#lore: ttrpg

[exhausted-archivist]

Deep Road and Dwarf Facts From Buried Pasts Adventure - Dragon Age Tabletop RPG

Bullet point list of the interesting bits I found, I've added the excerpts below the cut.

The Deep Roads and Thaigs are 2-4 miles (3.21 - 6.43 km) below sea level. Making them deeper in areas like those beneath mountains.

Mining galleries tunnel upwards into mountains while thaigs tunnel downward towards the mantle.

The environment of the Deep Roads can shift from shockingly cold to blistering hot depending on the area.

Thaigs are heated in old thaigs by lava but in newer (now abandoned) thaigs it was common to use steam.

If traveling the Deep Roads, carrying a light and heat source is required. Without a heat source you could die from the cold.

There is complete pitch darkness outside of the glow of lyrium or lights created by people.

Dwarves make oil lamp using nug and bronto fat.

The shadows are so long when a light source exists that it makes it hard to spot what might be lurking in the dark.

Sounds louder than a whisper will echo further than they would above ground in a space/passage.

Dwarves love wood instruments and design their spaces to allow for sounds to echo in thaigs, giving them an ever present hum poets have compared to the song of the Stone.

Dwarven stone-sense fades the longer you are on the surface.

Magic and lyrium resistance in the dwarves comes from the constant exposure of lyrium. When on the surface for too long that resistance will fade away completely.

Dwarves are masters in close quarter combat, favoring morning stars, crossbows, and shields.

Note: There are weird wordage/typos in the text itself that I didn't alter because I couldn't tell which way to go with so I've left it as is.

Deep in the Dark (page 3)

"...For those who have spent their entire life being able to see the horizon, the cramped, confusing conditions underground can be difficult to adjust to. The human and elven sense of direction is easy to lose underground, sound travels further as it echoes off the walls, the environment can be shockingly cold in one space and blistering hot in the next, and the cramped conditions impede the styles of fighting surface-dwellers will be used to..."

Light and Shadow (page 3)

"Above ground is never completely dark, even on a clouded moonless night. Underground, in uninhabited areas of the Deep Roads, the only light in the pitch darkness is that which the heroes bring with them and the glow of lyrium veins. The slightest obstruction creates a long shadow such that even with light characters are unlikely to be able to see everything within the reach of their light source. As characters move through the environment, everyone of those shadows will move in keeping, further hindering characters watching for creatures in the dark..."

Sound and Silence (page 3 & 4)

"Although the solid rock stops sound from traveling to completely sealed areas, anything louder than a whisper will echo much further than it would above ground along the passageways and chambers of the Deep Roads. The effect is especially pronounced on the roads themselves, as dwarves built their underground passageways long and straight with vaulted ceilings to greatly enhance the distance at which sound can be heard. The constant echoing combined with the dwarven love of deep wind instruments and song gives inhabited thaigs a background hum of sound that dwarven poets have compared to the Stone. Orzammar itself is never silent, and the impact of moving into the stillness of abandoned Roads beyond the city's control is greatly upsetting to dwarves who have lived with the comforting sense of community the background noise provides..." "..Any parties with dwarves in them may find the dwarves natural stone sense a help or frustration. Dearves who spend most of their life underground will find the sense still sharp and comforting. By feeling the stone, navigation is easier. However, the sense fades the longer dwarves remain on the surface and when the darkest parts of the Deep Roads it can be a vague distraction as the sense is dulled and irritating, though not completely without use.

Heat and Fuel (page 4)

"The majority of the Deep Roads and thaigs are built about two to four miles beneath sea level, although in the Frostbacks that means they're actually much deeper beneath the surface. Dwarven mining galleries normally stretch up rather than down, tunneling up into the mountain regions of Ferelden and Orlais from beneath, while the thaigs themselves burrow downward toward pockets of lava that have moved up from the mantle. Most older thaigs (including Orzammar) have open regions of molten rock near their center that are used for heat, while more modern thaigs (ironically those more likely to be abandoned thanks to the darkspawn pushing the dwarven empire back on itself) used steam heating. Inhabited regions between thaigs are heated and lit by oilk lamps using the fat from nugs and brontos. Away from lava or artificial heating, the Deep Roads are bitterly cold. The lack of weather is a mercy, but travelers that go too ling without a source of heat will begin to feel the effects. As their lanterns are likely the source of their heat as well as light, travelers must take extra care with the amount of fuel they have; the dwarven empire once maintained frequent waystations along the Roads for resupply, but running out of lamp oil in the modern Deep Roads can be a death sentence..."

Fighting at Close Quarters (page 4)

"The dwarves of Orzammar equip their rank-and-file soldiers with shields, maces, and crossbows, perfect for the cramped conditions they are expected to fight in. Skirmishing is a thing of the surface battlefield, except in the largest caverns. The dwarves train their warriors to block passageways with shieldwalls and corral disorganized opposition into killing grounds. Height is the main restriction. The dwarves built the main tunnels of the Deep Roads with lofty ceiling clearance, and thaigs are usually organized facing into large caverns to give a sense of space, but private houses and other areas not intended for heavy traffic can be uncomfortably cramped to a human. The lack of space can get in the way of swinging the large weapons humans may be used to..."

Dwarven Magic Resistance (page 16)

"...The dwarven resistance to magic is the result of prolonged low-level exposure to lyrium in the Deep Roads and is also the reason Orzammar dwarves can handle lyrium in relative safety in amounts that would drive a human mad."

[honourablejester]

I’m realising as I browse around that I really love lore when it comes to ttrpgs, games and game worlds. And by that I don’t mean I like to obsessively learn lists of dates and wars, and the names of leaders of factions, I mean …

I like learning weird, juicy details about the worlds of games. I like finding little nuggets that say things about the set-up and culture and assumptions of the world. I like finding fragments of ideas to hang whole story and character concepts off.

I love that in D&D 5e’s Spelljammer, the Astral Sea is full of the corpses of dead gods that you can fully sail up to in your ship. Just. Floating out there. Waiting for you to rock up to them.

I love that in Sunless Sea, the king of the drowned is the way he is because he fell in love with an eldritch sea urchin from space, and successfully married it. His niece is an angry sentient floating mountain whose mother is a goddess-mountain and whose father is a face-stealing humanoid abomination. This is fine and normal.

I love that in Starfinder, there are mysterious bubble cities in the surface of the sun that the church of the sun goddess discovered and cheerfully occupied despite having no idea who the hell built them or for what purpose.

I love that in Dishonored, the entire industrial revolution that has built the empire we’re in the midst of saving or destroying was built on the properties of whale oil harvested from eldritch tentacled whales that live half in the oceans and half in an eldritch void personified in the form of a weird-ass black-eyed shit-stirrer of a deity who was formed from a murdered and sacrificed child. And this is largely a background detail.

I love in the Elder Scrolls that the dwarves up and fucking vanished, as a race, at some point in history and absolutely nobody has any clue what happened to them or where they went, but their technology is so insane that ideas like ‘they time-travelled’ or ‘they erased themselves from existence’ are absolutely on the table.

I love that in Numenera, so many incredibly advanced civilisations have risen and fallen on this world that it’s absolutely littered with bonkers science fiction artefacts that have caused the current medieval-esque society built over top of them to develop in bizarre ways, and also you can find a mysterious artefact that absolutely baffles and delights your character, but that you the player will fully recognise as a slightly-more-advanced thermos flask.

I love that in Fallout, an irradiated post-nuclear apolocalypic hellscape, there’s a cult that worships the god of radiation as they have come to understand it, and they are mysteriously immune to radiation with absolutely no explanation whatsoever. They’re not ghouls, the usual result of fatally irradiated humans with some resistance, they’re perfectly normal humans who can somehow just tank rads all damn day. It could be a mutation, but Lovecraftian gods apparently do also fully exist in this setting, so it’s also possible that maybe they were on to something with this Atom thing.

I love that in Heart The City Beneath, there’s a mass transit train system that they tried to hook up to the eldritch beating god-thing buried under the city so that they could metaphysically chain the stations together more easily, which went horrifically and metaphysically wrong in entirely predictable fashion, and now there’s a whole order of train-knights who have to keep people safe from the extradimensional weirdness magnet the network has become.

That, and all the fantastic little details you can stumble across. There’s a biotech augmentation in Starfinder called an angler’s light that gives you a little angler-fish bioluminescent antenna on your forehead, and it was developed by asteroid miners who needed light but also both hands free for work. In Dishonored there’s a festival that everyone pretends is outside of time so nothing you do during it can be held against you. There’s a god of snuffed candles mentioned in a single line from Heart The City Beneath who has pacifist cannibal priests, and that is literally all the information you get on him.

While things like the history and geography and timeline of a world do also fascinate me, I’m not really here to memorise stuff like that. I’m here to find weird little nuggets of information and worldbuilding and delight in them. Give me funerary customs and weird myths and oddly specific circumstances and baffling little objects and absolutely bonkers cosmological implications. Give me the corpses of dead gods, and aesthetic movements with highly specific backstories, and bureaucratic fuck-ups of titanic scale, and mysterious things that seem to break all other rules of your setting with absolutely no explanation because people in-universe have no fucking clue how they work either. Why are the Children of Atom immune to radiation without ghoulifying? Not a clue, but Confessor Cromwell has been cheerfully standing in that irradiated pond that kills the player character with about 10 minutes of exposure for the last year and he’s still absolutely fine.

I just. I really love lore. I like my settings to have some meat in them, some juicy details to dig into, some inexplicable elements to have fun trying to explain. Particularly that last bit. I feel like a lot of people when building worlds feel like the rules have to be absolute and everything has to have an explanation, but nah. Putting some weird shit in makes everything immediately feel bigger, more real, because we don’t have even half an idea of how our world truly works, there’s always something we just don’t fully understand yet, and you can put that in a fictional world too. Some mysteries, some contradictions, some randomness, some weirdness. There’s a line, obviously, this depends on execution, but a little bit of mystery really does help.

Lore is awesome. And weird lore is even more so. Heh.

[owlyjules]

You like TTRPGs? Wondering what you could add to your campaign?

What about Strange, Powerful and Mysterious Deities and their followers? :) "Book of Devotion" is the most recent compendium by SleepyWyrm_Ed, who you might know from their previous project "Tome of Pact", currently open on Kickstarter!:D I was lucky to be part of this one this time as one of the "Forces of Nature" Deity artists!:D The compendium is great to add to any campaign or just to read for fun! If you are interested to learn more about those Deities and their Clerics and Paladins, please check out the kickstarter page!

[namarikonda]

The Drider of Araisodar 🕸️

NPC from my DnD campaign, the Dexial Degenerates.

[ezombieart]

bunch o' changeling the dreaming sketches

[oxventure]

🌳 Prepare to journey into the Wyrdwood with Oxventure! Join us for our all-new D&D campaign using the 2024 Player's Handbook this September! 🎲

🔔 Get notified when episode one lands!

[bethanythebogwitch]

My favorite magic system from a game I haven't actually played is from Mage: the Ascension. It kind of fits as both a hard magic system and a soft magic system at the same time because there are some hard rules, but its mostly very open. To become a mage you have to realize that reality is not what it seems. In MtA, reality is whatever the majority of people believe it is, known as the consensus. The consensus in modern days is pretty uniform everywhere, with small variations based on where you are, but it used to be wildly different based on the cultural beliefs of the local people. A mage is a person who realizes that the consensus isn't true reality and gains to power to act outside of its rules. Any given mage's abilities come from their own personal view of reality, known as their paradigm. A mage's magic can do basically anything, as long as it is accounted for in their paradigm. So a mage who's paradigm includes the classic Aristotelian elements can perform magic based on that, but if their paradigm doesn't include animistic spirits then they can't commune with those spirits even though other mages could based on their own paradigm. The problem with this is that the consensus doesn't like it when you go around breaking its rules and will punish mages by slapping them with an effect called paradox. Paradox can be anything from a spell failing to getting shunted into your own personal pocket universe. Nothing generates paradox like being seen doing magic by sleepers (people who are not mages and still live fully within the consensus). Most mages either only use magic around other mages or, if they need to cast around sleepers, will disguise their magic as a mundane effect. Someone throwing a fireball from their hands will generate major paradox because the consensus is that people can't do that. However if a mage holds a lighter up to a spraycan before casting their fireball, the sleepers can rationalize it as something that exists within the consensus and not as much paradox will be generated.

In the dark ages, magic was part of the consensus and mages could openly rule over the sleepers because everyone believed in magic and therefore magic was part of the consensus. In response to the tyranny of the mages, a group was formed called the League of Reason, who wanted to introduce a new form of magic to the consensus that everyone could use. This form of magic was based on logic and reason and was called science. This led to the ascension war, where the League of reason sought to remove magic and superstition from the consensus and a very loose coalition of mages called the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions want to keep magic in the consensus. And the League of Reason won. A mostly rationalistic, scientific worldview has become the consensus worldwide, forcing the Council into operating underground. The League of Reason has become the Technocracy, a worldwide secret organization ruling the world from the shadows and trying to stamp out magic and any other form of "reality deviants" to keep humanity safe, even if they have to suppress basic human imagination to do so. Notably, the earliest books for the game very much said "Traditions good, Technocracy bad", but later books went for a much more grey approach to the conflict between them, making it clear that both sides really are doing what they think is in humanity's best interest even if their ideas for how to do so are fundamentally incompatible.

What's really interesting is that science and technology really are a form of magic and technocrats are mages, even if the Technocracy would vehemently deny this. Technology is a form of magic that everyone can use because its part of the consensus and science doesn't discover new facts about the world, It creates those facts and applies them to the world. The Technocracy's super-advanced technology creates paradox just as much as magic does because personal anti-gravity suits and mass-produced clones violate the consensus just like throwing around fireballs and conjuring demons does.

Mage: the Ascension is a super fun setting because just about any fantasy or sci-fi trope can exist here. Classic pointy hat and wand wizards can battle cyborgs armed with self-replicating nanotechnology. Anti-authoritarian punks can hack your wallpaper to spy on you because they believe all reality is part of a unified mathematical whole that the internet gives us access to. A group of spacefarers can ride the luminiferous aether to mars only to encounter Aztec shamans who asked the spirits to carry them there thousands of years ago. A powerful mage can create a time loop by convincing their younger self to obtain enlightenment through the power of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Two people can have an argument over whether the guy they just met was an alien from Alpha Centauri or an elf from the Norse nine realms and both of them can be right. Animistic spirit-callers can upload themselves to the internet to combat spirits of malware. And an angry mage might just teleport you into the sun because they believe distance is just an illusion and therefore have the power to make anything go anywhere with a thought. It's a wild ride.

[falmerbrook]

TES Summer Fest Day 1 - Forbidden

A 7 year old Vanus "Trechtus" Galerion stays up late one night reading with his dad.

[brewerssupplies]

I just want to give a shout out to my favorite rpg podcast of all time, Spout Lore!

This is the podcast that has absolutely ruined my enjoyment of other rpg podcasts due to how much I enjoyed it! If you liked the Adventure Zone, I'd highly suggest giving this one a try! Also they don't run ads so you can listen to them ad-free!

[LINK]

[tales-from-the-aether-ttrpg]

“How do describe a Dungeon… Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in your abode minding your own business when a small spider appears crawling on your floor. How do you respond? Do you watch it curiously? Do you let it explore your house as a fellow resident? Do you take it outside? Do you pick it up and admire it? Do you instinctively squash it? Do you chase it with a broom? Do you capture it as a pet? Consider, in this analogy you are the spider and the dungeon is both the denisen and the house itself.

If you ever find yourself within the bounds of a dungeon, never forget that you are both a guest and a trespasser, and that the dungeon’s tolerance of your presence may shift on a dime.” -unknown

This is a peak at some world building from my trrpg. In Tales from the Aether, Dungeons are very rare living things and pocket dimensions of a sort. I was inspired by Dungeon Meshi’s dungeons and took it a step further haha There are other twists surrounding Dungeons but I want to leave some mystique around them for now hehehe

This is just a taste of TftA’s lore and if you like it, give a follow to support the project!

[ultimavela]

Solo Co-op TTRPG

For a while, I had the idea of writing a game that you could play at your own pace, as a solo game, but that would allow you to share part of the experience with your friends, in a way that didn't require everyone to meet/talk at the same time.

So as the One Page RPG Jam is on, I thought this was the perfect time to try out this idea of a Solo Co-op TTRPG.

[spinnychaircirclecasting]

On today's episode of I Work In A Comic Shop:

So on Sundays, I run D&D games for kids (ages ranging about 6-16). It's fun, we goof around a lot and I let them get away with most things in-game as long as they can semi-reasonably justify how it'd happen.

And something I do often, when the kids start looking for every single detail about NPC #4534 because they've decided he's Very Very Important™️, is to just stick in a reference to some random movie. (For example: "This townsperson's name is Billiam S. Preston Esquire, and his buddy Teddy Bear Logan is missing! If he doesn't return soon, then Wyld Stallyns will lose their concert gig at the local tavern!") If the kids get it, it's a fun easter egg, and if they don't, then at least I didn't have to come up with a fantasy name on the spot.

My latest adventure involved a battle with a gang of skeletons, after which their scattered bones start wriggling towards the source of the dark magic that animated them in the first place.

And I'm struck with what I consider to be a bit of brilliance.

So, we're playing, and we reach the end of the battle. I explain that the bones are all moving eastwards, and then I add:

"You're reminded of the legend of old, of the great adventurer Hiro and his mighty companion Baymax, who tracked a pack of magical nanobots to their evil master using a single hostage bot."

Now the table erupts in laughter, and I'm feeling pretty good. But then we realize that the youngest of our party (an 8-year-old) looks confused at what's so funny. He doesn't get the reference.

I'm naturally surprised - this is a well-known Disney movie, I figure pretty much all the kids know it. But apparently he hasn't seen it. And so I quickly google the release date of Big Hero Six.

It is 2014. Nine years ago. In other words, the movie is older than this kid. And I am immediately hit by the passage of time like a truck.

[heybiji]

sketched some super powered teens for a MASKS ttrpg I'm gonna run for some friends.

not my characters but they are my children. in order:

Adrian/The Doomed (@dallieart)

Eridani/The Outsider (@ninjanissie)

Amber/The Transformed (Rii)

Westley/The Delinquent (@chasewalk)

Sydnee/The Protege (@chiazartz)

[dataentryspecialist]

If the Soong brothers ever played D&D, Lore would be a murder-hobo and Data would be the one that insists on checking every five feet for traps.

Lore: brother... For fucks sake let's just GO there's vampires and/or townspeople to kill

Data: a little patience will go a long way, brother. I only wish to ensure you do not require yet another resurrection. I am currently out of diamonds by which to cast again.

[57sfinest]

also yall we need to step back from the harryvision and understand that kim, at his core, is a loser (affectionate) like everyone else. so much out there wants to portray him as limitless patience, great cook, super organized, good handwriting, nice tasteful living quarters etc and that's fun to contrast him to harry but well i am here to RUIN that we need to take off the du bois glasses and appreciate kim for the weirdguy that he is. he has horrific fits of road rage and harry genuinely fears for his life riding along with him and witnessing the generational curses this man is capable of unleashing upon the stupid little fucks that cut him off on the 8/81. he has never had the time or space or budget to learn to cook so he lives off deli sandwiches and butter noodles and the occasional grab-and-go fruit. he writes so much so frequently with such awful handwriting that he has invented a new form of shorthand and the moralintern is contacting him to create a cipher system for them. he has no resources to furnish and maintain a nice flat so it's like a slightly gentrified r/malelivingspace but with a table for his sewing machine and there's scrap fabric and thread and half-pinned half-hemmed pants strewn about the place. there are absolutely a bunch of shitty mockups of his old wirral character in the backs of his notebooks and he hasn't played it in years but if he ever picks it back up then his minmax high int high dex definitely-not-a-self-insert sidhe artificer is READY. everyone add your weirdguy kim thoughts NOW 👇

[dragonkid11]

The kindling that will start a thousands years empire.

This is basically a revamped version of the DDD series I made on the KTB history a long while ago, since some more correct info has been released with the release of Field Guide to KTB, just never got to it yet with the sheer amount of stuff I worked on back then.

Well, better late than never!