#playing-dd — Public Fediverse posts

How my campaign changes when a new product drops

The recent addition of Drops subscription content to DnD Beyond is going to challenge me.

I’m running only a single intermittent 5e campaign right now. The Ferments uses 2024 as its base set, but permits things from Black Flag, 2014 and A5e in general, with a quick scan to make certain that the addition fits within the campaign themes and the setting’s common lore.

In the past it’s been easy to judge what works and doesn’t. Book releases are heavily themed. Most grimdark will not fit in The World of the Everflow. Dragon stuff always fits. Giant stuff rarely fits. The new dinosaur book added to Beyond fits well in an undiscovered-to-this-point land.

But now there are weekly drops. The player facing stuff needs a quick review. Maps and stickers won’t matter because we aren’t using the Maps VTT. The cosmetics are fine, because they help a player connect with their character.

Teos explains the broader program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMyKu0cqDw

Evaluating the content to fit The Ferments and The World of the Everflow

First off, the five feats added are all extra planar in a way that has not been explored in our games through the several hundred sessions of play plus writing and backstory. There’s only been a single Warlock.

Those are going to be easy to ignore. If I could toggle them off at the campaign level I would.

• All five feats = no
• Pact Seeker background = with lore tweak and different feat
• Astral Flood = yes, fully
• Buzzing Bee = yes, fully
• Insidious Rhythm = yes, fully
• Leomund’s Lamentable Belaborment = yes, fully
• Sticks to Snakes= yes, but DM content only

The Pact seeker background doesn’t fit as written. The lore doesn’t work because of the demand that the pact is extraplanar, but if a player wanted to rework that and take a new origin feat it would be allowed. Maybe they are seeking a pact with a religious figure, an elder dragon, a scholar or something similar.

There are also five spells in the first Drops.

Astral flood fits unchanged. The Astral and Ethereal are somewhat merged in my world and opening that up to the physical realm would be devastating.

Buzzing bee is excellent. My first encounter with Bee was the useless cantrip from Unearthed Arcana back in the 80s. This is better and needed. It fits the use of animals for the Kin too.

Insidious Rhythm is a fun spell too. The magic of performance by Bards and others would be the path of introduction.

Leomund’s Lamentable Belaborment may not fit combat well. It does fit in social and political settings. Players will definitely find a way to turn a crowded room into a debate-disaster.

Sticks to Snakes is a classic spell, but this version is quite underpowered for 2024. It adds in-combat complexity for low damage. It reads more like a 2nd level spell and not a 4th. For narrative purposes it fits the world well. But it’s a waste for a player. This will be DM content only.

Eleven player facing items this week needed to be reviewed. Next week there will be more. And then there will be more. And more.

It’s going to be too much.

And each drop and each book from every publisher stretches and pushes a world. But fantasy worlds are not only defined by being permissive. They are also defined by what’s forbidden.

Every world a DM and their tables creates can choose to be a global fantasy (kitchen sink) or be as neatly defined as the group wants.

With Drops the default in the Everflow will not be for permission, but to evaluate what a player wants to add as they want to add it in order for us to continue to explore the themes of the world — how strong can the love between person and animal be, who gets to control access to knowledge, how can our local connections make the world better for most.

Rebranding Downtime into the Fourth Pillar it deserves to be

D&D and its variants are often referred to as “combat simulations” or “tactical combat games” or “dungeon crawling miniature games” in a somewhat dismissive way that seeks to reduce the other things that players have their characters do during sessions and campaigns.

These mostly heroic characters do have a lot of combat support. A vast majority of the rules support violence portrayed in what is now six-second rounds. Combat’s scenes in 5th edition are done in expanded time taking many real minutes for less than thirty seconds of cinematic action.

But combat is not all of modern Dungeons & Dragons. Other pillars are supported.

The three main pillars of D&D play are social interaction, exploration, and combat.

5.2.1 SRD / Wizards of the Coast / CC BY 4.0

Social interaction in the modern game is mostly done in scenes lasting a few minutes. These scenes take place in real time at the table. Ritual spells do not make sense in the context of social interaction because of the nature of social interaction. Other spell casting is less frequent than in combat, while it can still fit. The main engine of social interaction within the rules are skills (Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence) and a light dusting of feature from class, archetype, feat or species.

Taking a longer period of time, historically measured in ten-minute chunks, is Exploration. This is abstracted in an opposite fashion from Combat in that where combat sees time expanded, Exploration compresses it. Some, but not all travel makes sense as exploration. Rituals are frequently used. Spells are common. Certain spells and features may make classic exploration challenges meaningless (Goodberry or Find & Remove Traps). But Exploration, the delve into dungeons, the searching the wildes, the entry to a wondrous temple or the site of a majestic floating city is and always will be a part of the D&D genre.

There’s a fourth pillar.

It’s so hidden, it’s not even part of the SRD.

— Downtime —

Between the 2014 core books, and Xanathar’s there are 37 sometimes overlapping options for what can be done with Downtime. The 2024 core books and the Forgotten Realms expansions add many Bastion and Crafting options onto this.

Most downtime choices are measured in weeks, though small projects are within days. These scenes are time-compressed frequently taking only a roll or two per character to resolve as weeks, months, maybe even seasons pass. In film, TV and books the montage is how downtime is presented. Pick your favorite heroic montage — we’ll get back to it.

Every class supports downtime activities in some capacity, especially with the 2024 ruleset adding on Bastions. Skill challenges, as adopted to 5e by some homebrewers, make sense as resolution systems for downtime, exploration and sometimes social events.

But downtime is often viewed by players and DMs as accounting, boring academics, spreadsheet management.

Even the name is boring.

Downtime has a branding problem

Stories and adventures are an assembly of beats, eventually leading to rising action, climax and resolution. There are sometimes downbeats, setback.

Downbeats.

Who wants downbeats? Who wants downtime.

Even how downtime is presented, either by name or by style of play (Bastions and Crafting), it is shown as an appendage with little support. Downtime is a thing to rush past, not to enjoy.

A Bastion offers a character temporary refuge from the dangerous world of adventuring, and it provides opportunities for a character to craft magic items, conduct research, harvest poisons, build ships, and carry out a range of other activities.

2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide

Heroes do not want a refugee from danger!

They do want the ability to craft magic items, research mysteries, harvest fantastic elements, carouse, gamble, set sail across an astral sea, or plot the overthrow of a corrupt regime.

Those are all upbeats, not downtime.

Downtime also a massive part of the game

Acquisitions Inc combines D&D and modern franchise capitalism for fun. It contains franchise rules. It also lists every one of the 2014 options in downtime at its point of publication.

These choices are things heroes do!

The options above belong at your table. At some tables the options in Dragon Heist, Acq Inc, Tasha’s (Group Patrons), Strixhaven (schooling) and other official and unofficial books expand your campaign in ways that make sense too.

Think of your favorite montage scenes in your personal Appendix N. Do they involve plotting the overthrow of a corrupt leader? Do they involve building a guild? Do they involve carousing to gain information? Do they involve long study to craft a previously unknown spell? Do you have a favorite montage that includes sowing rumors? Or mayhap one that involves training for new skills? You probably have one where the heroes prepare for a test of skill, chance or magic?

In traditional D&D that’s downtime.

In the fiction these things advance the plot and add excitement.

Downtime has a branding problem.

That’s why you are going to start scheming.

Scheming

• making intelligent, secret plans, often to deceive others
• behaviour or activities that involve making clever secret plans intended to deceive people

In British English schemes aren’t necessarily deceptive or secret. They are plots and advancements, plans and procedures. They are the many days, weeks, months processes.

Both versions work for modern D&D, but the American concept of intelligent, secret plans especially fits my preferred themes.

Why Scheming? Other considerations

Concerns – while this captured the idea of the character being in charge of things it felt less involved in the plot and continued the ‘set aside’ concept of Downtime.

Occupations – but who wants to do work? That’s spreadsheet life, not plot advancement and fantastic discoveries.

Rejuvenation – is wonderful for healing, but poor for plot advancement and heroic actions over time.

Strategic play – this conveys the proper tone and your schemes should be strategic while other pillars are tactical.

Schemes involve rising action by heroes and antiheroes to get ready for the messy work that needs doing. Schemes are active plots and machinations (maybe that belongs above). Sometimes they are down notes, sometimes they are upbeats. They build rising action.

Unifying disparate subsystems into Scheming

Crafting, Bastions, Franchises, Group Patrons, Schooling, Carousing, Sacred rites, Grand rituals, Research, Business operations, Running a faction, Guild matters, Training militias, Communal defense, Grand voyages ….

The list goes on.

When these are schemes they are multi-check montages where failure matters and the results fuel the story. They either help or hinder a character or party on their quest. They take time.

Whatever you take to calling downtime (and do include Bastions and Crafting when appropriate for your campaign) you need to unify this set of systems together.

1. Describe the quest with the amount before the pace of action changes again. Set the expectation that there is time to Scheme.
2. Players describe their goals using the above activities or a combination thereof to achieve that goal within the amount of time (measure in weeks).
3. Narrate the results of the actions. These may require skill checks, use of various features or cooperation in the party. If there isn’t meaningful failure there is not a check unless extraordinary success matters. Use an odd number of checks (3 or 5 are best) mimicking skill challenges or use group checks if everyone is cooperating. Or combine the two.
4. Move on from the Scheme into action with a faster pace taking note of how much time passed and what that means for those that oppose the group.

If that resolution system feels familiar it is because it is the basic rhythm of play at the table, while capturing the montage and compressed time nature of a Scheme.

It’s not a scheme if the activities are passive. It’s not a scheme if it doesn’t advance a quest or plot. It’s not a scheme if it is fast. It’s not a scheme if it is tactical.

Frankly it’s not worth doing at the table if the activity is passive and/or doesn’t advance the quest

Schemes are strategic, long-term, montage-y activities that advance the action fitting a rising narrative building the eventual heroes towards a climax. They should not be the climax, nor the resolution. A denouement can be a scheme as it preps for the next campaign.

Ways to add Schemes to common campaign types

Try working in schemes into your campaign. Use a timehop that creates challenges because the enemy is building a grand army. The timehop also gives the heroes time to train a militia (as in Wheel of Time).

In a heist adventure use a scheme as the way to collect the necessary materials or information, setting up the background before the strike on the location (as the Crows in Shadow & Bone).

Maybe the scheme is to collect a group of allies to help the party cross a perilous ocean or astral sea, commissioning a ship and its crew (as in One Piece).

Play a scheme at your table inspired by the fictions that inspire your D&D.

Using Feats to expand your setting: Church of Quar

In the new Forgotten Realms books, Strixhaven, 5e Dragonlance and a recent Unearthed Arcana official D&D is using Feat trees/chains. Every published instance so far is a set of two.

While there are mechanical reasons to have tiered Feats every expression to this point also leans quite heavily into the story elements added. In Strixhaven the feat-taker goes from early student to late in the class. In Dragonlance a squire becomes a knight. In the Realms you are early in a Faction and then a powerful member of it.

The Feat helps tell the story in ways that a subclass wouldn’t because in all cases the feat has two expressions in Tier 1 available where a subclass gets a single expression. By the end of Tier 2 a subclass gets two expressions while a Feat chain can be up to four. There’s more space for story.

An initiate becoming an expert is the most common example. The chain (I prefer that to tree as the published versions are two options linked) naturally fit this.

Let’s explore how a Feat chain could tell a story in my homebrew world by looking at three feats connected to the Church of Quar.

In the Six Kingdoms of the World of the Everflow the Church of Quar is a hybrid church-healing center-merchant guild. It controls access to the healing waters of the Everflow at the Font of Two Paths in Telse. Their tongue became the common language of the Six Kingdoms because of the strong influence of their healing elixir in a world without magic.

No faith, no kingdom, no magic school after magic returned to the land has the influence of the Church of Quar. They’re in every town. That does not mean that every town has an Acolyte, a formal role represented by a member of the faith who is becoming a hero.

The following three feats expand the story of the Church of Quar for heroes (and villains) using the Feat system.

Acolyte of Quar

Origin Feat

You gain the following benefits.

Cultured. You learn an additional culture (or language).

Balm of rest. During a Short Rest you create a balm using a Healing Potion that removes one level of exhaustion and grants the creature advantage on a saving throw versus one condition with a save.

Blessing of the Everflow. When you administer a Healing Potion to a creature they may use a Hit Die to heal as well as gain the benefits from the Healing Potion.

Minister of Quar

Feat (prerequisites: Acolyte of Quar, 4th+ level)

You gain the following benefits.

+1 to Charisma or Wisdom

Oratory. You have Advantage when using Influence Action with Indifferent or Friendly peoples with which you share a culture or language (and Hostile creatures who are members of the Church of Quar).

Lord of Life. You learn the Aid spell and may cast it one time a day without using a spell slot. It becomes a known spell for you.

Lord of Rivers. You know how to create a Healing Potion (vial of Everflow) with only water and herbs. This lesser potion costs only 5 gp and can be created during a Short Rest. This potion is only half as effective as a standard Healing Potion. Sharing this concept is forbidden.

Free Minister of Quar

Feat (prerequisites: Acolyte of Quar, membership in the Reformed Church, 4th+ level)

You gain the following benefits.

+1 to Charisma or Constitution

Rivers and Roads. You learn two cultures or languages and the Religion skill (or another skill if you are already proficient). You have Advantage on Constitution checks brought about by Environmental Effects.

First Aid: Taking one minute you can grant a Hit Point to a stabilized creature. They are also subjected to Blessings of the Everflow if you have a Healing Potion available.

Together these dual Feat chains tell the story behind the Orthodox and Reformed Churches of Quar.

In just the tiniest bits of flavor text you see examples of how two branches of the faith are different, not just in their ability to be heroes, but what is expected from their most ardent believers.

Where a subclass gains features at 3rd, 6th and 10th level (mostly). Classes have feats at 1st, 4th, 8th, 12th (mostly). By 8th level a member of Quar’s faith could take all three faith feats, going on a journey from being part of a merchant-church to dedicated hedge healer.

This story doesn’t need to be connected to a class because they aren’t spellcasters. Plus, in the fiction inspiring the game contains people who are faithful without being clerics or druids or paladins.

Maybe another feat deals with Quars pantheon. After being an Acolyte of Quar the individual is a Devotee to Belsem the Untamed (leaning into animal companionship?) or a Teacher (adherent to Glight becoming an expert at knowing things). These would emphasize branching, which fits the pantheon.

The other pantheons may start dispersed and then unify (The Siblilngs) or emphasize bonding (Az and Sel) or only be about fellowship (Mehmd’s faith).

Maybe an aspect of your world is a military organization and feats could be ranks or branches. Does your world lean into magical schools like Strixhaven? A feat chain from underclass, to senior student, to teacher, to dean could work. A setting that anchors the horrors of the environment could use feats as a way to describe various paths to survival (water, shelter, food, community).

Feats are a discreet, light space that empowers all classes to carry bits of lore that connect to the world mechanically.

The D&D Stranger Things boom is bigger than you think

This post will not contain spoilers for Season 5 because I haven’t yet watched Season 5 of Stranger Things, though I do know it features more Dungeons & Dragons than Seaons 2-4 combined.

If you were to go into Target this fall you’d see a massive Stranger Things display somewhere in the store. Part of that display would feature the D&D boxed set Welcome to the Hellfire Club, which is a continuation of Eddie’s D&D campaign. It felt late, because Eddie isn’t part of season 5.

It was not late.

Welcome to the Hellfire Club sold out at Target. It sold out on Amazon. A light informal survey of local-to-me stores have it as sold out. The physical boxed set can still be ordered on DnDBeyond.

Sure, that could be a lack of ambition from Wizards of the Coast by not manufacturing enough of the sets.

It’s much more likely that the heavy lean back into D&D by Stranger Things Season 5 drove more desire for D&D the game than previous seasons, Critical Role and Baldur’s Gate 3. BG3’s drive of interest into D&D is hard to quantify, but has an extended window over several years.

Google Trends can show you.

Search trends for Stranger Things

Here are the four adjacent media and D&D

D&D, the game, had its biggest boom from the movie, but…

There’s one major difference — lack of tie-in gaming products.

Rime of the Frostmaiden contained a single adventure related to the movie. There was a boutique NPC download related to the movie, but nothing like the amazing boxed set Stranger Things got. Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus was barely related to the video game and its release timing was horrible.

Nothing sold out because of Honor Among Thieves, the best D&D marketing in the history of the game, because D&D wasn’t run as a franchise system with business units failing to talk to each other.

Both the current starter set and Welcome to the Hellfire Club are selling out.

What’s that mean for us Dungeon Masters?

1. Be welcoming to new and returning players.
2. Reduce house rules when they join you.
3. Talk about the intent of your table and what type of play you focus on .
4. Be familiar with the most popular products.
5. Help teach your current players to DM.
6. See if local cafes, libraries, schools, pubs, etc need DMs.

We are responsible for growing this glorious hobby. Thanks to the Creative Commons, various SRDs, the eternal nature of homebrewing and the thousands of other roleplaying games there is always something that’s right for someone.

Find what’s right for your family, your friends and your community.

People are interested. It’s up to you to be the reason they stay interested.

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #HonorAmongThieves #PlayingDD #RPG #StrangerThings #TTRPG #WelcomeToTheHellfireClub

A letter to the workshop

TO: Flasfur Wreltor with Blackbirds and the gobkons Chofs Chupmolea badged al-Chems and Bolnis Abica nox Qawaha via Artok at the Keep

Aboard the ship you’ll find a vial of the corruption I discovered. Additionally this letter’s addendum includes a report of testing as well as a sketch-print of a mechanical hand discovered on this long journey. When I return is unknown. This journey shall be long and ideally fruitful. It is also violent and absurd. Tsavancoast is a land of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, with many artificers, tinkers and crafters mostly gobkon with a few goliaths, plus you wouldn’t believe if but I think there’s a human using cattle to turn wheels like we might a mill. I saw a monkey pushing bellows.

It’s a large city. Where Sheljar is one with the land and full of righteousness Tsavancoast is bright even at night, garish. There’s gambling where we stay. I win regularly.

Sorry. Too long. I get distracted.

You are probably wondering what’s happened with the corruption. It’s a much bigger problem than we or Le Remoden Eisha or the Dragon Council thought. There’s also a local leader in Tsavancoast who is working to spread the corruption while supposedly being in Le Remoden Eisha.

I found that out after repelling an army of walking trees and this weird elf-insect hybrid creatures. Yes, others helped, including some great dwarven sappers who brought down a bridge, scouts that helped save outlying communities, a lot of wizards. It was a staged battle. Midqh helped quite a bit. I learned how to make even bigger fire and booms through its apparatuses.

Anyway, after that massive series of battles — yes, we won, that’s how you’re getting this letter — we chatted with the leaders of the wizard and dragon groups, plus a gent named Ryghast. Don’t ask me the order of who talked to who and when it happened. We were in a casino! I won a few games, many games.

Eventually we chatted. But chatting with Ryghast was difficult. He took me into a magical silence to spill secrets. I tried and tried and tried to break his spells with my own systems. A wizard of his power is well beyond my teknical abilities.

BUT, in his confidence he told me of his double-crossing ways. I immediately told Amos, Rolf, Crag and Nandi, who passed the information around.

Probably created a big enemy. Hopefully he didn’t follow the Sadijh back to the keep. If he did please flee. Artok cannot defend you on his own.

Anyhow, we’re back off to the wilds. The source of the corruption that created that army of trees is our goal. I don’t know when I’ll see you again. I have ideas about what we can do with this hand and I’ve started to work on armored carts with Rolf. There’s also a clockwork amulet that can give one a second chance. My latest invention is to burn a bit of corruption to power our items.

See you again under the Dragon Moon.

Xabal Gaitee Quarter-Flagged Optigraph Balaneer nox Free Tink and non-Commissioned Officer of the Sadijh (on leave in absence)

This recap of the Defense of Tsavancoast is written in first person by Xabal, a gnome artificer, to their hirelings at Xabal’s Workshop set in the Age of Myths campaign.

#AgeOfMyths #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #NilborgSCrossing #PlayingDD #Tsavancoast #Xabal

Ferments, Sessions three & four: Mud mephit slide, wake, fey chwinga

In session three the focus was on Keesrah. A duet session handled on Discord due to let turnout, session three was a fine example of the intent behind The Ferments campaign — always find a way to play D&D.

Session four was held at Logan Brewing in Burien, as is typical. Keesrah and Guarese attended.

What did the other characters do? We’ll use downtime to talk about the use of their homesteads as bastions, Xanathar’s downtime actions and/or improving their defenses for Militia Actions. And, due to player feedback we’re including traps in Militia Actions to embrace the case where a homestead may be solo or light on membership.

The Ferments reading;

• One sheet
• Common knowledge
• Sesion one
• Session two

Session three

Keesrah heads into the scrub mountains for food to celebrate the visit of the liquor-creating family of halflings from downway. Her mom is on the trip.

During this trip in horrific weather a mudslide forces a change in path, and eventually she is attacked by mud mephits. It’s a fierce encounter on the edge of failure. But together the two managed to hold off the mephits.

Later in the trip home they notice a fox, Rennard. Using spellcraft, Keesrah learns that fox is the companion to Taier Henkel. Tier is missing, and presumed dead.

Keesrah and her mother, Velthuria, need to cross the mudflow to return home. Using some craft, luck and Crow the Raven the two managed to safely cross the mud mephit slide. Keesrah is punched by a mud mephit swimming through the flow.

After the flow and storm subsides Keesrah and Caile (the brother) head into the hills to talk to the Henkels and then the Drudzhars. One of these conversations goes much better than the other.

As a sign of fellowship, and because of Caile, Taier’s memorial is to be held at the Trading Post — there’s also easy access to the liquors from the visiting family.

The celebration goes well, except for the fight between Caile and Keesrah.

Learned clues

• Keesrah Maltunyn learned that the Henkel halflings get along with Clan Drudzhar.
• Caile is friendly with both the Henkel halflings and Drudzhar.
• Taier Henkel washed away in the mephit mudslide.
• Keesrah rescued Taier’s fox Rennard.
• Taier’s body was encased in mud by chwingas claiming he gave them a piece of his soul.
• Chwingas released Taier when Guarase Spinebloom said he’d find them another bit of soul — maybe his.
• Ken raiders with an ambush drake made their presence known. One donated its soul.
• Guarase earned a Charm of Heroism granted by the semi–domesticated fey chwinga that now live in the Spinebloom’s rice marsh.

Session four

This was the first session featuring the Spinebloom homestead. It is a series of mostly underground dome structures in a desert environment. Many Spineblooms have some druidic magic and they use this and their traditional growing methods to have the least influence on the environment as possible.

The same river that goes past the Maltunyn’s flows to the Spineblooms. Since The Ferments are infested with extreme elemental influences the desert and scrub mountains are close than is practical in a typical world.

Keesrah and Caile travel along that river to try to find Taier’s remains. That journey includes meeting Guarase who helps them search. There is a mud casing hidden in the rice marsh the Spineblooms farm.

Unfortunately there are also chwingas, little elemental sprites whose morality is not the same as humanity. These chwingas rescued Taier, but kept him cased as a way to protect him during the mephit mudslide.

In order to get Taier free the chwingas demand another soul. Somewhat confused, Guarase agrees. Then the goliath figures out that they mean his soul.

During this exchange the non-chwingas notice two advancing elves and an ambush drake. Keesrah sends Caile and Taier home.

Guarase and Keesrah fend off the elves, while the drake and those elves destroy a third of the rice marsh including many chwingas. When one of the elves is dropped unconscious in the marsh a chwinga captures its soul.

The elves also damage a Spinebloom home.

Keesrah and Guarase learn of more threats to The Ferments, more friends that could be made and the challenges to come in a land that threatens their livelihood.

#ambushDrake #chwinga #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #Ferments #homebrew #mephit #PlayingDD #recap

Inkling Dragon

Inkling Dragons are thought to be related to pseudodragons, but where the pseudodragon is a wilderness lover the inkling dragon is generally an urban drake that enjoys being surrounded by books, scrolls and pamphlets.

Generally the size of a large rat or small cat inkling dragons can be mistaken for an immature jaculus drake. As all dragonkin hoard something, an inkling dragon is consumed with the pursuit of knowledge and writing, similar to paper drakes.

An inkling dragon without a companion can be found in libraries, universities, bardic colleges and wherever records are kept. Some are creatives writing fiction and song. Others are historians, tracking the world through the written word. At least one inkling dragon is known to only write in mathematics. This inkling dragon, Aymon, is a friend of transmuters, tax collectors and merchants often working as a clerk or calculator.

The Inkling Dragon was created as part of a limited commission in the upcoming book Dragons of the Dwindling by Dragons of Wales (Andy Frazer).
Follow Dragons of Wales on Instagram, Threads and Mastodon. Support Dragons of Wales on Patreon.

Inkling Dragon companions

Frequently inkling dragons and writers bond over their love of the written word. Sought after by many wizards and writers, an inkling dragon chooses their companion as much as their companion chooses them — the tiny dragon has to find the work engaging and relevant to their own writing.

1. Wizard
2. Bard
3. Propagandist
4. Novelist
5. Poet
6. Merchant
7. Tax collector
8. Cleric
9. Clerk
10. Noble

This work includes material taken from the Black Flag Reference Document 1.0 (“BFRD 1.0”) by Kobold Press and available at Black Flag Roleplaying

Inkling Dragon stat block

Inkling Dragon (CR 1/4)
Tiny Dragon

Armor Class 14 (natural armor, small size)
Hit Points 8
Speed 10 ft., fly 30 ft.
Perception 11 Stealth 12
Resistant none | charmed
Senses darkvision 30 ft., keensense 10 ft.
Languages Common and four other languages (or cultures)

Heightened Senses. The inkling dragon’s Perception is 20 when perceiving by sight. Ability checks for Perception using sight use Intelligence.

Magic Resistance. The inkling dragon has advantage on saves against spells and other magical effects.

Limited Telepathy. The inkling dragon can magically communicate simple ideas, emotions, and images telepathically with any creature within 30 feet of it that can understand a language it knows.

Copying a Spell into the Book. When an inkling dragon or its companion finds an Arcane spell of 1st circle* or higher, the inkling dragon can add it to a spellbook if it is of a spell circle the companion can prepare and if they can make time to decipher and copy it. For each circle of the spell, the process takes 1 hour with no gp costs. Once the inkling dragon spends this time, the companions can prepare the spell just like their other Arcane spells. Copying a spell from a scroll into a spellbook doesn’t consume or destroy the scroll. Non-magical writing is written four times as fast when compared to humans. The inkling dragon produces ink from its tail as long as it isn’t at level two exhaustion or higher.
* Black Flag uses circle as D&D uses spell level.

Ritualist. An inkling dragon with its own book can be a Ritualist, per the Black Flag Talent. The spell source is Arcane. Intelligence is their spellcasting ability. The inkling dragon knows one 1st circle ritual (typically Identify). If the inkling dragon is a companion to a spellcaster it can learn rituals at the same circle and source as their spellcasting companion.

1st circle Arcane rituals

• Alarm
• Create Familiar (these can only be common beasts)
• Identify
• Illusory Script
• Unseen Servant

ACTIONS

Sting. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one
creature. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) piercing damage and the target must succeed on a DC 11 DEX save or be poisoned for 10 minutes. If the creature fails the save by 5 or more, it is stained by ink per Ink Stain below. This staining does not count against the number of uses per day.

Ink Stain (1/short rest). On a successful sting the inkling dragon can mystic mark (Ranger) one creature. While a creature is marked (including for the attack that triggered the mark), the inkling dragon and allies deal an extra 1d4 damage to it (of the same damage type as the weapon) each time you successfully hit it with a weapon attack. A marked creature can use an Action to remove the Ink Stain. An inkling dragon that is a familiar or companion to a character may use this ability proficiency bonus (of that character) times per day rather than once per short rest.

#BlackFlag #DnD #dragons #DragonsOfWales #DungeonsAndDragons #homebrew #inklingDragon #monster #PlayingDD #TalesOfTheValiant

Saying yes to adventure

It’s incredibly difficult to capture what D&D can be in 30 or 60 seconds. That may be part of why the latest advert for the Starter Set, Heroes of the Borderlands is 75 seconds.

That’s also a short amount of time.

My sessions are typically three hours. We’ve played nearly a dozen campaigns in 5th edition from 2014 to the present averaging a game session every other week for the past 11 years.

Critical Role plays closer to four hours on average with the main campaign playing about 40 sessions a year over that same stretch.

How do you introduce the layers of play, the layers of friendship and the depth of potential in a minute?

Wizards of the Coast did that by showing a generation of players who said yes to adventure in the 90s and now play with their kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFOiXvVidwo

Saying that first “yes” to playing D&D

The people who introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons way back in the 80s introduced me to science fiction, to creative writing, to journalism and debate.

Later the second group I played with introduced to the concept of joining the Army, anime/comic books, writing my own game, and British comedy because we played Twilight:2000, Albedo, TMNT, Synnibarr, MERPS and of course D&D.

Saying yes to Vampire: The Masquerade helped me during language school, when the stresses of required success were overwhelming and I needed an escape from the combination Army-university life.

A year later saying yes to D&D with another nerd in 5th Special Forces Group helped me be myself while being all I could be and more. Those duet sessions created an escape and creative outlet.

Then I stopped.

Saying yes later

As my soccer blog matured and jobs came-and-went 5th edition D&D came out. I didn’t have a group. I hadn’t played in two decades except for those dozen or so sessions with a combat medic.

But, I was intrigued.

I asked my friends who wrote with me, who edited, who advised a small soccer blog as we grew.

Those first sessions of 5e included grand friends who helped each other learn the new system, remember our pasts and tell tales of glory through fellowship.

Those campaigns tuckered out and then ceased due to a wonderful job opportunity and then the pandemic.

Yes during covid

My last yes to adventure was when one of those friends asked me to DM again. During the pandemic I’d stopped running sessions. I still played, but online play and my DMing style don’t get along. I tried it once, in an actual play.

This yes meant getting a new group together. The old groups had scattered. Unlike the characters in that D&D advert I’ve never managed to maintain a group across decades. Not even my brother who was part of that first yes still plays.

But we got together.

And it grew. It taught me to share my world with another DM. This most recent yes reminded me that the fellowship at the table is as important as the fellowship of the characters.

This yes has our group playing in public, right in front of other people who don’t know what D&D is. We played with strangers who became friends. We introduced others to the game.

Marketing D&D

Saying yes to playing role playing games took me a lot of places.

And in 75 seconds the marketing team behind D&D reminded me of all of that. Taking us backwards on a journey of glory, of watching a child grow up, of a pregnant woman playing the game and a group of friends who stick together from 1995 to the present is brilliant.

Where will yes take you?

To the Caves of Chaos and The Ferments. To rolling d20s at a brewery and getting on stage at a security event. To Krynn, to Theros, to Sigil, to Exandria, to Trinyvale, to The Strix, to Wagadu, to al-Qadim, to Grim Hollow, to Drakenheim, to Midgard, to Obojima, to Eberron, to the darkest crypts and the glorious eternal afterlife, from dragons to halflings.

But mostly it will take you on a journey of friendship and discovery of the stories that you are unable to tell yourself.

That’s what saying yes does — it opens you up to things beyond what is contained within your own being.

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #HeroesOfTheBorderlands #marketing #PlayingDD #RolePlaying #RPG

Ferments, Session one: Smog buggy and fire snakes

The East marched on West Thundermoon Trading Post.

Wrapping up a typical day, Keesrah noticed a thick, acrid cloud coming from the east. At the same time a not-unusual goliath walked up the packed dirt road from the south.

The goliath, Guarase Spinebloom, reached the gates of the wooden palisade enclosure a few minutes before the smog buggy. Keesrah starts closing the doors.

The smog buggy encounter was one of three random encounters rolled by the three players taking part in today's session.

In a thick accent, the boss of the smog buggy, a goblin with driver and second passenger, demands/requests entry to escape “fire snakes.”

Keesrah messages her mother. This takes nearly a minute because it is the spell. She opens the gate and lets the rancid smoke engulfed clackety buggy into the trading post.

Mere feet behind them are fire snakes.

This was not a euphemism. They are snakes, made of fire.

Fire snakes were also rolled on the random encounter chart.

The fight is swift with another Trading Post visitor, a halfling with six tiny terrier companions, Luke with a silent and non-appearing q in his name. Luke is a cleric and joins in the defense. He was picking up farm implements from Keesrah’s father, a smith whose forge burns over an open lava seam.

Luke, Keesrah and Guarase try to defend these goblins. They have difficulty conversing with the goblins. Though the goblins know common (Telsian as we’re using cultures not languages)the two dialects known aren’t similar between the Ferments-born and the Essians (goblin born).

A unique use of Create Water by Luke reduces the fire snake effectiveness for a round, while also limiting the spread of fire in the walls.

During the fight the fire snakes kill one of the goblin minions and damage everyone, as well as a bit of the palisade. It’s a win, but with a hefty loss.

A mistake the DM, me, made was having four fire snakes. Standard fire snakes have too many hit points for three 1st level characters, even with their allies.As soon as I realized the error I dropped them to 13 or 14 HP. That meant the fight was very difficult, but not a campaign ender.

A morale roll means that the smog buggy driver will likely never leave the trading post again. Their best friend is gone, burnt. Malk, the goblin boss needs to repair their buggy, which is also crispy, and find a crew and find the resources to use as fuel. The goblins normally use tar trees, but outside of Essia those are extremely rare.

Malk and Keesrah’s father talk about the possibility of using lava to fuel the smog buggy.

After a bit of rest, and setting up a guard by Keesrah’s family the group tries to recover. They talk a bit.

Looking around the Post they notice the overflight of dozens of hunting birds. The Maltunyn family rivals up in the hills almost always bond with birds. At a heightened alert, the group of Luke, Guarase and Keesrah notice that one of the smaller doors out to the game trails is open. Keesrah’s younger brother is gone.

The overflight was the third random encounter rolled.

Key learnings (SlyFlourish would call these secrets).

• Goblins are searching The Ferments for a resource that can fuel their smog-tek.
• Fire snakes are now aggressive, rather than passive. They will chase outsiders in the area.
• Keesrah’s brother snuck out at night. That raised an alert from the adversarial clan nearby.
• Community helps community. No matter the challenge and the danger.

This was the first session of The Ferments, an East Marches Campaign set in the World of the Everflow.

It is an experiment in using random encounters, defensible places, and a West Marches style to talk about community, control of knowledge and love of pets.

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #EastMarches #Ferments #PlayingDD #recap

Your D&D campaign should have eyeglasses

One of the tenets of Dungeons & Dragons is that your character can be anything. Well nearly anything. There are certain limitations on species, mostly due to fantasy tropes. Those continue to expand. The embrace of characters with crutches, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids continues. Official books always include art showing these samples.

While the movement towards inclusion of disabled people as potential heroes is slow. It is there. This is wonderful. Because everyone deserves representation. Everyone should have the choice to see themselves as a hero.

Me? I wear glasses. Have all my life. This includes when I was a cartoon superhero as a linguist in the 5th Special Forces. On the range? Glasses. Jumping out of airplanes? Glasses. Setting det-cord? Glasses. Giving an IV? Glasses.

But how would my character where glasses? How could I play this?

My next D&D character is a glasses wearer.
They carry dozens of lenses for varied uses. One of the land’s best archers, they can shoot a bee’s nest at 300 lengths.
Once a truffle hunter always paying attention what was close, they now look afar, constantly.

There’s no rules for wearing glasses. The fix is simple. The worlds of D&D have magnifying glasses (100 gp, can start fires) and spyglasses (1000 gp, doubles size of object). So grinding glass isn’t a problem within typical D&D. Neither is the construction of simple frames. In the real world glasses as we know them date to the 13th century.

Eyeglasses or Spectacles

Type: Adventuring Gear | Cost: 25 gp* | Weight: —
Wearers of eyeglasses or spectacles have their vision corrected to normal within the world.

* any player who wants to start their character with lenses should be permitted at no cost.

Now, you may ask — what happens if they get knocked off?

First, I say? Whatever. No, seriously, is your game a constant barrage of disarming player characters of their weapons, shields, and spell components? If not, then don’t worry about it. If you do run that kind of game, then use the same rules for other disarms and expect that characters would carry an extra set of lenses, as I did when I was a cartoon superhero. Maybe their next attack is at disadvantage if you feel cruelty is necessary in your game of heroics.

Those rules are rather unnecessary. My glasses fell off only once during training exercises that involved nearly the highest level of training in the US Army (I was SOT-A, not tabbed).

Hero Forge, DM Heroes, ReRoll, Never Ending all have glasses options for art. Currently DnD Beyond does not have character art with glasses, but many of the 2024 books do.

My next D&D Character is bespectacled.
They wear lens to correct their poor eyesight. Not a nerd, just a person who lives life with lenses on their face. They slay dragons with a giant sword and use their shield to protect their friends.

This post was originally published in 2022.

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #equipment #gear #glasses #PlayingDD

Picking the Fall release 5e products best for you

Somewhat overshadowed by the release of several high-fantasy systems not based in 5e D&D is that Wizards of the Coast has two starter sets, a two-book/three-pdf Forgotten Realms set, and Eberron expansion coming out from September through the holidays.

Additionally, other 5e systems inspired by D&D are also cranking right now.

There’s a plethora of choice, right as genre TV’s most D&D related property is coming back — Stranger Things season 5 releases Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s in the U.S. Several of the early monsters based on Dungeons & Dragons are making a comeback.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKZyYdwS3Wg

Your normie (non-RPG) friends may be interested in the game again thanks to the combination of product releases, the Mighty Nein release, Stranger Things and the general zeitgeist around being big heroes with power in a world where that feels missing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7OCKYZjOcY

What game or books are the right system for them right now?

If you read Full Moon Storytelling it is likely that you are a DM/GM. It’s also likely that you lean towards 5e D&D. That will be the focus, with a small discussion of the other systems capturing attention (million dollar+ Kickstarters and the like).

Are you the GM/DM?

Go with what you like best, what fits your world, and be welcoming. Cut back on house rules and homebrew, at first, as the people who are new to the game can be overwhelmed with normal rule sets that can stretch to 1,000 pages.

Fold the new invitees into your world by asking them what they enjoy about high fantasy roleplaying. Finding out what your table’s Appendix N always helps, but it is the most helpful knowing what someone new (or returning from long ago) to the hobby wants.

If they want something simple, but familiar like the D&D of the 80s, but modern there are a few routes. Sticking with 2014 5e one can still get the older starter sets from Target or Amazon. Dragons of Strormwreck Isle is under $16 at Target online, and some physical stores may have it. Check with your local gaming store to see if they are offloading old product.

You can also intro them to 2014 via Kobold Press Tales of the Valiant Starter Set. It is under $14 at the time of publishing. The primary differences between Wizards of the Coast 2014 D&D and Tales of the Valiant lies in Tales having character creation that separates nature and nurture, luck replacing inspiration and the insertion of unique abilities on every monster.

I’d recommend Tales of the Valiant over 2014 D&D because of those changes, even if it doesn’t have the branding your friends expect. It also comes with minis! If Stormwreck Isle is 5.1 5e, ToV is probably 5.3.

Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club

Maybe your friends didn’t get into D&D from Stranger Things season 1, or 2, or 3, or 4. Or maybe they did, but didn’t have the time, energy or mental space to play the game.

Welcome to the Hellfire Club uses Wizards of the Coast’s modern take on starter sets — lots of tokens, handouts, cards and a written approach that blurs the line between board game and roleplaying game.

modern take on starter sets — lots of tokens, handouts, cards

The presentation includes a look that borrows from 80s nostalgia as expected. The four adventure books include trade dress that would make Gary Gygax and TSR proud.

This is the second starter set built out of Stranger Things by Wizards of the Coast. Both lean heavily into using the voice of the character from the show that was the featured DM, lean into the mythology of the TV show with its ‘not quite D&D monsters, but monsters that middle/high schoolers would think are D&D monsters.’

The first Stranger Things set was rather linear in nature, which fit the times and works fairly well for people newer to roleplaying. Welcome to the Hellfire Club uses 2024 5e D&D rules.

D&D Starter Set: Heroes of the Borderlands

https://youtu.be/evsJ_nZ7Sws

Similar to Stranger Things pulling out 80s nostalgia to pull people into its world, Wizards of the Coast uses Dungeons & Dragons most popular adventure from the foundational period to inspire its new general purpose Starter Set.

Keep on the Borderlands is now Heroes of the Borderlands, with three adventures. Using 2024 5e D&D’s rules, card-based character creation, tokens and maps, the intent of Heroes is to again bridge that gap between board game night and RPG night.

Because it is 2024’s rules rather than 1974s, the set is massive. Those three little folios that could fit in a small lunchbox are gone. Instead Heroes has more than 400 cards and tokens, a quick start, a set of rules, and three adventures.

The game of D&D is simultaneously more complex and more approachable than it was in the 70s and 80s. Being a more pervasive part of the culture is part of that. Also the decades of exposure to computer RPGs changes how one approaches teaching the game.

Forgotten Realms expansions

A massive two-book, three-digital book expansion coming with the brilliant marketing around “The Realms will know your name” these books aren’t necessarily great for first timers to tabletop roleplaying, unless…

You know people who were heavy into the lore of Baldur’s Gate 3 and/or D&D: Honor Among Thieves and/or the once dominant fantasy novels set in the Realms. Those legends exist within the expansion, but the point of D&D and RPGs in general is to tell your story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06Oe-XtgScs

Only dive into this if you are being joined by people who absolutely love those non-tabletop versions of the Forgotten Realms. These expansions include 50 micro-adventures that fit an on-the-fly DM rather well (similar to those in the 2024 DMG).

Those playing with your classic group you need little guidance. If you are using the 2024 D&D rules, or at a table that permits a broad swath of 5e rules, the expansion is handy if you want to borrow factions, subclasses, new species and nuggets of lore to insert into your homebrew.

In total the Realms expansions add about 30% more character creation options while dramatically expanding the story through the lore expansions.

Eberron: Forge of the Artificer

High fantasy doesn’t have to take place in a world that’s pseudo medieval/Renaissance and Euro coded.

It can also include pervasive magic, spread widely among the populace in a world that echoes tropes related to early Industrialization with great Houses, lightning rails, elemental airships and a ‘war to end all wars.’

That’s Eberron.

Forge of the Artificer is a lightweight updated to the setting originally invented by Keith Baker.

Due to a product failure on the physical book, it is being entirely reprinted with digital and print now out 9 December, 2025.

Don’t get Forge of the Artificer unless you already have Rising from the Last War or you really want to have the magitech Artificers at your table or you are a completionist. I’ll be getting it for the first two reasons. I’m currently playing a goblin Artificer.

The Artificer in Forge is updated for 2024 with a brand new subclass as well. From what was in the Unearthed Arcana developing this coming version of the Artificer it looks to have the quality of life improvements I would expect.

Other RPGs

LevelUp

LevelUp is built on the 5.1 5e chassis, but advances it. This does make it a more complex version of high fantasy role playing. Some of the greatest improvements come from expanding the social and exploration pillars. This helps tell a wider variety of stories. Like every offshoot of D&D from the 5e era it separates nature and nurture.

There’s now a Starter Set available. Yes, it has tokens and multiple adventure, because that’s what modern starter sets do. EN Publishing’s Starter Set is an excellent way to try on a different version of the game you already know.

Cosmere RPG

If you enjoy Brandon Sanderson’s writing you might enjoy the Cosmere RPG. It is not based on 5e. It is the highest earning RPG kickstarter of all time.

Cosmere is beautiful, complex and the most extensive lore heavy game upon release likely ever.

Draw Steel

While not the level of Kickstarter success of Cosmere, Draw Steel was still a massive earner. The design team from MCDM is mostly people who produced wonderful 5e products, but are now releasing a system that emphasizes combat (tactical, heroic, cinematic) even more than D&D. The rules are crafted so that the feeling of conflicts is a reminder of watching a movie or TV show’s fight scenes.

Daggerheart

If Draw Steel is inspired by D&D, but wanting to be more combat, Daggerheart is inspired by D&D, but wanting to empower more story. Like Draw Steel and Cosmere, Daggerheart is a wholly new system. Most simply defined there is a Hope/Fear mechanic attached to the double-dice roll of players. Additionally it covers more ground about how to communally create the worlds and social interaction. Coming from Critical Role’s Darrington Press Daggerheart is designed to showcase the types of stories Critical Role excelled at.

Similar to Cosmere and D&D there is a wealth of media associated with it already — with more coming from the media arm of what was once a D&D actual play, but is now a multimedia company.

There are plenty of other games too — listing them all is foolhardy. Pathfinder and Starfinder, Legend of the Ring, Warhammer, Shadowdark and the list could go on.

But the zeitgeist right now seems to be focused on 2024 D&D versus a few upstarts with million dollar or more crowdfunding campaigns all coming out in the second half of 2025.

No matter what you choose — play more games.

#5e #Cosmere #Daggerheart #dd #DnD #DrawSteel #DungeonsAndDragons #LevelUp #PlayingDD #RolePlaying #RPG #StarterSets #TalesOfTheValiant #TTRPG

Black Flag is in the Creative Commons, now what? Backgrounds!

Over the past decade the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons grew three main offshoots from its original 2014 release by Wizards of the Coast. These three trunks are all now in the Creative Commons thanks to Kobold Press’s announcement this week.

A5e is the Systems Reference Document for LevelUp, from EN Publishing. This branch of 5e places much greater emphasis on social and exploration, while also being a more complex combat engine. It’s “advanced” 5e.

2024 D&D by Wizards of the Coast (the 5.2.1 SRD) is an evolution of the most popular version of the game in history. It adds minor layers of complexity, and removes most bioessentialism.

Now, Black Flag, the SRD for Tales of the Valiant is also in the Commons under the CC BY 4.0. The primary changes within Black Flag are replacing Inspiration with Luck, adding Dread and similar to A5e uses both nature and nurture to define an upbringing.

All three modern offshoots add a unique element to every monster. Rather than have merely have bigger numbers, monsters do something different — a Commoner in Black Flag has Angry Mob, while in A5e Commoners have a Stone (they can also be a Group) and in 5.2.1 they have Training.

What can a DM/GM/designer do with all four in the same license?

1. I am not a lawyer. Nor am I your lawyer. Use an actual lawyer if you have questions and are publishing for money.
2. Read all relevant SRDs as well as their related FAQs.
3. Find the place you want fiddle with and become an expert at that before you try to be an expert at everything.
4. At your home table, borrow liberally from every system. If you don’t find yourself handing out 2014 Inspiration and don’t like 2024 D&D’s mechanical implementation, use Luck from Black Flag. Use everyone’s monsters — they’re balanced enough for the elastic system that is 5e — your players will have fun interacting with different commoners doing different things.

Maybe you’re thinking “that’s nice advice Dave, but what are you going to do?”

Backgrounds!

Full Moon Storytelling’s most popular types of stories are various Backgrounds. The ones on this site focus on empowering a wider variety of tales within our 5e games, while leaning into short-form personality, a spread of Feats/Talents for each and sometimes a cantrip.

Each of the main trunks of 5e do something different from the 2014 version of the game. That’s good! Your table can use a Background from any of the modern versions and there will be no balance issues. That means dozens of more origin stories for your heroes.

For myself it means my eternal project becomes a simple project. A few dozen new Backgrounds with methodology to fit in all four trunks of 5e.

Custom Backgrounds for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons

• Barker or Crier
• Remarkable Drudge
• Farmer & Beekeeper
• Vintner
• Midwife
• Caravanserai & Innkeeper
• Sparkler
• Tinker
• Lamplighter or Street Sweeper
• Herbalist
• Far Talker
• Hunter
• Messenger
• Clerk & Tax Collector
• Barber, Stylist or Bloodletter
• Cabbie & Ferien
• Clothier or Weaver

The Tinker

This week the Tinker is my most popular Background. Tuning it for each version of 5e doesn’t take much.

2014 5e by WotC

It’s already released, but the key point is the feature “I Can Fix It.” The feature helps in exploration situations, mostly, as it means the Tinker will usually have a way to MacGyver there way through a problem even if they don’t have the proper supplies.

2024 5e by WotC

If you leave Ability Score Improvements within the Background rather than have them float the Tinker would choose between Dexterity, Intelligence and Charisma.

Origin Feats

Choose one;

• Crafter
• Magic Initiate (Wizard)
• Skilled
• Tavern Brawler
• and from Tasha’s Artificer Initiate

Black Flag from Kobold Press

Choose a Talent

• Far Traveler
• Polyglot
• Trade Skills
• Scrutinous
• Ritualist (Arcane)

A5e from EN Publishing

ASI – Tinkers typically grant a +1 in Dexterity

Connections – Tinkers might know a caravanserai, an innkeeper, a ferien, a smith, a group of bandits, a sergeant from a warring nation, a local farmer, a maker of fine meed, a faerie that’s a cheesemonger.

Memento – Tinker memento options could include a letter from home, a chapbook of poetry, a metal they’ve never been able to bend or smelt, a strap of leather from their first failed project, the stein from their favorite inn, or a book of cantrips though they don’t know any.

Adventures and Advancement – A Tinker who repaired a notable authority’s broken item may be granted a writ of access granting the Tinker expertise on Persuasion rolls.

Feature – same as the original on Full Moon Storytelling.

Now, these examples are quick looks at a future project that will include the score of Backgrounds already on the site, plus the four Everflow specific Backgrounds that didn’t get their own entry. And more as my reading expands.

With four versions of 5e available in the Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) how will you create for your table?

#A5e #backgrounds #BlackFlag #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #gaming #homebrew #LevelUp #PlayingDD #RPG #TalesOfTheValiant

Lore Collage: Everyone has dragons, they’re all different

I have to blog. It’s a curse

It’s also a space full of unpublished drafts. I wouldn’t want to see what drafts I lost when Sounder at Heart left SB Nation. I can still check what SaH has of mine in drafts, but I don’t dare check that. I recently checked my work drafts and even there I have unpublished drafts. Here there are unpublished drafts.

Anyway, I have to blog.

But also I let things get in the way of publishing. Which is frustrating.

It does mean that I don’t need to shave the yak like my friend, but sometimes, maybe I need a bit of a reset. That’s a part of what Lore Collage is. It compels me to write more. Even if I don’t think my words are worthy — I press publish.

Reading

Dragons are funny things. Almost every culture has dragon-ish monsters in their stories. In my own world they horde things and emotions and knowledge. In others they are a warring faction of old gods. What are your dragons?

Over on EN World SlyFlourish asked people to share their game prep. Since I’m not DMing right now I didn’t share, but seeing the variety of ways people prep for games is wonderful.

While most of my role-play is centered around 5e and similar systems, I like the Ennies as a way to keep me aware of new systems, creators and aids. The 2025 nominee list includes two products I’ve already used (DungeonScrawl and Hero Forge Kitbashing).

Post by @scottfgray View on Mastodon

https://dice.camp/embed.js

If you live in the Puget Sound and Columbia Basins you don’t need to worry about the tiny earthquake swarms under Tahoma. If you are creating a fantasy world, add earthquake swarms as a natural hazard, make them big. See how the characters react to things they cannot fight. Then make them fight an earthquake swarms.

Making Enemies is the next book from The Monsters Know What They’re Doing creator Keith Amman. The way Keith approaches lore based in the short story of a stat block makes me excited to see what he does when he’s teaching me how to make the stat blocks.

Creating an RPG is hard. It takes either an immense amount of talent or a network of people. It probably takes both. PJ Coffey gets into the details of all the tasks that go into publishing a work. I’ve worked with PJ on two of their projects.

A few weeks ago I spoke at a risk intelligence conference about using role playing games as a teaching aid for non practitioners. My search algorithm is working. Both Rascal News and Military.com put out stories that will be part of my next work presentation on the same subject.

• Preparing for Public Health Disasters With Tabletop Games
• How Tabletop War Games Build Strategy and Community

Want help telling your world’s history of empires? Procedurally generate the ebb and flow of conquest (if you have a Windows machine and understand GitHub).

Watching

There’s always more to learn about sports, and I’m already trying to figure out how to insert tuj lub into my D&D games — I’m big about that too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FWhgnRjQME

Kobold Press has a deal on shipping right now. I’m looking at the Labyrinth Worldbook. It is full of ideas I can borrow into the World of the Everflow. Which would be funny since as a backer for Tales of the Valiant I pitched the World of the Everflow to be included.

Handily, SlyFlourish has a review up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT3Dl1rbPKs

Creating

Alignment is too simple. Personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws is too complex. Use short form personality instead — 2-6 words that describe your character.

Converting Full Moon Storytelling’s Herbalist Background to modern 5e

5e24

Pick one of the following Feats. They are listed in order of commonality;

1. Healer
2. Magic Initiate (Druid)
3. Skilled
4. Musician
5. Magic Initiate (Cleric)

Then assign ability score bonuses to Wisdom, Intelligence or Dexterity.

Black Flag

Pick one of the following Talents. They are listed in order of commonality;

1. Field Medic
2. Trade Skills
3. Physical Fortitude
4. Ritualist (Primordial)
5. Psycanist

#BlackFlag #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #herbalist #PlayingDD #RPG #TalesOfTheValiant

Your favorite fantasy TV series was cancelled, now what? RPGs

A few years ago it was the heyday of big, high fantasy TV series. Yes, the grit of Game of Thrones and Witcher were still popular, but there were also a selection of shows with a higher level of magic, higher level of heroism and a set of characters who you wanted to win. It was the era of peak fantasy TV.

Slowly but surely these faded away.

Some series got a reasonable run — The Magicians reached a conclusion. Some series were cut quite short — Willow, ended with more story to tell.

Universes were announced to be expanding. Shadow & Bone went from having the Six of Crows spinoff announced to the entire project dying.

There was big money in fantasy for a bit. These weren’t Brit TV specials like Merlin or modern attempts at low budget like Xena.

The biggest money of them all is still around. Rings of Power, the prequel-ish endeavor by Prime Video churns along at price points that are normally saved for theater or Andor.

The wheel weaves as the wheel wills, always turning.

Sometimes the wheel destroys the things you enjoy, like Wheel of Time — especially the last half of season 2 and all of season 3 with strong reviews and great fan appreciation. While there was enormous pushback against the changes made to adapt to the shorter run time of a book plus a bit per season, as well as pushback against the attempts to be less coded and more openly diverse, the series was generally well received. It was generally profitable.

It’s gone.

The story won’t finish (except in the books, which will always be around). Yes, there’s a petition to Save Wheel of Time. I hope it succeeds. Brandon Sanderson seems to suggest it should, but will not.

Petitions and book reading are passive.

Don’t be passive — adapt those stories to an RPG

Playing games in those worlds is active participation in the fandom, and helps build out that word of mouth.

You don’t need to have an authorized book in order to play. Any fantasy series, movie, video game, book, comic, etc can show up at your table.

You can instead borrow the themes, cultures, characters and put them in your world. Sure, you could play pure within the world created by Robert Jordan or Lev Grossman or Jonathan Kasdan.

The power of roleplaying games is that the tale is yours, no one can take it from you. The rules can be simple enough to fit on a business card or so complex it fills bookshelves.

What happens to Jade, Kit and Elora?

That’s up to you.

What happens to Mat, Perrin, Elayne, Min and the rest?

That’s up to you.

Take the themes, tropes and world of that story that a committee decided was no longer worth being told and tell it yourself.

That’s why I fell in love with D&D and RPGs in the 80s.

The unfinished trilogy, or maybe not

Back in my youth my bookshelves were covered with science fiction, fantasy and encyclopedias. Words on a page were meant to be consumed by me, like a black hole consumes a galaxy.

I’d shop at a used bookstore, looking for a new series to start. Except sometimes I’d never find book 2, let alone the inevitable trilogy. Sometimes I would start with book 3!

One of my favorite tales, and I say this as someone who had pets but didn’t really discover the love of pets until my 30s, was a story about a fading order of knights who rode giant tigers. The hero wasn’t really part of the order. His family was and he had that extremely large cat. In this dying world they journeyed, starting as outsiders and immediately recognized as legendary. But they were just a dude and a great cat.

They didn’t want to be heroes. It was so compelling, this story of man and beast who wanted to be normal while the world needed them to be great.

I never found book 2.

But I had already discovered Dungeons & Dragons. A character paralleling that tale was created. We roamed the worlds that Erik and Justin and Chis and Abel and Hayes and Jacob and Colin and Andrew and others created.

We finished that tale.

Wheel of Time is over, unless it isn’t

The series explored slightly different things from the books. One of those was how tales are told. There’s a suggestion from the meta of the series that within a world where there are endless retellings of tales and history.

What changes, and what stays the same is part of that story.

Your RPG could lean into that by playing similar characters at different levels, at different times with a power to oncer per month to have a past power show up, maybe ramping faster as time goes by.

Another possible exploration from the Wheel of Times series and books is how power corrupts. The nature of saidin is that man with power lose control of themselves — mentally, emotionally, physically.

Want to toss a saidin power into your D&D?

Maybe your Rand-ish character is a Warlock that has to roll on the Wild Magic table every time they cast a spell.

Of course, one of the most potent tales from the books that is amplified in the series is that women are not side characters. They are as important to the story, and powerfully so, as anyone else.

You don’t need special rules for this. The modern versions of D&D encourage this.

From Willow there is a connection in the series to the tales from the movie (history is a massive throughput in Wheel of Time as well).

To see this at your table means connecting a current adventure or campaign to one that ended a decade, a century, a millennia, an age ago.

A D&D campaign that builds off of former campaigns is a structure that generally needs some continuity of players, but can also be done through one-sheets, common knowledge pages and a regular re-telling of special moments.

This could happen around the campfire, on the steps of a temple, inside a tavern or any place where the PCs meet NPCs.

Find what’s important from these tales and make them your own

It’s rough to lose a special story.

You have your memory. You have your hope.

You have a game to help you continue the legends that are important to you. You don’t need Rafe or Sera or Kasdan.

You need dice, paper and a table of friends.

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #fantasyTV #PlayingDD #RolePlaying #RPG #WheelOfTime #Willow

This I’ll Defend, The Ferments: A campaign one sheet

The Ferments are a rough land of geysers, lava flows, fast glaciers, waterfalls, hot springs, tornadoes, earthquakes — the raw power of the world. From this land the best alcohols of the Six Kingdoms come. The peoples of the Ferments are dispersed, spread over the many miles with four main towns. They generally live in defensible homesteads interacting when they need goods or during festivals.

Campaign Premise

Our eventual heroes start out as the primary defender of a homestead. They know how to contact other homesteads for help when needed, but mostly they are on their own hoping to remain safe from a world where dragons came real, magic became powerful and kaiju returned.

Grand Conflicts

Elementals burst from the land, stronger than before and with a hungry intelligence that threatens the land. Outsiders fleeing the wars of Six Kingdoms come for safe harbor. Dragons and their Ken continue to search for more scholars.

Each homestead has a book, collection of scrolls or other devices that helps them control an element (earth, air, fire, water) or paraelemental (smoke, magma, dust, ice, steam, mud, etc). These start out with each PC knowing Elementalism, limited by their choice of element. Each was passed down since the time of Gallinor, before the time of dragons.

Factions

Every player will create either an ally or adversary family besides their own. They may also have a connection to one of the families (not all families share blood-ties) of other characters.

Adversaries

Allies

Rumors

This section will fill over time.

• Kaiju roam as in the time of Gallinor — some even are ridden. Word is they come from the Kirtin-in-the-Sky and the Cliffs of Gallinor.

Facets

• Exploring the zero-to-hero tropes, friendship with animals, and who gets to control knowledge.
• Defending your people.
• Inverted West Marches.
  • Enemy generally comes to you. Though you may sallly in order to obtain resources.
  • Episodic – attend when you can.
• Sessions are 3 hours, with each story completed in one session.
  • Characters will level up every 3 sessions.
• Recaps will be posted to Full Moon Storytelling.

Variant Rules

• Wizards of the Coast’s 2024 D&D is the baseline
  • Monsters may come from Black Flag, A5E, 5.1 and 5.2 products.
  • Player options must be consistent within the ruleset (i.e. if you play a Mechanist all options should be from Tales of the Valiant for that character).
  • There is a campaign set up on DnD Beyond. Email me to get an invite.
  • Start at 1st level.
  • Use point buy or standard array for starting attributes. If you want something random, the redrick roller gives random point-buy-valid stats.
    • SlyFlourish’s Simple Array is permitted (17 14 14 12 10 8). Do not use ASIs from other sources.
• Playable races are Human, Hin(what they call themselves)/Halfling, or Goliath.
  • Start with a Bonded Companion.
• There are several custom backgrounds and tools available. We will use cultures, not languages. Common is the Western Wildes. Other cultures are;
  • Kirtin
  • Daoud
  • Crinth
  • Azsel
  • Mehmd
  • Gobkon
  • Dragonken
  • Church of Quar
  • Every character is assumed to have Common Knowledge in the Six Kingdoms.
• Heroic Inspiration will exist as a shared dice pool that is a maximum of 2+ the number of PCs that day.
  • In addition to the normal ways to award Heroic Inspiration it will be awarded for playing to Short Form Personality.
• Each PC manages a Homestead (Bastion from 5e 2024) that starts with no Special Buildings.
  • When defending your homestead you will have Militia Actions available. If you control a Barracks you have additional Militia Actions.
• Each session will offer the opportunity for a short rest. Long rests are between sessions.

Practicum

Sessions are on Sundays from 1-4 when my main campaign isn’t being played. We’ll meet at Logan Brewing, usually. I’m willing to do duet play outside of that timeline as well.

Each character should be built in a session zero discussing their personality, homestead, allies/adversaries and key abilities.

#campaign #campaignOneSheet #dd #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #gaming #PlayingDD #RPG #TTRPG

Militia actions for 5e systems

Sometimes in D&D and similar games you need to empower the players to manage groups of allies supporting the narrative, without precise actions by individuals. When running a rebellion, skirmish or base defense you can use militia actions representing the training a character conducted with a group of commoners.

1. On every PC’s turn they now have a Militia Action. This is independent of their character’s actions and reflect the training that the character put into the small unit (think squad sized) during downtime.
2. In initiative the Militia Action happens after all player actions and the actions of that character’s companions (familiars, pets, constructs, etc)
3. A militia is a Swarm of Commoners (AC: 10, HD: 6, PB: 0, all abilities are 10, a Swarm may have a tool proficiency or skill for flavor). Every time it is attacked it makes a Wisdom ability check against the damage dealt. It gains a bonus from the controlling character’s Charisma (Persuasion). Each failure removes a Hit Die. When it drops below 3 HD it loses one of its damage dice. Do not track damage.
   Suggestion: Use a d6 to track the HD of a Swarm of Commoners.
4. Pick one of the following actions
   • Ranged attack – this attack is rolled with an Attack Bonus of + controlling character’s Charisma+PB (and whichever ability they use to command). Range is 30/60 to represent inaccurate and improvised weapons. Damage is 2d4.
   • Melee attack – this attack is rolled with an Attack Bonus of + controlling character’s Charisma+PB (and whichever ability they use to command). Reach is 10′ to represent pitchforks, spears, and other implements. Damage is 2d6.
   • Funnel – the swarm moves 20′ and creates an 10×10 area of difficult terrain. If the terrain is already difficult it now costs twice that movement. After that the terrain becomes impassable except through magical means.
   • Rally – the militia energizes an ally, enabling it to expand an Hit Die. If the ally is another militia it regains a Hit Die.
   • Pester – if an opponent is in reach of the militia the unit can distract it so that the next attack against the opponent is at Advantage.
   • Move and/or Hide – the militia unit can move 20′ and then if cover is available it can make its defensive check at advantage.
   • Activate terrain, traps, spell craft or siege weapons – If a siege weapon is nearby a Swarm of Commoners has as many Utilize Actions as it does damage dice. It can also activate Magic Items, Rituals or Terrain as allowed by the scenario and dungeon master.
5. A player may choose to use a second Bonus Action (if they have one, to make another Militia Action.

A character may only command one Swarm of Commoners unless they are a Propagandist or Inspiring Leader (PB number of Swarms).

This is a refined approach on the earlier Introducing Militia Actions to support base defense in urban rebellion play.

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #homebrew #MilitiaActions #PlayingDD #skirmishes #SwarmOfCommoners

How players should prepare before their next TTRPG session

There’s a lot of guidance on how to be a better DM. There’s some guidance on the player-side of the table. The most prolific of the player-side guidance is about character builds.

Instead of focusing on the character or DM, we’re going to focus on the player. What can a player do to prep for their next session? How can they help their group move at a pace that matches the genre of the game?

While the examples provided relate to Dungeons & Dragons, the fundamentals apply to most roleplaying games. You should be able to prepare in less than 30 minutes. These tips may be basic, but they’re steps I take every time I’m a player in my current era and come from my experiences in my bifurcated RPG time (early 80s to mid-90s, 2014 to present).

Review your character’s motivations

Others may push you to look at your powers first, but to me what makes a pen-and-paper RPG (even if it is D&D played on a VTT) special is that you get to act as the character would act. You aren’t constrained by anything but the willingness to be a coherent character.

To do so you should spend a few minutes thinking about your character. That could mean checking what their alignment is, what their personality is, what their goals are, how their family motivates them, etc. Don’t have them act slovenly if they’ve been cleanly in the past. Don’t have them be a chaos agent if they are orderly.

Do talk about how their brother inspired their quest. Do put forth that they are searching for their best friend. Do have them be motivated by riches and treasure.

Reviewing motivations means putting on that character’s face for a couple of minutes.

Review your character’s abilities

Character sheets can be complex. D&D PC sheets can be two-plus pages with spells and feats and features and weapons and masteries and riders — this list can go on. But for most characters you have a primary attack, a secondary attack, a way to interact in social encounters and a way to explore (or other pillars for other games).

Focus your attention on the main things your character does because they are good at them. At the table that’s what you’ll do. Spending a minute or two reviewing the rules for the things you do should speed up play as you won’t be looking up the rules live. This is especially important if the character has recently leveled up, acquired a magic item, or added a new feature.

Also remember what your character shouldn’t do because they are bad at it. You may want to hint at that during play. Maybe you are a Barbarian who shouldn’t be doing ranged attacks, bring that up when the group wants to snipe at distance.

Plan to use an ability or feature you haven’t in several sessions

When you’re looking at your sheet maybe you’ll notice something that your character hasn’t done in a few sessions. Find a way to do that in the session you are prepping for!

Xabal, my goblin Artificer, started using a spell called Caustic Brew regularly. They hadn’t used it in enough sessions that I forgot I had it. This week I committed to bringing it back to the forefront. Xabal blasted an automaton with it and later used it to break open a gate.

Review the party’s names, excellences and weaknesses

In real life most of us don’t forget our friends and coworkers. In a game like D&D, where some of us only play once a month, it’s easy to do so. As a player that’s understandable. It’s not for the characters.

Our recent session continued an invasion of a mob warehouse. Xabal wouldn’t forget the other character’s in the party, what they are good at and what they’d need help with.

The only way to ensure that you, the player, don’t forget the other characters in the group is to take a moment to review their names, their skills, and what they are doing adventuring with your character.

Remember the adventure and campaign goals

You don’t have to be a deep notetaker for this one.

Take the time to think about why the group is on this quest. What does success look like? What does failure look like?

Why is Xabal’s group invading a mob warehouse? Because they were sent there by an organization of mages from the ruling powers who think this mob may be connected with cultish activities that are attempting to overthrow the order in the world.

By knowing what the group’s goals are you may avoid going on that weird side quest or shopping trip or winding up with a 4-hour session in a tavern — you might not avoid it though! That’s the power of playing as real people. Sometimes we don’t do the smart thing or the right thing. We still should be ready to do the proper thing and know why we aren’t

These are my four steps to getting ready to be a player in a D&D session. What do you do to prepare to play?

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #PlayingDD #RolePlaying #RPG

Your players aren’t supposed to die

A couple weeks ago one of my players passed away. Not his character, the actual player. This isn’t supposed to happen. My group is GenX with a couple of Millennials.

John White left us too early. His D&D experiences were strongly in 3rd edition, though like myself had played for as long as he could remember. And even though he mostly played in an edition that encouraged optimization, it was his adoption of the story-centric campaign that we’ll all remember.

I remember playing with a friend who was never waiting for his turn to do something, but was engrossed in the act of telling a story together. I remember a collaborator who expanded the world that we played in by fully being in it. I remember characters whose backstories and internal lives were fully fleshed out, who incorporated elements of the world that even its creator hadn’t thought of and who interwove the stories of other players’ characters into their own with a generosity and care that is rare in any circumstance.
— another player at our table

He’s played with this group since it was founded during the pandemic, playing on the patio of a brewery that was roughly a midpoint for a group that is spread through King and Pierce County — Logan Brewing.

We’re going to celebrate John by playing D&D together in public — we’d like you to join us. Or you can watch. The event is March 16 from 1-4 pm PT at Logan Brewing.

Please fill out this form so we can be prepared with characters and the necessary number of DMs

John’s characters were:

• Habergeon, the world’s first, and possibly only, warforged, Habergeon was crafted during the fall of a previous age back when magic was plentiful and those who are now gods walked the world as mortals.
• Gardar, a Mehmdoan, this one-time cooper and weaponsmith lost his first animal companion to tragedy, fled his former master and now seeks to rid the influence of the Dragons and their allies.
• Tsirdan, an elven Scribe Wizard who worked with the Dragons to control the spread of magic in Douad.
• And Artok, our commander Dragonborn Paladin in his final campaign. Artok, like John, was noble and heroic, short on words but those few words were always potent.

John was unlike anyone I’ve ever met, his way of thinking and explaining things was in such detail that I could tell his mind was always working in overdrive
— another of our players.

The first time I met John was when I was co-hosting a Sounders podcast at our local German pub.

The first time I played D&D with John was when I was featured in the Renton History Museum exhibit on Creating Community with D&D. A letter to the editor at the time shouted that the museum shouldn’t support Satan, as if it was the 80s again.

John’s response was to suggest to me that we should play in public so that people could see this game for what it is. He and I were joined by his wife and sister-in-law. We played in a public park.

Though my modern D&D games had frequently been in public it was mostly at geeky places like game cafes.

It was perfect that our post-pandemic campaigns were in a very public brewery. Many times we played a stranger would ask us what we were doing while current and former players would always recognize the game and ask about the campaign.

Playing in public exposed more people to the game John loved.

John enjoyed porters and though he was short on words he was always present.

And that’s why we’re doing one session of a 4th level one-shot on Sunday March 16, from 1-4 pm. People who know John and those who want to experience the game are welcome. Again, please fill out this form so we can get an idea for how many DMs we need.

#DDInPublic #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #HoldBackTheDead #JohnWhite #LoganBrewing #PlayingDD

Integrating pop songs into the five-room dungeon system

You have limited time for gaming. Pulled in so many directions, you need to find ways to reduce prep time and focus the game on action.

Two innovations help those efforts quite a bit when playing a D&D style game.

• The Lazy GM’s 8 steps
• The five-room dungeon

But, you’re still left trying to be creative within those techniques.

Take the five-room dungeon, the short essay of dungeons. It’s an introduction/guardian, puzzle/social encounter, trick/setback, climax/big bad, and the resolution or plot twist.

This generally follows the basic plot graph in literature. It’s familiar, fast and can be done in one sitting if you time things well.

How do you fill that out? What’s the source of creativity?

Use pop songs!

No, really, they often follow a similar arc, but have a chorus that echoes the main theme of the song. This idea first sprung to mind with Apollo, by SYML.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIMSP3OC91g

Rather than five-rooms, we’re going to go with seven events because of the chorus. The song provides the creative prompts to fill these out.

Introduction/Entry — on the steps of a temple the party sees a golden altar being shined, hears talks of other wonders when a dark cloud blots the sky. A raven and a wolf rush to the altar, tossing it aside, fleeing to the countryside.

Note: after the intro the PCs determine the order of approach.

Social encounter — Interview the group talking of other wonders and the goals for the faith. Secrets and clues include a song that is unsung and a build up of a military force by the faith.

Choral echo — Tracking the raven and wolf leads to a moonlit glade with an empty space framed by 7 monoliths.

Setback — The huntress on wolf back, she rides with bow drawn, ready to fight. If the party sings the unsung song there is an attack. She only appears at night, under a full moon.

Choral echo — If the party rights the altar themselves and shines it to bright gold they discover a medallion that prevents the poison on the arrows from taking effect on the group (immunity from the poison condition in an emanation of 10′ from the one wearing the medallion).

Climax — The songmaker arrives when one of the party bends their knee (falling unconscious qualifies, as does voluntary submission)

Resolution (always last) — When the songmaker and huntress are both defeated a flock of ravens blots out the full moon. The wonders fall and a song echoes at their altars “I am. I was. I will be.”

Yes, that’s quick and dirty. Tuning that to a party shouldn’t be too difficult. Maps and expanding on the secrets can turn it into a decent short adventure facing off against avatars of gods in any D&D world.

Sure, that works for Apollo, but what about other songs?

Quicker and dirtier with Last Great American Dynasty by Taylor Swift.

Intro — In history there was a party with many attendees scheduled at any outsider’s home. Celebrations are held in town honoring the host and diminishing the current leaders

Chorus — One of the hosts dies, their partner is blamed in efforts by the current leadership to reduce influence

Puzzle — How did the person die? Clues include a neighbor’s dog, poor health, a nearby sea, a long drink together prior to the party

Chorus — The commoners in the community ignore the other surviving families, focusing instead on the surviving partner as both suspect and hero

Setback — Both partner-hosts haunt the house, interfering with ideas at solutions, causing the group to collect extra clues that may or may not be relevant.

Climax — PCs discover that the old money in the area is the reason for the death, as they didn’t want the new money to interfere. If the PCs share this with the commoners there is an uprising.

Resolution — The house remains haunted, after the PCs solve the mystery of the death, though the group can live there undisturbed.

Did you just use a Taylor Swift song?

Yes, I did.

Not every pop song will work

Just like not every TV show, movie or book is a good inspiration for a D&D adventure or campaign, not every song is.

But, if you find out at 9 in the morning that you’re DMing in the afternoon you can adapt the five-room dungeon using the chorus to help with theme and secrets.

Playing the song that inspires you on repeat can help you focus your energy. Sketch out the quick map including notable fantastic elements, make certain your secrets and clues work in a multi-nodal fashion.

Fill the monsters or opponents that fit the song (ravens, wolves, ghosts). The NPCs are in the song as well (commoners from LGAD or clergy in Apollo).

Connect a couple events to the characters and/or past adventures.

The chorus can either be tucked into various other scenes, can be dream sequences, portents, or speeches from various NPCs rather than specific events.

Have fun gaming

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #FiveRoomDungeon #homebrew #PlayingDD

Capturing the magic of the mundane Utilize action

The rules for the 2024 D&D Utilize [Action] are rather simple per the Free Rules and the Player’s Handbook. The magic is hidden in the siege engine blurb in the Dungeon Masters Guide.

Simply, Utilize lets you use non-magical items that take more than a bare moment to activate.

You normally interact with an object while doing something else, such as when you draw a sword as part of the Attack action. When an object requires an action for its use, you take the Utilize action.

Free Rules

Within the siege equipment rules, you can see the potential for Utilize. There, each engine has a different number of utilizations that it takes — frequently these are things like aim, load, fire. Each engine requires between one and five rounds for a single person to use these massive elements of war.

What’s the magic in a catapult? Nothing, normally.

But an enterprising DM will realize that there is an implied crew in siege engines. Full staffed these can be used within a normal combat round.

Also, and probably more intriguing, is the implication of time pressure.

Imagine now an opponent using mangonel. It takes two Utilize to load, two to aim and one action to fire. In our example we’ll use a crew of three, which lets the mangonel fire every other round and the crew do some other annoying things.

Our heroes are on a mission to take out the emplacement of the siege engine.

The weapon itself has an AC of 15 with 100 HP. It could take a long time to damage it.

Taking out the crew is easier, of course. And thanks to the number of Utilize [Action] required the DM and PCs know the time it takes to make the mangonel no longer effective at attacking their allies. Each loss of a crew member slows down the enemy and grants your allies time to act in other ways.

It’s a clock, without a clock.

You can also use this technique for a chase scene!

Let’s say your PCs run to the docks, board a sailing vessel and need to get going fast. Maybe it’s a ketch, with a main mast and an aft mast and foresail.

https://flic.kr/p/noLuTq

Quick and speedy let’s say that setting the sails requires two at the aft, one at the foresail and three at the main, plus there are two utilize actions needed to release the lines. Yes, this is highly gamist, but allows a scene to develop.

That’s an eight segment clock for the party to escape. Maybe they have an artificer with a servant, or a familiar that can help. Maybe the rogue uses Fast Hands. These can speed things up, for sure.

The group knows, quickly that while under assault they need eight actions in order to be undersail and then the enemy will be behind them.

No need for fiddly rolls, unless they take a wound or condition that would limit the ability to succeed at these mundane tasks.

Building ad hoc clocks from the Utilize [Action] can also be done with traps (the number required to disarm or the number before the flooded room no longer offers room for breath).

Maybe do similar with rituals and the Magic [Action]. Is the group raiding a grove where evil druids are conducting a multi-step ritual to bring the mushrooms to life in order to choke out a local farm?

Come up with a number of Magic actions that are required for success. Now the two groups both know the timing of success.

If there are seven druids that need 14 Magic actions to succeed they can choose to all ignore the PCs and perform their magic or some can address the PCs. The solution is up to them and creates an interesting balance of choice.

No, these aren’t the clocks of Blades in the Dark. They still create a sense of timing and urgency within your game.

#2024DnD #ClocksInRPGs #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #PlayingDD #Utilize

Making it easier to DM

Being a Dungeon Master is intimidating. At it’s biggest level it can seem like you are supposed to run an entire world, know all the rules to the game, spotlight every player-character equally and help everyone have fun.

There are many ways to make it simpler than that;

• Focus only on the world with which the PCs interact
• Skip rules that aren’t meaningful at the time
• Rotate the spotlight as appropriate to the table
• Get feedback from players in order to improve

There are other ways too. I’m a big fan of the Lazy GM series.

2024 Dungeons & Dragons helps make it easier in their Dungeon Masters Guide by incorporating some, but not all of SlyFlourish’s ideas. One notable thing is the tracking sheets — theirs and different from his, but that’s fine. Not everything needs to be the same.

The layout of the new book is much better for new DMs. It also has excellent examples on how to spiral out from the characters while building a world, using Greyhawks as an example. There are micro adventures, which may not give enough information, but they do show that one doesn’t need a lot of notes to run a session. My sessions are usually a single notecard for example.

Overall the ’24 DMG is a good to great book for Dungeon Masters early in their experience. It’s also handy that those tracking sheets are all available for free!

But, (sorry WotC), there is a flaw in how easy it is to be a DM in this modern era.

Those wonderful tracking sheets aren’t really part of DnDBeyond.com

They exist, but without integration.

What could make it easier to DM in the DnD Beyond era?

When you Create a Campaign on Beyond it should start with that Game Expectations sheet. The notes should be replaced with the Campaign Journal.

These are wonderful tools, and they are completely unsupported.

Adding the sheets or similar fields to the campaign page would help a DM as they introduce the players to the game-to-be. They’d all be able to see what the story is about.

Right now those pre-session one-sheets and the like need to be shared on the web, via email, Discord, at the table, or other tools rather than in the platform that Wizards of the Coast owns. It’s a silly gap in integration.

Make it easier to share variant rules and setting information

Currently, Beyond lets you share all of your books or none of your books. But that doesn’t help for a specific campaign.

Currently, Beyond lets you share books in a deeper layer of content sharing, but doesn’t let you pick and choose rules (like attributes, extra feats, no feats, encumbrance)

The above was updated at 8:57 pm on Nov 27, 2024

My current Age of Myths campaign would make sense to permit Strixhaven, Theros and Dragonlance rules. It’s absurd for it to include the Illrigger, Ravenloft, or Lord of the Rings (TM).

Imagine how much easier it would be for a DM and the table to say “these are the rules we are using for this campaign” and then toggle those rules and books either on our off.

Currently that’s a player-by-player decision within the character creator.

But what type of encumbrance a table is using isn’t a player-by-player decision. That’s a table decision. The appropriate setting and adventure rules aren’t most or none, but a delicate basis that sets the tone for the next several months or years of hanging out with your friends.

Wizards of the Coast and the D&D team can make it even easier for DMs by changing some architecture of their semi-walled garden in such a way that they already believe works, because it’s in their brand new book.

#5e #DnD #DnDBeyond #DungeonMastering #DungeonsAndDragons #PlayingDD

This isn’t something I talk about publicly much. The stutter and the lisp are a large part of the reason that when I worked full time in sports radio I was an off-air producer. Once in a while the on-air people would mock me.

Years later I would appear as a subject matter expert on those same shows.

I’ve also hosted 100s of podcasts, appeared on many dozen more. I used to be an analyst on ESPN+. I’ve been the MC for crowd events of four figures. Even now I host and sometimes appear as an analyst on security briefings.

Some people may have noticed the stutter. Others might not have. But it’s always something I think about while prepping. I also avoid words that would trigger the lisp — these happen to include the most common names I like for fantasy characters, which isn’t ironic. I think I like those names in writing because I struggle to say them. The lisp will often trigger bad stuttering.

Once upon a time I spent several hours a week in speech therapy for the stutter and lisp. I don’t remember those lessons consciously. They seep into how I grew up and who I became.

Somehow I won trophies in competitive speech while in high school. The stutter was still there.

It was there haunting me today in the Global Security Briefing. It haunts me when I DM. It haunts me when I’m a player.

One of my compensations is to spit out words as rapidly as possible. I don’t permit my mind to pause and think. I just do it, rapidly. My current character Xabal talks this way at the table. It’s easy for me to channel because it’s something I do. Xabal is an Artificer, inherently magical and constantly tinkering. Their speech pattern is part of them and has no impact on their magic or heroism. It’s just who they are.

I think that’s important when you consider playing a character with a stutter, lisp or other ‘issue’ with language. I’m not a weak speaker. It’s nearly been a profession for me. Xabal is different because of their speech, but isn’t weaker because of that.

I know coaches, other broadcasters and pro athletes that stutter. They are very good at their jobs. Yes, like me there are times when they doubt, when they compensate. But they aren’t lesser. They have a trait.

If you play a character with a stutter recognize that this is a trait. Don’t play it as a weakness. Don’t play it as a strength. It is a state of being.

I’ve been rewatching Agents of SHIELD lately. Early in the story cycle Leopold Fitz suffers an injury that causes him to stutter, but it’s because of a brain injury. In this case actor Iain De Caestecker was using the struggle to find the perfect word as a character element that was initially a weakness, but became a state of being.

Watching and rewatching Leopold Fitz develop and not-quite-conquer the stutter helped me open up about my own lisp and stutter. Because De Caestecker isn’t mocking me and others. He’s honoring that struggle. He also does a brilliant job of removing the in-character stutter during the season 4 Framework arc when Fitz is again his whole self, mentally.

I don’t get to remove my stutter.

I’ve listened back to various podcast and broadcast appearances and know when it has happened. I speed up in a way that harms communication because I don’t want to get th-th-th-that moment. I don’t want the obscenely long pause as my brain can’t tell my mouth the words to use.

So I go fast. It’s part of why I was decent at cross-ex and impromptu. I could spew words out rapidly.

But also there are times when I lose track. These tend to be emotional moments. My practice and therapy disappear. Since it happens at highly emotional moments and then the pause or micro-chunks of words happen I get interrupted.

That’s probably the time I get the angriest about the stutter — the interruptions (this is also where De Caestecker got it right). My state of being stops being valued. People can’t wait for me to find the proper word.

I don’t know why this is going up on my mostly D&D blog at this time. Probably because of Agents of SHIELD, probably because of the passing of James Earl Jones a few weeks, who I didn’t know stuttered until he passed. Jones is one of my favorite voices ever. His work in Star Wars, Field of Dreams and as the voice of CNN were inspiring to me, a dream voice that I wish I had!

And yet as a youth who loved those performances I didn’t know a stutterer could be one of the grandest voices in the world. Maybe that knowledge would have helped me be a better speaker, maybe I would have been a radio host.

I’m in a great place without that knowledge. But Jones passing caused me to wonder about my youth.

If you’re a D&D reader who has stuck through this long, remember — a stutter isn’t a weakness. If you don’t have a stutter don’t use a character with a stutter as inspiration for a Wild Mage. If you do have a stutter channeling that trait into magic would be awesome.

Yes, that’s the same general guidance for playing other characteristics that you don’t have. It’s not a joke. It’s not a weakness. It is. And no, I’m not stuttering right now.

https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2024/11/07/i-stutter-sometimes-a-little-sometimes-a-lot/

#acting #broadcasting #debate #personalEssay #PlayingDD #RolePlaying #stutter #stuttering

No other early-era playable species/race in D&D history has been shoehorned into a singular type as the Halfling. Originally called Hobbits, because that’s what they were, Gygax decided to avoid a legal battle and renamed them as Halflings.

But for nearly thirty years these small people were either the peoples who lived in homely burrows (Stouts) or peoples who lived in Buckland (Tallefellows). There were also hairfoots, which let’s be honest the three types of D&D Halfling perfectly mirrored Tolkien’s varieties of Hobbit.

In 2024 Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast says there are more varieties, mentioning Eberron’s street-gang house and Dark Sun’s roving cannibals. And that’s it.

Halfling communities come in all varieties. For every sequestered shire tucked away in an unspoiled part of the world, there’s a crime syndicate like the Boromar Clan in the Eberron setting or a territorial mob of halflings like those in the Dark Sun setting.

No longer are the differences in Halfling types subraces as earlier versions of the game. But the “all varieties” are conventional hobbits, gangsters and cannibals.

This need not be all varieties of the small folk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGqOVIGcxgA

Caravans

In Rings of Power we meet two varieties of Halflings. The first are the Harfeet, who travel in communal covered wagons travelling with the seasons over a wide land. These peoples hide quickly (a Halfling born trait) and sing proudly of their history. Though not ‘Shire-y’ they are clearly the popular Hobbit/Halfling of fantasy tropes. Caravan Halflings have been embraced by D&D in the past, fitting them in your world is easy.

Desert cliffs

Season 2 introduces the Stoors, who live in cliffside holes in an arid land. You can see some Halfing behavior in the structure of the settlement. Again, they are quite communal, which I don’t like associating with a species because that feels cultural, not born, but this is part of the Halfling trope still. What makes these Stoors inspiring for small folk in my world is that they seem to embrace the divine luck of Halflings. Those aqueducts and microforms carved into cliff sides seems to require bravery, nimbleness and luck. Children scampering through that space would fall constantly without the luck of the gods.

There are other ways that you can embrace the born traits of Halflings and build some societies, captured in their homes.

Coop homes

In visiting various farm and feed stores you can find fancy chicken coops. These will frequently have multiple levels, many doors and windows. Sometimes they have a small fence in material similar to the walls or roof.

These have made me think of Halflings for some time, not just because they are made for tiny creatures. The various nooks and crannies are places to hide. Similar to modern micro-housing, a cluster of these coop-style Halfling homes would take up very little space in a fantasy city too. A cluster would touch on the communal aspect that Halflings will never escape, because their connection to Tolkien is so strong (even in Eberron and Dark Sun).

Or one with a run extension could be a connection to terriers, cats, or other small domestic animals that live with these Halflings as companions. A design with space underneath is sensible for raising mushrooms or other foods.

What other home types make sense for Halflings?

Rafts and waterways

A species of brave nimble peoples living on the waters in a mix of canals, creeks and lakes makes a lot of sense. Their small size lends itself well to working in the sails and ropes of the big people too. Narrow paths of docks and ladders would require a nimble and lucky peoples too. This also works at sea, with Halflings living in the rigging of multi-mast ships.

Bridges

Yes, I love this trope. My own Fort Ooshar uses it. Small folk are perfect for settling in the upper levels of a bridge-city. They also make sense in the undercarriage. The ability to slip into and out of the various rope elevators is perfect for the narrative. Halflings in this environment can be similar to the Eberron gangs or they can be families who take up the small spaces that humanity (all the medium thinking peoples) ignores.

Tree houses

Yes, yes, yes — this trope is heavily associated with Elves. It need not be. Halflings make a lot of sense as a tree people. They are small and light, which means they can live in a much larger variety of tree and not just the not-Redwoods. Put them in birch, or larches, or cedar. Maybe they live in briars with offices in the local oak. Being just a couple dozen pounds is a massive advantage for Halfling tree people. Their divine bravery and luck are also a great fit.

Spire lands

Imagine a land of natural spires with Stoor-like homes, but even more exaggeration of height with tiny bridges of rope connecting the neighborhoods. Humans would hate such a place, but a Halfling would run full speed along a rope bridge connecting two towering rocks.

tl;dr

Halflings can be more than just Hobbits. Your fantasy version of the small folk should embrace their born traits – brave, nimble, lucky, stealthy. Don’t assign culture due to their species, but the places where they live and how that influences them.

Your city Halflings could be gangsters, your caravan Halflings could be communal, your bridge Halflings could be a hidden undercurrent, your burrown Halflings could be a coven.

Embrace more options in your fantasy world so you can tell a wider variety of fantastical tales.

https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2024/10/27/expanding-the-types-of-halflings-in-your-world/

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #Halflings #Hobbits #PlayingDD #TTRPG #worldbuilding

In this post Jared talks about how rules support fiction with the examples being from Tales of the Valiant’s rituals system.

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/10/12/what-do-i-know-about-diegetic-rules-tales-of-the-valiant-rituals/?page_id=26327

The magic of this is you don’t even have to use Tales of the Valiant as your base system to add this to your 5e world. The ritual system is essentially 5e D&D neutral.

Take Divine Ritualists as described. They look like, and are mechanically supported like, miracle workers at a temple. The Primordial Ritualists are like less powerful Tom Bombadils.

Thank you Jared Rascher for the inspiration.

https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2024/10/12/reblogging-ill-be-adding-npc-ritualists-to-my-world/

#5e #BlackFlag #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #KoboldPress #PlayingDD #TalesOfTheValiant

The latest version of D&D is out in the wild. I’ve been perusing it via D&D Beyond, and I bought the local shop version of the hardbound book (which already lacks the near-immediate errata updates). That cover, with its slice-of-life capture rather appealed to me. A large part of what I love about the game is imagining these heroes in their between times.

This review isn’t going to dive deep into rules, nor the debate about this being a new edition. Instead it’s going to be why I enjoy the book. Eventually I’ll use the 2024 version of 5e as my baseline, but leaning into SlyFlourish’s ideals I’ll augment it with other 5e materials I enjoy — Tales of the Valiant/Black Flag, Advanced 5e/Level Up, 2014 Wizards of the Coast, and more. Whatever tells the story at the table best will be what’s welcome at my table, when I DM.

I’ve played D&D in some variant for nearly as long as I can remember. My first games involved a few d6 and were kind of ad hoc, played with a red box and a DM who had to explain everything to my much too young mind. I stuck through it and grew into it, and played for more than ten years during my first run in the 80s and 90s. Then I came back to the game with 5th edition, almost twenty years after leaving the game. I bring this up, because in many ways the 2024 rule set isn’t made for me — it’s made for people who are still new to Dungeons & Dragons.

More welcoming

There are a lot of new rules, both revisions and outright new items.

But the best, absolute best, thing about this new PHB is that it seems crafted to help someone who has never played D&D before. It leads with how to play the game rather than how to create a character.

The examples given cover all pillars of the game, which is vital as more and more actual plays emphasize social and exploration pillars over the pure combat that birthed Dungeons & Dragons.

With a layout and organization that welcomes the eye the craft of the book is immediately obvious. The larger font is welcome to my old eyes, while also helping youngsters not feel like the wall of text is an obstruction to learning.

Massive amounts of art help too. That art sets tone, all the tones. Art throughout the book gives examples of sword & sorcery, high fantasy, magi-punk. In fact every active setting from 5e is given art at some point. There’s art that shows dirt and grit. There’s art from high fantasy superheroes. There’s art of a calm brook and a dragon and so much more.

Art is language. It shows us what the game can do, and for people with less D&D firmware updates in their brain they can see the game as it can be.

Having helped more than a dozen friends try to learn the game from the 2014 PHB I cannot wait for the first person to ask to learn now that 2024 is in our hands. It won’t feel like studying for a test.

Origins

There are some misses in the rules of the Origins section. Backgrounds remove some of the distinct flavor elements that were great (this is fixable via expanded feat opportunities and short-form personality). Also, my halflings were simplified, which makes me sad.

There are also wonderful new things that, once again, help new players more than old.

Background and species art is a slice of life for both.

With the species are every species listed but one shows at least one character with corrective lenses. Yes, this is something I harp on a lot, but it is a rather easy way to show the level of technology and acceptance within a society (even if it wasn’t historically accurate, which it is, your D&D campaign should include glasses). Species art shows the typical cultures for a species. The language also makes it clear, that you don’t have to make a character that is typical.

This is further reinforced because the background art shows other cultures. These vignettes of life are demonstrations of what the future heroes did before. It’s a wonderful and subtle to show more variety in the worlds of D&D. There are rice patties and sailing-canal towns and magi-scribes and so much possibility. That’s really what D&D is about at the core, possibility.

Equipment improvements

Of all the rule tweaks and expansions, my attention keeps coming back to what the design team did with gear. In old school D&D your equipment build out helped define how you could innovate to solve exploration and social problems.

2024 doesn’t go that same direction. Instead of innovation it goes for explanation. Every non-container (probably, I haven’t counted) has a description about what types of mechanical things it helps the owner of such gear do. A book helps with history checks. Perfume helps charisma checks. The list continues.

This is a massive improvement for the social and exploration pillars’ mechanical support. Equipment availability also helps describe the types of worlds within D&D. With muskets and pistols and ball bearings and magnifying glasses and spyglasses this is a world similar to the Renaissance.

A setting book can also remove or add to those elements. Eberron and Dark Sun need this the most.

As someone who used to peruse the polearm section of the original Unearthed Arcana for hours upon hours the massive amount of drawings for mundane gear is a pleasure.

Rules Glossary!

D&D is a complicated game. There are quite a few rules. Within the tabletop RPG space it is somewhere between medium and high complexity, even with 5th edition’s much more welcoming ruleset.

Another wise layout choice was to not waste space on an index, but instead give us a glossary of rules. A 384-page book, even one with a larger font and loads of art, can be intimidating.

For 2024 Wizards of the Coast decided to cut back on that potential complexity via the Rules Glossary (yes, it probably should have been an index also, but the glossary aspect is most important).

When people first start playing they consult rules frequently. During character creation they do this to understand what their PC is capable of. During play flipping pages to understand is quite common.

A glossary speeds things up at the table. So does writing the page number of your abilities on your character sheet (another SlyFlourish tip).

Who should get the 2024 PHB?

• People new to D&D who will be joining a table where it is the baseline rule set.
• Completionists.
• DMs who want to understand the tweaks that will speed up play (like beasts no longer having rules riders with saving throws).
• Players who want a much better monk.
• Tables that want better representation.
• Art lovers.
• Me

https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2024/09/16/2024-dd-players-handbook-review/

#2024DnD #5e #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #PlayingDD

Hello again fair reader. You may be wondering why these diaries of my times with Artok and the crew are from me and not the humble bard we met. The reason is two-fold.

1 – I happen to want to remember the journey I’m having. It’s my life and my tale.

2 – Eustace died.

https://flic.kr/p/4cN8N9

Yeah… things didn’t go well in the fungal caves behind the waterfall. Some of that is my fault. Some is the fault of the funguses. Sometimes it’s just bad luck, like when that crewmem’ went o’erboard. This death in the violent life we lead has fault.

Eustace getting stuck inside a shambling mound of vegetal horror is kinda traumatic. Especially since at one point all of the group spent time inside that mound. I nearly died too, at my last available breath Rolf slew the dread beast!

How’d we get into a situation where the four of us were in such danger?

It started by trying to help a mushroom man who asked for help. I’m always up for helping the needy. Plus, Rolf really trusted fun-guy. Turns out that was because of a spell. Which, we probably should have figured out, but didn’t, again, because I believe in helping the less fortunate and who is less fortunate than someone made of fungus.

Deep in the cave the two of us were following Funguy, the shroom, and things started to get complicated. We discovered a ritual with other ambling funguses plus this thing that looked like what would happen if a fungus and elf merged, maybe that’s what was happening to poor Glovin who at least had the fortune to die before being taken over.

Things turn violent pretty quick, luckily Eustace and Amos showed up. We’re outnumbered. Things are going well somehow. We start to get confident. Things are working, kind of. I did accidentally destroy Midqh in boom of thunder, but we’re doing well outside of that until…

Funguy summons that mound.

In our weakened state we struggle. I get off some decent spells. So does Amos (that wizard knows some powerful magic). Rolf is doing alright with his magic too! Eustace’s words weaken things.

I’ve got no Midqh and I’m out of little bits and bobs to build more. I have to stand toe-to-toe with the mound eventually. It sucks me in.

Rolf and Amos tell me later that they were in serious danger. Rolf uses a misty step to get out and then he and Amos finish off the shambling mound, last of our enemies. I thank them after they wake me up.

“Where’s Eustace, our gnome storyteller?”

Their faces turn sad. One points to his body.

We search spellbooks and knowledge bases. We have nothing to help.

We have nothing for Eustace.

We’re stuck in this fungal cave, still no answer to what’s terrorizing Mihrstone, what killed Glovin, what stole his herd.

And there’s one less of us.

In our current Age of Myths campaign I’m playing Xabal, a smaller hobgoblin artificer that uses an eldritch cannon called Midqh. My goal is to be the party notetaker, but with a twist. I’m writing our recaps as if Xabal, a motormouth former Tinkerer is the author.

Other PCs are;
Artok — bronze dragonborn paladin
Amos — elven wizard
Rolf — bugbear monk

Rest in peace Eustace, the gnome bard.

https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2024/08/25/diary-eustace/

#AgeOfMyths #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #PlayingDD #recap

There are significant changes between the 2014 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons Backgrounds and the way 2024 5e D&D manages the same design space. 5e14 used backgrounds to expand on the social and exploration pillars of the game while encouraging roleplay via traits, ideals, bonds and flaws.

5e24 abandons that, turning backgrounds into a space with more mechanical heft than ever before — adding Ability Score Increases and Origin Feats. This also differs from alt-5e systems like Black Flag (no ASIs, talents are Feats) and Advanced 5e (no ASI, no Feat, single ASI adding connections, momentos and advancement).

By nature 5e24 reduces the story available via Backgrounds. Every Soldier is a Savage Attacker and never Tough. There’s no personality assigned everywhere, not even a highly detailed matrix of choices that results in 100s of combinations. There are also assigned ability scores, which means that Soldiers aren’t wise, for example.

So how do you inject story back into your table as you transition to 2024 5e?

Remove ASIs from Background

They can go back to floating like they were with Tasha’s or just included in the standard array/point buy like Black Flag.

This has absolutely zero impact on the power balance of the game.

Associate multiple Feats/Talents with a Background

Tough Soldiers exist! So could a soldier trained in magic in a high fantasy world (see the Second Army in the Grishaverse). A solider could be trained in Healing or Linguistics. Make the assigned Feat the one that most members of the Background have, but do not confine your story to that.

Pick a Feat and then justify it with a single clause in your backstory (backstories for Tier 1 play should fit in a text-based social post).

For myself, I’ll be using a chart that puts the most common Feat in the middle with the next most common next to them and rares on the outside. This small curve helps define the world in which you play.

Here’s an example for the Tinker

2. Magic Initiate
3. Tough
4. Linguist
5. Actor
6. Skilled
7. Ritual Caster
8. Artificer Initiate

This doesn’t impact the power level at the table at all.

Use custom Backgrounds to expand your world’s lore

Add more Backgrounds to enrich your world. Similar to how official Wizards of the Coast settings books have added a couple Backgrounds to help define those stories. Dragonlance added Wizards of High Sorcery and the Knights.

Take this lesson and use it at your table.

Do your stories consist of a world on the edge of Renaissance technology? Add in Optical Telegraph Far Talkers. Is there something inspired by the Silk Road? Add the Caravanserai. Are airships common? Those shouldn’t have sailors, but flyers. It’s a different skill set and a different story.

Again, there’s no power imbalance.

Add personality back to the game

Even though WotC, and the alt-5es too, got rid of personality you don’t need to. The 5e14 system is long and clunky. Alignment is tired and dated.

Instead, use short-form personality. Having 3-5 words or phrases isn’t a bulky system. Still grant Inspiration off of this — your players should be rewarded in game for playing their role. If you’re shifting to Black Flag or borrowing their Luck system do that instead.

This has a minimal amount of power disruption while encouraging more story through play.

These four simple steps don’t disrupt the power balance of 5e (and variants). They add lore to your world and story to your characters.

Best of all is that they can all be done while playing using DnD Beyond or any other virtual character sheet.

https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2024/08/10/enable-your-table-to-embrace-wider-stories-using-2024-dd-backgrounds/

#2024DnD #5e #backgrounds #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #homebrew #PlayingDD

Adding Culture to your game: A new tool

Languages in most Dungeons & Dragons settings are rather rudimentary. There’s the pidgin-trade tongue of Common (and sometimes Undercommon). From there, the typical known languages are based on races and the planes.

A character might know Common, Elvish, and Primordial for example.

This is bland, unnecessary, and lacks verisimilitude (people don’t either know or not know a language).

Get rid of languages.

They rarely come up at the table. For most tables, languages are simply “You can communicate” or “You must use gestures.” Few encounters are successes and failures based on the 3-7 languages a character knows.

Instead replace them with Culture: NAME.

This then replaces Intelligence (History). This small tweak aids deeper connections between certain character classes and backgrounds with the world in which they are played.

What do you gain from adding Culture?

Especially in games with heavier social and exploration pillars you have a better idea of what your character knows. Rather than have a wood elf raised as an urchin on the streets of Waterdeep be capable of talking to every single elf in the world, as if language is hard-coded in the soul, it is instead a learned thing.

Said wood elf would instead know Common and the Culture of the Sword Coast, able to communicate with the peoples in and around Waterdeep, as well as knowing the traditions of the various peoples, their symbols, their stories.

The characters are deeper, with more connections to the world in which they play. A Fighter-Sage would be intimately familiar with many nations and cultures, rather than just a few and whatever the DM determines is known through a d20. A character that has studied the Dalelands would know the holidays, conflicts, and ways to communicate that are common in the the Moon Sea and the Inner Sea.

At its simplest with Culture, you know more.

What do you lose by removing Languages and History?

Not much.

The characters will still be able to communicate as always. There may be a perceived penalty for a few backgrounds, but there is a fix for that.

There is additional bookkeeping. You will have to use a custom language on DnDBeyond.com, for example. You do this by clicking on Languages on the character sheet on the website (the app may be different). Then click add proficiency. Then select custom language. Add the culture you choose. If you skip language selection during the creation process you’ll now have a listing of Common plus the Cultures your character experienced and/or studied.

How does adding Culture work when building a Player Character?

While building your character in the standard order (Race, Class, Background) take note of every language learned. Each of these are replaced with adding a culture for each language.

When you would take History you would now have the option to take another proficiency or take a culture.

Additionally, I would encourage most tables to use a PC’s Intelligence modifier to add (or subtract) from known cultures. This is mostly because Intelligence is undervalued within the game.

Example: A High Elf, Fighter, Sage would begin knowing as many as 8 cultures known. This would represent their studious familiarity with many peoples.

How do you use Culture?

Use Culture like you would use History, but apply it like a tool. Most often it would connect with Intelligence, but there are times when your proficiency in a culture would apply to a check based off of Wisdom (if a character isn’t proficient in Insight their awareness of the opponent’s culture might help them) or Charisma would apply.

Knowing a culture of a peoples with which you are interacting is particularly helpful in social encounters. A character familiar with a particular empire should be able to take advantage of that knowledge at the table!

Are you familiar with the Dalelands? Then you would recognize their heraldry, for example. Hidden societies, or subsets of a culture may require a check (DC: 15) to see if you have studied or are aware of that aspect.

Practical Examples of Cultures in D&D

Within the World of the Everflow, a rather narrow setting, the following cultures would be available;

• Western Wildes
  • Ancient Sheljar
  • Ancient Gallinor
• Kirtin
• Daoud
• Crinth Confederacy
• Azsel
• Mehmd
• Gobkon Union
• Dragonken
• Church of Quar (yes, this is cross-national group with influence throughout the continent of Kin)
  • There are other faiths and cults that may be appropriate
• The Scholars and Proctors of Grace

In a more explored and developed setting such as the Forgotten Realms I would recommend using the super-national regions such as, but not limited to the Sword Coast or the Dalelands or Chult. If you are a member of a Faction, assume that you know their Culture too. The list of political groups, religions, factions, and other strong cultural groups within the Forgotten Realms would fill an entire wiki.

If you are playing in Eberron: Rising from the Last War the various nations of Khorvaire would all be appropriate Cultures as would most of the religions.

Tables that use other setting would have to assess that setting. Do not make the cultures too narrow, nor too broad (then you just have the language problem, but different).

For the first time I’m going to be playing a character in my world. One of my players in the last two campaigns is going to DM and together we set up the one-sheet so as to not change too much lore. One of the ideas I came up with early, was by playing in the Age of Myths, because any lore changes can just be referenced as legend when we play in the current era.

The Road to the Uncoupling

Your story begins in a prosperous world of togetherness and mutual can-do spirit.  Before the battle for the heart of Kirtin on the Lake (KotL) or the sacking of Kirtin in the Sky (KotS), before the Proctors spread death and misery in Sas Rurulit, and before the unprecedented events of the Awakening and the finding of Lorebooks, there was The Uncoupling.  The apocalypse that destroyed the weave of magic for the Kin and Kon, leaving Ken and the 5 coloured dragons of the Chromatic Convocation in complete possession of magik. 

Players are part of a select group that were born with innate magical ability (you’ve been everflow touched) that is prized even in this magic-rich world.  Possibly you inherited your trait from a bloodline trait or ancestral ties to deeper magik of the Everflow.  It has shaped your early years, possibly enrolled at a young age by family in the scholarly studies to become part of the magik ruling core of society or you hid your talent and nurtured it on your own. 

However, recently there have been rumblings, rumors about a shadow organization unhappy with the status quo, who seek to eliminate the existing ruling council and rule not by consensus but by force.  You’ve each been selected by the bronze Dragonborn Artok, tasked with this mission by his patron, the adult Bronze Dragon (Othimbane) who sits on the council, to identify and either infiltrate or forcefully break these fools of their notions and ensure that no other plots are forthcoming. 

The following is written by the DM for this campaign.

Premise 

• This campaign takes at least three millennia before the Born Generation and the return of magic to the Lands of the Everflow.
• Gain information about “The Shadows”, a secretive organization bent on wiping out the Ruling Council of Aur.
  • Artok has the rough information about several potential members that could lead you to a hideout or meeting place. 
• Infiltrate or brute force your way into the group. 
• Identify other members and find potential leads about who is the power behind “The Shadows”.
  • Keep (human council) and (gnome council) members apprised of your investigation. 
• Possibly assist the council with additional tasks at your discretion.  

Factions  (NPC names to come soon)

• The Ruling Council of Aur (RCoA) – A group of 9 members, three of each Ken, Kin, and Kon, and 4 dragons, two each of metallic and chromatic. 
  • The RCoA is the “federational government” of Aur, with different cultures/regions governing in their own way and answering to the RCoA.
  • Kin: Human (F), Goliath (they), Halfling (M)
  • Ken: Elf (F), Elf (M), Dwarf (M)
  • Kon: Goblin (M), Bugbear (They), Hobgoblin (They)
  • Dragons:
    • Elder Metallic (Silver) – Tanargnyvur
    • Adult Metallic (Bronze) – Othimbane
    • Elder Chromatic (White) – Dwargauth
    • Adult Chromatic (Blue) – Nymaryxon
• In occurrence with the rise of The Dragon moon (the fourth moon of the Aurian system), the dragons withdraw from the council for a year (draakmoeten) and meet at an undisclosed location with the world dragon (a deep time dragon) named Andarawus Del-mos. 
• The Metallic Dragons
• The Chromatic Dragons 
• The Shining Order of Dreki – Holy dragonborn order who serve the Draconic races as paladins, clerics, and religious personages located across the world. Some that choose a more individual path travel and assist as Priests and Mortuary persons in smaller towns and villages.
  • Necromantic magic is thought to primarily flow through the draconic race). 
• The Shadows – A heretofore unknown organization/cult/religion(?) focused on the overthrow of the RCoA, and to rule through force and oppression rather than through consensus. 

Campaign Facets 

• 2nd & 3rd tier drop in/out campaign play, starting at 5th level 
• All PCs start at lv.5 with the added feat “Everflow Touched”, adding a +1 to spell attack modifier and adding one free 1st level spells (from any school expect necromancy, unless your PC is dragonborn) to your spell list which can be cast once per long rest.
  • Material components will not be needed.
  • at lv. 9 this will increase to +2 and an additional spell (2nd lv.) can be learned.
• Rules used are core 2014 WotC D&D, plus most player facing options from WotC
  • Check with the DM about using setting-specific feats, subclasses and spells
• Allowed races are Kin (human, halfling, goliath), Kon (goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear), Ken (elf, dwarf, non-rock gnomes) and dragonborn/kobold as shining order of Dreki
• Divine magic is thought to come from the forces of nature and the philosophies, there is no active pantheon of faith, beyond those who worship the dragons.
• Potential for multiple pathways to quest completion
• Player driven story creation in a sandbox setting
• Wide regional/worldwide settings with airship and/or teleportation travel 
• Actions may become legend
• Milestone leveling – several sessions per level gain; saves time when we all don’t have to track XP

https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2024/05/19/age-of-myths-the-uncoupling-campaign-one-sheet/

#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #homebrew #OneSheet #PlayingDD #TheUncoupling

During the Age of Revolutions the leaders who wanted liberalization and democracy in Genoa had no idea how to govern. They were a bit idealistic. They struggled to get the various classes of this significant mercantile kingdom to get along.

This all comes up in a recent Nerd Farmer podcast featuring Nathan Perl-Rosenthal. And it’s going to inspire a new third-place tradition in my Dungeons & Dragons world.

One of the ways the Genoan revolutionaries tried to create cross-class conversations was by mandating public lunches be held on the streets before festivals. These lunches would be funded by the elites, had limitations on the number of courses and were intended to inspire conversation before the entire group proceeded together towards a town square for fest time.

This attempt at a third place being a space in time rather than a physical building intrigues me. That porch was only a third place during the luncheon, roughly every two weeks. It didn’t work.

This is a fantasy blog, mostly about a fantasy world where dragons and magic are real. Let’s make the Genoa public luncheons real.

My world has a naval empire, which makes this easy. But it is rather hierarchical and centered on the influence of the navy as sailor-citizens with power and influence. It is expansionist. Daoud won the war with Kirtin twice, and just lost their hold on Kirtin-on-the-Lake, the winter capital of Kirtin.

Douad’s fleets sail the seas trading goods, conquering territory and bring their wealth back to the homeland.

This is where the lunchtime third places come in!

These now-wealthy sailors, officers and captains are required, by the Admiralty of the Land, upon returning to port to share their wealth and throw a party in the neighborhood from which they came.

They lunch and fest together, with the Admiralty and Royalty surprising random porches with visits.

This now ingrained tradition started because when the first ships came back with massive wealth they were seen as a threat to the non-sailing gentry. So that leadership in a form of taxation started the luncheon program. This kept the peasants that didn’t sail happy with the leadership and that joy spread.

These lunches are simple fare — three courses, one which must always be from the land the ship just visited. There’s always a flatbread, that was originally simple but is now treated as a complex way to serve a fourth course that is not in violation of the edict. There is wine and coffee, tea and liquor.

There is joy.

Then there’s the party, always in sight of the harbor with the ships lit and glowing at mast and crossbeam. There are flags and fireworks (the best ships travel with Sparklers). These parties are on a time limit. They start within two sunrises of the ship’s return. They end the next morning.

And everyone participates. The paupers, urchins and sweeps know that when a ship returns they will eat well for at least a day, often two. The displays of wealth are ostentatious and the people are happy. These aren’t circuses, nor taxes. It’s Daoudian Luncheon — one of the two third places in the culture. The ships are the other third place.

https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2024/03/23/adapting-genoan-revolutionary-lunches-to-fantasy-third-places/

#Daoud #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #homebrew #Kirtin #PlayingDD #thirdPlace