#dnd5e game

[cwowo]

Boom, wip of my dnd character's patron

Yea the fairy i dropped some time ago, warlock and this is her hot patron i guess i hate him, he is such a bitch

[leidensygdom]

So, what is the OGL and why are DnD creators thoroughly screwed?

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

And maybe consider other TTRPG systems for the time being, Pathfinder’s Paizo has been much nicer to the community, their workers are unionized and are far more healthy overall

[saul-tortellini]

There has to be some level of self-relfection after you hire the honest-to-god PINKERTONS to BREAK SOMEONE'S LEGS on which you're forced to acknowledge that you're now just a straight up movie villain

[anim-ttrpgs]

Help Save the World of TTRPGs and Their Creators.

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.

This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)

If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.

If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.

[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]

Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.

You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)

You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.

“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.”

Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.

“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”

So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.

“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”

There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.

“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”

You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.

(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)

“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”

That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.

“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”

I have several answers to this.

Try showing them this post.

If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.

If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.

“I only watch actual plays.”

Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.

“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”

Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.

“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”

Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.

“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”

Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.

Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.

Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.

First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.

Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.

@indierpgnewsletter

@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day

@theresattrpgforthat

@haveyouplayedthisttrpg

@indiepressrevolution

Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:

Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)

Seth Skorkowsky

Questing Beast

The Gaming Table

Rascal News

Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.

Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

We also have merchanise.

[iriwinged]

Curse of Strahd in Hades style

Let's see .... The main cast of our favorite Draculastic DnD module in one of my favorite game art style

Follow on instagram on @iriwinged_

[sherbertquake56]

y’all I have dnd tonight and Centross (my DM) just said “oh be sure to wear clothes you’re comfortable running in!”

���

EXCUSE ME???

[andysuriano]

Shreddy or not.. here we come!! Remember to follow @lostcompanyofficial , we might post the full piece...

Kickstarter launching real soon, make sure to follow to get notified!! Link in bio

[sweetch3rr1]

This game is +18 for the presence of sexual themes and some violence (very mild but it's there). This game is NOT FINISHED, i'm just putting this out here because i want some feedback.

Seven strangers join to play dnd online. While the campaign avances, the players start getting closer and a friendship between them is created. Charismatic personalities, a nice fantasy story that brings them all together and maybe even love.

You've been playing dnd online for about a year. Previously you were in a campaign with some strangers that allowed you to learn the game and get more comfortable in your own skin. After all, you have always liked fantasy; most of your childhood was spent with your nose deep on a book and things didn't change in your teen years.

As an adult you always thought your dreams of living in a fantasy world were well past you but with the discovery of roleplaying games, things have change for you.

Lately, you joined a new campaign with six other people and while you're all in different parts of the country (some even in other continent) you feel oddly connected with all of them.

Ley Leah (she/they): Leah is the dm of the campaign. On text she seems kinda dry and cold but she is the absolute opposite. This is the second time she's dming and she's still pretty insecure about her skills. Ley tries to be acommodating for her players and worries about them when they're having a hard time irl. The party is super chaotic and she constantly adds wood to the fire cause she's a chaotic queen too. Carol constantly flirts with her and Ley always takes it as a joke. She was super excited when Carol joined because there was another girl in the campaign.

Her discord user is: @leyderivia.

Lup Liam (he/him): Lup is one of the players of Ley's old campaign but they don't know eachother a lot. He's extremely creative and a great actor, he changes his voice for his characters and has overall great ideas. He's super friendly but he's kinda forgetful. If there's a mess in the game, there is a 50% chance he's at fault. Overall he's a great dude but doesn't share a lot about his personal life

His discord user is @lupt02

Carol Caroline (she/her): Carol is a completely new player, she doesn't know anyone in the campaign but it's like she was meant to be bffs with everyone playing. She's super sweet and super funny. She's kinda rough when she speaks (lots of dirty jokes, swears words...) and she's a meme queen (always knows the best meme to send in every situation). She's always flirting with Ley (in a cute way) and stays talking with her, Fill and David until late at night.

Her discord user is @caroline1999

David (he/him): David is a completely new player and is kinda shy. While the rest of the romaces are around 24-26, David is 20. He's very introverted and has a hard time integrating into the campaign but little by little he's talking more and letting shine his personality. He's extremely funny and his character is the opposite to him. He doesn't talk a lot but when he does, its the funniest shit ever. David is kinda the mystery of the group.

His discord user is @doc_grn

Fill (he/him): Fill is a player from Ley's old campaign along with Lup. Fill is a non romanceable character but you can befriend him. He's very nice, always in the middle of the chaos and he usually stays until late with Carol, Ley and David. He's usually really quiet during the campaign but is aware of everything that happens. He's simply not interested in romance.

His discord user is @fillthatbowl

Irvas (he/him): Irv is a completely new player and is extremely outgoing and very loud. He's super friendly, gets along with everyone and is a great player. Unfortunately he has broken out with his long term boyfriend and he's taking a break from relationships and healing.

His discord user is @irvasth

 ➝ 4 romanceables characters, all of the bi/pan.

 ➝ Multiple poly relationships with specified characters (for now there are multiple options between 3 characters)

 ➝ Every romanceable character can be your friend if you want to avoid a romance route

 ➝ You can personalize the mc choosing your pronouns, eye colour, hair etc.

 ➝ Multiple options for your mc's dnd character (race, class etc).

[dicedragonjo]

'Molten Touch'

"So you got a bit of metal I could effortlessly bend to my will or something?"

Inspired by Hephaestus from Hades 2

These are available in my shop for preorder!

Shown polished, you can choose your own paint color, and (as usual) they're inedible.

[rustedportal]

[luckyblackcatxiii]

Strahd standee pre-orders are finally going out, and for the very kind customers who were a part of it, I made a thank you card for them (on really cool paper, I hope they like it)!

Love drawing this horrible bastard :Jc

[cwowo]

Scene from my last dnd game.

Amrik Vanthampur and my little Fae Rot, she is a little babygirl.

[rocketorca]

Want to tell better ttrpg stories using monsters? Check out MONSTROUS, an "oops, all flavor" book with no statblocks, lavish art, and robust system-agnostic tools that help you craft rich backstories that tie directly into the bad guys' motivations and actions.

Hi! I'm Amber and I'm a part of Cloud Curio. Cloud Curio is a 4 person collective designing tabletop roleplaying game supplements both whimsical and strange. (We also have a tumblr!) Part of that collective is Kyle Latino aka Map Crow. MONSTROUS was an idea that was born from his Building Better Monsters Playlist! All of the art you see in this post is by Kyle Latino!

Create custom monsters that uniquely fit your world with MONSTROUS! MONSTROUS focuses on narrative impact and is compatible with any fantasy roleplaying game.

If this is interesting to you, def check out our Kickstarter page. There are a lot of cool updates showcasing how to use this book and the design process behind it! We also have a lot of free ttrpg supplements on our itch.io page! Thanks for your time and attention! -Amber

[saul-tortellini]

[anim-ttrpgs]

Just one way that Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy solves the Perception Problem

[ghostmaggie]

Fantasy-inspired dice towers available now from Hidden Raven Games!

Cask Themed Dice Tower

Waterfall Dice Tower

Roll your next nat 20 in style 😎