[”Quick #dnd #creator #dmtip! If you got MS Excel access & want to draw out some dungeons, just set your Column Width to 2.14 & your Row Height to 14.5 and boom, you got yourself some graph paper! Just use the fill command from there to color in the squares! Like so!”]
all-my-secrets-in-a-pickle-jar:
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
ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO FIND THE SYSTEM FOR YOU
AEG (A Legend of the Five Rings)
COMPLETE TABLETOP RPG ARCHIVE
Helllll yessss
@purpleoath for the list
Dungeons and Dragons: A new generation.
My heart! 💚💚💚
And this is totally my thesis. D&D as a way to let people explore their feelings and selves.
This reminds me so much of playing D&D with a four year old druid who could talk to animals. SHe was just so interested in their lives, and so full of love for them. This cursed prince who had been turned into a cephalopoid thing with limited intelligence. She tried to heal him, and when she couldn’t she got a wheelbarrow and convinced our big fighter to bring him all the way back home to the party’s cottage so she could take care of him because it wasn’t his fault his brain was broken.
How I come up with D&D adventures in 4 steps.
I hope this helps you come up with your own D&D adventures for fun and profit.
Reblogging for new followers.
Here’s some advice from a multiple ENnie nominated/winning TRPG writer who has worked on official D&D.
The above works incredibly well for me and ensures my work stands out. If this advice helps other new designers write their fitst adventures, break into the industry, or find success, it will be my greatest achievement.
D&D 5e Character Creation Flow Charts: Backgrounds and Classes
This only includes the backgrounds included in the Player’s Handbook Mind you, so no SCAG options.
Class one doesn’t assume archetype obviously.
A fun little project I made after work today, I thought it might be helpful for players newer to the system in choosing their character’s options, or just a fun little tool.
This is neat
i was literally searching for something like this a couple of days ago. i WILL be using this when i have newbies to run through a game!
- Male tieflings wearing skirts because having custom pants tailored to accommodate their tails is too much of a hassle
Firefighter clerics, wizards, and druids
- (and the apologetic sorcerer that probably started the fire by mistake)
- Young, forty-something dwarves joining druid circles and protesting the damage their clan mining does on the environment
- Everyone gives up trying to categorize sexuality when a half-elf can bring their cute dragonborn boyfriend home to meet their family
- Human kids having an awesome bearded dwarf vodka-aunt that adventured with a great-grandparent decades ago and gives the best presents
- Ok but there are several disciplines of magic that let you bring people back from the dead wtf
- Young punk elves barely in their 80s but yelling at humans “Check yourself knave I made out with your grandma before she even had your Da.”
- Wizards for Familiar Rights
- Spellcasters using ‘alter self’ and switch genders at will
- A giant half-Orc mom adopting street kids and giving them shoulder rides
- A normal human whose sibling was born a tiefling beating up village kids who mistreat them
- Integrated cities made to accommodate smaller folk like halflings and gnomes
- Would alchemists be the ones to concoct magic medications for psych disorders? Are divination clerics and wizards psychologists?
- Convoluted age laws because a half-orc is an adult at 15 but an elf isn’t considered of-age until their first century.
- Maybe democracies aren’t a thing in
Faerûn because all you’d need is a few necromancers to literally have dead people voting
- Bard rock bands
I figured out a simple guide to the alignment chart last night
Lawful: Rules matter more to me than individuals.
Chaotic: Individuals matter more to me than rules.Good: Other people’s well-being is more important than my own.
Evil: My own well-being is more important than other people’s.Neutrals: My opinion of what is more important is determined on a case-by-case basis.
So a Lawful Good character’s guiding moral philosophy might be “I follow the rules because the rules keep people safe, even if they are sometimes inconvenient or harmful to me or other individuals.” A Chaotic Evil character’s guiding moral philosophy would be like “Screw the rules and screw you.”
This is a very succint way of explaining a long post from a few months ago. It is also kind of how it was originally written, and is what I use. No more “Is he chaotic neutral or chaotic evil” questions.
It also makes Evil a playable alignment
I find it kinda odd how people talk about writing “flawed” characters like the flaws are an afterthought
Like “cool cool we’ve got this perfect hero now to just sprinkle on some Irritability and Trust Issues then microwave for 6 minutes on high until Done”
But I’ve personally found it feels a lot more useful to just… think of the flaws as the Good Traits except bad this time
The protagonist is loyal? Maybe that means they have a hard time recognizing toxic relationships and are easily manipulated by those they want to trust
The hero is compassionate? Maybe they work too hard and overextend themselves trying to help people and then they refuse to ask for help when they need it themselves for fear of burdening others
They’re dedicated to their ideals? Maybe they’re also too stubborn to know when to quit and they have trouble apologizing for their mistakes
If they’re creative, they can also be flighty. If they’re confident, they can be arrogant. If they’re brave, they might be reckless. If they’re smart, they could be condescending. Protective can become controlling, and someone who’s carefree could very well also be emotionally distant
In my opinion, the best “flaws” aren’t just added on afterwards. The best flaws are baked in deep, ‘cause they’re really just virtues turned upside down
Original post from u/jimbaby on r/DnD
When writing a character’s backstory, it’s important to include a certain number of “knives”. Knives are essentially anything that the DM can use to raise the stakes of a situation for your character. Anything that can make a conflict personal, like a threatened loved one or the appearance of a sudden enemy. They’re called “knives” because the players lovingly forge them and present them to the DM so that the DM can use them to stab the player over and over again.
The more knives a player has, the easier it is for the DM to involve them in the story. So it’s important to have them! When breaking down a backstory, it kind of goes like this:
- Every named person your character cares about, living or dead (i.e. sibling, spouse, childhood friend) +1 knife [EDIT: a large family can be bundled into one big knife]
- Every phobia or trauma your character experiences/has experienced +1 knife
- Every mystery in your character’s life (i.e. unknown parents, unexplained powers) +1 knife
- Every enemy your character has +1 knife
- Every ongoing obligation or loyalty your character has +1 knife
- Additionally, every obligation your character has failed +1 knife
- Every serious crime your character has committed (i.e. murder, arson) +1 knife
- Every crime your character is falsely accused of +1 knife
- Alternatively if your character is a serial killer or the leader of a thieves guild, those crimes can be bundled under a +1 BIG knife
- Any discrimination experienced (i.e. fantasy racism) +1 knife
- Every favored item/heirloom +1 knife
- Every secret your character is keeping +1 knife
You kind of get the point. Any part of your backstory that could be used against you is considered a knife. A skilled DM will use these knives to get at your character and get you invested in the story. A really good DM can break your knives into smaller, sharper knives with which to stab you. They can bundle different characters’ knives together into one GIANT knife. Because we’re all secretly masochists when it comes to D&D, the more knives you hand out often means the more rewarding the story will be.
On the other hand, you don’t want to be a sad edgelord with too many knives. A buttload of knives just means that everyone in your party will inadvertently get stabbed by your knives, and eventually that gets annoying. Anything over 15 knives seems excessive. The DM will no doubt get more as time goes on, but you don’t want to start out with too many. You also don’t want to be the plain, boring character with only two knives. It means the DM has to work harder to give you a personal stake in the story you’re telling together. Also, knives are cool!! Get more knives!!!
I always try to incorporate at least 7 knives into my character’s backstory, and so far the return has been a stab-ity good time. Going back into previous characters, I’ve noticed that fewer knives present in my backstory has correlated with fewer direct consequences for my character in game. Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, it’s just something that my friends and I have come up with to help with character creation. We like to challenge each other to make surprising and creative knives. If you think of any that should be included, let me know.
EDIT: I feel I should mention it’s important to vary up the type of knives you have. All 7 of your knives shouldn’t be family members, nor should they be crimes that you’ve done in the past. That’s a one-way ticket to repetitive gameplay. Part of the fun is making new and interesting knives that could lead to fun surprises in game.
SlythKris (tumblr backup babey) 