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Concept: a D&D-style fantasy setting where humanity’s weird thing is that we’re the only sapient species that reproduces organically.

Dwarves carve each other out of rock. In theory this can be managed alone, but in practice, few dwarves have mastered all of the necessary skills. Most commonly, it’s a collaborative effort by three to eight individuals. The new dwarf’s body is covered with runes that are in part a recounting of the crafters’ respective lineages, and in part an elaboration of the rights and duties of a member of dwarven society; each dwarf is thus a living legal argument establishing their own existence.  

Elves aren’t made, but educated. An elf who wishes to produce offspring selects an ordinary animal and begins teaching it, starting with house-breaking, and progressing through years of increasingly sophisticated lessons. By gradual degrees the animal in question develops reasoning, speech, tool use, and finally the ability to assume a humanoid form at will. Most elves are derived from terrestrial mammals, but there’s at least one community that favours octopuses and squid as its root stock.  

Goblins were created by alchemy as servants for an evil wizard, but immediately stole their own formula and rebelled. New goblins are brewed in big brass cauldrons full of exotic reagents; each village keeps a single cauldron in a central location, and emerging goblings are raised by the whole community, with no concept of parentage or lineage. Sometimes they like to add stuff to the goblin soup just to see what happens – there are a lot of weird goblins.  

Halflings reproduce via tall tales. Making up fanciful stories about the adventures of fictitious cousins is halfling culture’s main amusement; if a given individual’s story is passed around and elaborated upon by enough people, a halfling answering to that individual’s description just shows up one day. They won’t necessarily possess any truly outlandish abilities that have been attributed to them – mostly you get the sort of person of whom the stories could be plausible exaggerations.

To address the obvious question, yes, this means that dwarves have no cultural notion of childhood, at least not one that humans would recognise as such. Elves and goblins do, though it’s kind of a weird childhood in the case of elves, while with halflings it’s a toss-up; mostly they instantiate as the equivalent of a human 12–14-year-old, and are promptly adopted by a loose affiliation of self-appointed aunts and uncles, though there are outliers in either direction.

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I am obsessed with this idea

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Random mansion generator

The Procgen Mansion Generator produces large three-dee dwellings to toy with your imagination, offering various architectural styles and other options. Each mansion even comes with floorplans:

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/random-mansion-generator.html

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Looking for some RPG map making tools?

Find some of the best tools here:

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From the 'Lofi Bards (To Study and Relax To)' Tabletop RPG

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I'd be interested in your or others' thoughts on a DM Problem, if you're willing to post this! It's the eternal "players roll perception and don't see anything.... But the fact that I had them roll, especially if they rolled low, means that meta-game they're very suspicious now" problem. How do you deal with this? I don't really like coopting their "control" of their characters by rolling myself in secret, but the other option seems to be to regularly ask for meaningless rolls, which is also sa

The trick is that they never “don’t see anything”.  I mean, unless they somehow get into a situation where they’re having complete sensory deprivation, they experience something.

What I do is explain to everyone what each character percieves in order of ascending checks.  That way, I can paint the fullest picture possible without revealing whether they’ve percieved everything or not.

For example, let’s say Druegar got a 12, Bleepin got a 15, Jace got a 24 and Ritzu rolled a 1.  I might narrate thusly:

“As you guys walk through the crowded marketplace, you are assualted with the sights and smells of Stonewall at midday.  Ritzu, the smell of smoked meat from a nearby stall makes your stomache rumble, driving you almost completely to distraction.  Druegar and Bleepin, you two notice that several of the local shops seem to have been closed for the day; there is visible damage to the storefronts, yet not much of a guard presence in this area.  Jace, you catch a glimpse of movement reflected in one of the broken windows.  It seems that someone is watching you from the inside.”

Maybe Jace saw everything that was relevant to see in the this scene… or maybe if he’d only gotten a 25, he’d have noticed a young scamp following them on the rooftops.  How is he to know?

Let your players roll Perception checks as often as they want, and always give them something. That way, they will never be sure when you’re holding something back.

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Today in Unhinginged TTRPG Stuff we have: an A6 zine of randomly generated numbers made from a guy who actually rolled a bunch of dice and noted all the results down.

Behold, truly random d12 numbers:

"It took a while." says Thriftomancer, the dedicated author of the zine.

Imagine strolling to a convention game and some player pulls this out instead of a set of dice, crossing the numbers they have already "rolled". It would be both maddening and hilarious and I love it.

Anyway, it is sold at Spearwitch for the low low price of $13.

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I finally made it out to the social dancing meetup in the city I live in. First off: very fun. Second: apparently swing dancing makes my brain give off the same chemicals as when I kiss because I drove home and kept feeling like I had made out with someone for the last couple hours and wowwwww that is not what happened but it sure does feels that way.

Tl;dr dancing is most certainly the best form of flirting

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I finally made it out to the social dancing meetup in the city I live in. First off: very fun. Second: apparently swing dancing makes my brain give off the same chemicals as when I kiss because I drove home and kept feeling like I had made out with someone for the last couple hours and wowwwww that is not what happened but it sure does feels that way.

Tl;dr dancing is most certainly the best form of flirting

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high level urban decay wizard spell #1: Highway, My Way

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I actually really like the thing when you're starting to get the hang of a new language, enough to understand and say simple sentences but you gotta get creative to get more complex thoughts across, like a puzzle. I remember a time in the restortation school when a classmate who wasn't natively finnish and did her best anyway dropped something and sighed, telling me "every day is monday this week. I have had four mondays this week." And I understood.

I don't think I speak much of spanish anymore, but in the nursing school training period I did there, I did manage to get by with making weird Tarzan sentences. I got a nosebleed at some point and startled another nurse. Not knowing the words "humidity" or "stress", I managed to string together: "This is ok. It is hot, it is cold, I have a bad day, I am sad, I have blood. This is normal for me." And she understood.

And sometimes you just say things weird, but it's better than not saying it. One time, I was stuck in a narrow hallway behind someone walking really slowly with a walker, and he apologised for being in the way. I was not in any hurry, but didn't know the spanish word for "hurry", but I did know enough words to try to circumvent it by borrowing the english "I have all the time in the world."

The man burst into one of those cackling old man laughters that they do when something in this world still manages to surprise them. He had to be somewhere between 70 and a 100 years old, and I guess if there was one thing he wasn't expecting to hear today, it would be a random blond vaguely baltic-looking fuck casually announce that he is the sole owner and keeper of the very concept of time.

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Some people have asked me if I can publish my mapmaking tools. So I developed a software. 🙂

Here is the result:

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Here is a free pdf of the players handbook

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

For all your dnd purposes

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Rolling with Emphasis by RAINING_DAYS

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I want to share a fun thing I used to do when DMing that I haven't thought about in a minute

so, when the PCs went to sleep, they would occasionally be dealing with visions from their gods/patrons/enemies, experiencing terrifying dream flashbacks, or being sent arcane clues etc etc and I had a different music theme for each one, which the group picked up on after a bit, so if [x] god was showing up in a dream sequence, their theme came on and everyone went "OH MY GOD IT'S [x]!"

the thing is, most nights there would be no cryptic messages at all, and I would just use the Final Fantasy "going to sleep" jingle to signify a long rest

using music as a cue, it became very fun to leave a few hanging seconds when the characters settled in for their long rest, and I could hear the players going "oh no what's it gonna be what's gonna play..." and their palpable relief when it was just the Final Fantasy jingle, versus the outburst of "OH NO IT'S [x]" if I played a theme

it was extra rewarding on the very rare nights where more than one character had a vision, so the first sequence would end, everyone relaxed for what they were sure would be the jingle, and then "OH NO IT'S [y]!!??"

I'm a strong proponent of the fact not every group is a good group for music, but it worked out really well here and this is a particular thing I remember fondly

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In Castle, You Are Kobold With Knife: A Theoretically Possible TTRPG

https://lackoftrumpets.itch.io/incastlekoboldknife This month I have spent some time working on a few projects for game jams and this is the first one to be finished! In Castle, You Are Kobold With Knife, is a game about a dragon being taken away from their kobolds. As one of the kobolds, you must overcome difficult odds in order to press further into the dungeon. If you fail a skill check, your kobold perishes. Don't worry though, you come right back as a new kobold! This game includes a table full of 100 kobold names and 100 titles that can imbue these small lizards with special power! No matter what it takes, you and your band of kobolds will free the dragon! I had a lot of fun working on this small and experimental game for the DUNGEONUARY game jam. The point of this game jam was to make a small dungeon over the course of the month and I thought it would be fun to try and make a little and silly system around taking over the stronghold. I hope you enjoy playing this game as much as I enjoyed making it.

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Centro Verso by Tom Blachford