#tabletop roleplay

[dailydungeondelves]

It's probably fine

[ladyazulina]

Linney's Campaign

Masterpost - Campaign Page

🌸 Spring 1 🌸

Weather: Stormy ⛈️

Previous Part: Who's this?

He's not as bad as it seems

Word Count: 2.137.

“Why do you live so far from the rest of the valley?” I distract myself, trying to look at him, but I’m so tired of running behind him that I can’t keep my head turned and walk at the same time. All my energy is going to my legs. To keep me going one step at a time. I don’t know if it was for the regained-and-already-lose warmth, but up until now my muscles weren’t aching. My legs ache with each new step and the only thing I want is to go back to the reclining chair with an enchanted towel around my shoulders, another one around my legs, and a warm mug of hot cocoa between my hands. It’s that too much to ask? It shouldn’t be. “I like the quietness,”—I startle and try to keep it subtle, having forgotten that I asked him a question—“the peace and calm that are around here.” Uh, yeah. It’s like no one else lives around here.

You can find a few other different phrases from this chapter on Medium, Substack, and Inkspired.

You can find the whole chapter in the Sapphire Azulino tier on Patreon 💙

Tagging: @aziz-reads 💙 @cilly-the-writer

[skunts-own-truth]

Trying to think of what I should add to my little Burning Wheel fantasy setting that I’ll be using as my house-game with the wife and roommate. Here’s some concepts that are set in stone for it:

Feudal society with knights and kings and shit, on a misty and dangerous set of 15 large islands with a whole lot of tiny rocky islands around them. Lot of small kingdoms, with two large kingdoms that are currently at war with each other over a shared familial claim over the other’s realm.

The islands are a closed system with no one really getting in or out, a storm has surrounded them for generations. The outside world is hardly considered by anyone other than scholars and wizards, some claim there isn’t a realm outside the misty islands.

Orcs are not a natural species, but are folks affected by a particularly nasty curse. Anyone consumed by hatred that comes in contact with the curse can become an orc, with elves being the easiest to corrupt due to how deep elf emotions run.

Population of the islands is pretty well mixed, with humans being only 20% of the folk around with Roden (Skaven) being another 20%, and elves, dwarves, orcs, dark elves, and trolls making up everything else.

Elves are often the royalty and nobility of the various kingdoms, but there are some human, roden, dwarf, and orc royalty out there too.

Mercenaries are kinda like rockstars. Tales get told of their exploits, and the more deeds under their belt the more a kingdom is willing to pay for their services- with most kingdoms saving their actual warriors for wars, mercenaries are used often for dealing with monsters and petty disputes between lords.

There was a great and terrible dark lord a while back, but he’s long dead. The army of monsters, orcs, and demons he once commanded is now scattered with some old generals attempting to rally them and destroy the dark throne under their own banner.

Necromancy is very illegal, given that Death himself wanders the land and frowns on people trying to break the cycle of life and death.

No guns or black powder weapons just yet.

Lesser curses charged with intense emotion cause unique instances of suffering and horror. The Orc curse is a powerful one, a curse that spreads and lasts indefinitely, but a singular curse that turns a man into a giant centipede with bloated human fingers for legs- that’s a unique lesser curse.

There are many forms of magic, and a lot of mixed feelings towards it. There is a magic college in one of the larger kingdom, but hedge witches and wizards are the more common practitioners, with some unique forms of magic cropping up as individuals uncover different ways to manipulate reality.

The party consists of a grave digger who spent so much time with the dead he began to hear the whispers of dead gods and now worships them as their priest, and a necromancer who was born gifted and studied at the college of magic before breaking off and hiding as a street performer to travel and steal forbidden tomes. They have formed a little mercenary band, the two of them and a big dumb goon NPC who joined in with the promise of coin.

I have the first adventure pretty much written, but I think the setting needs just that extra push to really make it bloom.

[2lim3rz]

Every day I die inside because I can't play the Transformers ttrpg

[artofapeach]

FREE TO USE D&D art and character sheet on my Kofi page! This one is a sorcerer gnome named Kimmi Kissin :)

You can get it FREE here!

[mysticdragon3md3]

Nice👍

[maximumzombiecreator]

It's often remarked how D&D 5e's play culture has this sort of disinterest bordering on contempt for actually knowing the rules, often even extending to the DM themselves. I've seen a lot of different ideas for why this is, but one reason I rarely see discussed is that actually, a lot of 5e's rules are not meant to be used.

Encumbrance is a great example of this. 5e contains granular weights for all the items that you might have in your inventory, and rules for how much you can carry based on your strength score, and they've set these carry capacities high enough that you should never actually need to think about them. And that's deliberate, the designers have explicitly said that they've set carrying capacity high enough that it shouldn't come up in normal play. So for a starting DM, you see all these weights, you see all the rules for how much people can carry or drag, and you've played Fallout, you know how this works. And then if you try to actually enforce that, you find that it's insanely tedious, and it basically never actually matters, so you drop it.

Foraging is the example of this that bothers me most. There's a whole system for this! A table of foraging DCs, and math for how much food you can find, and how long you can go without food, etc. But the math is set up so that a person with no survival proficiency and a +0 to WIS, in a hostile environment, will still forage enough food to be fine, and the starvation rules are so generous that even a run of bad luck is unlikely to matter. So a DM who actually tries to use these rules will quickly find that they add nothing but bookkeeping. You're rolling a bunch of checks every day of travel for something that is purpose built not to matter. And that's before you add in all the ways to trivialize or circumvent this.

These rules don't exist to be used, that is not their purpose. These rules exist because the designers were scared of the backlash to 4e, and wanted to make sure that the game had all the rules that D&D "should" have. But they didn't actually want these mechanics. They didn't want the bookkeeping, they didn't care about that style of play, but they couldn't just say, "this game isn't about that" for fear of angering traditionalists. And unfortunately the way they handled this was by putting in rules that are bad, that actively fight anyone who wants to use that style of play and act as a trap to people who take the rules in good faith.

And this means that knowing what rules are not supposed to be used is an actual skill 5e DMs develop. Part of being a good 5e DM is being able to tell the real rules that will improve your game from the fake rules that are there to placate angry forum posters. And that's just an awful position to put DMs in (especially new DMs), but it's pretty unsurprising that it creates a certain contempt for knowing the rules as written.

You should have contempt for some of the rules as written. The designers did.

[bddc-pod]

Exploring the Depths of 'Godspark' - A Playtest Review

Venturing into the immersive realm of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), ‘Godspark’ by M. Allen Hall promises a captivating journey through its evocative narrative and innovative mechanics. As a playtest participant, I had the opportunity to dive into this intriguing world. From the outset, the game exudes a compelling vibe that draws players into its mystical setting. Hall’s knack for…

[fanonical]

i am looking at you, new ttrpg players. i am looking you in the eyes. you do not need to be like the professional players. it's okay if you can't do voices or stutter or need to pause to think about what you're going to say or how your character would act. we are doing this for fun. gaming should never stop being fun

[anim-ttrpgs]

(Exerpt from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.)

[middaydolomite]

Converting Formats

New blog post: Converting Formats.

Of all the factors plaguing Dungeons & Dragons players, arranging a convenient time for everyone to gather is probably the most difficult. This meant my group ended up seeing the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves at different times in different cinemas. Making this film was a real gamble. Not only is it taking a largely open-world game and telling a linear story, but it also sits in…

[lackadaisycats]

Varasta - a luck deity. Some artwork I did for The Delver’s Guide last year!

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Reason why you should play solo games :

You can play without having to find a day when all the group can be here.

[artofapeach]

FREE ART Plague Doctor-inspired D&D character! This one is a level 5 aasimir artificer!

Editable character sheet can be downloaded at my Kofi shop here!

[prokopetz]

Low-level Dungeons & Dragons adventure where one of those big goofy skywhale things has died and crash-landed in the middle of town, and what initially appears to be a simple cleanup assignment abruptly takes a combat-heavy turn when the party gets to find out what feeds on skywhalefalls.

[nudityandnerdery]

It's a great day to consider the vast array of other RPGs out there other than D&D. If you want that style of game, Pathfinder is great. And if you feel like trying something new, there's so much to explore...

Amazing timing for this article to come out the day Critical Role opens the beta for their own RPG system...