao’s pose. He looked a bit more confident. “Mercutio showed promise as a hero early on, and there was lots of talk around his village about all the good he could do if he were trained properly. But the village didn’t have much, and going off to any sort of hero school seemed like an impossible dream to him. But after his years growing up there, helping everyone and being a hero at home, he earned their love and respect. So the people pooled their resources to send him to a heroic academy far across the continent. Now he patrols the world trying to make a name for himself and raise his village to prominence in return for their charity!” Mao Mao realized he had begun gesturing and gently folded his hands back in his lap, embarrassed.

“A world traveler! That’s fantastic, Mao Mao!” Badgerclops said.

“Oh yes,” King Snugglemagne agreed, “I simply love a village prodigy story!”

Mao Mao rubbed the back of his head, looking away. “Thanks…”

They worked out some details of how their relationships to each other and how they’d met. Gilwyn had hired Rirkarg to find a treatment that could fix his face, and the two of them had struck up an unlikely rapport even though Rirkarg failed to help him. Mercutio had come across the pair when he hitched a ride on a caravan of traveling merchants and found Gilwyn entertaining the salespeople with his songs in exchange for their transport.

Satisfied with their characters, Badgerclops stood up and dimmed the lights a little. “Okay,” he said, sitting back in his chair, “let me set the scene.”

“The three of you are sitting at an outdoor table in a busy park in one of the Green Reef Coast’s largest cities, Ymera. Mercutio tracked a lead to an informant with info on Duke Freewater. You intend to meet her here. Since you’re meeting under broad daylight, you’re hoping that the anonymity of the city will prevent any prying eyes; the crowds should be enough to leave you in total peace.”

“Rirkarg, you spot the informant first. She is a tall, strong Dragonborn with green scales and large black horns jutting back from her head. She approaches the table and sits down inconspicuously, as though she’s a part of your group. ‘Greetings, Mercutio.’ she says.”

Mao Mao considered. “I want to check her for weapons, but we’re trying not to draw attention…”

“You can roll a perception check to see if you spotted anything on her as she was sitting down, or sleight of hand to attempt to feel around for weapons without her noticing.”

“Well, my sleight of hand check would be better, wouldn’t it?”

Badgerclops glanced at his stats. “Yes, it is.”

“Now, sheriff,” King Snugglemagne chimed in, “you would be groping an informant under the table, which is most unbecoming of a hero. Plus, she looks like she could kick your ass.”

Mao Mao blushed. Adorabat giggled. “Okay, okay. Perception, then. Which one do I roll?”

“This one,” Badgerclops said, handing him a twenty-sided die. “It’s always the d20 for checks.”

Mao Mao turned the die over in his hand a few times, then rolled it across the table. It slid to a stop with a six facing upwards. “Six plus one gives me seven.”

Badgerclops shrugged. “You’ve got no idea if she’s packing or not. Nothing looks amiss.”

“Stupid dice,” Mao Mao grumbled.

“Please, Madam,” Snugglemagne said in his smooth character voice, “allow me to introduce myself. I am-”

“Oh my god, you’re Gilwyn Goldheart!” 

King Sugglemagne tugged at his collar, evidently already in character. “Well, it’s always nice to meet a fan, but could you perhaps keep it down? This meeting is supposed to be… clandestine. Cloak-and-dagger-ish.”

“She shakes her head, embarrassed. ‘Sorry, I just got a little excited. Let’s just get to the point. You’re looking for intel on Duke Freewater?’”

“Rirkarg nods. ‘He destroyed my home. I will have my revenge.’”

“‘Well, rumor has it that in a week, he’s launching a massive warship from Port Rejtal. They’re going to blow a hole straight through the Green Reef and open up a passage to the sea. It’ll increase his naval power tenfold, and the damage to the reef will be unrecoverable.’ You guys know that Rejtal is about five days’ travel south of where you are, so you need to get there quickly if you want to make it before the warship launches.”

“Rirkarg’s nostrils flare. They look determined. Also angry. ‘Freewater. He will be on this ship?’”

“The informant isn’t certain. She says she’s heard conflicting reports.”

“Is the Green Reef well known?” Mao Mao asked Badgerclops.

“Oh yeah, this entire coast is considered one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’d be a huge deal if it was destroyed, even partially.”

Mao Mao’s eyes sparked. “Mercutio slams his fist on the table. ‘If we save the reef from destruction, we’ll be renowned the world over!’”

“Rirkarg agrees. ‘And Duke Freewater must not gain any more military power than he already has.’”

“So, we’re taking a road trip to Rejtal?” Snugglemagne asked in his Gilwyn voice.

“Yeah!!” Adorabat yelled, out of character. “Road trip!” They laughed, and after a moment, Mao Mao joined in.

===

The next few hours of the game unfolded without a hitch. Every time Mao Mao acted in character, Badgerclops would encourage and praise him. Mao Mao grew invested in the game, talking in character and building out his story. He carried out an excellent philosophical discussion with Gilwyn about fame, Gilwyn having lost his and Mercutio seeking to grow his own. He came up with unexpected, exciting strategies in battle. He took a few failed rolls a little too personally, but Badgerclops decided that was a good sign. Mao Mao was empathizing with his character, and poking at the edges of some of his insecurities through Mercutio. Badgerclops had hoped that Mao Mao would react like this. Roleplaying might be good for him.

It felt like no time at all had passed before they came to the climactic scene. The party was split, with Gilwyn and Rirkarg fighting to place a bomb down in the hold while Mercutio faced the ship’s captain, alone. The boat had pulled out of the dock but was not yet at the reef. Duke Freewater was nowhere to be found, much to Rirkarg’s chagrin. Adorabat had cursed up a storm when they failed to find him, which Badgerclops reprimanded her for even though it was technically in character. He’d have to speak to Orangusnake later about his language at the table.

“Okay, Rirkarg, Gilwyn is holding off the guards. You have a moment to act. What do you do?”

Adorabat stood up on her chair. “I plant the bomb I made earlier right against the hull, then cover it up with some boxes so nobody will see it! This thing’s going down!”

“Roll sleight of hand.”

“Sixteen plus three! Nineteen!”

“You plant the bomb and hide it perfectly. Nobody is going to find it.”

“Good show!” Snugglemagne exclaimed. They high fived.

“Let’s jump back to Mercutio. Mercutio, you have the captain backed against the railing of the ship. He grins at you as he brandishes his cutlass. ‘You were a fool to come here, Mercutio, and a bigger fool for fighting me alone! You want to be a hero, hm? Then it’s too bad you’ll die here, weak and alone.’ You hear someone running up behind you, and before you can turn around…”

Badgerclops rolled a die. His eye shot open. “He MISSES?!”

The players cheered. “The whole ship rocks as an explosive rings out from the lower hull. You see the captain’s chief naval officer stumble past you, his sword narrowly missing your arm. He was thrown off by the blast. And because he missed, it is now your turn.”

“Come on Mao Mao, get him!” Adorabat called.

“Yes, sheriff! Destroy those men!”

“What was that about being alone, Captain Ulrich?!” Mao Mao roared, laughing as he hopped up onto his chair. “I’m stronger than you’ll ever be! And I have my friends to help me be even better!” Mao Mao grabbed a twenty-sided die from the table. “And then I stab my sword into the chief officer!”

“Roll to attack!”

Mao Mao released the die. It rolled to a stop. He leaned over the table to look at it.

“NATURAL TWENTY!!” He roared.

Adorabat screamed. Snugglemagne whistled and clapped.

“Alright Mercutio,” Badgerclops said, “describe it.”

“I switch to a dagger grip on my sword and as he stumbles to my side, I swing out without even looking. My sword goes straight up through his stomach to his head, impaling him. I keep my eyes on the captain the entire time.” Mao Mao acted out his description in dramatic fashion, illustrating the movement for everyone else to see.

“Grizzly!”

“Cool!!”

“Oh, how terribly violent of you!”

“I’m going to action surge for an additional attack.”

“What are you doing?”

“I want to pick up the chief officer and throw him at the captain, sending them both overboard.”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Adorabat was thrilled.

“Normally that would be a strength contest, but… he’s dead, so he can’t resist being thrown. Roll a strength check, I guess.”

Trembling with excitement, Mao Mao picked up the die. He let it roll along the table, and then…

“ANOTHER TWENTY!!!!!” He stepped a foot up onto the table as everyone absolutely lost it.

“Oh my god! Okay! Okay hang on!” Badgerclops looked like he was ready to explode. “What’s it like, and do you say anything cool?”

“I switch grips on the sword again and hoist the entire chief officer over my head like a kebab, my massive muscles rippling under the sun. I plant one foot back, yell, and spear him at the captain like a javelin. My sword slides out of him as he shoots forward.”

Badgerclops looked up at Mao Mao. There was genuine excitement in his eyes. He was being open and vulnerable, and he was having fun. 

“The body collides with Captain Ulrich, knocking him over the bannister of the ship. He grapples with the corpse, trying to get a hand onto the side of the boat before he falls.”

“I say ‘Enjoy your new view of the reef.’”

“You hear fading screaming and then a splash as he plummets from the sinking ship and falls into the water below.”

Everyone around the table cheered. King Snugglemagne hopped out of his seat and grabbed Mao Mao off the table, spinning him around in a hug. “Good show, sheriff Mao Mao! Good show!!” He deposited Mao Mao, who was now blushing, back in his seat.

They played out a short epilogue to the adventure, Gilwyn and Rirkarg pulling up in a stolen lifeboat to rescue Mercutio from the sinking ship. They were technically felons now, since they’d destroyed the Duke’s ship and killed several people, so they fled as soon as the made land. But word spread of their heroism even though they weren’t there to tell it firsthand. Mercutio’s rise as a hero had begun.

===

“Oof, I’m EXHAUSTED!” Badgerclops said, slumping back in his chair. “Thanks for playing, guys.”

“Thank you for running this little experience, sheriff Badgerclops! It was most delightful.”

“Yeah Badgerclops, that was incredible!” Mao Mao laughed. 

Badgerclops smiled at him. Then suddenly, Mao Mao was hugging him.

“Thank you.”

It was a short hug. He blushed and walked away very quickly, taking some of the snack plates with him to the kitchen to clean them up.

“How do I stack up to the Sky Pirates?” Badgerclops asked Adorabat.

She considered. “Your worldbuilding is better, but Orangusnake’s character voices are incredible. And it’s more fun with a fourth player.”

Badgerclops thought for a moment. He counted on his fingers. “Huh. Too bad we don’t have any more friends.”

“But lots of enemies!”

Badgerclops chuckled.

[kaibacorpintern]

@emblematik requested “yuugi + datebook” and i was like “hm interesting” and then a few minutes later i was like “oh shit... IDEA.” 

no joke: i wrote 90% of this on my phone. i just checked the word count and it’s 2000 words. lol. casual rivalshipping, but it’s not about that. post-DM. enjoy the feels x

MONDAY, 8:26 AM

Yuugi sat cross-legged in the soft, shallow cradle of his bed, half-asleep, phone in his hands. Anzu was on the other end of the video call, wandering through the New York apartment she shared with four other girls.

“ -- so they come bursting out of the egg, and that's just how the show starts. It gets loonier from there. But it means every week, she has to make another big-ass papier-mâché egg for her guest performer, and this week, that’s me. Hey Tiff, love the space buns,” Anzu said, turning to someone out-of-sight, and Yuugi heard a voice call back, in a cheerful sing-song, thaaank youuu!

“So you're helping her make the egg?” Yuugi said.

“Yeah, she calls it 'laying the egg.’ Performance artists are so weird,” she said, as Yuugi grinned with delight. “Anyway, gotta run. Can you do next Sunday?”

“Let me see,” Yuugi said, leaning over to swipe his weathered datebook off his night stand, the pages dogeared with almost a year's worth of use. A blank datebook he'd filled out from June to June with every notable hour of his life, using a pen he kept tucked in the binding. He'd spilled water on it a few months ago and the pages had crinkled as they dried. Now it refused to sit flat, with gaps that rippled between the pages.

He held the phone in one hand and flipped clumsily through the datebook with the other, spreading it open on his thigh. After that Sunday, there was one blank week left in the datebook. “Nope, I'm booked. Let's just do Monday again.”

“Works for me,” Anzu said. “Love ya! Bye!”

“Love you too, have fun laying your egg,” Yuugi said, and she flashed him an exasperated grin. The screen went black, and a dreamy silence descended on Yuugi’s bedroom once more. Yuugi flopped back down into bed with a contented sigh, tossing the phone onto the nightstand. He held the datebook over his head, his week carefully penned in. Class, his shifts at the game shop, and on Tuesday, he was seeing…

TUESDAY, 6:37 PM

“Fuck,” Jounouchi said, staring in bafflement at the cards lying face up on the playmat between them. They sat at a long, wooden table on the airy patio of a cafe, with vines flowing thick along the walls, the cards illuminated in the soft, inviting light of the lanterns strung across the space. “How did you win? When did you win?”

“A few turns ago,” Yuugi confessed, idly churning the ice of his Italian soda with his straw. “But you had me on the ropes for a while there. If you played your Time Wizard combo a turn earlier, I would've lost.”

“Damnit! I knew it,” Jounouchi said, thumping his fist firmly on the table. “I keep forcing myself to wait. I just don't wanna blow it again, like Nationals.”

“I think your nerves are making you doubt yourself,” Yuugi said. “Your instincts are strong. Just listen to them, and you'll do fine.”

Jounouchi, gathering up his cards from the playmat, glanced up at him, the lantern light giving his faint blush a rosy glow.

“See, how the heck am I supposed to attack you when you say things like that?” he said. “Maybe I should get a practice duel with someone who actually pisses me off. Hey, ask your pal if he'll duel me.”

“My pal? Is that what he is?” Yuugi said, lifting an eyebrow as he reached for his phone; then he changed course, tucking his hand into the messenger bag at his feet and ferreting out his datebook. He checked the date. “I'm seeing him tomorrow, actually. I'll just ask.”

“Perfect. How's your Sunday looking? Honda said he’ll have my Duel Disk fixed by then.”

“I have plans already,” Yuugi said, dropping the datebook back into his bag and leaning back in his chair.

“Oh, okay, Mr. Popular. Don't forget I leave for the tournament Friday after next. That's in your book, right?” Jou said, and Yuugi hummed in reply. Mm-hmm. Then Jou leaned forward, resting both elbows on the table and his chin atop his hands, fixing Yuugi with a roguish look. “Who is Kaiba, if not your pal?”

Now Yuugi couldn't help but blush, his skin warmer than the summer air. “Uh, he's…”

WEDNESDAY, 9:57 PM

Sitting next to Yuugi on the couch, one bent leg tucked underneath him and one arm slung over the back. Studying the screen of Yuugi's laptop as Yuugi scrolled through the lines of code he'd abandoned, several days earlier, at dawn, surrendering to the frustration of a long and fruitless all-nighter. Lucky for him, Kaiba liked nothing so much as telling people they were wrong, why they were wrong, and how to stop being wrong.

Kaiba leaned closer, frowning intently, his force of presence buffeting Yuugi like a wave. A good wave, dense and heady, fragrant with his cologne. He had many, many things to say about object-oriented programming, all of which Yuugi had listened to very carefully, and none of which he'd actually heard.

“I found your problem,” Kaiba declared.

“Thank God, this assignment is driving me nuts,” Yuugi said, sighing with relief. “What is it?”

In response, Kaiba reached out and shut the laptop with a firm whap. “You’re distracted.”

“I am not,” Yuugi said.

“Tell me what I just said about using global variables.”

Yuugi bit his lip, scrambling through the last five, ten, fifteen minutes for whatever Kaiba had said about global variables, and found… nothing, except a keen awareness of the way Kaiba was staring at him now, leaning his cheek against his loosely curled hand, a wry smile tugging on his lips. 

“Uh,” Yuugi said after a moment, realizing he’d fallen neatly into the usual trap. “Don't?”

Kaiba snorted. “When is this due?”

Yuugi leaned forward, momentarily escaping the weightless swell of feeling in his chest, and plucked his datebook off the coffee table from where it lay beside his textbooks. “In a week.”

“Alright. I have a few hours on Sunday or Tuesday. When would you like to waste my time next?” Kaiba said, with a sort of laid-back disdain.

“I think I’ll squander your Tuesday,” Yuugi said, tugging the pen free, scribbling a note. He set both laptop and datebook on the coffee table and settled back, deeply, breathlessly aware of Kaiba's gaze on him, tracing lines of fire up and down his body.

“So,” Kaiba said, a low, teasing growl, his mouth inches from Yuugi's ear. “What is so distracting to you?”

“Nothing,” Yuugi said, smiling, about to vibrate out of himself with impatience. “You have my full attention.”

“Good,” Kaiba said, and the next thing Yuugi knew he was swept up in a dark rush of warmth, Kaiba pressing a kiss like a hot, wet star to the curve of his neck. He fumbled blindly with one arm, catching Kaiba by the back of his head, pulling him down as he twisted and fell backwards along the couch.

He huffed, a wordless plea for mercy, as Kaiba mouthed along the shell of his ear, making scandalous suggestions with his tongue, clearly enjoying himself.

“Problem solved,” he said smugly, and Yuugi groaned, laughing.

FRIDAY, 4:13 PM

A gentle chime broke through the cool, quiet air of the game shop. Yuugi, wandering the shelves with his scanner, conducting inventory, pulled his phone out of his back pocket.

RYOU: finished writing my new campaign!! want in?

YUUGI: duh

what days are u thinking?

RYOU: sundays? that's when everyone else is free

YUUGI: i can do sundays, but not this sunday

RYOU: not a problem. we can start next week. any plans?

The question turned over in his chest like a stone, a tremendous weight, heavy and slow and dull. Yuugi stood motionless, staring down at his phone, the scanner dangling in his limp hand and the silence of the store falling over him like a shroud.

But he shook it off. Ryou had given him the idea.

YUUGI: I’m going to the park with my datebook, you know the one

RYOU: oh

please send him my best

YUUGI: i will!

is this the space campaign you were telling me about?

Pulling out of the subject like pulling a boot out of the mud, with staggering release. Yuugi resumed his task of taking inventory, stopping every so often to answer Ryou's excited texts about Eldritch horrors and homebrew campaigns.

That night, he lay in bed and discovered the stone was still there, cradled in his straining ribs. So he opened the skylight in his bedroom, inviting the summer night to flow in. It sprawled open above him, hot and dark and flecked with stars, vibrating with the hum of cicadas hidden in the trees. The summer spinning its promise into a refrain. Every new day, each blank page of his datebook, beckoning him forward.

SUNDAY, 11:00 AM

Yuugi awoke to a bright, beautiful June morning, sliding his feet into the secret pockets of cool still tucked away between the sheets. The skylight in his room revealed a clear, hot sky.

He flew through the rest of the morning, as light and taut as a kite, unburdened by exhaustion or idleness. On a whim, he opened his laptop, giving a quick eye to his assignment; Kaiba wouldn't bring up global variables for no reason… and the solution presented itself, like a closed fist turning over to reveal the prize in its palm.

He didn’t cancel on Kaiba. They’d waste time some other way.

Buoyant, he left the house, with his datebook and a lighter in his bag. There were two stops to make before the park: first, a cafe, for an iced coffee, and second, the neighborhood bookstore, where he bought a brand-new blank datebook.

Then he began the long, pleasant walk down to the park, his phone on silent. The whole of Domino was cast in a drowsy summer light so smooth and liquid he wanted to cup it in his hands and drink it, to feel it run sweet and pure through his veins. Neither his mind nor his route wandered from their destination: the plank bridge in the park.

It sat in an isolated corner of the park, a leafy, overgrown grotto dappled with sunlight. The long pond slowed to a mirrored stillness here, cooled by the shade of the trees. Insects hummed in the foliage. As Yuugi stepped onto the plank bridge, the hollow thunk of his foot sent some small, shy creature plunging for safety into the water, leaving only ripples behind.

He knelt on the plank bridge and opened the old datebook, taking a moment to transfer the last remains of his schedule into the first week of the new datebook. His class schedule, his work schedule, his weekly call with Anzu, Joe's tournament dates, the new campaign. All of it carefully penned in.

Then he leaned over the edge of the plank bridge, seeing his reflection on the surface of the water. It was harder with mirrors: they were too crisp, too defined. They showed him nothing but his own face. But if he unfocused his eyes a bit, if he took a deep breath and snapped the last piece into place and made a wish, the face on the water wavered. Just enough to believe.

“I miss you,” he said, to the water. “I miss you every day. I still feel you… gone, here.”

He made a fist, motioning to the center of his chest. An absence with weight; a nothing and a something all at the same time. The kind of puzzle Atem would love.

There was nothing else to add. He’d said most of it already, last year and the year before. They would see each other again, some day, and he had long since understood that he was not meant to wait and he was not meant to run. He was meant to stay right here, in the heart of his own life, and feel it beating.

Yuugi readjusted, sitting cross-legged on the bridge. He flipped through the datebook, going backwards to the beginning. The memories burst open inside him, as raw and fresh as a ripe fruit, swollen with color and feeling. Deadlines for that art history class. Flying out for Anzu’s solo show in December. His first date with Kaiba, sometime in March, although neither of them realized it was a date until the morning after. CHAMPIONSHIP!!, on a weekend in September, when Jou had swept the Pan-Pacific. The pages were as crisp and dry as autumn leaves; they'd burn well.

He turned to the first page.

“Here’s what you missed,” Yuugi said, and began to read.

[panticwritten]

Writing request! Carl and Sawyer (some version of you, I’m not sure where Carl usually fits in) have stumbled into the same dungeons and dragons forum and become closer through battling together (not 100% sure of Carl’s personality, be him not the type for this or totally the type). This can be a silly throw away or warmup up one since it is me.

Okay, so Cherry sent me this like forever ago. I wrote it, they read it because they live with me, but I forgot to actually post it! The name change to Kane is going smoothly, and I’m ready to never think about that asshole as Karl again lmaooooo

So, yeah, Kane and I play some DnD and he’s not subtle about anything ever at all. 

I’ll have to wait until after I post this to change the colors of the different people in the text chats because lord knows I look at those strings of chat-text and have a time sifting through it. Homestuck has spoiled me.

Word count: 2270

@asinwolves @avi-burton-writing @infinitelyblankpage @no-url-ideas-tho @jade-island-lives @ravenpuffwriter @spirit-wizard-nerd @steakfryday @alextriestowritestuff @cataclystr0phe  @perringwrites @davidvalencia323 @fluffpiggy @dont-trust-the-clogs @authorkimberlygrey @aclassilighthouse @cherrytying

I don’t think Kane knows I know.

If the smattering of ‘kid’ in our correspondences hadn’t tipped me off, it would definitely have been the way he made his character. I doubt anyone else would get the joke or see what he’s doing, but seriously? His character isn’t anything like him, of course.

If he were to be himself, he’d be a tiefling fighter. Either scout (ha) or cavalier archetype. He’d be a faction agent. Making a call between the chaotic alignments might be a shaky one sometimes. His attributes terribly skewed toward charisma and dexterity.

But he’s chosen a true neutral urchin. A mastermind rogue. An eladrin. The attributes are fairly balanced, save for dexterity always hovering above the others and strength a little lacking. Nothing like Kane. Not at all.

No, that’s the point.

He made a character that is exactly what I end up presenting myself as in the damn Cube. How I always play in console RPGs. Behavior just not erratic enough to be chaotic. Snarky and angry, never overtly because of the need to cover every goddamn emotion up. Inconsistent.

I’m not sure when I realized it was him. I thought it might be a member of the Collective when I first got the invitation from an unknown player. With Haz, j355, Hal, and Jax as mods of the server and tag-teaming as DMs, I slowly caught on to Kane’s game.

He’s making fun of me. He must have been playing with this character for some time, with their high level, and I wonder how long he’s been planning this.

It took me a little bit to even realize most of the similarities between myself and the character. My own character, a homebrew ice genesai, a brawler, bonded fairly quickly with them because they’re both urchins and saved each others’ asses when their time in the city overlapped.

He uses my lines, though. The whole ‘I’ll be fine’ shtick and his character has mentioned being a poet several times. After that, it took a few more days of play to start realizing it was him. That it was Kane playing such a long game.

The first time it occured to me, it was a bad call on what the endolin would do. We were looking for the deed to a seemingly abandoned manor. We hadn’t run into anything but low-level scavenging animals. In short, any good player would be a little on-edge and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Halexander (MOD): Alright. The second you both clear the door, it slams shut behind you.Match (SeeSaw): Crap.Videre (ANON): whats in the room?Halexander (MOD): It’s a pretty nondescript room. Pretty small, almost looks like a study with three desks lining one wall and a bookshelf on another. There’s a couch shoved into a corner, looks like it was slept in recently.Match (SeeSaw): Can we roll investigation real quick?Halexander (MOD): Go for it, dude.Match (SeeSaw): 5Halexander (MOD): You notice that, unlike the rest of the place, there’s no dust. The whole room is swept clean of it. That’s it. The epitome of observation.Match (SeeSaw): Okay. Videre?Videre (ANON): nah im goodHalexander (MOD): You sure? Just gonna barge in there?Videre (ANON): the doors locked right what else can we do?Match (SeeSaw): Whatever. I’ll get a closer look at the couch.Videre (ANON): imma look at the closest desk while the kid does thatMatch (SeeSaw): Fuck youHalexander (MOD): I’ll put some form of that exchange as being in character.Match (SeeSaw): GoodMatch (SeeSaw): Now, the couchHalexander (MOD): To clarify, you’re both investigating different areas of the room?Match (SeeSaw): YesVidere (ANON): yeahHalexander (MOD): Excellent.

I was so used to the DMs at least pretending to need time to formulate responses that Hal’s immediate block of text took me by surprise.

Halexander (MOD): The two of you cross the room in different directions, as if by silent agreement. Match is slower, being more hesitant, so Videre gets to the desks first. Before you can do more than peer at the desk, however, there is a cry behind you. The bedding on the couch lashed out and has taken Match captive. Match, a blanket has one wrist and a facemask has bound itself over your eyes due to your proximity when the animation first occurred. Roll Initiative.Match (SeeSaw): Whaaaaat. Not cool. Okay, 16.Halexander (MOD): Enchanted Bedding got 12.Halexander (MOD): Videre?Videre (ANON): am i far enough away that i can stay out of order and keep looking through the drawers?

Uh.

Match (SeeSaw): What the fuck. I’m being attacked here, your rapier would take care of this in like two seconds.Videre (ANON): you dont know that. i have a feeling the deeds in here just give me a minuteHalexander (MOD): You can stay out of the fight if you want, but you still need to roll so we can keep this orderly.Videre (ANON): fineVidere (ANON): 8Halexander (MOD): Thanks for cooperating.Match (SeeSaw): Okay, first off, Match is never going to trust you again.Videre (ANON): he doesnt even know im helping yet. he cant see rememberMatch (SeeSaw): WHATEVERMatch (SeeSaw): Is the blanket pulling on me or just holding me there?Halexander (MOD): It’s tugging something fierce. The rest of the pile of blankets and pillows are writhing as if alive.Match (SeeSaw): I guess I’ll attack the blanket with that dinky little knife.Match (SeeSaw): “you should empty your bag in case you find good loot” THANKS VIDERE NOW I DONT HAVE MY GOOD WEAPONSVidere (ANON): hey you should know better than to listen to me by now kidMatch (SeeSaw): When we finish this, I will find you and kill you.Halexander (MOD): Also canon, in-character dialogue.Match (SeeSaw): YEET, crit. 5 damageMatch (SeeSaw): Don’t think you’re off the hook here, HalHalexander (MOD): I resent that.Halexander (MOD): And that’s including your proficiency?Match (SeeSaw): 6 damage.Halexander (MOD): That’s what I thought.Halexander (MOD): You slash blindly at the blanket. You manage to cut the corner holding you clean off. You’re still blinded, but you’re free to move.Match (SeeSaw): OKAY YEAH I BACK THE FUCK UP AND ASK VIDERE WHAT THE FUCK THEYRE DOINGHalexander (MOD): You stumble back into the door.Match (SeeSaw): Hold up just a fucking second

I scrolled up to reread the chat.

Match (SeeSaw): Can I try opening the door?Halexander (MOD): Unfortunately, you’ve exhausted your turn. The mass of blankets shoots out another piece but cannot quite reach you in its haste. Obviously, you don’t actually see this because: The blindfold begins to tighten around your eyes. That’s it for that, what’s next on the agenda?Videre (ANON): how many of these drawers could i search in one turn?Halexander (MOD): Two.Videre (ANON): how many drawers in each desk?Halexander (MOD):Three.Videre (ANON): ill search two drawers in the first deskHalexander (MOD): Alrighty then. The first drawer is full of vials and tubes. Most of them stand empty, but there is a vial each of blue, red, and orange liquid. The second contains a weathered journal.Videre (ANON): ill snag those three vials and pocket the journalHalexander (MOD):Of course you will.Match (SeeSaw): Can I open the door now.Halexander (MOD): Since Sherlock Holmes over here can’t do much else, I’ll bite. The door, amazingly, shockingly, opens once you manage to find it with the blindfold currently limiting your sight and putting increasing pressure on your skull.Match (SeeSaw): Okay, we’re dumb.Match (SeeSaw): Videre, the door’s open, let’s get the hell out of here!Videre (ANON): im not doneMatch (SeeSaw): Are you serious right now.Halexander (MOD): Better make the rest of your turn good.Match (SeeSaw): K. I cut the string on the blindfold and join that IDIOT at the desksHalexander (MOD): I’m honestly just gonna take that as a free action.Match (SeeSaw): Sweet. Can I search a drawer?Halexander (MOD): You definitely can.Match (SeeSaw): I’ll start on the middle desk, I guess.Match (SeeSaw): I’ll deal with YOU later, VidereVidere (ANON): looking forward to itHalexander (MOD): The drawer holds a dusty lab coat. That’s it.Match (SeeSaw):Why the fuck not, I’ll take it.Halexander (MOD): You done?Halexander (MOD): Just kidding, I know you are. The blanket wraps around your ankle to pull your feet out from under you. Roll for acrobatics to see if you eat shit.Match (SeeSaw): Jesus fuck.Match (SeeSaw): 10Halexander (MOD): You slam your face into the desk on the way down. Take 1d4 damage for that, and your nose is bleeding.Match (SeeSaw): Why are you doing this to me.Halexander (MOD): You chose to let me design this campaign. What did you think would happen?Match (SeeSaw):2Halexander (MOD): While you’re down, another blanket catches you by the wrist. Again. Go, Videre.Videre (ANON): two more drawersHalexander (MOD): The first is full of pieces of metal. Mostly junk, nuts and bolts. The second is empty, so I’ll knock the action down and let you open another one.Match (SeeSaw): IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR HANDS AFTER THIS YOU WILL HELP ME RIGHT NOWVidere (ANON): yeah ill open another drawer. that leaves three left right

They searched every single drawer before helping me, by which time I was almost dead and being smothered by a pillow. They found the deed and I chewed them out on the way back to town. They said they knew I would be fine, they needed to find the deed, and there was no harm done.

Having already seen the parallels this anonymous player was making between their character and myself, I bristled at my computer.

Match (SeeSaw): Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. You won’t stay anonymous forever.Videre (ANON): oh im so scaredVidere (ANON): are you gonna come kick the shit out of me over a dumb game? give it up and find something else to obsess over if youre gonna be like that kidVidere (ANON): im just staying in character

And I had a good idea who was on the other side of the computer after that. Especially after I found out he’d done a covert investigation check with Hal instead of sharing with me. He knew there was an enemy in the room before we even entered. Was likely planning on using me as a distraction from the beginning.

The next time he surprised me, we were working for the owner of an orphanage to find ways to exploit parents interested in adoption. Match goes along with it because why not. Also because fuck adults.

But Videre surprised both me and Jax.

Jaxabandit (MOD): u want to what?Videre (ANON): buy the orphanageMatch (SeeSaw): We won’t get paid if you do that.Videre (ANON): im gonna assume that was in character and not in this whole ‘ooc’ space or whateverMatch (SeeSaw): Duh. The guy’s slimy and gross. But just because you have money doesn’t mean Match does. He needs the paycheck.Videre (ANON): think of it this wayVidere (ANON): if dicks like this werent in power match wouldnt have grown up on the streetsMatch (SeeSaw): That’s not how he thinks about shit and you know it.Videre (ANON): and hes not the one holding a huge sack of gold right now

I didn’t know what to think. By this point, I knew it was Kane. The fact that I asked Haz helps, but I know the way he talks to me. He’s the only one that would do this and keep up with it for so long.

So now, I’m not exactly sure what to do.

Match just died, like D-E-D, dead, and Videre is flipping the fuck out. The two of them had become fairly close friends. They were snarky and prickly toward each other, but they were partners in crime and would likely kill for each other.

Videre gets really scary in the final stretch of that fight.

I didn’t realize Kane thought so highly of my intimidation skills. I didn’t think he thought highly of me at all, not outside of work. I was just a tool and a weapon and something to either give orders to or take orders from.

But Videre is a force of nature toward the end. Being a mastermind rogue, they confuse the ice devil as well as fighting it. They show a lot of skill they didn’t before, turning a few unlucky rolls into happy mistakes. Even they seem surprised when they win.

Videre (ANON): wellVidere (ANON): i guess i know what its like to be you nowThe Old Hazzle Dazzle (MOD): Are you done now, Kane?Videre (ANON): wow cats out of the bagMatch (SeeSaw): You’re awful at hiding who you are, though.Match (SeeSaw): Also, you’re an assholeThe Old Hazzle Dazzle (MOD): Did you want to make a new character and keep going? Or call it quits for now?Match (SeeSaw): I think I’m done. I gotta go challenge Kane to a fist fight.Videre (ANON):gotta find me first

- Videre (ANON): has left the chat -

He’ll have to try a hell of a lot harder than that to get out of actually hanging out with me like a person.

[pepperbox]

Tell me about your DnD campaign? My group is on a hiatus so I'm living vicariously through other people :(

THE WORST we just came off a month hiatus from the main game, tho last month we were doing slayers take style sessions w/ the party split while we did bounty hunting things

it’s the phoenix fields!! i post some stuff on my art blog @hydrae and there’s a tumblr our dm made @thephoenixfields that has inspo, occasionally session summaries, all that jazz

THE PCS bc why the heck not

sariel is a sun elf from a magically closed off elven city called alanar, who HAD been a wizard once upon a time but one night she sort of. exploded. literally. and awakened as a (homebrew class) fury, tho she still doesn’t know wtf that is. she ran away from home and eventually met the rest of us losers. we ended up heading to alanar for help dealing w/ a revenant problem we kiiiinda had and she reunited with her family. she was named grand enchantress while we were there but not without losing her mentor in the process :( sariel felt abandoned by the sun elf god corellon larethian, but while in alanar and then in the northdark, she started having visions of corellon (and lolth’s) daughter eilistraee, who eventually blessed her. sariel now prays to her and we’re all kinda EYES EMOJI at where it’s going. during their slayers take games, sariel, julian & rowan went back to some woods called the northern wilds that she has some Bad memories in aaaand the fury side to her took over?? so that was a thing. julian punched it. it liked it. WELP. but sariel is basically the leader of our group of disasters and everyone kinda looks to her a lot for what to do

julian is a human rogue who’s an absolute disaster. OKAY BUT NO REALLY he’s gr8. the party doesn’t know much about him yet, except for sariel which was sparked by her finding a wanted poster for him 👀👀👀👀 julian’s from a city called gilead, the same city with the bounty on him from the count, rhys, who julian has some History™ with. sariel found out that someone (rhys) carved a binding rune into julian’s chest, and that someone he cares about (a woman named isolde) is in the shadowfell. julian became the accidental AND VERY RELUCTANT dad to the group, who tends to reel sariel back from just murdering people who piss her off lmao. he tries to be broody and sad but he’s also super weak to fen and rowan–which was unfortunate when dominate person was used on him and compelled him to nearly kill fen, it’s cool it’s fine. also fun fact he’s super bad with animals and has failed every single animal handling check. help him

rowan is a lightborn human life cleric of pelor, lightborn being a variant where she is. very glowy. also when she’s killed, she automatically casts heroism around her and comes back at 1 hp. SHOUTOUT TO THE FIRST TIME THIS HAPPENED AND SHE DIDN’T TELL US, SO WE SAW HER STAB HERSELF SO SHE’D GIVE US ALL THE BUFF BEFORE A FIGHT AND WE WERE JUST LIKE UM!!!!! /BREATHES it’s fine it’s cool. but rowan is a good egg and also the only lawful good one in our band of chaotics and neutrals. she’s super empathetic and second guesses herself a lot esp when we’re being uh. us. had a Time in the northdark bc she couldn’t reach pelor down there. oh and also? first one of us to die for real. sariel and julian of the main crew were the only ones there, but so was the (former) thief king raphael, an npc we helped (and crowned!) during our first quest who rowan had a small thing?? with. THEY BROUGHT EACH OTHER BACK FROM THE DEAD AND KISSED, IT WAS A WHOLE THING. has a loaded dice from nemo that he gave her so she wouldn’t forget him

fen is a human druid–mostly. she’s from a place called the witchcombe and left home after a freaky dream that she eventually found out was of tharizdun. gods kept popping up in her dreams and she found out through sariel’s mentor that her mind is basically an open window, and told her about some monks of ioun in the desert who’d be able to help her close herself off again. things got bad in the northdark tho ‘cause they down there for a WHILE, and tharizdun marked her apparently bc he’s a dick so now she’s just kinda giving off his aura. cool. he gifted her a dagger for her to use for a shiny new (homebrew) class called avatar (not that one), so that’s fun. also fen has an accidental Thing w/ a revenant named salome that was risen for the purpose of raising tharizdun. TURNS INTO A DIRE WOLF 99% OF THE TIME, 1% CAT WHEN SHE WANTS TO ESCAPE A CONVERSATION. also fen has holes in her memory for?? some reason???? has no clue if it’s due to the god fuckery or something else. has the bag of holding and is a magpie. also can’t stealth for shit despite having a +3 dex modifier, why

nemo is a human umbramancer who we know literally NOTHING about except that he’s a disaster and he revealed as a trade of secrets that he doesn’t have a shadow and he’s “cursed.” he didn’t deign to mention that he makes people forget him, which ONLY rowan just found out (rowan, sending to an npc from a past city: hey do you know nemo?/ them: who?? / rowan: K!!!!). we also don’t know that nemo himself has no memories, yikes!! for magic reasons, nemo also uh. did a ritual to remove his own eyes. for new powers. he kept casting minor illusion on himself to make his eyes look normal literally until he was forced to explain why he had a pair of eyes in his pocket, THANKS NEMO (he’s not actually blind tho, he uses his new shadow powers to see, cool cool). nemo tried trading his eyes to the raven queen to get her to help us but since they were something he’d given up already and were meaningless, it just ticked her off. nemo gave her the memory of his brother linus instead bc it’s all he had and none of the party knows this :( during a side quest with fen, they fought a lord of hell named sammael who could tell what was done to him??? nemo also has a sort of not really boyfriend named lysander, a cleric of the raven queen. THE TRULY STEALTHY ONE OF OUR PARTY, TRIES TO CRIME BUT HECKS IT UP A LOT. has a mace with bees in it, has been described as “horny eldritch raccoon boy” 

[mylordshesacactus]

Me and some friends want to start playing Dungeons and Dragons, but we have no clue on where to start. I've seen some posts you've made/commented on/etc and I'm wondering if you have any tips for complete begginers? Thanks for reading this and I hope this wasn't a weird question or anything.

Not a weird question at all! Though I’m afraid I’m not the best person to ask; all the campaigns I’ve played have been heavy homebrews, playing fast and loose with the rules because we were a lot more focused on telling a story and developing the characters.

So hey, that’s some advice--don’t be afraid of the rulebook. It’s there to provide a structure for the game, because the element of chance is what makes D&D fun. It’s there for you. If you decide to “hardskill” something (which is just...slang for, essentially, instead of making a check to inspire your troops you literally give a speech and the DM decides whether it would be effective and inspiring, for example) then fine, if you decide that certain rules are too complicated and you’re going to resolve those situations with simpler dice rolls, that’s your call. House rules are your friend, especially if you’re all beginners. Take the basics, and run with them.

On that note, don’t be scared of failing! See above RE: house rules. Our agreement in this campaign is that our characters won’t die. Horrible things might happen, but we want a good story, and we want to be deeply invested and develop these characters. And because we’re good roleplayers, the DM trusts us to play the characters as if THEY don’t know that they’re not going to die--so we feel comfortable with that arrangement because we all know nobody’s going to abuse that trust to do wildly game-breaking things that should kill us. It’s a good-faith arrangement. Honestly, I recommend that for your first time. Act as if you could die if you mess up, but it takes a lot of stress off if you know an honest mistake won’t completely screw you over.

Again--the element of chance and luck is what makes D&D fun. A failed roll can spur the story on and create classic moments even better than a successful one. My current character was a shepherd, so she had some goats. I asked the DM, jokingly, if I had to roll to successfully breed them. I was informed that I could have just done it, but now that I asked, yes, I had to roll. I failed so hard that all my billy goats are gay now. A few weeks ago my rogue was attacked by a giant centipede and the paladin rolled a natural one. He burst into tears and punched the centipede in the face, doing zero damage, and immediately developed a debilitating phobia of centipedes.

This stuff is fun. Don’t be afraid to go for it. Most of my skill points are in stealth, because I’m a rogue. I failed to open a door quietly enough to avoid waking the enemy mages in the room. Then, immediately afterward, I got a natural twenty on using a crowbar to break a lock on the other side of the room, slip inside, and close the door so silently that nobody noticed. COOL STUFF HAPPENS IN D&D. Don’t be afraid of it.

I would also say: be careful about playing magic users. I’m biased, because I personally don’t like playing them. They can be really cool! But there’s a lot of rules involved and a lot of stuff to keep track of. Suggested house rules for beginners: don’t worry too much about keeping track of spell components, because that can seriously bog down the gameplay.

Another suggested house rule: replenishing ammo. Unless you fail a roll (like an arrow shatters against a stone wall or something), you might want to just Assume that you’re collecting fallen arrows or darts or whatever ammunition you use after combat, so that you don’t have to keep track of them. On the other hand, you might WANT to keep track of them if you think it adds realism!

In general, just keep in mind that this is fun, and that everything is negotiable. If something is stressful or unfun, you can change it. Just try to make sure as much of those changes as HUMANLY POSSIBLE is agreed on beforehand. This is a group thing, so, come to these agreements as a group. (That being said, some things can be individual. If Player 1 wants to have the possibility of their character dying and Player 2 doesn’t, you can do that, it’s okay, you’re allowed. If you want to track ammo but your friend doesn’t, you can both do your own thing. Again, just make sure you’re clear about what you’re doing.)

So: Have fun, communicate, don’t be afraid of the dice, don’t be afraid of the rulebook, don’t taunt the gods of randomness or you will end up with gay billy goats, a druid faceplanting down a flight of stairs in the middle of what was until that point a 100% successful stealth rescue mission, and a rogue who walks facefirst into a Fireball, instantly transforms into a werewolf, and tries to eat the paladin.

Not that I would have any experience with that.

[dnd-inspiration]

If you’ve sent me an ask within 30 days… it's here!

If yours isn’t here, send it again!  I’m sorry it took me so long to get to you guys. It’s been a few crazy weeks, I’m generally a lazy person, and having more than 5 asks stresses me out so I avoid my inbox. So lets get to it!

@leonmashedpotatoes Hello there, I'm going to be running a 3.5 shackled city campaign and I'm excited about the campaign, but I'm nervous because my homebrew campaigns have been making me super overwhelmed and I don't end up having any fun playing and the session just ends anticlimactically. How can I keep myself from getting overwhelmed? I figured it'd be easier since I'm using a module but I'm still nervous that I won't end up having fun PLeS HalP

It depends! Why does it overwhelm you? Are you organized enough? Do your players ask you stupid questions that you didn’t think you had to prepare for? Get good at predicting those dumb questions, or get good at improv. Are they doing things you don’t want them to do, like going north when they should go south? Just change the stuff happening in the south to the north. Or block off the path. I’d also recommend taking a 5 - 10 min break. Get up, stretch, get some snacks, etc. AS for anticlimactic session ends, try to plan for a good stop or stop playing too long. Sometimes sessions I’m in go so long we basically end when someone falls asleep.

@meme-regime

Hi, gonna DM a campaign that revolves around 2 countries at war. The campaign will eventually build up to each country having a superweapon, but the players only know about the enemy's. They are sent to stop it and while gone the allied country's goes off accidentally. My question is, how should i get my players invested in the story and really care about and join one side, rather than just do mercenary work? Its a war over land, so neither side is necessarily in the right, morally. Thanks!

Ask them to come up with detailed backstories about where they’re from, any friends, etc. Put those NPCs in the town in the region you want. Maybe one side pays well, maybe one side is filled with [x “evil” race]. Have them meet NPCs that they themselves care about their land. You can’t really force anyone to care about anything. I always stressed myself out when I cared if they did, so I stopped caring. And weirdly enough they started!

@ anon

I want to start dm'ing a campaign. Any advice for someone who's never dm'd before?

Just read up on the rules, find a module you want to try, read through it, and relax!

@ anon

I need to create a D&D character for a group me and my friends are starting. How do I go about it?

I use the app “5th edition Character Sheet” and I love it. If you pay 1 dollar you get to level up easy. There are guides online to help you out. Reading the player's handbook also helps! Make sure you and your buds know what level you’re starting at, and if you’re doing point buy or rolling your stats.

@sevenawkwarddays

So, I just recently started DMing and my group really seems to enjoy inns and enjoys roleplaying visiting one. I'm running out of gimmicks and fun quirks to give them and was wondering if you have any advice or suggestions?

Watch/read/listen to media related to that and take inspiration from there. Look up historical inns, look up local bed and breakfast joints, etc. There are some cool podcasts about history, myths, etc.

@irl-yuya

I'm writing a campaign for my friends (in which I will be both DMing and playing a character) should I get ideas, just knowing my friends' classes and see what happens or wait until they've finished character building? (We're using fan made classes. Dancer, Death Weapon (based on the show Soul Eater) and Dragon Slayer Wizard (based on Fairy Tail.)

Its your campaign, you should make it no matter what they want to play. Their races and classes shouldn’t matter too much. I’m in the middle of writing a campaign where Drow are despised, much more than normal, and driven out of towns. I’d gently suggest my players not play Drow, but hey if they want I won’t stop them. They just need to know what they’re getting into. I’m not about to change my entire campaign just because they want to play Drow but not be treated unfairly.

@ anon

Im setting up a Lamia lair in an old desert ruin, and so far i have a Lamia, jackalweres, manticores, and slaves occupying it. I have a maze, main lair, and slave cages planned, but i want it to be bigger. Any ideas???

Honestly I have no idea what Lamia is and google didn’t help… so here are some maybe not so helpful suggestions.

Room of pots, some overflowing with rubies. When you dig for more, its sand. If one breaks, endless sand pours out.

A giant room with pillars, and a single set of stairs that almost goes up to the ceiling.

A room dedicated to giving gifts to gods. You probably shouldn’t take anything. Should leave something instead.

Giant crocs who can be appeased with hearts

@ anon

So, in my campaign, almost all the PCs have a dead sibling, so I try to emphasize familial bonds in the story. Would having the BBEG's goal to bring back their own dead sibling be keeping to the motif or just lazy writing? Any suggestions for alternatives or ways to make that more interesting?

Whats bad about bringing your sibling back? Obviously raising the dead is a bit iffy but if I was one of your players I wouldn’t hunt him down for doing that. Maybe his sibling is bigger, badder, and generally better at doing evil stuff.

@didthething

My players are wandering through a mountainous region, with occasional Kobold tribes interspersed. They are searching for an old tower surrounded by a thick, cloying fog. What might they run into while they are wandering about?

I don’t have a monster manual, but I’d look into that to help you out! Rocs could be funny, since they sound like “rocks”. Bullets? Birds, goats, other typical animals you’d find on a mountain. Maybe some mountain monks or something.

@candalable

I think this is totally doable for your first game. Neat idea! I think your plot is fine, I don’t have any points. Since this is set in one place, make this places VERY detailed. Names, ages, jobs of all npcs they come across, town export and import, etc. Not sure about puzzles since everything sets back to normal tbh.

@anon

I'm DMing a session and my players are in a campaign where they're in a magical rubix cube dungeon that rotates and opens paths to new rooms when they interact with certain parts of the room they're in. I'm trying to design each room to be unique in both it's layout and what kind of challenge they'll have to go through, and i've already got three rooms planned out, but i'm running dry on cool ideas for puzzles, traps, or fun battles for them to stumble into. There are 5 players if it helps.

@anon

Could read through my blog and see if you can apply/tweak any to a room. Look up popular brain teasers and puzzles, twist them to a dnd setting. A room with a long staircase, halfway up you notice a really tall being just staring at you. Narrow bridge to get to the other side, but its cut. You can climb down the ladder into darkness. The other side seems slanted enough you can climb up.

@literal-trash-heap

In an adventure I'm writing, I need a monster that could make ships mysteriously vanish, but still be suitable for first level players. I was thinking maybe something to do with ghosts and the ethereal plane, but any suggestions would be terrific!

Low HP powerful monster that actually only makes ship invisible and sets them off course? Otherwise your suggestion sounds great.

@anon

In the party I have, everyone seems to be focused on only the task ahead and they aren't finding creative ways to overcome challenges. How can I change this and slyly force them into some RP and world exploration?

You can’t make them play how you want them to. If you want them to get into room A, and the door is locked and you don't want them busting it down but finding the key… make it impossible to break down. Thats as far as you can force their hand though. Maybe they like the straight path? You can introduce some NPCs  that want to show them the world, or need an escort.

@anon

Several sessions ago the party I have been DMing helped an Armorer and a Weaponsmith get together. Now, they've been invited to their wedding. It looks like the party wants to go so I want to spice it up a bit. I'm thinking some sort of monster should attack mid vows but I'm not sure what would be good. The wedding will take place in a city set on the side of a mountain, and the players should be about level five by the time they get there. But I have no idea what the monster should be

@anon

Look in the monster manual? Maybe there is a crazed ex lover that wants revenge. Maybe some giant birds want the bird seed, or see shiny objects in the wedding like the rings or decorations.

@anon

im dming for my four friends, but two of them chose to be bards, and the other two are a cleric and a wizard. should i like, force some of them to change roles or is there someway for me to change monsters and enemies so they dont get completely junked

I’d tell everyone everyone’s class, see if they’re okay with that, and treat them like any normal party. I treat my normal parties like they CAN die… but if they’re nice and don’t do stupid stuff, they only almost die. I don’t force my players but if you’re cool with that and so are they, go for it I guess.

@cometgrace

I have a question, if you don't mind. I'm really interested in playing d&d but I have no friends who would be interested so I'm looking to play it online. The problem is, I have absolutely no experience with the game and I know pretty much nothing. What's a good way a get started and figure out the game? or a good way to just learn the ropes?

Read up the players handbook and go online! Roll20.net is something people use. You can also find game shops in your town that host [free] dnd nights with tables for you to use! For free! Most people are patient. Just be up front that that you’re new and do your best to play along.

@gxjira

i have an idea for a campaign and several little details for it but for some reason i cant connect them? so far i have a tiny town full of completely regular people, a well with weird powers, the lunar eclipse and a bad time

Sorry but there isn’t nearly enough information for me to help you out!

@synodicstudying

I have a new DND session this weekend and I'm dusting off one of my old character ideas- a wood elf druid with a chronically ill wife and a 10 year old stepson, driven by trying to find the cure for her wife. She's definitely a motherly figure, with an emphasis on healing and shapeshifting abilities who I mean to make into the glue of the party, but I just got the setting. We're in the Arctic. Any ideas on how to adapt her to fit?

I love your idea so much!  Why not have her travel from your beautiful home continent? The arctic supposedly has the oldest seed in the world, frozen in time. And its one of the things you need for your wife!

@anon

So my players have unknowingly contacted the first arcs Big Bad and asked them for work. The Big Bad has been scrying on them and is slowly recognizing them as a threat, not just an annoyance. He's in a really good position to get rid of them without losing his sterling reputation. Any suggestions on how he could do this without tipping his hand that he's a villain to the party until it's too late?

Having them do tasks that kind of fuck up the town, or powerful people only. Tasks like taking a package from the Yarl to X address, instead of Y making it look like you stole it.