mapsmonstersamazing

[mapsmonstersamazing]

one of the most freeing things you can do in ttrpgs is let go of the idea that your player characters should be/are morally good. Once you've accepted that your characters might be bad people or do bad things, the possibility space of what your characters can do opens up wide. Plus, you no longer have to contort your setting into bizarre and problematic shapes to make sure your player characters are always in the right.

a good example of this is combat. The normal approach is:

violence is what our characters will do. therefore we must make it so it is good for them to do violence. therefore their enemies must deserve it. therefore we will create a class of being for them to fight that is inherently evil and deserving of violence.

Which, needless to say, veers into extremely racist territory extremely easily.

Whereas once you no longer need player characters to be in the right, you can instead get:

violence is what our characters will do. killing people is bad, and when our characters kill people they're doing a bad thing.

which is actually a far less fucked up set of ideas to express!

like, okay, a concrete example. Right now, I'm playing in a Vampire the Masquerade game. My character, Molly, follows the Path of the Feral Heart and is in the blurry border between the Anarchs and the Sabbat. What this means in practice is that she's totally abandonned any pretences of being human and instead embraces being a monstrous predator, with no qualms about killing to survive and get what she wants, and who is essentially a Vampire Terrorist who cheerfully murders, sets bombs and massacres humans in order to destabilise the vampire government.

Molly is not a good person. She is, in fact, a terrifying monster! You aren't meant to agree with the things she does and says! And, sure, when she explains her backstory, you can see how she got like this, but that doesn't make it okay, her ending up like this is meant to be itself tragic, because in a better world she wouldn't be like this.

The story becomes more interesting because I can, in fact, play a character who does horrible things and let them be horrible. Playing a sabbat-sympathising path-follower would be entirely meaningless if the game contorted itself so nothing she did was ever actually horrific.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

my bravest knighttt... come hither ..... mmmwah !! ok you are dismissed

[mapsmonstersamazing]

I love the timeless appeal of dragons across cultures. What if a lizard were really big and could fly. Crowd goes wild.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

@vixensdungeon asked me to also roll a dungeon freak for da original game, also known as 0D&D, also known as the Little Brown Books edition, also known as D&D74. Anyway, the dice did not favor me so here's what I ended up with:

Str 11, Int 4, Wis 10, Con 10, Dex 13, Cha 8

The only thing that stands out about my character is that Dexterity. Everything else is either average or below average. I won't be able to get any of their abilities to the point where they'll grant bonus experience points. Sad! Oh well, at least that Dexterity of 13 will grant a +1 bonus on firing any missile! If I recall correctly, the Chainmail combat system actually uses 2d6 for hit determination, so that bonus is actually more generous if using the Chainmail combat system instead of the alternative combat system (which later became the default).

Anyway, there is one option that is still attractive: the humble Halfling. Since we're playing with no supplements the Halfling is limited to the Fighting-ManHalfling class, and they'll be unable to progress beyond 4th level. But that's okay, because in exchange for it my character will save as a Fighting-Man four levels higher than them and will also be better at missile combat, as detailed in Chainmail. Sadly, I don't have Chainmail, so I'm going to have to take it as a matter of faith that Halflings actually have a bonus to missile combat there.

Strangely enough, Halflings cannot be aligned with Neutrality or Chaos: my character must be aligned with Law! And that's actually quite unambiguous: it doesn't say that Halflings are often aligned with Law, it says:

Character types are limited as follows by this alignment:

And then lists Halflings in the Law column. Even Dwarves/Gnomes get a choice between Law and Neutrality!

I should also roll my character's starting funds, also on a 3d6, multiplied by ten: 8 times ten is 80, that's great.

My character spent 53 pieces of their starting gold on getting a shortbow and 30 a quiver with 20 arrows, leather armor, and a dagger. 15 gold goes to purchasing a week's worth of dungeon rations. The remaining twelve gold will go towards buying the following:

6 torches for 1 gold

Leather backpack for 5 gold

Waterskin for 1 gold

Wineskin for 1 gold

A quart of wine for 1 gold

A flask of oil for 2 gold

50' of rope for 1 gold

So my character saves as a level 5 Fighting-Man due to being a Halfling: as a first-level Fighter, or Veteran, they have 1+1 Dice for determining their hit points. Which means 1d6+1 in modern day terms. Roll of 4 means 5 hit points.

Anyway with that out of the way my Fighting-ManHalfling is ready to go. I grant her a gender and a name. Belladonna the Halfling Veteran is ready to party. She may be half the size of a man, but she fights with the strength of 1 + 1 men! (Distinct from 2 men)

EDIT: I had the flask of oil listed as costing 3 gold when it's actually 2 gold, for a moment it looked like she'd spent one more coin than she actually owned, which she would never do as a Law-abiding Halfling.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

it really is gleeblor to try and explain to a lot of people that no the GM did not covertly orchestrate every single element of my PC's victory, and when you try to say that, they get all like "oh you sweet summer child" at you like you still believe in Santa Claus

It completely robs you and your PC of absolutely any accomplishments.

I promise you this isn't Critical Role, plot armor does not have to be the default, and the alternative is not just adversarial GMing

[mapsmonstersamazing]

D&D 5e supposedly has a GM shortage and idk maybe if the player culture of the game didn't treat GMing as a thankless job and the rules of the game as an issue to be fixed by the GM maybe things would be better. Ah well, who knows. Maybe a couple hundred more "we ruined the GM's campaign on purpose" memes will make people enjoy running the game better.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

PLEASE do yourself a favour and check out this wikipedia-styled template for google drive, made by @ Rukidut on twitter

I decided to try to sort my ideas and whats canon regarding my ocs with this and ITS PERFECT. IT ALL FEELS SO CONRETE. and i sure as hell AM Going to continue to use this with every single OC I have until google drives is set ablaze- Just!!!!!!!!

Also; link directly to the doc, just copy the file and you have your own lil template!!!!

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Have you played THE KING IS DEAD ?

By D. Vincent Baker, Meguey Baker

The king has died without heir. Civil war is coming.

You are warrior princes and warrior princesses of noble name, each with a claim to the throne. At the end of the game, one of you will be crowned.

To win the crown, you'll need to make a mess: fight with your friends, ally with your rivals, fall in love with your enemies. You were born for this.

To start the game, you each choose one of the noble houses - the ancient crown, the rightful regents, the loyal retainers, the usurpers, the foreign power - and introduce your heir. You also each get a starting hand of cards.

Then go around the table. On your turn, choose one of the games and announce it. Everyone turns to that page in their game book, and you all follow the rules there to play that game. When that game ends, it's the next player's turn to choose a game.

All of the games have you drawing cards, showing your cards, trading cards around with the other players, and discarding cards. Your goal is to build the best hand of cards that you can. At the end of the game, you want:The highest card; The most suits represented; and Maybe, just maybe, the Doom Cards: Jacks and Twos.

Once everyone's had a turn to choose a game, keep playing, but now anyone can end play with a final game: the Coronation. At the coronation, you find out who won the crown, whose houses rise and whose fall, and whether the new crown's rule is peaceful and prosperous, or doomed by disaster, assassination, or civil war.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Okay so in the art for the 2024 update of D&D the classic D&D characters Vecna (famous for the hand and eye of Vecna) and Kas (famous for the sword of Kas which was used to sever the aforementioned hand and eye) are depicted in life and are seen smiling at each other. The text does not address it but many fans have read this as confirming that they were lovers in life. What I want to know is that is this true? Did Vecna sometimes give his trusted lieutenant a bit of the hand and head of Vecna?

Jeremy Crawford: how do you keep breaking into our office

[mapsmonstersamazing]

“From whence you came” is a classic place to send back a foul beast

[mapsmonstersamazing]

I’m actually remarkably chill considering I’m consistently under the spells of many wizards

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Yeah I saw the lovecraftian horrors and didn’t succumb to madness. What- no I’m not a cultist, James. For Christ’s sake. What you’re forgetting my friend is that HP Lovecraft wasn’t a flexible man. His brain simply wasn’t stretchy enough to take it all in. I however, have short term memory issues. Flexibility is the name of the game when you can’t remember if you ate lunch or not. What’s the size of the universe? Big. You knew that already, James. Come on now. You don’t need to witness the terrifying ocean at the base of the entirety of reality itself to know that. Pass the brandy.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Here's a sneak peek at a monster I created for a personal project. The "Shape Stealer", a rare spirit of sorts (that's all the info I'll give about these guys).

[mapsmonstersamazing]

I HAVE ACQUIRED A VINTAGE DIGITAL DUPLICATOR

The government was trying to get rid of it just because it's old and kind of sucks at everything. EXCEPT MAKING RISOGRAPHS.

When I figure this thing out I am going to be so powerful.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

clap along if you feel like a wraith without a tomb!

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Now one thing where you should seek to exceed Matt Mercer and Brennan Lee Mulligan as GMs is in the number of transfems you have at your table: experts testimony shows us that Good GMs usually have at least one transfeminine person present at their game (oftentimes it is the GM herself!), and both Mercer and Mulligan struggle in this regard.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Wanna make a gothic punk RPG about playing cool edgy cartoon animals, probably using an adaptation of the proprietary d10 dice pool system from the World of Darkness games