wewerebeachdwarves

[wewerebeachdwarves]

my artfight card (I don't have rudy and durmemora uploaded yet, but the rest are there. I need more relevant ocs please help-)

[wewerebeachdwarves]

Instead of telling the players the rules in session zero, they have to guess the entire rules set from scratch. The rest of character creation can't start until they get it right.

[wewerebeachdwarves]

Gaming Dice.

I learned a lot about edges and light and color relationships here.

[wewerebeachdwarves]

like, numbers-wise, or physical size?

the stronger the enemy, the bigger the dice

[wewerebeachdwarves]

my commissions are open!

payment upfront via p^ypal or v^nm^, full/partial refunds negotiable

DM @zinziinziiin for inquiries

for more examples of past work, visit @zindoesart

all prices in australian dollars

I also offer new YCH types every so often, so keep an eye out for those!

[wewerebeachdwarves]

we need playing pretend now more than ever

[wewerebeachdwarves]

Making the Werewolf: The Forsaken/Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist situation worse on purpose by running a game jam whose only rule is that each submission's title must abbreviate to "WTF".

[wewerebeachdwarves]

eugh oh god. why did I agree to this D&D campaign. now I have to make a character who wears ARMOR

kill me now

[wewerebeachdwarves]

they have to make a way to let you listen to the adventure zone for the first time again

[wewerebeachdwarves]

Another worldbuilding application of the "two layer rule": To create a culture while avoiding The Planet Of Hats (the thing where a people only have one thing going for them, like "everyone wears a silly hat"): You only need two hats.

Try picking two random flat culture ideas and combine them, see how they interact. Let's say taking the Proud Warrior Race - people who are all about glory in battle and feats of strength, whose songs and ballads are about heroes in battle and whose education consists of combat and military tactics. Throw in another element: Living in diaspora. Suddenly you've got a whole more interesting dynamic going on - how did a people like this end up cast out of their old native land? How do they feel about it? How do they make a living now - as guards, mercenaries? How do their non-combatants live? Were they always warrior people, or did they become fighters out of necessity to fend for themselves in the lands of strangers? How do the peoples of these lands regard them?

Like I'm not shitting, it's literally that easy. You can avoid writing an one-dimensional culture just by adding another equally flat element, and the third dimension appears on its own just like that. And while one of the features can be location/climate, you can also combine two of those with each other.

Let's take a pretty standard Fantasy Race Biome: The forest people. Their job is the forest. They live there, hunt there, forage there, they have an obnoxious amount of sayings that somehow refer to trees, woods, or forests. Very high chance of being elves. And then a second common stock Fantasy Biome People: The Grim Cold North. Everything is bleak and grim up there. People are hardy and harsh, "frostbite because the climate hates you" and "being stabbed because your neighbour hates you" are the most common causes of death. People are either completely humourless or have a horrifyingly dark, morbid sense of humour. They might find it funny that you genuinely can't tell which one.

Now combine them: Grim Cold Bleak Forest People. The summer lasts about 15 minutes and these people know every single type of berry, mushroom and herb that's edible in any fathomable way. You're not sure if they're joking about occasionally resorting to eating tree bark to survive the long dark winter. Not a warrior people, but very skilled in disappearing into the forest and picking off would-be invaders one by one. Once they fuck off into the woods you won't find them unless they want to be found.

You know, Finland.

[wewerebeachdwarves]

"We're going to Scrimshander ComicCon" - Basil about our next stop in Pathfinder

[wewerebeachdwarves]

I think we may need to get rid of Reddit once and for all.

[wewerebeachdwarves]

I'm sorry but:

"am i being kidnapped?"

"no."

followed up immediately with:

"then am i free to go?"

".... no"

is the single funniest thing i've ever heard in dnd history. nothing will ever top it.

[wewerebeachdwarves]

Using ChatGPT to Pass Magic School, the same goes with having it tell you spell ingredients.

­This is the moment just before that recurrent "a great magical working went terribly wrong and tore down the advanced and enlightened civilization" we find in a lot of fantasy settings.

[wewerebeachdwarves]

[wewerebeachdwarves]

untitled mage TTRPG WIP summary

so. the player characters are mages, which are humans born closer to raw magic than others. some mages are born closer to raw magic than others, and character creation is done in part through a spiderweb graph.

aspects of the spiderweb graph include spreads for magemarks (lower = fewer or easier to hide), Reality Sensitivity (determines which consequence table the GM uses for critical failures), Arcane Focus needs (ranges from a need for one specific magical item, to any magical item, to no focus needed at all), Topics (lower = dots across more Topics), Remarkable Topics (complicated), and Remarkable Arts (complicated).

there are 3 "tiers" of mages, defined in the book by how many points they've spent across the spiderweb total. tier 1 mages are the most grounded in reality, and must transform to access their powers (or they activate uncontrollably under stressful conditions). they usually blend in with nonmages relatively easily. tier 2 mages are between magic and reality, and have an easier time learning it, but their magemarks are typically visible at all times unless they've taken a trait to be able to hide them. tier 3 mages are the closest to raw magic, and can become extremely powerful. however, their talents are limited, and they often need help and care to navigate the reality their bodies are bound to.

Arts are the subjects that come up in arcane situations. a mage will typically find one or two Arts to be Remarkable, granting them a discount in the XP cost for purchasing Spells from those Arts. Spells are fairly freeform, with players encouraged to craft their own within the limits of the system and their character's abilities. Arts do not describe domains like "elemental" or "healing" or "luck" magic, but rather the manner in which raw magic is harnessed. current Art forms include:

movement

perception

enchantment

creation

destruction

these can be combined for different effects, if the player is adept enough at the correct Arts to achieve it. An example of this would be Movement + Creation making a Summoning spell.

Topics are the subjects that come up in mundane situations. a mage will find certain Topics to be Remarkable, granting them a Specialty within the interest, potentially combined with another Topic depending on the mage's spiderweb graph. Topics are fairly static, but Specialties are freeform. Topics include things like vehicles, history, technology, physicality, and medicine, to name but a few. some example Specialities would be Physicality (football), History + Medicine (medical history), and Vehicles + Technology (vehicle schematics).

Magemarks are the visible signs of magehood, and they vary in location, size, and type. some glow, some are stains or tattoos, and some can even manifest as things like translucency or skin of other materials. a mage's rating in the magemark aspect determines how numerous or how hard to hide their magemarks are.

the game uses a dice pool system, the specific dice and numbers of which I haven't figured out yet. it's day 1, cut me some slack. Arts and Topics can be used one or two at a time to complete arcane and mundane tasks respectively, or both Arts and Topics can be combined should the situation call for it.

I don't have damage/health figured out yet. I suspect, given the bullshit magic system, things could get a bit twisty.

the concept is setting-agnostic, but there are some suggestions for tolerance levels for mages. generally, mages are reluctantly "tolerated" by masses that poorly understand them, discriminate against them, and frequently consider them suspect. some extremist factions seek to eradicate mages one way or another. mages are typically drawn to each other, though this not-infrequently causes fights, and as a result of this volatility attempts at forming dedicated "schools" for mages usually blow up in one sense or another if they're approved at all.

this is a game for masochists who like doing cool shit. the higher tiers require you to limit your utility, but you can do some wicked stuff in return.

I've got more in the planning doc, but I think I've managed to imply enough with the phrasing for you to get the idea? let me know what you think! thanks for reading this far!

[wewerebeachdwarves]

weirdest tabletop experience i ever had

be me in 2022

download a bundle of tabletop games at 3 am

find a giant pdf labeled "act one"

it's a game played by only exactly three people on different levels of reality.

you also play alternate universe versions of your characters on different levels in reality

secrets in the book are written in mirror writing

the whole book is an in-universe preserved text by someone in a different universe

i am so into this game.

best thing i've ever read.

i tell all my friends about it the next day.

"sounds cool, what's it called?"

i can find no evidence of this game.

i can find no evidence that this game ever existed.

i'm not even sure what bundle it was in.

all my friends develop the theory that this game is a dream i had.

they tease me about The Time Bird Dreamed An Entire TTRPG That Could Only Be Read In A Mirror

i find the game three years later

it's about dreams

anyway if you wished Invisible Sun was weirder you may enjoy Disparateum by Rathayibacter