#deep in homebrew

[kawaiipony-productions]

AYO BABE, NEW KAWAIIPONY PRODUCTIONS UPLOAD IS UP ON YOUTUBE!!!

[unknown-lifeformthatdraws]

First time using a drawing tablet. Definitely needs some getting used to, but I think I did alright.

Been thinking about the spooky scarecrow man. Markus belongs to @pshattuck

(also planning out a fanfic focused on him, so I might start drawing it once I get the hang of the new tablet)

[joehills]

Corrinne and I got the first three star posts secured to the playfield, and the rubber ring around where the left sling will go!

The Deep Field pinball prototype project is underway!

[pythosart]

I'll draw these better later The crew in the Blades in the Dark game I'm running tangled with this watchdog hull and didn't have a great time! Its gaze is paralyzing.

A few actions, an electroplasmic bullet, and a lot of migraines later, the cutter twisted its entire head off and took it as a trophy

[ibd-5e]

Release the Krakens

[dungeonofthedragon]

Day 5: Dragon

I love deep dragons and thought it was about time they got their own dragonborn variant.

[jhamkul]

Hydrothermic Diving Suit (plate), Very Rare (requires attunement)

Forged by the order known as the Makers of the Deep to safeguard adventurers in the depths, these suits are said to be an excellent ward against the elements that provide a significant enhancement of the wearer's underwater capabilities, making them magnificent tools for submarine exploration. Let me know what you think down below in the comments! ————— Thank you very much for checking out this new creation! If you want to see more of my content, feel free to visit my Instagram, where I ask for advice, post teasers, and you can vote for my future posts.

[bajablastflavoredsaxreed]

the sheer and utter agony of realizing that you spent a month making a race for a sci-fi DND campaign and then reread Shadow Over Innsmouth on a whim only to find out that you basically just created the Deep Ones all over again. it’s like the snake devouring its tail of nerdom. i will never be free

[abigailbozarthart]

Marinos sketch dump.

[theunwellkingdom]

Design Deep-Dive #2: New Mechanics of the Unwell Kingdom

One of the first things I did when brainstorming for this set was to look for elements of our D&D campaign — be it lore, system rules, or whatever else — that would be good candidates for new card mechanics. These could give a distinct flavor to specific colors, and to the set as a whole! After lots of tinkering, I landed on these three:

(Examples and explanations below the cut!)

1. Inspire X/Inspiration Tokens

Create X Inspiration tokens. (An Inspiration token is an enchantment with “T, Sacrifice this enchantment: Target creature you control gets +1/+1 until end of turn.”)

Main color identity: RED

For those unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons, there are two mechanics called "Inspiration" and "Bardic Inspiration", which lets a bard character give a bonus to any player that they can add to one of their rolls. I've conflated them here into a new type of token, which acts like a Treasure token but for temporary stat buffs!

This mechanic is impulsive and combat focused, so it seemed like an obvious fit for red. This naturally developed a Bard sub-theme across many of the set's red creatures. Of course, other colors would have access to a few Inspire options too, but most decks that build around it will likely want to splash in some red!

This mechanic bears obvious similarities to +1/+1 counters, which are ubiquitous in real Magic cards, and one of the most fundamental mechanics to the game. However, I realized that it could get tricky to keep track of lots of temporary buffs from Inspiration alongside the permanent counters... so I decided to keep +1/+1 counters out of this set entirely! This became another mostly pointless but fascinating design constraint going forward.

You may also notice that unlike most small, crackable tokens, this one is an Enchantment rather than and Artifact. This meant I could print some cool Enchantments-matter synergies and have them function with both Inspire and...

2. Concentration

If enchanted creature is dealt damage or targeted by a spell or ability, sacrifice this enchantment.

Main Color Identity: BLUE

Another mechanic pulled straight from D&D rules, Concentration spells demand that whoever casts them must maintain clear, steady focus or risk the spell being interrupted. I chose to translate this into a keyword for aura enchantments, as they're a perfect way to visually represent a persistent spell as well as tie it to the creature casting it.

A Concentration Aura can be knocked off whenever the creature it's attached to is damaged or merely targeted by anything (this will feel familiar to long-time Magic players, as some Spirits and Illusions have similar triggers on them). This can be a real restriction, as you could knock off your own Concentration spell by targeting your creature with an Inspiration token, or even attempting to attach an Equipment or another Concentration Aura to it!

This makes them strictly worse than ordinary Auras, but opens up some interesting design space. I can give them enters-the-battlefield effects, so they do something right away and don't feel like a waste of a card if an opponent can simply knock it off. Alternatively, I can create greedy spells with snowballing effects, which reward you for finding ways to protect your creature for as long as possible!

3. Hoard Counters

Exile one or more cards and put a hoard counter on each of them. Then cheat out hoarded cards, even from opponents!

Main color identity: BLACK

While this may not be a strictly new mechanic (ex. Tasha the Witch Queen stealing spells by exiling them with "page" counters), I really wanted to expand this idea and build support for it across the set.

Dragons are, unsurprisingly, a pivotal part of our campaign. In our story, they are born from the coalesced anxieties of people, literal manifestations of fear which compulsively hoard whatever they lack. As such, their hoards are not the stereotypical piles of treasure and gold, but can instead be a bit more abstract: knowledge, experiences, even the souls of the dead!

For this set, I've decided to add several cards in black which can put cards into the exiled hoard, and a key payoff card in each 'black + ___' color combo which allows you to play cards from the hoard of a specific card type. Stay tuned for examples of these.

This will be a tricky sub-theme to keep an eye on in playtests. There's a fine line between recurring value and accidentally creating and infinite loop, and the shared-pot structure of hoarded cards has the potential for trouble in cases where multiple players are trying to use it. But for now, it's very flavorful, a bit fiddly, and hopefully fun!

🔮NEXT TIME — Color Identities

[kawaiipony-productions]

Thank you

Thank you to all my new follwers here who found me through my Nightmare Rariappleslash post. I hope y'all support me not only here, but also my other socials... mainly TouTube cause that's my main social.

My next video there will be post either this Friday or next week Friday or Saturday. So go check me out over there!!! :D

[unknown-lifeformthatdraws]

Little doodles based on the fanfiction I mentioned in a previous post.

Essentially, Ra wakes up to find that she is separated from Twoton and is now being held captive by Markus. She has no memory of how she came to be with him but after making numerous attempts at escaping, she realizes that she's stuck with him for now. And since Markus says she's more useful to him alive (though he won't explain why), she puts in all her effort into making things as inconvenient as possible for him.

I have it all planned out on a doc so I'm really hoping I don't scrap this.

If I ever end up going back to One Night of Fun (which is old, I know, but I like to think about it still), this fanfic would take place a while after that.

Character belong to @pshattuck

[kaitlynsbustlingworkshop]

A friend of mine mentioned the Vampire Squid and spoke about how it would make for a good dnd creature. Well I decided to take up the challenge and made a few of cool underwater creatures. Definitely something I'd like to revisit and do more of in the future. Underwater is an aspect of TTRPG's I so rarely visit. Maybe soon?

[honourablejester]

Can the eldritch bees stop/slow/contain the vitrification from a glass spider bite, to extend the life of their hive? Could be a neat backstory for a Deep Apiarist, to narrowly escape the spiders alive but bitten, and make a deal with the bees because they can (or, the Apiarist believes they can) do this.

That’s a question alright. See, the (homebrew) glass spiders are a manifestation of the Heart, and the bees explicitly exist to combat that. “They are the Hive, they say – a megaconsciousness, a defence network, grown from within the Spire. They are here to help you push back the tide of unreality.” The bees exist to push back the transformative unreality of the Heart, of which the spiders are a manifestation. So, yes, they might well promise exactly that in order to have you become part of their Hive. There are landmarks in the Heart where the bees are very determinedly holding back the chaos. They are fighting it, and they can fight it within you too as well.

But. Interestingly, the bees also do so by potentially turning things to glass crystal. One of a Deep Apiarist’s ultimate/zenith abilities involves freezing themselves and a dangerous foe into a stasis crystal: “To cast this spell, touch a creature; you and they are forever bound together, rendered perfect, inviolable and immobile in glittering, transparent crystal like a statue.” And, amusingly, a crystal that spreads to those who try to break/violate it. “In fact, interacting with the crystal in any way incurs D10 stress as it spreads instantaneously from one body to another, binding another person into the curious tableau.”

So the spiders and the bees might be … if not directly linked, possibly shadows/mirrors of each other? To prevent yourself from being turned to glass, did you allow yourself to become a conduit of crystal instead? Which is worse, to become the Widow of the Web, or to become a point of Absolute Stasis?

Which could absolutely be a cool set of narrative choices for a Deep Apiarist!

[outeremissary]

Running a TTRPG for complete beginners is always interesting in terms of where people fall on character concepts- like, I've seen a lot of beginners whose first question is "what can you do in the game" and then make the most basic interpretation of one of the first few archetypes they grasp (scholar wizards, knight fighters, etc), but when you go "it's a game of imagination" some of them will leap ahead with huge and amazingly specific concepts that the question is then "how do we bring this to the table mechanically according to your vision." All systems are created to do certain things and to suggest certain modes of play and archetypes- I've seen big dreams for every system I've run for or tried to set up a game for. I just really enjoy seeing both ends of the spectrum with people who are new to a game or to TTRPGs in general: what do I think the entry point is vs what is my biggest dream based on the idea of the game.

[lilywaves16]

My first ever DnD campaign (I'm the DM) and I may have gone a bit overboard with roleplay and created an actual deed of ownership for my players 😅