#anyway here's my homebrew design

[smugsomeone]

We were so close to getting him in tf1..,,.

[slasherflicks999]

he hath been redesigned..,,..

this took me far far too long (10 hours tracked on this canvas with half of that being shit i didn’t even end up using HELP)

i feel like lowkey improved a lot since his old design and that was only like 3 months ago hello??

i really grinded to get this done bc i have like 10000 things i wanna do with him but i wanted to get his design redone first LMAO

some more yapping after the break if yall would like to readdd :33

okay FIRST OF ALL i changed his mask a whole bunch bc a. i put no thought into the first one LOL and b. i think this one works better functionally and symbolism wise anyway plus i just like the look of it more hehe :3 i had this idea of like… cuz he’s not really typically a killer but more so a stalker and he just sort of follows people around and watches them from a distance it would be sick if his mask looked like. not TOO unusual from a distance? like if you’re not looking too hard and he’s far away or in the shadows it kinda just looks like a person but with something kind of off… but like you don’t wanna stare at some random dude so you’re probably not gonna think too hard about why his face looks a little funny. and then you see him up close and you’re like “ohhhhh. thats not your face.” PLUS LIKE uncanny valley symbolism cuz slasher looks human but somehow isnt and stuff… idk i thought it was neat 😈😈😈😈 and like freaky androgyny we love to see it. he got his three little eyelashes even when he’s being a freak 🫶🏻

dont ask me how he breathes in that thing (i thought about that when i was thinking of making his mask irl) he just does trust

i wanted to add more red to his design too since that’s like “his color” in my mind and also bc red is my favorite color HAHA and like more symbolism jazz… cuz red and blood and flesh and whatevers there’s a lot of symbolism to this guy i could go on and on and on i love symbolism it’s so much fun

BUT i dont feel like writing all that for now bc i lowkey gotta get some more of his backstory sorted first hehehe BUT I’LL YAP EVENTUALLY trust… :3

i WILL however feed yall with some miscellaneous fun facts while i’m here because why not :D i might as well spill some more info on him now that he’s dripped out

FUN FACTS YAYYYYY

bro does NOT permanently scar. like at all. even his most gruesome deaths have never left a scar that hasn’t eventually gone away, he WILL scar for a while but they never end up being permanent. as with most things about himself he has no idea how this happens

i think i mentioned this in the post with his old ref… but his ginormous pupils reflect light when you take pictures like a cat or raccoon’s would, meaning he has a tapetum lucidum and can see well in the dark! :D this also means he’s constantly confused why the people around him can’t see what he does in the middle of the night like “hey look at that deer. what do you mean you can’t see it? it’s not ‘too dark’??”

he split his tongue by himself because he was bored and thought it would be cool

he has really, really, REALLY intense issues with derealization and depersonalization especially. dissociation too, but since he lost most of his memories and became a proxy he hasn’t really felt “real” or fully connected to the world like… ever. a little part of him is convinced he must just be in a coma or (fully) dead or something, but he tries not to think about that too much.

he’s really good at staring. like. just unblinking, unmoving staring. it lowkey freaks the others out how long he can go without blinking and he does it sometimes just to spook them hehe

he likes to paint! he doesn’t usually let anyone see his stuff because he’s shy about it but he definitely does it whenever he gets the chance

he lowkey forgot what video games were until BEN reintroduced them to him and ever since then he constantly asked him to borrow his handhelds and stuff until BEN got fed up and just got him his own homebrewed ds LMAO

he definitely prefers not to but like.. he absolutely has eaten human flesh before. particularly when he was momentarily crashing with ej (more on them eventually >:3) but he’s also had his fair share of um……. slip ups. when he hadn’t eaten meat for a while

he’s pretty damn soft spoken. like he doesn’t talk much around people he doesn’t know in the first place and will straight up go nonverbal if he’s too overwhelmed or upset, but even with his friends he’s not usually very loud. he’s yelled maybe a small handful of times in his time as a proxy and even most of those were at video games

he LOOOVES the cold. meanwhile the heat literally makes him want to lay on train tracks

he steals literally every cd he sees when he’s out and about. like even if he’s never heard of the artist he doesn’t give a fuck he’s bringing that shit home

speaking of, in the house he shares with toby and kate he lives in the attic :3 bc of course he does. and you’d better BELIEVE he called dibs on it immediately upon discovering it was there

AND speaking of music, alice in chains is one of his favorite bands. largely bc i just associate their songs with him a lot hehe

other than any sort of meat his favorite food is instant noodles :3

i would yap more but 1. i still need to actually write more about him and 2. im hungry so I HOPE YALL ENJOY ANYWAY he’s so goober

im actually really proud of his redesign hehehe i wanna draw him so much more…… more art of him most definitely coming soon and answering asks and writing stuff yippee yippee!!!

[that-house]

The Tarrasque Can Blow Me or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Make 5e Bosses That Don't Suck

HI, I'm Catherine that-house, and I play Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition almost as much as I hate it. I do this because I am a sicko pervert who likes to tinker with abysmal dogshit, not because it's a good game. This screed is dedicated to everyone trapped in the same mine as me.

D&D 5e combat sucks! Here's the flow chart for your melee champion fighter's turn:

IF BAD GUY: smack bad guy

IF BAD GUY WITHIN 30 FT: move to bad guy, smack bad guy

IF LOW ON HP: second wind

IF NO BAD GUY WITHIN 30 FT: dash towards nearest bad guy

action surge, take it from the top

IF YOU'RE FEELING DARING TODAY: maybe a grapple or an item interaction

And pretty much any non-caster monster has a pretty similar flowchart: there's no real back and forth, just the same set of actions over and over and the only time you have to pay attention on someone else's turn is for an attack of opportunity maybe. Finally one side reduces the other side's number to 0, and you can get back to roleplaying in your roleplaying game.

In general, I strive to make my boss fights hard and interesting, with interesting being the more important of the two. For some reason the wicked clowns working at WOTC got it into their heads that the only ways to make a fight hard are Bigger Number and Less Counterplay. I don't have any data on how they sought to make fights interesting because as far as I can tell they were too busy siccing the Pinkertons on people like it's the fucking 1800s.

Probably not all 5e combat is like this. But, like, look at the statblock for the Tarrasque, the CR 30 "strongest monster in the game" and try to tell me that that thing looks INTERESTING to fight. Difficult? Maybe, if your stats are bad. But INTERESTING? It walks at someone and murders the shit out of them, then rinses and repeats. The fetid dog turd that is the Tarraque is the perfect example of the Bigger Number, and even its meme status as the DM's "fuck you" monster is eclipsed by later additions to the game.

The other end of the "strongest 5e statblock" spectrum is shit like Sul Khatesh from Eberron, who earns the title of "most bullshit" by being immune to nonmagic attacks and creating antimagic fields. This is progress, because you might force someone to grapple it out of the field or something so everyone can deal damage! But this is still ultimately a pretty linear fight, not unlike fighting any other caster in the game, but with Less Counterplay.

My DMing style is pretty character goal-oriented, with the occasional bullshit superboss. We sit around for a few sessions while people pursue side projects and gather information, and then I subject them to the Horrors of a 5e fight that requires things like "positioning" and "planning" from turn to turn.

When playing a high level D&D campaign with insanely bullshit homebrew magic items and character-specific custom mechanics, it becomes necessary to pull out the big guns. The biggest guns. I'm talking a gun like my boy Hierarch Ozyas, undead demigod, father of monsters and heart of a living city, who had a meaty 2000 hit points and took somewhere in the vicinity of thirteen rounds of combat to bring down. Building bosses is an arms race and it's my job to lose in style. Here's Ozyas' statblock:

The bitch himself

Anyways I've been talking for a bit without actually saying anything of substance besides making fun of the Tarrasque. Which I will do one more time:

...deep breath...

D&D 5e is a pretty widely-disdained game by pretty much anyone who's ever played more than one RPG system. I myself only play it because I enjoy game design, and the thoroughly-beaten dead horse that WOTC calls a game serves as a decent foundation to do a lot of heavy tinkering. The Tarrasque is perfectly emblematic of all of the trash I have to wade through in order to get to the stuff worth keeping: it is an uninspired, anticlimactic relic of the past that didn't even manage to cling to a shred of its old glory and is instead content to wallow in the filth of what it once was, never once providing a challenge to any character with a flying speed. I would probably attempt to beat it to death with my hands (and fail, because it checks your character's stats rather than challenging you as a player in any way), but Jim the 1st level aaracokra with a save-forcing damage cantrip already solo'd it for me, so I'll settle for chewing through the throat of whichever game designer forgot they were making a "game" and submitted a three step flowchart for D&D's ultimate boss monster.

But anyways, I promised you a guide to how I design boss fights these days, so let's get to that.

Actually, first here's a quick aside about action economy that I didn't bother finding a place to fit in elsewhere: legendary actions are basically a necessity for any boss past level five or so. One big action is going to be a lot more polarizing than several small ones (i.e. one big crit on a large attack could completely flip the course of the fight, whereas multiple smaller attacks offer the same amount of damage output in a more consistent fashion). If you don't want to give your boss a bunch of HP to make it live long enough to take a few turns, you could consider giving it two turns in the initiative order (reducing the damage per turn to keep the damage per round constant). Low health minions are also a good way to pad out action economy, and even if they're easy to kill they tend to buy the boss another turn or two just from the actions it costs to take them down.

ANYWAYS, here's the core ideas I like to focus on in my boss design:

Keep them moving

Keep them working

Keep things changing

Reward good play

Punish mistakes

Make it a game

Along the way I'll be using snippets of the boss I mentioned above to illustrate examples of these principles and how they affected play. Let's begin.

KEEP THEM MOVING Positioning doesn't really matter in 5e. AoEs and movement values are both so large that you can easily get away with not having a battle map and sorta just tracking "in melee" or "not in melee." I run most fights without a battle map and just kinda track that, but for a good boss you need a map.

But how do we keep the game from just falling back into "move into range and hurt people," you ask? Simple: the Zone of Nasty. The Zone of Nasty is something on the map that is going to hurt the PCs if they're in it, and the Zone of Nasty moves. Depending on the boss, it could grow, shrink, follow a player, follow the boss, alternate between areas of the map, whatever. Some bosses might have multiple different Zones of Nasty that move in different ways and do different things.

There are other ways to force movement besides a moving AoE, such as punishing players for being too close or too far from each other or the boss.

The general principle here is that a boss should at times force suboptimal play: optimal play involves simply standing around, spending all your actions on damaging the boss, and it's incredibly boring from a strategic standpoint. There should be turns in which your players have to spend their action economy on protecting themselves or helping their allies. If they find themselves in a Zone of Nasty, it should force a decision between suffering the consequences to continue optimal play, or spending resources to get out of it.

Our boy Ozyas had a Cancer Field that he could move slowly around the arena that damaged and debuffed PCs inside it, and Pretender-God-Piercing Strike, a telegraphed line attack that oneshot anything that stayed in its area too long (more on this one later).

KEEP THEM WORKING Everyone needs a job to do! This job is probably just going to be based on what their class and abilities encourage them to do, but it sucks for someone to not be able to meaningfully participate in a boss fight.

Let the DPS players kick the boss's teeth in, obviously, but make sure the person who focused on AoE effects has some extra enemies that they can deal with. Bonus points if the extra enemies have something that forces them to be dealt with instead of just rushing the boss' HP bar.

Worst case scenario, throw in a secondary objective like completing a ritual, controlling a point on the map, or fighting the boss' soul on a higher plane to give someone who isn't immediately needed for DPS to still have something to do.

Ozyas spawned a bunch of extra monsters from these gross Birthing Pillars around the map, and killing the monsters and destroying the pillars provided a nice secondary course of action for people either not equipped to slug it out with the boss or not currently positioned right to fight him.

KEEP THINGS CHANGING The tarrasque sucks because it does one thing over and over until it works or it dies. The Theros splatbook improved on this marginally: Mythic Traits are fucking baller! Combats should change over the course of the fight, or this could have been a fucking autobattler. But we can go further.

In addition to occasionally shaking things up based on health thresholds, here's a few ways I like to do it:

Rotating list of effects that change every round

Huge list of options the boss can choose from for one of their effects with no repeats

Some sort of meter that increases and decreases based on what's happening in the fight and modifies the boss' abilities

Ozyas summoned new monsters every round and could customize the statblocks with a bunch of quick templates I whipped together, and in his second phase he started alternating between scaling the to hit/damage of his tentacle attack, the reach of his spear attack, and applying extra buffs to his summons.

REWARD GOOD PLAY These next two kind of tie together but the core idea here is that it's okay if a boss is a bit easy, as long as it makes your players work for it.

This can include things like ways to trivialize certain parts of the encounter as long as the players utilize them, typically at the cost of advancing other parts of the fight.

I knew that Ozyas was going to be a long fight, so I gave my players the ability to heal to full health, as an action, whenever they wanted. They were fighting inside Ozyas' body, and he was a generous host. However, any time they healed, he would be healed for the same amount. They got around this restriction by hitting him with Chill Touch to disable his own healing whenever people needed to heal, but that obviously had the cost of losing two actions' worth of damage output.

Towards the end of the fight, everyone was still standing thanks to that healing, but as he began to infinitely scale his stats once he reached his second phase and started taking them seriously, they couldn't afford to waste turns healing anymore and the safety net they built up by healing earlier in the fight kept anyone in the party from dying.

PUNISH MISTAKES The range on D&D characters' HP pools and general survivability can be pretty broad. I like to give my bosses a reasonably-heavy hitting melee and some sort of light ranged attack to remind the backliners that they too can die. But there's a third kind of attack.

The great equalizer.

The One Hit Knock Out move.

These need to be telegraphed. There needs to be copious time to get out of the area, or to stop the boss from using it, or whatever the case may be. But any superboss should have a way to threaten any player on equal standing: a move that will always hit if its conditions are met, and puts them clean to 0.

Ozyas' OHKO was Pretender-God-Piercing Strike, where at the end of each turn he would wind up a spear thrust with enough range to hit across the entire map, targeting a 15-foot line through the nearest player. Neither he nor the line could move after that, and if you were still in that line at the start of his next turn, you were done.

It wasn't hard to avoid: just walk like 10 feet and don't get pushed back in by another enemy. They even lined it up to target some of his own allies sometimes. But it forced them to think about positioning and stay moving, and there were a few times where it aaaaalmost caught someone in the line. The prospect of Instant Death really does wonders to ratchet up the tension.

And now, finally, we come to the most important part:

MAKE IT A GAME D&D 5e likes to jerk off while fantasizing about being real. "Catherine what the fuck are you talking about?" What I mean to say is that D&D makes a fumbling attempt towards a more simulationist style of game, trying to distance itself from the fact that it is, in fact, a game. It tries to comport itself like reality, such that every part of its combat makes sense in-universe, and then immediately falls short because it can't be assed to indulge in actual simulationism.

It is my belief that if you're going to spend 4 hours fighting a boss, and one of the boss mechanics doesn't really make much sense as an in-universe concept but does make the boss more interesting and fun to fight, then that's a perfectly fine mechanic. Obviously finding some way to justify it is preferable, but my bosses prioritize good gameplay over verisimilitude.

The upcoming boss in my campaign has a feature which puts the fight on a ten-round time limit before he begins kicking substantially more ass than he was before (and the prior ass-kickery was indeed already substantial). If this is a desperate fight with his life and his dreams on the line, why doesn't he open with that? If this were a WOTC statblock, barring a mythic trait, that's exactly how it would work. But fuck that, because it would make the fight way less interesting! Now there's time pressure! And sure, the post-round-ten version of the boss is meant to be fled from, not fought, but if he's at a low enough HP it could instead make for an insane climactic finish!

I let my players see the whole statblock before the fight. We talk through all of its abilities, and I'll even point out some of the potential points of complexity and the big risks to watch out for. There's no in-universe justification for why the characters would know this (beyond, perhaps "you're exceptional adventurers and are good at evaluating your foes"): in fact, one of the quintessential examples of classical 5e metagaming is the Guy Who's Read the Monster Manual. I think that's fucking stupid, though. With open statblocks:

Features can be game-warpingly deadly without instantly incurring a TPK born of ignorance. OHKO moves don't feel fair unless the counterplay is known

The players can strategize around the ways in which the boss is going to change throughout the fight

It's fundamentally fair. Some GMs just wait X turns and then let the boss go down when it takes a big, impressive hit (and I fully respect people who do that! That's still more compelling boss design than 5e's normal schlock), but I personally like when numbers have meanings.

You can still hide some information (I like to black out the boss' Mythic Trait, and then only use it if the players stomp the fight too easily), and you can still tweak it to adjust the difficulty, with the difference being that your players know it's being adjusted and how so (which again comes back to my feelings of fairness).

A few other fun mechanics to toss in include stacking debuffs that trigger something horrible at some certain threshold, additional win conditions or lose conditions, and silly little minigames. One trick I particularly enjoy is having my players secretly vote between two or more bad outcomes, and punishing them even more if the vote is tied.

CONCLUSION Your mileage may vary, but I'm hoping at least some of the insights here were useful to you! I have a particular strain of undiagnosed mental illnesses that make me especially predisposed towards piloting huge convoluted intricate bosses with 1k+ word statblocks, and I'm lucky enough to have players who know their shit well enough to play around this bullshit. Find something that works for you and your players.

If you hate 5e combat and think this sounds like way too much work to be worth doing, go play something else, like Pathfinder or Lancer or (heaven forbid) a game that actually struggles to trace its lineage of inspiration back to D&D. Go to itch.io and find some game no one's ever played before, and toss the creator a bit of money. The only way we're making it out of these goddamn Mines of Phandelver is if people try something new from time to time.

On the subject of cool games with cool combat, bear with me as I shill for a friend real quick. If you want a game that cares less about combat as an abstract dick measuring contest and more about combat as a facet of violence and all that that entails, check out [BXLLET> by @rathayibacter.

And, finally, from the bottom of my heart, fuck WOTC. Your books aren't even worth pirating, and the Tarrasque can blow me.

[maspers]

Hundred Line as a TTRPG AU

Crap maybe this *is* my latest obsession. Anyway here's the AU where Hundred Line is a frankly insane tabletop game campaign being played by people who definitely had no idea what they were getting into. (Spoilers, obviously)

Takumi quite possibly had the most stressful time in the group's previous campaign, and was looking forward to something relatively more straightforward. He was also expecting to have significantly less of a role in the main plot, building a relatively simple Fighter character with a rather generic personality. He just wants to take a break, have fun with his friends, and not think too hard. Obviously this didn't pan out for him, and suddenly he's stuck dealing with being the centerpiece of the most convoluted plot known to mankind. He rolls with it, thankfully, but not without complaint.

Darumi has been begging the group to play a Danganronpa-style campaign for ages, and has finally decided to completely throw away subtlety with her character in this campaign. At first everyone is genuinely annoyed with her for doing this, but as the plot progresses and things get more complicated she starts getting more interested in what's actually happening in the game, which leads to her PC becoming more nuanced as things progress, culminating in some absolutely brilliant moments down the line that the group will remember forever.

Eito is a huge fan of playing very cliched character archetypes and injecting some personality into them to make them fun for everyone else at the table, so at first his character in this campaign seemed very on-brand for him... until suddenly All The Things happen and the rest of the group screamed at him for like twenty minutes straight. He just chuckles and comments that he's relieved none of the other players caught a glimpse of his character sheet earlier in the story and spoiled the twists ahead of time. Then he proceeds to continue playing the most unhinged character in the party. He also incidentally ends up having the most scheduling conflicts later on, but that doesn't stop him from still engaging in shenanigans every time he sits down at the table.

Tsubasa had been hoping to experiment a little in this campaign. When she learned the group had decided on aiming for a sci-fi setting, she thought designing a character around fighting in a vehicle would be interesting and unorthodox (it even required a bit of homebrew). Instead she ended up being this campaign's Only Sane Person, and all those mechanical Skills she got for the car ended up making her the only PC that can reliably do useful stuff outside of combat. She's at first a bit disgruntled about not getting more of the spotlight, but soon changes her tune when she realizes how insane this campaign is.

Nozomi actually wasn't originally part of this campaign, or part of the group at all, but she was a mutual friend of the group who'd expressed interest in playing. Plus, the group really needed a healer. So they let her join. Since she created her character after the others, she decided to give her PC a connection to the backstory of Takumi's character, just to spice things up a little. Since she's new to the game, the GM decided to help her out a bit too by sneakily telling her some of the plot twists in advance, but she ends up not needing much assistance. She takes to the game like a duck to water and soon reveals some really impressive roleplaying chops.

Shion is the campaign's Game Master, who has been working on designing this campaign for over a year and he is SO HYPED to finally show it off to his friends. He slammed the massive binder down on the table, said it was the outline for the campaign, and everyone recoiled in horror. But he'd proven himself to be a genuinely good and fair GM in the past so they were willing to give it a shot, and soon he had them all hooked. Which is good, because despite his massive collection of plans and notes somehow the group STILL manages to go off the rails and he has to improvise... which ultimately leads to him stealing plotlines from other genres.

The rest of the Hundred Line characters are NPCs, because despite them all being extremely cool having over a dozen of players in one campaign is a bit much. I considered Gaku, Kurara, Takemaru, and Yugamu as potential options for a sixth player but eh it wasn't the vibe. Yugamu might be Shion's GMPC? Perhaps most if not all of the NPCs are at least vaguely based on people Shion knows IRL. Gaku seems like the type of person who wouldn't have the time or patience to play with the group but he's still their friend or something so there's an NPC made in his honor.

They do in fact keep playing through multiple Routes. Shion asked everyone to keep backups of their starting character sheets "for reasons" which means implementing the "Special Review" mechanic isn't too difficult, and after everyone got over freaking out about the Day 100 reveals, they soon got really into the whole alternate endings gimmick. None of the group had ever played a campaign with a plot like this one before, and between Shion's extensive notes and everyone else's propensity for derailing things they can just keep coming back to this campaign over and over and over again whenever they have downtime. They all agree having the chance to explore the same group of characters from multiple angles is exciting. Even when they move on to other campaigns, the group often ends up coming back to this one to try out a new route in the form of a oneshot or twoshot game.

Other random thoughts on this idea:

When they finally did the Killing Game Route, Darumi literally shrieked so loudly from excitement that she shattered glass.

It's a running gag at the table that Takumi's character keeps getting love interests in each route. He's genuinely trying to avoid this, but he also cares too much about the game to deliberately prevent it ("It would be out of character!") and eventually he just groans every time another romance arc begins.

Honestly quite a lot of the game is the rest of the group trolling the heck out of Takumi. But he's a good sport about it, and they know not to go too far because usually the games are hosted at his place and he provides snacks.

Tsubasa didn't mean for vomiting to become a recurring character trait, it just kind of kept happening and soon she had no choice but to just kind of let it continue to be a thing. It really shouldn't be funny, but for some reason it never fails to get someone to laugh.

The entire Retsnom Route was Shion making things up on the fly ("monster" backwards? really?) and letting Darumi do whatever she wanted. It was nuts.

Shion does in fact do voices for all the characters, and he invented the entire Futuran conlang from scratch. He's very proud of it, but the players didn't really put too much effort into trying to decipher it during the first route so he just dropped it, disappointed. They didn't realize it was a full conlang until later on, and all of them apologized to him for not letting him show it off more.

The Cult of Takumi Route is this group's Noodle Incident. None of them will ever speak of it ever again.

Since this campaign was her first time playing this game, Nozomi ends up with a very skewed idea of what the game system is NORMALLY like. Now in every campaign she plays since, she's always way more paranoid about crazy plot shifts, even when it's someone else taking their turn as GM and clearly aiming for something more light-hearted.

Eito has never played a character like the one he plays in this game before or since, but because his character in this campaign was so jarring every character he's made since receives tons of side-eye and suspicion from other players. "I swear, I'm literally just playing a normal cleric this time, really! Can't you trust me on this?" "NEVER AGAIN."

Takumi has passed out on the table multiple times.

Everyone agrees Tsubasa is the MVP because of her ability to fix things and otherwise contribute to the party and plot in ways that don't involve combat or assorted shenaniganry. That, or it's because she always brings the food everyone likes, and is the one person actively trying to keep track of all the routes and points of divergences despite that having very little to do with her character.

Everyone has screamed some variation of "What even IS this?!?" at Shion at least twice. And "Are you kidding me?", as well as just exasperated screams and expletives. Shion just laughs it off.

Speaking of Shion, inviting a new player (Nozomi) was actually kind of a risk because Shion's games often have those "GM inserting their fetishes into the game for their own amusement" vibes. Shion isn't actually doing this on purpose, he's genuinely oblivious to just how Weird the Weird Stuff he puts in his games is, but while the group is used to it they're aware other people might get the wrong idea. Thankfully Nozomi's known most of the group for quite some time, so she kind of knew what to expect from Shion.

Just as how Darumi's wanted to do a Danganronpa campaign for ages, Eito has wanted to play a character wielding a scythe for ages. He's had the descriptions of Judge, Jury, and Executioner written down on a WIP Google Doc for half a decade, but in previous campaigns he either couldn't figure out how to make it work or it was just too unrealistic for the campaign setting (scythes aren't good weapons, really). But in this campaign Shion is letting the group do basically whatever they want for combat and Eito is ecstatic.

The whole "Nozomi stays by Moko's bedside for ages" thing genuinely caught Shion off guard despite most of the first route generally going to play, so he needed to make up the stuff about needing to get medicine in order to bait her away. The entire thunderstorm scene was a happy accident. Shion can't believe it worked out as well as it did.

Darumi actually made cosplay for everyone, and they all went to a local Con dressed up as their characters' combat uniforms. Quite a few people noticed and asked questions, leading the group to have to explain themselves and that their costumes were based off of their own TTRPG campaign that they'd been running for over a year and a half at that point. Someone recommended they try doing an Actual Play series. Obviously they couldn't do an Actual Play of their Hundred Line characters (since the audience wouldn't have context), but they still thought it was a neat idea, so instead their Actual Play series was Persona 2 (Darumi is GMing, Nozomi plays Tatsuya, Tsubasa plays Lisa, Eito plays Eikichi, Takumi plays Maya, and Shion plays Jun. And then when they do a second season for Eternal Punishment, Nozomi and Takumi are still Tatsuya and Maya but now Tsubasa plays Katsuya, Shion's playing Ulala, and Eito's playing Baofu).

"Shion I swear if you unfold your GM screen to reveal a laptop with a custom-programmed visual novel on it I will shove my water bottle down your throat."

Nozomi is not a violent person but over the course of the campaign she ends up slapping Eito in the face not once but twice. The second time was because he insisted on wearing sunglasses every time his character wore sunglasses, and pretending it was for the same reason.

All of the players vow to protect the Shouma NPC with their lives. Shion is baffled because Shouma's explicitly supposed to be a tank that soaks up damage and protects the players, not the other way around.

Each player has their own favorite route. Takumi's is the True Route, naturally.

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Anyone here ever play Get in the Car Loser? anyways

Touchstones: Queer fanfic and media, Premade settings have many different touchstones

Genre: Swashbuckling action, can vary from group to group

What is this game?:  Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a game about being swashbuckling queers of all colors and sizes, it's got a very generic setting, as long as your setting has combat, queer romance, and evil to be defeated, TSL can run your setting

How's the gameplay?: TSL is a powered by the apocalypse game, primarily based on the classic Monsterhearts, with its Strings mechanics being outright named after the mechanic of the same name from it. It's a classic PBTA (which you can read more about here) system with the core difference being the game's mechanics, which encourage the players to do things that are not the healthiest, or to fall fall in love with the other PCs or NPCs. For example when a character falls in love, they may ask a question about that person according to your playbook, this is your trait of heart, and when trying to figure someone out mid-fight you may ask one extra question from your playbook, this is your trait of blade! and this mechanic exemplifies what everything the gameplay in TSL wishes to lead to: Heart (falling in love) and Blade (Combat)

What's the setting (If any) like?: TSL at first seems like it doesn't have a setting, and it kinda doesn't, while there are many, many, many very fun premade settings within the book, the average TSL setting only has to have 3 things: Combat, Romance, and 2 Toxic Powers, toxic powers being two entities within the universe (be it a faction, religion, power, etc) that may not Necessarily oppose the players, but are definitely a bad thing.

What's the tone?:  Tone is generally decided by the players, but there will always be two universal things: Queer Rebellion via community and people trying to put down this rebellion.

Session length: Very very variable, but usually speaking you can do a lot in the plotline in 3 hours, though at minimum I think it'd be an hour long each session

Number of Players: TSL can be run with very few players, 3-6 is preferred but there's rules for solo or even two player play

Malleability: TSL is designed to be malleable, not really having a  defined setting, its themes are designed around lesbian romance, but the game itself has MLM rep and explicitly states that trans stories can also be run within this.

Resources: TSL has free playbooks, organization sheets, a google sheet that's pretty good, and a pretty decent amount of homebrew, most of it is fanmade but its there

TSL's my favorite tabletop game. While not doing too much new, it polishes what was already established in prior games to a very very high quality extreme, it's a great time, even if you're not a lesbian.

remember to kiss girls, inject estradiol, and have homoerotic swordfights with people whose worldview and/or neuroses are injected within the fight itself!

[homunculovers]

Monarch: *breaking into Venture's house* THIS IS THE END, DOCTOR VENTURE! PREPARE TO MEET YOUR DOOM! MRUU-HAHAHAHA what, what are you doing? Pay attention to me.

Thaddeus: *panting, pulling on Pete's hair, struggling to speak through a clogged nose* GET THE FU- GO AWAY! I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!

Monarch: Why are you two killing each other? How many times need I remind you, Venture, your designated archenemy is none other than I?

Pete: *growling abjectly, two long nailed finGers shoved up Thaddeus' nostrils* HE STARTED IT!

Twenty-One: Ehh I dunno if I would call this killing each other, Monarch...

Monarch: SILENCE! NOW AS I-

Twenty-One: Oh come on that was just rude. You know what I mean, I mean look at 'em.

Monarch: Yeah well, they're still IGNORING ME, AND THIS WILL NOT DO!

Twenty-One: Yeah I mean, what are you guys even fighting for? You got the memo, you know it was our time.

Thaddeus: *wriggling out of Pete's grip in eel-like fashion, cradling a very light nosebleed* We were watching Fantastic Mr. Fox...

Twenty-One: Oh that one Wes Anderson film with fox George Clooney?

Monarch: You would know that one.

Twenty-One: Dude! What's that supposed to mean??

Pete: Everything was ORANGE.

Thaddeus: It is a MOVIE ABOUT FOXES!!!

Pete: I CAN'T SEE A MOVIE SCREEN VERY WELL ALRIGHT?? IT ALL BLENDS INTO THIS BRIGHT ORANGE MESS!! PLUS IT IS A VISUAL ATROCITY!!!

Thaddeus: Then why would you come to the cinema with me??

Pete: Gee, I dunno, for the experience???

Malcolm: That's gay.

Pete: Your point being?

Twenty-One: Guys I think we've lost track of the conversation here-

Thaddeus: AS I WAS SAYING, we went to watch the fox George Clooney movie, standard death of a salesman story, and then the villains were introduced...

Pete: You gotta have villains.

Monarch: Agreed, Mr White. Now Dr Venture, proceed with your explanation- but make it quick! Or so help me, your following torture shall be proportional to the time you made me waste...!

Thaddeus: Uff you asked, do you want me to go on or not? Anyways. The villains were introduced, Boggis Bunce and Bean, one fat one short one mean; and it was all so campy and stupid, that a great idea came to mind.

Pete: The idea was great. The execution, not so much.

Thaddeus: It was FLAWLESS you fucking neck albatross! We bring it to the New Year’s party as a costumed trio, Billy as the short one, you as the fat one, and I go as the evilest one!

Twenty-One: Why, why would you do that?

Thaddeus: BECAUSE HE'S THE COOLEST!

Pete: I am NOT playing the fat kid AND I AM MEANER THAN YOU!

Thaddeus: I can list- PETER YOU WERE THERE! YOU WERE RIGHT THERE AS I COMMITTED SOME OF THE MOST HEINOUS ATROCITIES KNOWN TO MAN.

Pete: AND IT WASN'T INTENTIONAL! You didn't want to actively kill those fellas, it was your usual gross negligence...!

Thaddeus: As Hannah Arendt stated in The Banality of E-

Pete: DON'T YOU LECTURE ME WITH YOUR THIRTY DOLLAR ESSAYS RUST, IT WASN'T ON PURPOSE AND AS SUCH DOESN'T COUNT AS MALICE! YOU'RE NOT THE EVILEST ONE IN THIS ROOM!

Monarch: *sarcastically* ...Nyeah, I would sure hope so. Ehh but I do agree, you're a more of a douche than a dictator.

Thaddeus: Oh now you're just ganging up on me...!

Twenty-One: *visibly confused* To... aggressively defend your actions?

Pete: And anyways, I am the meanest one here.

Monarch: Excuse me?

Thaddeus: Oh my god please tell him, this feels like having a stroke.

Pete: I kidnapped a kid and ruined his life.

Thaddeus: Yeah like ONE, and Billy doesn’t even… Look, evil isn't, objective evil isn't proportional to your guilt...!

Twenty-One: Ok, I am super confused right now. We find you fighting, and it was about... what? Who gets to wear the lamest costume at some lame ass party basd on your idea on which one is the evilest between you two?

Thaddeus: Yeah! And it's ME!!!

Pete: RUST THAT BEAN CHARACTER SUSTAINS HIMSELF ON HOMEBREW MOONSHINE THAT MAKES HIM LEAN AND MEAN, I AM NOT PLAYING THE FAT ONE!!!

Thaddeus: WELL I'M NOT FAT AND I'M MEANER THAN YOU!

Monarch: *shooting two paralyzing darts* Gentlemen, as a professional villain, I must inform you of two facts: one, you are delusional; and two, I AM THE EVILEST IN THIS ROOM!!!

Pete and Thaddeus fall to the ground, unconscious, in a little pile.

Twenty-One: What was that about?

Monarch: I dunno. Love makes some folks gay... er, I guess. Just tie them up already, the ice blade is melting.

[commodorez]

How would one go about learning how to make something like the cactus?

Like prerequisites, older code, hardware stuff, etc.

The main prerequisites I can think of are being heavily interested in vintage computers, and having the drive to try and fail and then try again.

I started with building Grant Searle's design, borrowing from other working designs as I went. However, for the front panel? That's alot of time designing, learning, simulating in Logisim, and testing with physical logic gates to produce something 100% original and of my own design. I imagine most folks won't want to go to the trouble of designing an entire front panel state machine like I did.

The good news is that there are way more kits that can help teach the necessary skills than ever before! Most notably, Ben Eater's 6502 kit is a really great way to learn many of the things that I've put into practice here. He has a whole youtube video series associated with it, walking through concepts, construction, programming, etc. step by step. Even if you don't build one of his kits, watching them is an informative process. *I* learned alot, even after having built the Cactus.

If you're going the Z80 direction, the RC2014 series of kits can teach you plenty. There's also glitchworks kits in a few processor types, but those tend to be a bit more for the advanced user. There's the 1802 Membership Card but that's small and not really expandable. I could be here all day listing kits that can help teach and build up experience.

I should mention that I have a computer science degree in my back pocket, but learning logic gates or using assembly was only lightly touched on in the course of my studies. Most of the programming I do involved messing around in BASIC anyway.

I really didn't have a game plan for some of it, so alot of my learning process was trial and error. Alot of errors, in fact. Still making them, and learning from them. I also took the harder route to construction, since I didn't know how to use EDA tools for designing PCBs like KiCAD or Altium or Eagle (don't use Fritzing for the love of fuck).

Oh, one other thing I can recommend: reading through contemporary 1970s computing magazines like Byte (check the internet archive for back issues). There are all sorts of cool projects and ideas present that can really guide you. It doesn't hurt to have a copy of Don Lancaster's TTL Cookbook on hand (I think it's in PDF form online).

Finding a community to help you out is also a great idea. Even back in the 1970s, many folks who jump-started the home computer revolution had the Homebrew Computer Club to help them out. Community meetings to bounce ideas off of, and help one another through debugging are essential in my book -- you don't have to work in a vacuum. I've got a few places I've asked for help, most notably the Retrotech Crew discord server. I've had the benefit of friends who also have homebrewed designs like @techav, who have inspired me with their ideas, but helped me out with mine. In turn, as I've learned, I've been able to help out others.

Hopefully that answers your question. Keep 'em coming!

[dartagnantt]

Trickery Domain: Revised | Making a domain more than just its one feature

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here! I release everything for free, so your support makes this possible. I'm working on a new class for 5e! Follow the Kickstarter here! I've also started making a new system based off of 5e, 6th Dawn! Become a patron and join the playtest.

So, in this month of deceit, what sort of trickery could I devise? No… revise! Haha! I've always been slightly disappointed in the trickery domain. It has one of the coolest channel divinities (the coolest belonging to forge) but past that, everything else is unremarkable. At will advantage on stealth for one person. Be invisible for 1 round when you could be doing the cool thing. and finally cool thing, but stronger! The divine strike was okay, but that's also the one thing that it only had one of two options for anyway

Bonus Proficiency

Behold the divine providence of lies! What do you mean it doesn't teach you to lie? I considered getting disguise kit, but I solved that with the next issue.

Sacred Mask

So, warlock's get unlimited disguise self at level 2, so what if a cleric could too? But how do I rationalise making it more limited, I know! By making it mundane so as to bypass divination magic

Invoke Duplicity

How do you improve upon perfection? Not sure, but I had to do something. I am all for fuckery with a doppleganger of some sort, well, I decided that making an important feature of this CD require melee combat doesn't really fit every kind of trickster. But what is tricky? What if what you thought was an illusion is now suddenly real?

Redirect Attack

I was inspired by the old treachery paladin and this seemed fun. This could probably do with some kind of restriction, but one reaction per round is a pretty good limit

Sacred Visions

When designing domain capstones, I find it useful to ask 'what is the ideal of this aspect?' So, when tricking someone, what if it was REALLY convincing? This is similar to my programmed hallucination spell, but more specific.

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

School of Illusion: Revised

Oath of Discord

Modular Airships

Lightspawn

I also have three classes, and a splatbook over on DriveThrueRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

The Werebeast. A class that turns you into a half beast to destroy your foes.

d'Artagnan's Adventurer Almanac. A compendium of races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters and more!

[barkingbarghest]

I'm helping my buddy with some combat balance tests for his homebrew Etrian Odyssey-inspired Pathfinder 2e mega-dungeon campaign which may never actually exist on account of how much time and effort is going into him writing it...

But that didn't stop me from getting over-invested in the lore of the setting. So here are 3 characters, 1 of whom is not getting run, that I spent the past like 2.5 days designing and thinking about. To be clear these characters are never going to matter. Oops!

Anyways, this is Fenway Goldtail, an 'Orc' Protector Fighter: she is a big beefy tank with the ability to impose a penalty on enemies who attack anyone besides her, which is why she's so friggin' many colors.

At lvl 1 she can have an AC of 23 by using the 'Raise a Shield' action followed by the 'Take Cover' action, and she can have a functional HP of 44 between her base health and her shield health.

Next is Myrin Longnight, an Awakened Animal (probably) Dark Hunter Swashbuckler (maybe?). This one is not developed bc he is not getting run in the test campaigns, but Etrian Odyssey's Dark Hunter is a fun concept to play with. Their whole thing is using their whip to 'bind' parts of an enemy which prevent them from taking certain actions.

and finally, the least visually-developed is Jawday, an Awakened Animal Hexer Sorcerer. Hexers are silly little freaks, and I'll just quote my friend's doc about them:

"You spent your early years emulating the punishment of the Zoas: gagged and bound in chains in a dark cellar, unable to move a limb or make a sound. All of your words—all of your heart—were sealed in a silver bell. Now, in the fullness of your power, you can instill in others the fear and restraint that was forced on you in your childhood. As you speak, the bell rings in resonance, and your foes flee before you."

Hilarious! Anyways, it is here to impose the Frightened condition on enemies, which synergizes with other characters in the party, and do elemental damage to exploit vulnerabilities. Fun fact: it can climb walls.

[writinrealslow]

Hi Writin! I saw that Circle of the Phoenix homebrew you wrote! I'll probably do a more detailed review at some point as I love discussing TTRPG design, but for now I have a couple questions.

I'm curious as to why you deviated from the usual druid formula of two 2nd level features alongside a feature at 6th, 10th and 14th. Between levels 2 and 6, your only distinguishing feature is Phoenix-Touched Magic, which is the usual "circle spells" benefit most other druids get, though you do get it a level earlier. Still, it seems like a pretty large gap especially since other druid circles get their defining feature at level 2. I might just be missing something here… I do really like the spell selection you went with though!

The other thing I couldn't quite wrap my head around was Phoenix Shape, for a few reasons. I'd like to know why you didn't just use wild shape charges like Circle of Spores and Circle of Stars do? Substituting that for damage persisting between transformations and transforming granting you extra temp HP instead is a neat idea (wild shape in pf2e is sort of similar actually!) but I think in its current state this approach has some issues. Since Phoenix Shape isn't limited by charges, is the implication you can transform between it and your normal form as many times as you wish? How does that interact with the temp HP gain? Is transforming a free action? If the last two are true, can you re-transform at the start of each of your turns to refresh your temp HP?

I'm also curious why you went with the forms having their own hit points but damage transferring between them, instead of just having the form use the HP of the druid who became the phoenix form, since the damage is linked between the two anyways. With a slight increase in temp hp the totals would be about the same assuming you don't completely dump constitution.

Sorry for the ramble, and thanks in advance for answering! You absolutely killed it with the evocative flavor this subclass, and I really like a lot of the ideas here!

Well there's a very simple answer to your question of why it's not tied to wild shape usage: It is, we just forgot to specify that because we're both sleep deprived. Thanks for catching that, we should get that fixed pretty quickly, I actually noticed a couple other things that should be changed for balance purposes.

The idea behind the phoenix druid is to make them into a sort of specialized support tank. @lustrouslizard approached me with the statblock for a special phoenix and wanted to make it into a sort of alt-moon druid subclass, so I offered to help make it into something more unique since I homebrew a lot for fun and I've had more experience doing so.

The actual phoenix shape comes in at 6th level because the statblocks we were working with felt kind of overpowered for something at 2nd level, so the circle spells came in to allow for more freedom in the meantime. The lower levels tend to go by pretty quickly, and I thought it was more appropriate to the theme of healing, death and rebirth for it to come in when players are getting access to revivify.

Since we need to fix it, these are the currently intended answers to your other questions, which are subject to change after we look it over closer: The temp can only be gained once per long rest, and carries over to your next use of the phoenix transformation if you don't burn through them. The phoenix transformation uses 2 wildshape charges, but is a bonus action. All other wildshape forms use an action and only one charge.

The phoenix forms have their own HP to help facilitate the 10th and 14th level abilities, and to keep the theme of death and rebirth. For the purpose of balancing the later abilities, once the phoenix form is reduced to zero, the player will not be able to use it again until completing a long rest.

Like I said, we really wanted to create a more support-focused tank build. Druids are already pretty incredible tanks, thanks to wildshape and their large number of summoning spells, but making one that follows the theme of the phoenix felt like a fun challenge, which is why later abilities are so focused on what happens upon death.

I hope this answered all of your questions, and thank you again for bringing that mistake to my attention, we'll work on getting it fixed up. We're actually hoping to playtest it in a campaign we're both playing in soon, so it's likely to change even more after we give it a real test-run.

[ordinarykeys]

Otto progression part 2! Here's a collection of my dnd character from throughout the year so far. Including some NPCs and other player characters. We recently had our 1 year anniversary for the game so I wanted to draw everyone's character and some memorable NPCs / Enemies from the game.

I'll talk about the images under a read more if you're interested.

So the first picture was Otto's new look after becoming divine. We thought it would be cool to try out the Gestalt system (which is leveling in 2 classes at the same time), and Otto had a combo of Death Cleric with a Homebrew Necromancer we found. I would NOT recommend the homebrew we found, the subclass I took turned out to be extremely broken without us realizing. It did make for an extremely funny combat where we were fighting a mini army, dropping Sickening Radiance down on them, and getting 100+ HP back once a turn through syphoning traits. Honestly it was incredible, and extremely fitting for Otto who basically became a God of Death.

Right after making the art of Otto's next outfit shit hit the fan hard, which made the very happy and cute expression in the picture just... completely unfitting for what happened. Otto grew up in a foster home along with their six other siblings, Everette(the eyeball ghost) being one of them, and raised by an old woman named Ingrid. They loved their home, and even after they reached the age they could move out to live on their own, they chose to stay and help take care of the home. Turns out, Ingrid has been a flesh puppet orchestrated by the "real" Ingrid, who was this powerful old Ascended(super powered humans basically) that wanted to keep Otto safe until everything came together for her to set off her plan to send them out into the Otherworlds(basically the dimensions that open up to the players when they become an Ascended, think of it like the "world map" name). Then it turned out Otto was taken at birth because Ingrid needed their blood to create an immunity to the BBEG's mind control effects, and used that to give to the other players. The reason Otto was immune at birth, is because their mom is the BBEG. So, it turned out Otto had been an Ascended all along, but their powers were suppressed and they've basically been lead down this path by their grandma. Otto's BBEG mom is the bottom right lady in the 6th picture with the white hair. Which was COMPLETELY UNINTENTIONAL OTTO'S HAIR HAS BEEN SLOWLY TURNING WHITE. I had begun the process since they became an Ascended, and then when we found that out I just... my reaction was just the surprised Pikachu meme. So we found out that the BBEG had been doing this for a while, having kids, and basically killing them and taking their power for herself. Before she had the chance to do that with Otto, Ingrid snatched them and went into hiding to start her whole revenge plot.

Anyways though, since then it's just been constant emotional turmoil of the party trying to grasp what the fuck is going on(again). But we're all having a great time. I mean between the emotional trauma. It's been hit after hit for our nb legend, their other bro was murdered along with one of their companions, they've been questioning their trust with the party, they had to defend their friend against another god of Death(who they ended up taking the powers up) and now that friend won't talk to them, and they're sort of just going through the motions. IN ALL THAT THOUGH, they did start getting close to one of the NPCs named Serfan that's been helping them out. They met because Serfan was hired to kill the party. :) Good times. He's in the group picture, if you look close enough you might be able to spot who he is.

AND FINALLY, THE LAST PICTURE, is how I imagined Otto's design progressing towards the end of the story. Tired, embracing their new self, and I thought they would just look cool with a big coat. Very regal feeling for someone that would take over restoring balance in the universe as a death god.

Anyways though thanks for reading! The game is currently on pause while one the players got busy over the summer. Hopefully we'll be returning to the game soon and finishing it up. Even after the game is done, I might still draw Otto. They've grown to be a fav.

[clatterbane]

We are back in the pressure-cooking business!

And, yes, this is very much a case of "second verse, same as the first". To the point that trying swapping the new lid onto the much-used old base did indeed fix the problem as I had hoped. I just ran a water test, and the thing did seal and pressure up no problem.

I was frustrated because I was pretty sure that the entire issue was with the float valve. But, unless I wanted to mess with trying to get it shipped from the US--and no doubt paying through the nose for that? I couldn't find replacement parts for that, or even a new whole lid.

What we ended up with instead was a replacement for the entire unit, from Clas Ohlson. It's not like nobody is selling the things here, but even the manufacturer is offering a very limited range of spare parts. 👿

(Which did at least include the replacement main lid gaskets I already bought when the old lid started acting up. Do they also have the valve gaskets which wear out too? NOPE. At least we do have plenty of lid gaskets to last a good while.)

Anyway, I am peeved at needing to buy the whole thing again over what very likely was a worn-out valve gasket. But, I can't say I'm sorry to get a backup for everything but the lid and its valve parts.

Also, the steaming rack to fit in there somehow got left behind when we moved, and I'm glad to get another one of those.

Any accessories to fit your standard 6 qt. Instant Pot will work fine with this too. Apparently including the inner pots. But, pressure cookers in general just don't seem to be nearly as popular here as in the US or UK. So, try to find a new rack, etc. outside of oddly pricey ones on Amazon or, again, ordering internationally. 🙄 Most of the ones that I have found sold for stovetop use in other pans are just too wide to fit in there.

Anyway, I now do have a rack to use in my seemingly fully functioning pressure cooker. Life could be worse.

I also now have one of the stacking bamboo steamer things--also from Clas--which isn't really designed to fit down in there, but totally will. 😎 So, we're much better set up to steam things in general.

I am actually thinking of turning out one of my easy one-pot pasta deals in there tonight. (Not in the bamboo thing. That would get messy fast, if it would even work!)

Probably next up: some glutinous rice for the mirin I had wanted to try making, along with another batch of homebrew sake. The pressure cooker had been doubling as a rice cooker for my glutinous rice needs, since you can't reasonably cook it on a stove without a steamer. Now I'm spoiled for choice on how to cook the stuff. Thanks to Clas Ohlson, and to Mr. C for picking up the order.

[that-house]

I wanna host a ttrpg where a bunch of mostly ordinary folks are sent into a strange haunted house of madness dungeon type thing to kill a stupidly powerful vampire/magic user person.

What system would you recommend? DnD feels like a bad thing for this...

And what is your go to ttrpg anyway?

Given your second ask, where you mentioned wanting them to get stronger over time and such while in the dungeon, honestly? Dungeon crawls are basically the only thing D&D 5e does well. The sole good use case of Dungeons and Dragons (unless you’re a freak like me) is as a grindy resource management simulator. Very few people actually run their D&D games like this because they got it in their heads that it’s about the importance of queer found family as opposed to desperately rationing spell slots and torches.

There’s definitely going to be some initial tonal mismatch but as resources run low your players will need to actually consider when to fight and when to run. As long as running is always theoretically possible, I think you could give them a pretty nightmarish experience. Heavily restrict their access to long rests (hell, maybe even *never* give them a long rest and just have them gain new resources on leveling up but not refresh lost resources), and eventually even encounters that should be easy wind up seriously dangerous just because a spell cast here isn’t available elsewhere.

If you’re looking for a more Horror-related experience that still ends in a crazy fight, I might recommend a reflavor of CAIN. The PCs are all psychics but you could always just cut into how many powers they start with and pass out more as the game progresses. CAIN is meant for a structure more based around doing a bunch of missions, but I imagine you could hack together some solid approximation of a one mission structure, or run each section of the house like its own mission.

Beyond CAIN, i can’t think of much in the way of horror systems that encourage dungeon crawling, where the expectation is that you eventually get stronger and kick a load of ass. Mind you i have like 600 rpg rulebooks saved and haven’t read anywhere close to all of em, so, I’m sure there’s something out there. You might consider asking @/theresattrpgforthat, a blog much more dedicated to answering these sorts of questions.

As for your second question: I think D&D 5e is a terrible system that makes unreasonable demands of the DM and encourages a style of play that I personally don’t find very enjoyable.

That being said, I’m very very good at running D&D 5e the way I want it run, to the point that I’ve had a player say he’s never going to touch the system again unless I’m running it. I just give my players Kill Six Billion Demons-tier bullshit like the Universe Slash and set them loose in a sandbox full of powerful assholes.

D&D statblocks are designed with the intent that you’re fighting 4 level-appropriate encounters per day. I design my statblocks to hold up against a party of level 16 PCs (that could probably each individually wipe the floor with a non-homebrew party their same level) going nova in their only fight of the day, and I find that when the enemies are well designed and the players have fun abilities that force them to actually make meaningful decisions, D&D combat is actually pretty fun! It is not, however, really worth playing D&D like this unless you’re a freak like me who gets off on game design

[seabunnbunn]

~~~~~EUANTHE DUMP!!!!~~~~~

Here is some more Euanthe stuff I made a little bit ago. She has been on my mind as of late and all I wanna do is draw her morreeeee. However, *sigh* I have finals I have to do, so for now this must suffice. Most of her tattoos are Magic Tattoos from TCoE, but recently she got a new fun homebrew tattoo I found online called the Tattoo of the Peregrine which basically lets her sprout big ole wings. She is a druid, so she can wildshape, but her wings help in situations when I don’t really want to use up a wild shape just to use her crazy perception to scout out an area. This particular tattoo was given to her by Athena at a level up (I forgot which level but we are lvl 17 now, and it was pretty recent, so it may have been 17 idk) so I figured it’d be fun to use owl wings for the reference, plus I feel like of all of the owls, barn owls are the most Artemis coded, seeing as she is the champion of Artemis.

Omg her first full body piece I made!! This one for sure is a throwback. I was still exploring her character and trying to fit as much of it into her design as possible. I’ve got a soft spot for this piece even through she has changed a bit since then. I still imagine her armor like this, maybe a bit more leather here and there and some more fancy stuff since they’ve leveled up quite a bit since this piece was made but similar vibes. I don’t usually draw her in full armor just because I like drawing her tattoos so much, but here she is. Oh and how could I forget about Argos!! He is her oldest friend and the best boy in all the ancient greek world. She carved him out of marble she found in her woods one day a very long time ago. Before the campaign started, he would sit on a plinth at one side of the the forest Euanthe was tasked with caring for and greet travelers when they arrived at its borders. These particular woods can be quite disorienting, and many a traveller have gotten swallowed up entirely by its charms, so Euanthe and Argos existed there as guides as much as they were protectors.

This one dates itself… The character on the right is Hybris, champion of Dionysus, so this format was quite fitting lmao. This was following some events in campaign in which Hybris may or may not have accidentally made a child go blind and become a seer and almost get arrested and by proxy almost made the rest of the party get arrested… but its ok because he fixed it by starting a rager that got the entire city of Athens to get drunk and completely forget about it all… ah the memories…

Ah yes, the Albion arc…

Basically, we were in a place that was guarded by a special kind of magic which meant that we couldn’t contact our gods and they couldn’t see us (hence the lunar eclipse). Euanthe in particular, since she is basically just a living amphora, doesn’t sleep, so she spends most nights meditating in temples of Artemis with the other huntresses. This arc was particularly hard for her. Her relationship with Artemis is complicated. She knows that Artemis created her for a reason, but she doesn’t know what that reason is, and she worries that her love for Artemis has grown outside of the bounds it was meant to.

I do really like this piece, but it’s very unpolished and I would like to revisit it soon to finish it up and maybe add a few things.

Then there is this onneeee… soo basically, I love this character so much that I may or may not have brought her into a Curse of Strahd campaign. But it’s ok i swear because she’s different in CoS I swear. Several hundred years have passed since the events of her original campaign, and she has grown quite jaded since the fall of the Greek Pantheon. In the original campaign, she’s pretty bubbly and optimistic, so its a pretty fun character development to play with.

Anyway… I love her and miss her and just wanted to post these as I reminisce…

[9ofspades]

hi I saw your post saying your ask box would be open to offer TTRPG suggestions/advice and I was wondering if you could help me out! I play DnD (shocking, I know) because it's what I know even though it doesn't give me tools to do what I want to do. It's hard to switch when so much of my stuff as a DM in my homebrew world has been set up to work with it, but I'm hoping to find something to switch to anyway.

My game has become a sort of module on its own in that I run the same homebrew story with new groups, so I know basically the world from the ground up. I'm hoping that there's a system out there that has at least ok combat but primarily social stuff. It's high fantasy with magic being common enough that magical lights are used for business signs in the town square. The game heavily replies on social actions, talking to NPCs, getting info from them, making agreements and deals, and a little bit of "we gotta kill this guy without being caught because he's fucking awful" or just plain killing enemies like dragons in general. Gods are in the story and exist partly powered down due to plot reasons, so a game that's meant for a world without magic or gods wouldn't work. Combat is to spice up the game, not the main focus in the way that DnD tends to set its rules up and its assumption of fighting being the man way characters interact with the world.

I looked at Pathfinder and while it does offer a lot more in that regard, it was far, far too crunchy with too many options and overwhelmed me. I saw that Foundry devs are working on a system named Crucible which seemed really neat with the branching paths for players to create characters beyond the railroad of a class limiting them severely in options, but it's incomplete and that doesn't help. I honestly don't know where I'd start looking for something to replace DnD as a system. I've tried looking a bit but most stuff that comes up is Kids on Bikes or Powered by the Apocalypse but the former has assumptions are are irrelevant by design and the latter is too open ended.

Thank you in advance! I hope I didn't send too much info or bother you!! (Side note: This was sent from my main blog since Tumblr forces main blogs to be the ask sender, but I don't use that for interaction, so any responses I have will be from my side blog RachRiposte.)

I am so sorry for missing this! It got lost under a deluge of requests for money, but I really appreciate the ask!

It makes a lot of sense that PbtA would come up; I agree that Kids on Bikes is irrelevant, and while I can’t think of any particular PbtA system that would be a good fit, there’s some mechanical elements from them that could help with a homebrew temporarily while you try out new systems.

I’m thinking of stuff like Thirsty Sword Lesbians’s and Glitterhearts’ investigation mechanics, where on a successful roll you can ask 1-3 questions (depending on your result) from a list. The GM always answers the questions honestly.

TSL’s:

What are your feelings towards _____?

What do you hope to get from _____?

How could I get you to _____?

What do you love most?

How would you feel if I _____?

Glitterhearts’:

What happened here recently?

What’s about to happen?

What’s the most dangerous thing here?

What’s the most useful thing here?

What needs to be protected?

What here is not what it appears to be or what are they trying to hide?

Who is in control here?

What new and useful information can I gather?

What sort of creature is it?

TSL also uses Strings, which might be helpful; those can represent favors owed or agreements made between characters, or they can just be “I know you well enough to offer you something you want in exchange for something I want.” Let me know if you want more information on that!

These mechanics might be too broad or open-ended for your purposes, though. Are you looking for something that’s more like a basic framework of mechanical ways people can get information from NPCs or their surroundings, or something that gives players more specific actions to work with? Or something that relies more on player skill in asking questions or interacting with NPCs/solving conundrums/putting clues together?

Also, just to confirm — it sounds like you’re looking for something with politicking and socializing rather than a mystery to be solved by interacting with NPCs for clues, right?

TTRPG question recs never bother me :) Please feel free to provide more information if you can!

Edit: forgot to ask — are the PCs also using magic for social or investigative maneuvers? Should the system take into account things like mind-reading or forced truth spells, or is all that less relevant?

[yurisorcerer]

What are your top five dragons?

I've thought long and hard about this, and I've come up with a list that I think is pretty good.

Spoilers for, honestly, like, a couple things below the cut. I've tagged the post accordingly.

5. Raijin, my Dragonite from Pokemon Violet

(Obviously this isn't specifically a picture of Raijin, my Switch is sadly batterydead at the moment, but this is about what she looks like in my head. Anyway!)

Somehow or another, Dragonite ended up being the very last Gen I Pokemon I'd never caught or trained in any way. I'd caught all of the others in SOME playthrough of SOME pokemon game over the years, even the ones people generally don't love or tend to forget about. (I will be a Lickitung apologist until the day I die.) I'm not sure why I avoided the Dratini line for so long. Some general subconscious backlash? I can't really say for sure. Anyway, I caught Raijin off the coast of Paldea in Violet and she quickly became essentially the ace of my team. As it turns out, Rain Dance + Thunder with an Electric terra type is a pretty good combination.

4. Black Hole Dragons, from a Dungeons & Dragons homebrew sourcebook

I looked and looked and to my IMMENSE frustration, could not find a copy of the old-school D&D homebrew sourcebook that these things are from, but please trust me and hear me out here.

Black hole dragons as depicted in this book, a truly ridiculous bestiary of appropriate foes for Epic-level adventurers, were bizarre snaking collages of geometry that could grow to be larger than the size of the visible universe and erase people from existence by breathing on them. After encountering these when reading these sourcebooks at the impressionable age of uh....like, 23, vanilla D&D's usual array of chromatics and metallics don't do a ton for me anymore.

3. Nicol Bolas, from Magic: The Gathering

This guy.

This fucking guy. This is how you do an impossibly powerful doomsday villain right.

Nicol Bolas is a dragon who's also a dimension-hopping wizard. As part of what is by my estimation one of Magic's last good sets, he also kills a bunch of faux-Egyptian deities and takes their place as the divine ruler of an entire dimension. This guy fucking rules and every single card that's ever had his name on it is awesome and if you disagree, well, that's good for you, because WoTC killed him right around the time they decided to make Magic boring forever.

2. Falin Touden, from Dungeon Meshi

No, she counts. Get back here.

If I stopped to count all of the ways I thought Falin was an amazing character we'd be here all day, but very briefly I find her arc and her interesting liminal role in Dungeon Meshi's narrative super compelling, and I find her characterization very, very relatable, and not entirely in a way that reflects well on me.

But as a *dragon.*

As a DRAGON

Falin is still one of the best to ever do it. The original Red Dragon is a very cool and pivotal part of Dungeon Meshi, and I love that too, but when Falin is fused with it by Thistle we get what is just honestly one of the most memorably bitchin character designs of all time, a ludicrously hot capital MG Monster Girl, and a huge driving force for the rest of the story. Not to mention Ryoko Kui clearly put a ton of thought into how she would work, since a key flaw in her design (so to speak) is what eventually leads to her being saved. I love her to pieces, and the form Falin finally gets at the very end of the story is honestly super cool-looking too! Although it's less dragonny than this one.

The Dragon, from "Dragon"

headspace-hotel's "Dragon" is one of my favorite poems of all time. It's easily the best tumblr post, and while I don't read a ton anymore, it's definitely one of my favorite overall pieces of literature.

I realize that being so brief in the top entry makes this a little anticlimactic, but I can't bring myself to rob the poem of its impact. I linked it there, so please go read it. More than anything else on this list, it's made me think. Beyond simply thinking it's an absolutely great piece of work (which it is), it's very meaningful to me. A reminder that the danger is still present in our time.

Some honorable mentions: the rest of the Dungeon Meshi dragons, every dragon from the Souls series and from Elden Ring, Paarthurnax from Skyrim, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Godzilla, Beast Machines Megatron, and Odious, the Green Dragon who turns into a giant d20 that I bought from Hasbro Pulse a year or so ago.