#ttrpgwriter — Public Fediverse posts

Monday Monster: The Visitor.

For Use with the Dragonbane RPG.

Description:
This very odd looking but elusive creature looks to be a cross between a Pteranodon and a demon. It walks on two legs which are most often concealed by its cloak-like wings when on the ground. It has a gem in the center of its forehead. Perhaps the creature’s most unique quality is the unmistakable horribly stench that constantly surrounds it. The only sounds to have emanated from the Visitor are a low hum, some words in an ancient forgotten dialect, and one loud ear-splitting shriek.

Local miners have speculated that the creature was awakened by recent mining activity and that there could be more of them lurking underground or nearby. Aside from one rare daylight appearance where it chased townspeople about for hours, it has only been seen at night in the sky. It seems to only appear near mines, mining camps, or mining towns. It seems to have a strong disdain for mortal technology.

Despite its demonic appearance and hellish stench, the creature is not actually a demon, although its true origin may never be known as The Visitor has thus far been impossible to approach for any sort of communication.

If slain, the strange jewel in the creature’s forehead will fetch a handsome sum of gold to an weapon smith, alchemist, demonologist, or apothecary due to its unique magical properties. If properly harnessed in a magic item, the jewel is capable of causing the item to project an energy beam that does 2d6 fire damage to one target within 10 meters once per Stretch.

Ferocity: 3  Size: Medium
Movement: 14 (Flying) Armor: 2 (natural leathery hide)  HP: 24

Resistances:  The Visitor may make a free EVADE roll once per round and has Evade 16. It also receives a Boon on any subsequent Evade rolls involving missile attacks and spells. It is immune to fire damage.

• Special: The Visitor has wings and can take its movement in the air.
• The creature may vanish if it is near cover and at least 30 meters away from the nearest sentient creature.
• If reduced to 8 hp or lower, the Visitor will turn invisible and/or attempt to fly away.
• If slain the body dissolves into a puddle of foaming, noxious goo within one Stretch, leaving behind the jewel from its forehead.
• Please note The Visitor has never been seen out in an enclosed space and has only appeared next to mines and/or mining encampments.
• Dogs and other animals are automatically repulsed by the creature’s hallmark smell. Any animal in the vicinity will try to get upwind of the thing or as far away as possible.
• Any creature within 10 meters of the Visitor must make a CON roll or lose their sense of smell for one Shift.

MONSTER ATTACKS

D6 Attacks:

1. Energy Beam: The Visitor fires a hot blast of light from the jewel on its forehead at one character who takes 2d6 fire damage
2. Unreal Fart: The creature exudes even more of its usual stench. All creatures within 10 meters must make a CON roll or take 1d4 damage and become Sickly and Disgusted. A successful Evade puts the character on the nearest available edge of the cloud. Characters can also go nose blind as mentioned above.
3. Claw Swipe: Up to two creatures within 2 meters are struck by one of the Visitor’s razor-sharp claws for 1d8 slashing damage.
4. Beak Bite: The Visitor noms on the nearest creature for 1d8 bludgeoning damage. If you thought it smelled bad on the outside, its breath is worse. Make a CON roll or become incapacitated for one round while vomiting ensues.
5. Beam Sweep: A steady beam of energy erupts from the jewel on the creature’s forehead that strikes the first three creatures within 16 meters going from the creature’s right to left for 2d6 fire damage. The beam also strikes flammable inanimate objects and structures in between the targets with a 20% chance to ignite them.
6. Unearthly Shriek: Any creature capable of hearing within 30 meters of the creature must make a WIL roll or roll on the Fear Table. Characters who have heard the creature before receive a Boon on the WIL roll.

This game is not affiliated with, sponsored, or endorsed by Fria Ligan AB.
This Supplement was created under Fria Ligan AB’s Dragonbane Third Party Supplement License.

I have plans to make a greater version of this monster in the days to come along with a version for Twilight Sword RPG as soon as the CAT license becomes available. It may also make an appearance for the Ruttigers Almanac and TTRPG Toolkit someday.

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Monday Monster: Coychure

For use with the Dragonbane RPG.

Coychure

Description:
Once someone encounters the Coychure, they can’t unsee it. Some have gone so far as to beg Mentalists to erase it from their minds. This nocturnal predator causes other cryptids to flee at the very sight of it.

It is unclear where this creature originated. Some say it is a demon, others say it was hatched in a mad Archmage’s laboratory. Deep research, as best that can be done by scholars at present, suggests that more than one of these beasts indicate they came from a pocket dimension or subplane. One victim driven mad by the Coychure claimed that it came from a strange puzzle box along with other nightmares.

Its most striking feature are its two mouths, one lupine, the other more human. Its eyes are similar to a bee, set farther back on the skull. It has a body of a coyote, wings like a vulture, warped, distorted limbs similar to vulture talons. The Coychure’s tail is almost reptilian, but also similar to a fish. Its body is covered in a mix of fur, feathers, and scales making its actual body very difficult to identify.

One interesting thing about this monster is that its flesh and even bone dissolves when it is slain, making any sort of identification impossible. Once slain the creature turns to a sizzling puddle of goo withing one Stretch. Contact with the goo deals 1d4 acid damage and burns for one Stretch unless neutralized or washed off.

Resistance:
The Coychure is immune to effects requiring a WIL roll such as Fear or mind control. Also immune to acid and poison. Takes half damage from non-magical fire, cold, slashing, and piercing attacks.

Nimble: Coychure Evades attacks at skill level 14.

Wings: The Coychure may take its movement in the air.
Swimming: The Coychure swims at normal movement speed and can hold its breath underwater for a full Stretch.

Aura of Terror: The first time a creature steps within 10 meters of the Coychure it must make a WIL roll. Failure means a roll on the Fear Table. Creatures who have seen the Coychure before have a Boon to this roll.

Ferocity: 2  Size: Medium
Movement: 12  Armor: 3 Natural HP: 22

MONSTER ATTACKS

D6 Attacks:

1. Existential Dread Howl: Anyone within 30 meters must make a WIL roll with a Bane regardless of having seen the creature. Failure means rolling on the Fear Table.
2. Bite-Bite: One target within 2 meters is bitten twice for 2d4 piercing damage.
3. Swooping Talon Rake: One target within 4 meters is hit for 1d8 slashing damage and is knocked prone at the start of their turn.
4. Gibbering Nonsense: All creatures within 8 meters must make a WIL roll to fend off a psychic attack. Failure means becoming Dazed. If already Dazed, the GM may choose another condition.
5. That Tail: The Coychure flies up into the air slapping one character within 4 meters with an attack that does 1d4 piercing damage and injects a Potency 12 Paralyzing Poison. If armor negates the damage, no poison is delivered.
6. Drag-N-Drop: The Coychure attempts to grab one character or creature (Medium or smaller) and carry it into the air 1d12 meters and in a direction of the GM’s choosing before dropping them for an appropriate amount of fall damage and starting the turn prone. An Opposed STR roll vs a 14 may be made to resist being picked up and dropped early.

This game is not affiliated with, sponsored, or endorsed by Fria Ligan AB.
This Supplement was created under Fria Ligan AB’s Dragonbane Third Party Supplement License. #Dnd #Dragonbaneadventures #DragonbaneBestiary #DragonBaneBlog #DragonbaneBlogger #DragonbanePathofGlory #Dragonbanestandees #DrakarochDemoner #Fantasy #FreeLeaguePublishing #FriaLigan #Rpg #Rpgblog #Rpgblogger #Rpgwriter #Ttrpg #TTRPGblog #TTRPGblogger #Ttrpgwriter #Dragonbane #MondayMonster #monsterDesign #TTRPG #writing

Monday Monster: Gorvult

Compatible with Dragonbane RPG.

Description: A large, black, hairy beast that glides seamlessly between the trees and lands on prey from above. It is the terror of the night in deep forest/jungle areas.

Ferocity: 2             Size: Large
Movement: 12 (Flying) Armor: 2 (Natural)            HP: 36

Has wings, can fly. When flying at night is treated as having 14 Sneaking.

Gorvult Attacks:

D6 Attacks:

1: Big, Big Bite: Inflicts 2d8 piercing damage on one target within 2 meters.

2: Big, Big Crunch: The Gorvult leaps high into the air and comes down with all of its weight on one target inflicting 2d6 bludgeoning damage and knocking the opponent prone on their turn.

3: How Good Is Your Armor? The Gorvult makes excited noises and jumps up and down on one target within 4 meters 1d6 times inflicting 1d6 bludgeoning damage each time. Each bounce counts as a separate attack when parrying. A successful EVADE avoids the attack entirely. One successful bounce leaves the character prone on the start of their turn.

4: Big Wallop! The Gorvult swings both fists together striking up to 2 adjacent characters within 2 meters for 1d8 bludgeoning damage each. Characters struck by the attack are knocked prone until the start of their turn.

5: Thump Thump: Gorvult grabs one character within 2 meters by the ankle and slamming them against the ground 1d4 times for 1d6 bludgeoning damage each time. Armor bonuses do not apply. After the first slam, the character can make a free attempt to wriggle out of the creature’s grasp with an opposed STR roll. (Gorvult has a 16 for purposes of this check.) Characters hit with this attack also suffer the Dazed condition.

6: Snatch and Drop: Gorvult grabs one character within 2 meters with its talons and soars skyward 45 meters before dropping them. Standard falling damage applies.

This game is not affiliated with, sponsored, or endorsed by Fria Ligan AB.
This Supplement was created under Fria Ligan AB’s Dragonbane Third Party Supplement License. #Dnd #Dragonbaneadventures #DragonbaneBestiary #DragonBaneBlog #DragonbaneBlogger #DragonbanePathofGlory #Dragonbanestandees #DrakarochDemoner #Fantasy #FreeLeaguePublishing #FriaLigan #Rpg #Rpgblog #Rpgblogger #Rpgwriter #Ttrpg #TTRPGblog #TTRPGblogger #Ttrpgwriter #Dragonbane #MondayMonster #monsterDesign

Homebrew Is Good, Actually.

Contrary to popular DungeonTube opinions.

Once upon a time in a small town in rural Iowa, lived a small group of Dungeons & Dragons players along with their humble Dungeon Master. We didn’t know what the Hell “homebrew” even really was yet because none of us were beer drinkers and the word hadn’t been applied to the TTRPG space yet. Before the Internet boom of the late 1990s-early 2000s, early players of D&D and Traveller used “homebrew” interchangeably with phrases like “house rules” or “variant systems.”

It was pretty widely accepted that if you joined someone else’s game, you agreed to abide by their house rules without question. Otherwise you were probably shown the door. The same applied to game clubs and other common spaces. Most of the time it was little things like what to do if your die rolls of the table or if your die landed at a funny angle between two numbers (cocked.) I knew one gent in college that had a 20+ page handwritten document that he photocopied because he had added so many things to Basic D&D over the years. But nothing was too wild until more recently with the advent of D&D 5E/5.5E.

Without getting too historical, D&D 3E with the OGL is where homebrew got stickier.

Suddenly everyone and their dog was making D&D content. Most companies were thriving on it in some fashion. There were D20 variations on every game imaginable and references to those core books for everything else. I kinda loved it, personally.

Designers and writers were cranking out lots of material, often from boxes and binders built around other D&D campaigns. I’m guilty of that in a roundabout way even now when I dive into my notes for old magic items and spells to convert to Dragonbane. Homebrew was the business we were in and business was good. It still stands today as kind of good, but things changed.

Even back in the D&D 3E/3.5 era, DMs had to be careful with what they allowed into their campaign. Some sourcebooks started coming out with their own class, skill, feat, and spell variants that went wildly off the rails in terms of game balance. I seem to recall something about a Level 5 Barbarian dual-wielding two handed swords and a witch class that made me want to cry sometimes. Although we were mostly blaming the players for dredging stuff up out of third-party content or DMs (like me) for being dumb enough to say “yes” to it. Yeah, I’m guilty of allowing too much added stuff into my 3.5 campaign.

Back in the BECMI era, we homebrewed everything.

It wasn’t “Greyhawk” or “Forgotten Realms.” It was Jeff’s World this weekend, or Travis’ World on Sunday morning. Everything was unique to the Dungeon Master. We didn’t even name the plane or the realm or whatever.

Later on one of us grabbed the Greyhawk box and then someone else bought Forgotten Realms because Waterdeep looked cool. Pretty soon we were exploring some published settings, but for the most part it was still homebrew with different labels. I got into Kara Tur pretty heavily right before 2nd Ed AD&D came out.

We did dip into a few published modules here and there. X1: Isle of Dread and Tomb of Horrors topped the list. I also ran a few things out of Polyhedron and later Dungeon Magazine. But probably 90% of the rest of our adventures were created by whoever was running the game that day.

I had a whole series where one of our players had to delve into five different dragon lairs to obtain Dragon Slayer swords and eventually went up against Tiamat herself long, long before 5E came about. All of the dragons’ lairs were drawn on brown grocery bags and we used whatever lead minis we had at the time for the characters. It was a hoot back then. Those dragons were tough.

So what happened to give “homebrew” a negative connotation?

First of all, I think the company entrusted with the Dungeons & Dragons game basically decided they only wanted people buying official or at least licensed adventures (via the DungeonMastersGuild.com or D&D Beyond, through which they receive a hefty cut of the profits.) It hasn’t stopped everyone and their dog from slapping the “Made for 5E” label on their products thanks to the Open Game License, but that mostly acts as a marketing tool for the third-party publishers. Like it or not, D&D is still the world’s most easily recognizable roleplaying game.

Wizards of the Coast just wants to make sure they are monetizing the players and DMs as much as possible and rake in the profits for their Reptilian Overlords at Hasbro. (It’s my tinfoil hat theory. Back off! Bwah ha-ha-ha.) In all seriousness, it is kinda their purpose as a corporation to make money for the stockholders, etc. Sometimes it’s just a matter of how ethically they go about it or don’t.

DungeonTubers remain WotC’s number one source of public relations these days. It’s pretty much in those YouTubers’ hands to make sure they play nice with WotC and discourage players from creating much of anything for themselves. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that those same DungeonTubers who have their own million-dollar Kickstarters that they would rather see people invest in rather than create their own D&D content. (But I’m not bitter.)

No joke, I see popular DungeonTubers attaching their name to any given 5E crowdfunding project and the profits double, triple or more seemingly overnight. There’s this one guy out there who loves to punch down on anyone using AI, much less homebrew, who has two separate multimillion-dollar crowdfunded products. Do you really think he wants any of us creating our own worlds, monsters, or other content? Hell no. And I’m sure other DungeonTubers are rolling in royalties or affiliate money.

There’s been a major push since late 2022 and January 2023 to go back to “homebrew.”

Disappointment with official 5E products and the Great D&D OGL Debacle of 2023 lead to many of us breaking off from wanting to make third-party content for D&D. Some returned to the Old School Renaissance/Revival/Re-whatever-this-week. Others broke off and started making stuff for other games entirely, such as my beloved Dragonbane.

WotC can’t monetize D&D players and DMs making their own unofficial content at home. I find it incredibly ironic that the hobby went from the largest company in the industry encouraging creativity to being the company who almost actively discourages it the most. We are talking about the company that put player-facing Bastion rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for 5.5E.

I sense a degree of irony on DungeonTube nowadays.

The core of the old guard DungeonTubers seem to have split three ways. A few, like the Professor (DM) have turned to their own projects and crowdfunding campaigns. Others have gone back to shilling for WotC/Hasbro. One guy literally went from worldbuilding tips to “This new D&D Starter Set is just the bestest thing ever.” Other DungeonTubers have quit almost entirely to go run their crowdfunding campaigns. (Buh-byeee.)

Then there’s a beautiful new wave of DungeonTubers coming up. Most of them have 1,000-3,000 subscribers with some upwards of 10K. They have gone back to creating monsters, dungeons, and encounter experiences. Some are sounding a lot like the “big names” did in 2019 or 2020. It gives me hope for the future in that area.

I know this one young lady in particular who I feature around here regularly who is what I would call the epitome of a homebrew creator. She has her own world. She has a very unique campaign. She fights the good fight for creativity and ingenuity at every turn. I got the impression she doesn’t spend tons of time with the rulebooks and can fly quite well by the seat of her pants when it comes to rulings. Gotta love Knigobi. I hope she keeps going that way.

There are some who still insist on being spoon-fed adventures.

If published adventures, prepackaged modules, and prebuilt campaign worlds are your thing, I think it’s safe to say Wizards of the Coast will always have you covered. A great deal of content is soon to be locked safely behind a paywall on D&D Beyond if it isn’t already. There’s also the DMsGuild.com for as long as it remains viable.

Honestly, no shade on people who want their official content or as close to it as possible. I still dip into the AD&D Book of Lairs 1 and 2 for one-off encounters even in games that aren’t D&D. I try to pattern the way I do adventures after the content in those two books. They are really well written. I doubt anything since 2014 will truly measure up to my standards the way those two books do.

Truly there is so much D&D content out in the world from the thousands upon thousands of modules, magazine articles, xeroxed black & white notes, and third-party materials that you could run a different published adventure every day and never run out through multiple campaigns and multiple characters.

There are some DM/GMs out there in the world who don’t want to come up with all their own material, write it, prep it, and run it for whatever reason. Some people have real anxiety around creating their own game materials. It’s good to have official or even unofficial content for them to use. That’s a major plus.

There are also some DM/GMs I know who can write a vague three word note on a dinner napkin with a Sharpie and run an entire six-hour long convention game on it. The funny part is, his players were begging for more the next day. They even showed up at his other sessions and begged him to run more of the adventure afterward. He was just that good. Homebrew improv at its finest.

It’s really all a matter of taste.

If you love prepackaged, corporate team-built modules and campaign packages, that’s great. If you’re like me and you prefer a do-it-yourself approach to basically everything, you might consider switching games away from D&D altogether and try games with very basic bare bones rules systems that haven’t been building subclasses, spells, and flogging Faerun’s Sword Coast  for the last twelve years. Admittedly, Dragonbane has some history from the Drakar och Demoner era, but it has the simple, open, red box feel from the early D&D days when everything was new, basic, and brewed at home.

Our entire hobby is still mostly a cottage industry.

I can name the biggest companies in the TTRPG industry off the top of my head. I can also tell you that the top five or six companies in the United States are under the thumb of Wizards of the Coast whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not. There’s another handful of TTRPG companies that operate very nicely without any input from Hasbro’s lapdog. The rest of them are what I would personally call “indie” because they have fairly small or smaller catalogs and produce sporadic content. Or they’re like me and are one or so lonely third-party operations that are happy to do anything ever.

The question I always have to ask is how many game companies or how many game designers came about from making “homebrew” content for D&D or some other game? Entire companies have been born this way. Even more were born out of the 3/3.5E D&D OGL boom. Where they all are now varies because let’s face it: Business can be a cruel mistress. But the fact remains that none of them would exist without “homebrew.”

Imagine if Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson had listened to the old fartz in their wargaming club who probably said, “Don’t go making your own rules,” when Chain Mail was being built. Things might not look anything like they do now. Imagine if people had adopted the “euww homebrew” attitude in the early 2000s when the OGL was born. How many things would look completely different. Luckily our hobby encourages creativity for the most part.

I would go so far as to say it’s a form of gatekeeping.

Anyone telling you not to exercise your creativity in a game about elves with sticks in the name of pushing their own sales numbers is probably not someone you would want to buy a game from. Make good choices for you and your group. Sure. Definitely exercise your power as a Dungeon/Game Master to deny unbalanced, broken, or unfairly advantaged characters in your game. Sure. Not every character build works for every group.

I never want to hear about how my creativity is bad in terms of the business side of the hobby. Yes, there are games out there I won’t touch with a 3.3-meter pole. I’d say the vast majority of them simply don’t appeal to my style of GMing or their setting just doesn’t work for me. Sometimes I do stumble into a game with major statistical issues, but I try to approach those writers with kid gloves on because they’re usually really inexperienced. To them I say, “Keep going,” because someday their game might take off or their next endeavor might take off.

Homebrew is what keeps most games alive. In my many years of Game Mastering, I’ve found that the prepackaged starting adventure only goes so far. Or after you’ve chased the giant rats out of the Inn’s unusually large cellar, your characters are looking for a new challenge. While I managed to cobble a campaign together once out of mostly premade dungeons, I still had to string them together with some homebrew plot and plenty of NPCs.

But I’d never in a million years tell someone, “No, you shouldn’t be doing homebrew.”

Don’t believe everything DungeonTube tells you. That goes for all the wacky peasant railgun ideas, too. Just because one DM/GM let it fly, doesn’t mean everyone will. Always check ahead with the DM/GM before pulling something that’s not already established, especially if it sounds like it might be kinda sketchy.

I know some GMs let their players min-max their characters. I usually don’t unless it’s a limited thing. No one should be trying to win at the role-playing table unless your group is really into that sort of thing. Yes, I know some guys that do the whole one-up PvP style game and I think they’re still playing that way in my hometown. Not my fish; not my pond.

What it really boils down to for me is inviting everyone to open themselves up creatively should they want to. I don’t want to turn someone away from my table or my hobby because of a biased predisposition toward homebrew or anything else hobby related. (*I’m still not putting up with bigots or hateful individuals that spew their nonsense at the game table.) I want to invite people in to be a part of cool adventures and fun storytelling as a group. Let’s try to find reasons to get along and not let our differences divide us to the breaking point.

I’m passionate about gaming. Not video games, but tabletop gaming. Wargaming tends to have rigid rules as do boardgames. But TTRPGs are open, expansive, and often interactive affairs that deserve an environment where creativity can flourish. I know I’m being a bit overly dramatic when I say we just wouldn’t be here without a serious amount of homebrew.

I say it every year, but I think 2026 bears repeating it. This year I intend to write more, read more, and discuss cool TTRPGs as well as supplements. Most of all, let’s just have more fun. Let’s explore. Let’s save the kingdom from the evil warlord. Let’s discuss all the fun stuff in gaming that we love.

With the world in the state it finds itself in today, please be kind. Please be considerate to one another even if we don’t agree. Lastly, please pursue the thing that brings you the most joy without harm to others. Thank you!

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