Make sure the system you use matches the kind of players you have, for an optimal experience
Admin Note: This is part of the ongoing series called “D&D isn’t the only TTRPG if you don’t want fantasy play another goddamn game!”
I already reblogged this once but this is important:
Like I run a D&D blog. I understand that D&D is the most well-known and popular RPG in the world. But a lot of the time I see people going like “Hey I want to run a D&D campaign and throw out all the D&Disms and here’s all the notes I have for running a campaign about courtly romance and chivalry in a historical setting” and I’m just like STOP YOU DON’T NEED TO RUN THIS USING D&D
There’s a sort of a mistaken assumption that because D&D is the biggest game on the market and that it’s fantasy that it should be the go-to fantasy game but look it’s not D&D isn’t a generic fantasy game it’s a very specific kind of fantasy all of its own, one that steals liberally from swords & sorcery and high fantasy and adds fucking extradimensional cube robots for good measure
So next time you’re thinking about a fantasy campaign in a decidedly non-D&Dish setting consider instead of jamming the square peg that is D&D into a round hole trying to find a system that actually supports what you’re trying to do
And this is not to say that you shouldn’t play D&D: D&D is hella fun. But there’s a lot of genres and styles that D&D does a piss-poor job of doing, and because of that it’s so good we’ve got other games
*cracks knuckles*
All right then. I’ve been meaning to dust off my own D&D sideblog for a while, so here we go with providing some examples. I’m limiting this specifically to other types of fantasy outside of the standard high fantasy and sword & sorcery millieu.
Courtly Romance and Chivalry
There are a number of options for this, and they range from standard secondary world fantasy to more historical and mythological settings. My list here shouldn’t be treated as fully extensive.
Blue Rose – based on the romantic fantasy subgenre, specifically as seen in the works of Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey. A lot of courtly drama and intrigue and swashbuckling, based in a fictional world.
Pendragon – naturally based off of Arthurian mythology, and having a lot of stuff given over to the court of Camelot and the chivalric adventures of the various knights. The same company also has a kickstarter for a spin-off called Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne that might be worth checking out.
Historical Fantasy
This one’s a bit more prominent as historical settings serve as an inspiration for a variety of fantasy worlds and games, and this of course invariably extends to settings that actually use historical settings with a degree of fantasy elements thrown in. Note that I’m going to emphasise Europe here simply due to greater familiarity with games in that millieu, and as a European myself I’m ill-equipped to judge how accurate or respectful games using other settings actually are.
Because of this, feel free to add other examples in reblogs
Chivalry & Sorcery – one of the early tabletop games inspired by D&D, taking a more pseudo-historical approach.
It’s based on 12th century France and strives for a degree of historical accuracy and medieval politics.
World of Darkness, Dark Ages (including Vampire and Mage) – while the World of Darkness has earned some negative attention lately (and for good reason), the dark ages RPGs are still an old favourite of mine. Also worth checking out is Mage: The Sorcerer’s Crusade, set during the Renaissance. The Mage stuff has a really cool open-ended magic system worth checking out.
Ars Magica – this exists along very similar lines to the dark age material above, based around mages and magic-users in a ‘Mythic Europe’ setting. It also has a really cool open-ended magic system, and one of my personal favourites.
Awwww shit heck yes I might want to add to this list but this is a really good starting point
Every mother with trans children should take Cher as an example.
ok i love her but lets not give brownie points because she called him her son. thats like. minimum requirement for a decent human being.
Ok, you know what? No. Brownie points to Cher.
She publicly announced her love and acceptance of her SON and yeah some people would call that “the minimum requirement” of decency, but as someone whose mother gushes about her acceptance in private and sometimes uses gender neutral terms for me (not the male ones I prefer) but aggressively misgenders me in public to keep things from being “awkward”, cher’s public acknowledgement and expression of her love and acceptance for her son is a big deal.
Yes this SHOULD BE the bare minimum of parental decency, but right now it’s not and I’m glad to see Chaz and Cher showing the world that this is the way things are supposed to be.
What is up with the idea that we shouldn’t acknowledge when people do something good/nice/etc. because “everyone should be doing that anyway”? It is BY acknowledging the things we see as good that we tell others how we see the world and enforce what we consider proper behavior. There is literally never a time when it doesn’t make sense to acknowledge something positive. And acknowledging something positive does NOT make some sort of blanket statement about the person like they can do no wrong either. We can acknowledge a positive, and also criticize a negative; there is bo zero-sum game here.
I JUST HAD TO CLOSE MY EYES FOR A SECOND AND LIKE……..DIGEST THIS WHA T THE HELL
You know why
clowns actually originated in egypt to entertain royalty- they wore weird masks and imitated gods. there were also clowns in ancient china, greece, and italy. it wasn’t “black face and then switched to white face” like i saw in the notes– the clown white paint was invented in 1801.
the big, red nose is associated with alcoholism/being drunk (heavy alcohol usage can lead to severe rosacea and swelling of the nose), because drunkards in ye olde times were seen as fun for the whole family. the overlined lips create an exaggerated smile). curly or big hair was seen as whimsical and fun, as was a lack of hair (if you look up ‘vintage clowns’, you’ll see their hair is puffed out to the sides or upwards. nowadays, people probably wear afros because they’re cheap, and don’t involve lots of styling.
i am passionate about clowns
They are a terrifying breed of monster, and must be eradicated from the face of the earth, but it’s relieving to know they weren’t born from a place of racial prejudice.
tumblr has a sad-boner for the burning of the library of alexandria
which was not actually one burning but several
and while the Library of Alexandria was an immense historical and national treasure, a lot of ppl tend to forget about the other book and library burnings that occurred in antiquity
Places like the library of Nalanda, in India, which contained an elaborate classification system to hold what was then seen as the largest collection of Buddhist literature
and the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which contained Greek and Arabic works on mathematics and astronomy to zoology and cartography
and more recently, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (no, that does not mean sexual witchcraft) which was burned by the Nazis b/c the majority of tomes dealt with same sex relationships and gay rights and acceptance.
and omg, this makes me so mad. The Libraries of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada has all its collection thrown away in an attempt to save taxpayer money and on the hope that all of its material was digitized. Only 5 to 6% was.
and the Saeh library in Lebanon, which was burnt b/c of terrorism.
Book burnings are happening right now, y’all.
Not to mention how the Spanish systematically destroyed the entire literary output of whole societies in Mesoamerica, to the point where we only have a handful of their codices today
We should talk, too, about the heroism of those trying to save books from violence, not least because the deliberate destruction of cultural artifacts is evidence of genocide. A few libraries not mentioned above:
The National Library of Bosnia, located in Sarajevo, which was destroyed in August of 1992 by Serb forces. It was targeted with incendiary shells, and over a million books testifying to Bosnia’s multicultural history were lost in the resulting fire. Aida Buturović, a young librarian, was killed by sniper fire while trying to carry books from the burning building. The Oriental Institute, housing the majority of Sarajevo’s Islamic manuscripts, was destroyed that May, but it wasn’t the first library burnt in Sarajevo: during World War II, the Nazis decimated the collection of La Benevolencija, one of the oldest Jewish organizations in the city.
The Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, which was burned in January 2013 by Tuareg rebel forces fleeing the city, who had been using the library as a barracks. The fire destroyed 4,000 manuscripts – but Abdel Kader Haïdara, a librarian, saved 400,000 more from libraries all over the city by smuggling them out in the preceding months. He had help, and the ‘book rustlers’ of Mali – who risked their lives to do it – saved 800 years of West African history.
When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:
“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”
Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either.
Op I’d like to thank you for sharing this. Ever since the first time I’ve read it I’ve held it in my mind and it really has helped me to be kinder to others and to myself.
At long last, The Chosen One has been discovered. Working as a cashier. With no interest in doing anything even slightly more difficult.
yeah because there is nothing more difficult than retail
tbh anyone who works/has worked retail would see the chance to go around saving the world in ways that could potentially kill them as a welcome vacation
“Does the position of Chosen One offer health benefits of any kind?”
“Well, our ragtag gang of world-saving underdogs has a doctor on-team.”
“Do I have to pay her out of pocket, is what I’m asking.”
“Gosh no! She’s an idealist, you don’t pay her at all!”
“Oh! That’s nice. But then I guess there’s no paycheck.”
“I mean, the secret cabal that dispenses our orders does make sure we have enough money to feed ourselves and keep a roof over our secret lair and such.”
“Hourly?”
“Hourly what?”
“Like have you guys ever had to punch a time clock?”
“We once had to dismantle a sinister time-freezing device in the shape of a clock….otherwise no.”
“Sold. Off we go.”
“do i have to be nice to people who are yelling at me?”
“we’re the good guys, you can’t kill random civilians just because they’re mean!”
“kill?? no, i mean, can i tell them off.”
“well, sure, of course.”
*rips name tag off shirt and tosses it over shoulder* “i’m your huckleberry.”
fuck personality types u wanna know a lot about a person? present them w a plate of brownies and see if they take a corner, side, or middle piece
tag this with the type of brownie piece you would take
This post claims this metric can tell you a lot but doesn’t offer any insight on decoding people’s choices so allow me to take a crack at it:
Corner piece: Bitter and tired but cute, likes to curl up in a blanket burrito and marathon weird documentaries and true crime at three in the morning because executive dysfunction won the fight against going to bed on time for the morning shift, probably a top. Honestly very sweet under layers of cynicism.
Side piece: Has kinks weird enough it bears mentioning as like a personality feature, gets excited to solve a math problem, may be verse, knows weird shit about animals and/or bugs in particular and will tell you when you didn’t ask, tries to swim like a mermaid in the public pool. Verse.
Middle piece: First off, a b o t t o m, spoiled rotten, either has way too much energy or is depressed with no middle gears, externally much more chipper than the Corner Piece people but inside absolute chaotic evil. Never to be trusted with anything.
Bonus options
No preference: Pure chaos, no impulse control, has at least 3 hyperfixations and is dying to infodump, has lots of people they talk to but not sure if friends??? Piles 60 tasks their plate and accomplishes 0 by the deadline. Also a bottom.
More concerned with eating brownies in systematic order: So fucking tired of everything, trying to make sense of a chaotic world, steps over cracks and gaps in sidewalks, gives so much side-eye their face got stuck that way. Verse.
SlythKris (tumblr backup babey) 