the-orange-wizard - Tumblr blog

[the-orange-wizard]

I am very excited for Draw Steel.

When it comes out I will be running so much of it you can’t even understand the level to which I will be abandoning d&d.

Assuming I can get enough players on board of course.

[the-orange-wizard]

can’t find my ring of a thousand spiders

[the-orange-wizard]

a list of 100+ buildings to put in your fantasy town

academy

adventurer's guild

alchemist

apiary

apothecary

aquarium

armory

art gallery

bakery

bank

barber

barracks

bathhouse

blacksmith

boathouse

book store

bookbinder

botanical garden

brothel

butcher

carpenter

cartographer

casino

castle

cobbler

coffee shop

council chamber

court house

crypt for the noble family

dentist

distillery

docks

dovecot

dyer

embassy

farmer's market

fighting pit

fishmonger

fortune teller

gallows

gatehouse

general store

graveyard

greenhouses

guard post

guildhall

gymnasium

haberdashery

haunted house

hedge maze

herbalist

hospice

hospital

house for sale

inn

jail

jeweller

kindergarten

leatherworker

library

locksmith

mail courier

manor house

market

mayor's house

monastery

morgue

museum

music shop

observatory

orchard

orphanage

outhouse

paper maker

pawnshop

pet shop

potion shop

potter

printmaker

quest board

residence

restricted zone

sawmill

school

scribe

sewer entrance

sheriff's office

shrine

silversmith

spa

speakeasy

spice merchant

sports stadium

stables

street market

tailor

tannery

tavern

tax collector

tea house

temple

textile shop

theatre

thieves guild

thrift store

tinker's workshop

town crier post

town square

townhall

toy store

trinket shop

warehouse

watchtower

water mill

weaver

well

windmill

wishing well

wizard tower

[the-orange-wizard]

Seventy years.

It's been seventy years since they laid the baroness' wife to rest in The Gilded Tower.

Seventy years, and it still seems like yesterday...

Because it was.

For you see, these three heroes are dedicated to protecting the kingdom from grave threat.

Queen Egnata herself commanded they be interred with a powerful spell beneath the old fortress, and awaken only when the need was great.

Now, our heroes awake to a request from the regent; A heretical text, held by a stone-dwarf in a distant village.

But this is only the second time they have awakened. How many more eras will they live through?

Only time will tell.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

This D&D campaign is a weird one. Our three heroes are already established as The Finishers, but more could join their ranks. After all, the court wizard built 6 Stasis Chambers beneath the old fortress.

Can you save the kingdom? Perhaps.

But are you prepared to watch the world move on without you? To leave your family and friends behind as you sleep until you are needed again?

If you answer "yes", then perhaps you are ready to become one of

The Finishers.

[the-orange-wizard]

Old-school D&D's penchant for magic items which appear to have some beneficial property and automatically defeat every conceivable test that would demonstrate otherwise, but the first time you use them in a life-or-death situation they can somehow tell that it's for real this time and suddenly reveal themselves to be horribly cursed has rightly been criticised as player-hostile bullshit, but the oft-unacknowledged corollary is that many of them are also, in context, extremely funny.

There's a flying broom that gets mad when you try to ride it and attempts to beat you to death with its handle. This is separate from, and unrelated to, the flying carpet that gets mad when you try to ride it and attempts to wrap you up and squeeze you to death.

There's a spear which performs normally in sparring matches, but in mortal combat it curves around to make you stab yourself in the back like some sort of fucking Looney Tunes gag.

There's a magic ring which appears to have the powers of a randomly chosen different magic ring, but in reality the only power it has is to employ mental illusions to trick its wearer into thinking it has powers. You are being gaslit by jewellery.

None of these require you to go to obscure sourcebooks, nor are they apparently particularly rare – they're just hanging out on the standard treasure tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide, ready to pop up in any random hoard.

You can even create them by accident by biffing your roll when crafting your own magic items (the roll in question of course being made secretly by the GM, so you can never know whether this has happened until it's too late), which implies several fascinating things about the nature of magic.

There's a hat that makes you stupid and it's plotting against you.

[the-orange-wizard]

avoidance

[the-orange-wizard]

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.

[the-orange-wizard]

inspired by the scariest words my dm has ever said to me and the subsequent coolest (AND SCARIEST) scene of my life

[the-orange-wizard]

If you want to play D&D tomorrow, there’s still 3 open slots on The Finishers.

Get in touch with me sooner rather than later so we can discuss your character!

New Campaign Looking for Players

Sometimes, the story goes like this:

Six heroes are put in stasis beneath the castle, awaking only when the queen's lands are under great threat. They sleep as the ages pass, and awake into a world that views them as ancient myth.

These are The Finishers.

But as the years pass, and they are awakened again, and again, and again, it becomes clear - They can't fix every problem. They are only people, after all. And people with a self-sacrificial streak, at that.

But that might not be how the story goes, this time. If you're interested in playing a part, go for it. If not, that's okay too. There will always be another story.

-------

I'm trying my hand at professional GMing. I've been running games for 8 years now, and I love running for people who are LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent, like I am. You don't have to be, though; I love creating stories with all sorts of people.

For this story, though, you need to have a "Hero" in your mind. Someone who is already known for great deeds. Someone who is willing to give up the rest of their life for the greater good. These six people will see themselves become legend. Can they handle that?

More importantly, is it more interesting if they can't?

On another note, feel free to request a different time. If you have some friends who want to join in, that's cool too. This game is beginner-friendly, and features plenty of content from a variety of sourcebooks to keep things interesting.

[the-orange-wizard]

Partially related to the recent exchange about milestone leveling but. Something that kinda drives me up the wall is how whenever someone criticizes any mechanic from 5e one of the first comments they're inevitably bound to get is someone telling them that they probably only dislike that mechanic because "your DM probably just sucked". And then their description of the behavior of a DM who doesn't suck involves either ignoring the mechanic entirely in favor of rule of cool, or completely redesigning the mechanic from the ground up so that it works completely differently from how it's presented in the book.

Like first of all Idk where they get this urge to automatically assume that anyone who complains about a mechanic is probably a newb player traumatized by having a bad GM and not a GM themselves. It feels weirdly condescending.

Second and most importantly. Of course you aren't bound by RAW, you can hourserule and ignore rules till your heart's content, it's your table the world is your oyster do whatever you want forever etc. If a mechanic doesn't suit your table change it. But like. If using a game mechanic in the way presented in said game's rulebook automatically makes someone suck as a GM then it's the game design that it's bad!!! If the rules are written in such a way that running the game rules-as-written makes you someone who is considered bad at running it then the rules are bad!!! Following the rules of the game you paid for the way they are presented to you being seen as a mistake that sucky GMs make and not the default way to run a game is a clear indication that there's something seriously wrong with those rules!!!

[the-orange-wizard]

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

[the-orange-wizard]

no. Yourew not allowed to enjoy d&d. ifg you are out there and enojying a game of 5e my elite squad of pbta warriors will crash in yhtough yourt windows and get a mixed success on their roll, allowing them to flawlessly handcuff and arrest you but at the cost of describing to the GM one dream they will never achieve,

[the-orange-wizard]

first session of a tabletop game: and here’s my character, jingles fartman the ridiculous jester

hundredth session of a tabletop game: we will always remember the sacrifice of jingles fartman, who laid down his life to save the city in an oscar-worthy scene…he will live on in our hearts forever

[the-orange-wizard]

UPDATE: New game is full now due to a group of very enthusiastic artists.

But!! The original game still has 2 open slots if you’re interested.

New Campaign Looking for Players

Sometimes, the story goes like this:

Six heroes are put in stasis beneath the castle, awaking only when the queen's lands are under great threat. They sleep as the ages pass, and awake into a world that views them as ancient myth.

These are The Finishers.

But as the years pass, and they are awakened again, and again, and again, it becomes clear - They can't fix every problem. They are only people, after all. And people with a self-sacrificial streak, at that.

But that might not be how the story goes, this time. If you're interested in playing a part, go for it. If not, that's okay too. There will always be another story.

-------

I'm trying my hand at professional GMing. I've been running games for 8 years now, and I love running for people who are LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent, like I am. You don't have to be, though; I love creating stories with all sorts of people.

For this story, though, you need to have a "Hero" in your mind. Someone who is already known for great deeds. Someone who is willing to give up the rest of their life for the greater good. These six people will see themselves become legend. Can they handle that?

More importantly, is it more interesting if they can't?

On another note, feel free to request a different time. If you have some friends who want to join in, that's cool too. This game is beginner-friendly, and features plenty of content from a variety of sourcebooks to keep things interesting.

[the-orange-wizard]

When inventing a fantasy religion a lot of people a) make the mistake of assuming that everyone in fantasy world would worship the same gods and b) assume that polytheistic religions see all of their gods as morally good

[the-orange-wizard]

After some more demand, I've opened up another campaign with this adventure prompt for next Thursday at 7pm EDT!

Both of these campaigns are Bi-weekly, so they won't interfere with each other.

If you're interested, the new one is open here:

New Campaign Looking for Players

Sometimes, the story goes like this:

Six heroes are put in stasis beneath the castle, awaking only when the queen's lands are under great threat. They sleep as the ages pass, and awake into a world that views them as ancient myth.

These are The Finishers.

But as the years pass, and they are awakened again, and again, and again, it becomes clear - They can't fix every problem. They are only people, after all. And people with a self-sacrificial streak, at that.

But that might not be how the story goes, this time. If you're interested in playing a part, go for it. If not, that's okay too. There will always be another story.

-------

I'm trying my hand at professional GMing. I've been running games for 8 years now, and I love running for people who are LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent, like I am. You don't have to be, though; I love creating stories with all sorts of people.

For this story, though, you need to have a "Hero" in your mind. Someone who is already known for great deeds. Someone who is willing to give up the rest of their life for the greater good. These six people will see themselves become legend. Can they handle that?

More importantly, is it more interesting if they can't?

On another note, feel free to request a different time. If you have some friends who want to join in, that's cool too. This game is beginner-friendly, and features plenty of content from a variety of sourcebooks to keep things interesting.

[the-orange-wizard]

The Finishers has 2 slots left for anyone who’s interested.

(There’s a secret third slot open for anyone who isn’t interested, too.)

New Campaign Looking for Players

Sometimes, the story goes like this:

Six heroes are put in stasis beneath the castle, awaking only when the queen's lands are under great threat. They sleep as the ages pass, and awake into a world that views them as ancient myth.

These are The Finishers.

But as the years pass, and they are awakened again, and again, and again, it becomes clear - They can't fix every problem. They are only people, after all. And people with a self-sacrificial streak, at that.

But that might not be how the story goes, this time. If you're interested in playing a part, go for it. If not, that's okay too. There will always be another story.

-------

I'm trying my hand at professional GMing. I've been running games for 8 years now, and I love running for people who are LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent, like I am. You don't have to be, though; I love creating stories with all sorts of people.

For this story, though, you need to have a "Hero" in your mind. Someone who is already known for great deeds. Someone who is willing to give up the rest of their life for the greater good. These six people will see themselves become legend. Can they handle that?

More importantly, is it more interesting if they can't?

On another note, feel free to request a different time. If you have some friends who want to join in, that's cool too. This game is beginner-friendly, and features plenty of content from a variety of sourcebooks to keep things interesting.