#every dm is so over their player’s shenanigans

[gemstarstarlight]

Listening to Murder on the Rockport Limited and I forgot how Absolutely Done™️ Griffin is with his brothers and dad at all times.

[efangamez]

Yoooooo the GRIM expansion "The Palace of Eyes" has some actually NUTS lore. The work for the content is almost finished, but it needs to get fine tuned for publication while I include it in the handbook.

I'll be talking a bit about it here, so if you don't wanna possibly get ANY spoilers, you can dip now!!!

Okay so because I have pretty chronic pain in my fingers I'm going to be using text to speech or speech to text to share some of this information. So this will be my first time writing something that has like time travel and dimension travel shenanigans and the way that I was inspired by Metal Gear Solid to have these wild storylines all going on at once with some twists and turns but it's still kind of holds together through lower explanations is really really cool. I've honestly had a blast making every one of the story beats come together in one giant epic of a story to be honest with you.

There are actual pieces of lore in here that were crafted not only because they were cool but because they are thematic and have almost a cinematic and ideological feel to them. I think that the more that I build worlds and the more that I come to terms with who I am as a person the more fleshed out and well built stories can be created through my games. I kind of realized that when I made Neon Nights and some of my other games. I thought that if I just made a system that had a little bit of scaffolding I think that would be enough but to me I really do think that just like in a video game playing in a world where you are able to explore and uncover mysteries and be shocked by events I think it's really really cool and I like that. I think that's because one of my strengths and interests is in narrative and while I've gotten older I don't really have the patience too much anymore for prose, but I have fallen in love even more with World building and creating narratives with that World building if that makes sense.

I think that this expansion will not only be a really fun thing to explore within the GRIM multiverse but to also kind of look within yourself and to relate to some of these characters in their struggles and to kind of be invested in their stories and what's cool about tabletop games is that their stories are not fleshed out all the way. The scaffolding is there with strong connections to the world but the way that you the players will interact and the way that the watcher who is basically the standing for GM or DM in a game will be completely unique. I think that that's one of the powerful components of an RPG. And while GRIM may not have the most robust mechanics for role-playing in a system or using a system to roleplay rather you can still create Grand narratives by just being interpersonal with your players.

I don't know I just kind of wanted the info dump a little bit and not have my fingers hurt while I type so that's why I use speech to text. I'm really really excited working on this. I have over 34 pages of content in a document that hasn't even been designed yet. This thing is going to be a big lad probably over 100 pages at least. It's going to be kind of hard also to price this at $9.99 but I think that to me what matters most is getting this out there and kind of showing off my talents as well as giving people an awesome epic to play along with GRIM.

Anywho I hope you have a fantastic day today! Make sure you drink your water you eat your food and you take care of yourselves. Love ya!

[jo-harrington]

Corroded Coffin Fest Halloween - Pride

Summary: Jeff goes head to head with his Dungeon Master.

Word Count: 1313

Rating: T

Warnings/Themes: Friendship, humor, angst, typical DnD shenanigans, Dungeon Master and Player dynamics (Eddie is a ruthless DM, but his players are little assholes and he isn't a tyrant).

Check Out the Main Post for @corrodedcoffinfest here! Thank you to @thisapplepielife for organizing another wonderful event for us! I already told them in a DM, this is not only giving me a chance to tickle the old keyboard but read everyone else's work when reading gets to be a challenge between work and writing bigger series. I've set time aside for this. I'm ready! THANK YOU AGAIN.

Also thank you Reddit for giving me some fuel for this because I hate writing combat sequences. The gameplay probably isn't accurate but I don't care. If you see something you know is wrong, no you didn't.

Tagging @the-unforgivenn @1lostsoul0fishbowl upon request.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

Friday, October 25th 1985

There wasn't much in life that was as daunting as staring across a table at Eddie Munson while he was DM'ing.

That's not to say that their sessions weren't fun. On the contrary, it was probably the most fun they had in their lives.

But when all of the players fell into one of Eddie's little traps, there was a certain sparkle in his eye that would make their hearts plummet directly into their asses.

Tonight, Jeff was determined not to let it get to him.

It was hard to see any progress in Dungeons and Dragons sometimes, especially when campaigns ran for weeks on end. Not only did you need to advance the plot, but you had to have character growth, not to mention leveling up. Plus, with Eddie's elaborate plots, there were endless clues and red herrings in the gameplay that would make or break future sessions.

Oh, and combat; you never knew if a wrong move would kill you.

That's what they were faced with right now. A dungeon full of adversaries, and a big bad slime monster. Half of their party was down, the rest with barely any hit points left, and morale was low.

So of course Eddie, crouched on his throne, smirked and laughed at each pathetic move they made.

"Back to the top of the cycle," he announced and pointed at Jeff. "You're up."

Jeff stood from his seat and squared his shoulders.

He knew he was a good player, had a great character, and a few tricks up his sleeve. Plus, he had been playing long enough to know how to get a leg up when he needed one.

They could turn this around; they had to.

"Alright," he began and stared at the board with calculating eyes.

He started narrating his series of moves; he crossed a distance to face the slime monster himself, attacked, then used his bonus action to cast Mage Hand and distract the monster by stoking a fire nearby.

The dice gods smiled down at him. All of his friends cheered as every move he made succeeded. Suddenly, they were motivated enough to rally, and Eddie grumbled as they cleared the field of enemies.

Soon, the slime monster was the only one that was left.

And it was Jeff's turn once again.

He smiled unabashedly as he calculated his move; he'd been picking up on some of Eddie's clues all night, and if he was right about one hunch, he could try something a little risky for a big payout.

Was this what Eddie felt like all the time?

"Don't get cocky, kid," Dustin quoted the legendary Han Solo and patted Jeff's shoulder in encouragement.

Jeff then announced his plan, something too simple for his sorcerer, but he knew would work.

"I'm going to try and suplex Slime Boy into that fire over there."

"What?" Everyone shouted, Eddie included.

"Why are you gonna use melee when you're a magic user."

"I've never seen something so stupid in my life."

"I just told you not to get cocky. It was nice knowing you guys."

"You sure you wanna do that Windforger?" Eddie questioned over the chaos.

"Yeah," Jeff nodded. "I'm sure."

"You know what," Eddie shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. "I'll entertain this. I need an athletics roll. I'll even give you advantage for the...courage.

"But!" he shouted over the din of his friends voices. "I need you to tell me how you envision this is gonna play out first, should you succeed."

Jeff didn't hesitate.

"You've been leading us all along," he began. "Slimey is afraid of fire. He'd pretty much melt in it."

"Then cast fireball!" Mike shouted.

"I just used mage hand for a distraction," Jeff ignored him. "So there's a fire over here. If I can just...grapple him into the fire, he's done for."

His explanation only caused everyone to shout louder, but he got his dice ready, regardless of the protest. He knew he needed something pretty high, but with Eddie giving him advantage and his luck at rolling all night, surely this would pay off.

And he'd be a hero.

"Well wouldn't you know," Eddie's brow jumped in amusement. "Someone was paying attention. Go ahead and roll. What do you need...uh...15 to succeed sound fair? He is slime, after all."

Everyone leaned in to watch with bated breath as Jeff threw his dice onto the table. Time seemed to slow as they rolled and clattered.

"Come on," he muttered and envisioned his roll.

A 15 exactly. A 17 to be safe! Maybe even a Nat 20?

"Come on."

Yeah he would get a Nat 20.

"Come on."

The dice slowed down and then came to a halt.

And then the world came rushing back.

Eddie grimaced theatrically, tsking at his friend all the while, and the others wailed at the sight of two Natural 1's.

"It was a risky move," Eddie offered sympathetically, then his face morphed into a feral grin. "But not one that paid off."

Jeff stood there, frozen, as Eddie narrated the clumsy failure of a grapple and his character falling headfirst into the fire.

Mercifully, it was a night where Jeff's mom decided she'd pick him up from Hellfire.

"Good," he thought as he grabbed his backpack and scurried out of the drama classroom. "Then I don't have to endure Eddie's gloating on the drive home."

He deserved it, though, didn't he? He'd made an absolute fool of himself, could have gotten everyone killed, all because he thought he was a better player than he was.

Once outside, he leaned against the building and tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for the sight of his mom's car. The guys patted his shoulder as they filed out and headed towards Eddie's van, each offering words of comfort that fell on deaf ears.

Eddie was the last one out, and he stopped silently at Jeff's side. He took a moment to light a cigarette, then once the younger boy seemed enough at ease with his presence, he spoke.

"You let your pride get the best of you."

"I know," Jeff grumbled.

"You're not a newbie, Jeffy," Eddie shook his head. "I would've expected a move like that from Wheeler or something."

Jeff stayed silent.

"Come on, you're not gonna laugh as I take cheap shots at Mike?" Eddie scoffed. "Man, you're really taking this harder than I thought."

"It's because I don't screw up like this," Jeff threw his hands out, as if presenting his failure to the world. "I'm the best player in that room. I pay attention, I take notes, I overanalyze about every single word that comes out of your mouth because I know you're out to fuck us all over."

"I do do that," Eddie nodded in agreement. "Don't I?"

"I should've known better," Jeff continued, hanging his head in defeat.

"No, hey," Eddie stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "Don't say that. It was a risky move and damn, if it had worked, it would've been epic."

"But it didn't."

"That's the whole point of playing though." Eddie shrugged. "You try, you fail. You die. In this case, you're revived and live to see another day. You try again."

"I'm never doing anything as stupid as that ever again though," Jeff huffed.

"Yeah you will," Eddie clenched a fist and punched his chin softly. "And next time, you'll succeed."

Jeff looked up at him nervously, "You think so?"

"Of course I do," Eddie shrugged. "You are one of the best players in Hellfire."

He patted Jeff on the shoulder and then turned to head towards the van. He paused for a second though, and turned to call back to Jeff as he walked backwards.

"I wouldn't have even allowed the freshman to do a dumb move like that!"

[crownedinmarigolds]

If the Stakebait Coterie all played D&D together what classes would they play? And who would be the DM?

O-oh my gosh thank you for the question! It's my favorite kind - dungeons and dragons + Stakebait!! Straight from the horse's mouth (@thesixthplaneteer ) it goes as such:

Dungeon Master - Sydney aka the Dusk Angel, leader of the Thinblood revolution in ATL and exasperated den mother. No telling where he got the time to run this game but maybe he needs to feel some real control in his life. He is probably always late by maximum half an hour but he's at least always prepared. His stories are always thoughtful and well-put together and he eventually gives everyone what they want.

Ranger - Ralph! Despite his IRL size he's a much better fighter at a distance so that would probably carry into his gameplay. According to thesixthplaneteer he'd be a half-orc. The least optimized person at the table but he's ALWAYS going to play the character he wants. 🥰 I imagine him cracking jokes the entire session but gets scary tactical during combat. And he brought the white claw. (Probably jokes about ERP with Khloe after the session is over... JK! Unless.)

Wizard - Khloe! The chronic overthinker and planner, she'd definitely be a clever spellcaster who would try and use her environment to her advantage because wizards have paper skin and glass bones. While she likes martial classes that's just so many numbers she's not prepared to handle. I think race-wise she might be a human variant like a Genasi! Or perhaps a gnome. Either or. Something where she can be colorful! She probably has dinner for everyone at the table and plenty of snackies. She'd take gameplay INCREDIBLY seriously but would definitely slip into silly shenanigans when prompted.

Fighter - Christian. Human fighter - completely by the numbers made in a generator character sheet. Has probably never played DND in his life but he loves hanging out without his coterie despite his grumpy demeanor so he's "toughing it out" and playing the most generic race+class combo imaginable at the DM's suggestion. He's made fun of it relentlessly by Ralph but he does a good job fighting. He's probably a stoic RP'er who only speaks minimally unless something really interests him, but he at least takes the game seriously enough so everyone still has a good time. He probably brought a giant coffee thermos because he always just got off work before a session. And actual beer because "fuck white claw, goddamnit."

Cleric - Kyle! The forever Healer both in unlife and at the table! He'd be a gorgeous elf of whom he'd already have stunning commissioned artwork of. He also has the highest Charisma at the table and probably has a stable of lovers in every port they visit. All implied of course and nothing explicit at the table. Probably spoke with the DM beforehand about a custom made God that is dubiously aligned morally... bordering on Warlock but he knows the system enough to game it properly. 🤭He and Khloe would be the ones taking the story the MOST serious, Kyle breaking character the least out of the party. Bonus Player: Nyth, Sydney's boyfriend(?) who will randomly join him some sessions to play a various pre-made NPC. He'd probably steal everyone's hearts before bailing halfway to go meet up with his bestie Noa or he'll make the session go on forever for one reason or another. He's a mess and we love him. AH so fun.... THANK YOU!

((Art by @the-art-block!!! Sydney, Nyth, Khloe, Ralph, Kyle, and Christian!))

[soylent-robot]

saw that d&d movie

i will vomit my thoughts here

it was really good! just a fun fantasy heist movie, simple. im glad it didnt do a 4th wall thing where it shows the "real players" at the table, that would have broke it for me, but plenty of things in the movie still felt like the kind of shenanigans that happen in D&D

like side characters have names that sound like the DM made them up on the spot. Xenk feels like an over levelled DM insert to help the players. the heist plans are the kind of bizarre nonsense players often come up with

the fights feel as chaotic as they do in the game too! everyone is frantic, they make mistakes, they dogpile opponents to get the upper hand. theyre absolutely not some overchoreographed display, so they felt like real life or death situations

and you see spells & creatures & abilities without the movie pointing them out to you. it doesnt nudge you and go "hey the Barbarian activates their Barbarian Rage" wink wink it just does it and if you know, you know

one final thought, its great how as much as possible was filmed on location and used practical effects with the costumes and locations. it would have been *so easy* to greenscreen everything and have CGI everywhere and im glad they restrained themselves

like theres CGI in it of course, theres dragons and all sorts of crazy stuff, but its not absolutely every possible thing in CGI. that bird dude is a real costume, and it looks great!

so yeah it was a neat enjoyable movie

[kaydear]

Holga and Edgin: Old-timers and IRL friends, 100% met playing 3.5e in college or just out, have known the DM for some time and have definitely DM'd themselves. Holga's player is in their 'I just want to hit things' stage of the character cycle (last character had an in-depth backstory of tragic turns and transcendent highs), while Edgin's player is always stuck in 'my character's story shall be a masterpiece of pathos' stage. Because they've both DM'd before, they can see the machinery behind some DM choices, and while Holga's player turns a blind eye (no metagaming!), Edgin's player leans into it for profit.

Simon: Semi-new player, got into DnD after watching Critical Role. Previous characters were wizards/artificers, decided to try a new class this session only to realize that sorcerers are charisma casters, and just because your character has a high charisma score doesn't mean that you automatically win every social roleplay interaction you have.

Doric: New player, her player got invited to the game by Simon's, and ended up spending a good two weeks before their introductory session messaging the DM to make sure that their character's backstory was enmeshed into the lore of the world and provided useful inroads for the DM to introduce. Thus, became the DM's favorite player almost immediately. Then had the wake-up call of the vibe of the game being way more lighthearted than they expected reading the DM's summary.

Xenk: DMPC. Meant to be supremely cool and interesting while also guiding the roleplay interactions more towards the serious, only to get roped into shenanigans. Over-leveled/homebrewed to look cool, but therefore needs to just leave so the players can't rely on him during the final battle. Edgin's player ends up begrudgingly writing some post-game fic of Edgin and Xenk getting closer, to the DM's delight.

[idkaguyorsomething]

Why you should read Darths and Droids:

Are you a fan of Star Wars or tabletop RPGs? Do you wish that the Star Wars movies had a more consistent quality of writing? Have you ever wanted to read a story where Qui-Gon Jinn was a crackhead crazy-as-shit dumbass who orchestrates the most hilariously convoluted terrible plans, Anakin Skywalker was a menacing manipulator who makes the most influential people in the galaxy dance like puppets to his tune, and Jar Jar Binks was a genuinely helpful badass? Well have I got the webcomic for you!

What It’s About: Darths and Droids is a retelling of the Star Wars movies where the story is reframed as an ongoing campaign between a group of friends who keep derailing their poor GM’s plans with their shenanigans. By taking screenshots from the movies and adding different dialogue, it manages to tell a completely different story that weaves in a lot of familiar elements but manages to turn a lot of them completely on their head. The story of the various player’s lives outside of the game and the drama they experience is also added into the narrative, creating two different layers of story that are both interesting in different ways and allows for humor and heart to be integrated with intrigue and adventure.

Why You Should Read It: This comic has some seriously clever writing, you guys. It starts out as a simple parody of a lot of the goofier elements of Star Wars, but as it goes on it whips out some quite impressive Chekhov’s Guns, deconstructs various themes and elements of the Star Wars universe thoroughly, and offers rich new storylines in its place. What it means to balance the Light and Dark when there is a prophecy fortelling one who will even its scales, for example, as well as exploring cool concepts that the movies never quite took advantage of, like the existence of shapeshifters, clones, and the ability to upload one’s consciousness into other vessels. Framing it as a tabletop game also does wonders for clearing up plot holes, and the script is so tight that you’d have a hard time picking out any continuity errors if you tried. Rereads and attention to detail is incredibly rewarding, as you get to see a huge amount of setup pay off, and it’s really nice to see the players grow up and watch their lives change over the course of several years. Also, for the visually impaired, each episode comes with a handy transcript that makes it easily accessible, as well as some nice food for thought from the writers about game design.

Why You Might Want To Avoid: First and foremost, this is a long comic. It’s been updating three times a week for nearly two decades, and at a glance the archives reveals it to be quite a binge (though there are a couple of recorded play versions of the first arc that might take you less time to get through). Some arcs can also drag significantly more than others, since the better Star Wars movies tend to provide less material for satire or plot holes to cover, though they still contain some pretty juicy drama and entertaining jokes. However, if you’re here for the characters from Star Wars that you know and love, you will not find them here. This is a game played between a group of friends, and the versions of every character they encounter are very different from canon. Not to mention that, if you’re unfamiliar with tabletop RPGs, then a lot of the jokes and references will probably confuse you, though the writer’s commentary does a good job of explaining everything to the uninitiated. Still, it was a pretty influential comic back in the day for a reason. It really elevated a lot of the ideas another webcomic with a similar concept, DM of the Rings, first came up with, and by extension, a lot of the ideas in Star Wars.

TL;DR Darths and Droids is a fantastic cleverly written webcomic that combines tabletop gaming and Star Wars to excellent effect and manages to tell a funny, memorable story with tight action, knotty intrigue, and witty plotting. It’s super bingeable and you’ll never be able to look at Star Wars the same way after reading it.

[brodingles]

Year in Review, 2022

I actually made a couple of these, because it was hard deciding what really encompassed my year. The version above is the one with my Aesthetic version, which has the pieces I think were the prettiest or most aesthetically pleasing ones I did for that month.

This post has my thoughts on the pieces and some overall thoughts on my progression through the year! I’ll post one with just the image afterwards.

January

I spent most of January coming off the end of IR and DMP, and as such I had a lot of. Juniper, Dorkus, and Angie on the brain. I actually made a few of these little comics. >:0 Dorkus is one of my favourite expressions I’ve done in a long time, and it lives in my army of Discord emotes haha.

This kind of WAS my meme for the month, my favourite thing overall.

February

This piece is actually part of a set that I did on stream! It’s part of a set. Keep this artstyle in mind, it will come back later!

Was still drawing Triad Shenanigans this month. I just wanted to share Discount Chocolate Dorkus.

Despite what it may seem like, I actually spent this month planning Tiny Gents! I made headshots for every important NPC for the first oneshot I ran ever in my life. Very shaky knees, but everything went well!!

March

I have no idea what came over me for this one I just went as feral as Barbeau haha. This HAD to be when we were talking about doing a certain DnD game, but the DM and players have been so busy all year we never played. Maybe 2023 is the year Barbeau comes into fruition??

Not the full comic and no Dorkus because I’ve already shared plenty of Dorkus and Juniper needs to be in here SOMEWHERE, but apparently I was still going strong with these in March?? Wild!

We ran the second(?) Tiny Gents session this month. I am including Tiny Gents because it was such a big part of the year in total haha. April

I actually don’t like this piece very much, if I’m honest, but I made it and that should be worth something!! I had the song Eyes Don’t Lie going on loop for this, and I put it on my Rememdium playlist, which is probably my most played playlist of the year (If not, it’s TG). This song is going to come up again, but it definitely put me in A Rememdium brainspace.

I actually spent the month drawing more Tiny Gents stuff. Pictured above is one of the “Feral Group” PCs (featuring Charming reading a book). I did some more character design stuff this month, mostly sketching traditionally.

May

This piece is actually from a LIST of pieces that I did in a row for the Song Meme. This one just looks the nicest when cropped to me haha.

I also redrew a classic comic with the newer designs for the TG RA’s. I...got so much done this month haha.

June

Pride! Emilio and (then) Geon! This was actually NOT the highlight of the month, because this month I created Aine!!

She just POPPED into existence while I was listening to Eyes Don’t Lie and then she took over my brain for a while. 

I also did more Tiny Gents art because I had brainrot all year.

July

ANTHONY TOKEN

So Anthony, my boy, came into existence a little before this month, but I didn’t draw him much or think about him much until AFTER I drew his token. Now I’m obsessed with the goober. I plan on redrawing this, I’m not as happy with it now.

I actually posted this one here recently, but I did this as a send off with the Feral Group for TG. They haven’t played since and I miss them ;v;

August

I did a lot of doodles? This month? It was a little slow. I created Hisscisca (the half orc) and Jamie (the pink goth). I actually did frames for an animatic done by @anatthema-art 

Also created another character with the help of @churrobird

Got back into Triad shenanigans and made Dorkus a gf. I also did a set of outfits for Juniper! I’ll try to post these separately, this post is getting long.

BUSY MONTH.

September

More Tiny Gents. I did so much Tiny Gents. Not so much art but just doing Tiny Gents.

BUT I ALSO WENT INTO ANTHONY BRAINROT

I HAVE SO MUCH ANTHONY. I DID AN ANIMATIC FOR ANTHONY I WEEP. I SOB. I CRY.

October

I drew this one in a haste and for love of the game to do MOTI’s Songtober! It was a really fun piece to do, and I’m surprised I have not done more fanart for this game ohoho. Omori made a big impact on my art.

I also tried really hard to do a TG comic this month, and I did 3 pages. Hooray! I can’t find it in my files, but it sure is a thing I did.

I also did like...3 birthday pieces because I have so many OCs with October birthdays.

I actually also spent this month working on an even bigger project...

 So Monkey’s Paw is not mentioned ANYWHERE in this summary, and that’s because I forgot I had to do a ton of art for it despite it consuming my being for several months. It is a surprise I got anything else done, really. I don’t even remember when I drew these-- technically they should be earlier. I’m glad the song and video are out haha. Also yes I put an Omori reference in the video.

November

This piece kind of changed how I approach my pieces in general? There was a lot of reference gathering and editing that went into it, even though it didn’t take long to actually draw. I just wanted to try something cool, and it seems to have succeeded.  Really this month I did a bunch of cool art with Anthony, I’m also quite fond of the sword piece.

I have so many feelings about this image you don’t understand.

December

I actually don’t know if the person I did this for has a Tumblr, but it was a Secret Santa gift! I did other smaller pieces this month, a lot of them, actually, but I mostly just chilled out. December was very reflective for me personally, and I became so grateful for things that happened this year. This summary is very visual heavy and I apologize for that, but there’s so much art to share this time around and I wanted to do that! Conclusion

I spent this year working mostly on my own projects, which was very surreal. I’m very grateful for being able to do that, and would like to continue working on projects throughout 2023 as well!

[raining-anonymously]

infodump to me please.

ok but as you may know i am hyperfixating on a dnd series that none of tumblr cares about. it’s 1 For All DND by Deerstalker Pictures on Youtube and it is so funny and chaotic and well-made. i think i saw in a behind the scenes video that they film with a black magic camera (which i have seen in practice before and it’s. like. very good and expensive) and edit with adobe premiere (my beloved).

anyway series concept is that there are four Guys—Patrick the DM and his three players Eva, Antonio, and Nicole. Eva plays a half-elf fighter called Evandra who is tough and cool and scary and also bisexual. she has a sword and armor. sometimes she’s the common sense and sometimes she is Not. is that not top-notch character design? also her hair gets progressively cooler throughout the series which is very amazing of her.

Antonio plays a human bard named Antrius, who is incredibly full of himself, flirts with everyone (including a villain he successfully seduced, two paladins, evandra, his rival bard, a vampire, a random knight, a dwarven couple whose child evandra murdered, himself, etc), carries a lute but also plays everything from a kazoo to an accordion. he once said, “There’s no I in team. There’s an A, though—which stands for Antrius!” before doing a silly dance.

then there’s Nicole’s character, a tiefling sorcerer named Nixie. she can be a bit on the oblivious side—her intelligence score is zero—but she makes up for it with FIRE. like. literal fire. she’s adorable and pink but also she has one plan ever and it’s FIREBALL. also she likes women. when she was a kid she accidentally burnt her whole family to a crisp, probably due to wild magic and repression. disaster.

then there’s Pat the DM. who just wants a nice campaign. he also plays Every NPC (excluding a few roles later on) regardless of species and gender. he has to put up with the party’s shenanigans, which are exhausting, but he clearly does enjoy what he does, which is nice.

of course, this alone is great potential for a series—but what really brings it in for me are the side characters. aka guest players. over the course of the series, there have been a LOT of those: Vlithryn the triton cleric who’s tired of the party, Annandale the warlock who everybody hates, Dargle-Bark the… eccentric druid, Lorienne the paladin (who eva and antonio flirt with both in and out of character), the catlike Rogue who Nixie flirts with and Evandra hates, Mogdar the pacifist half-orc barbarian artist, Godfreya the incredibly amazing paladin, and my personal favorite—Zephyr the air genasi bard, who a) is Antrius’s ex, b) is Antrius’s rival, c) flirts with Antrius despite all this, d) is a bit (read: a lot) of a prick actually, and e) is crushingly insecure and cries himself to sleep.

that last character appears in a one-shot and one full episode, but that doesn’t stop him from being my blorbo. i have also watched the episode and gone over each shot and frame so many times that yesterday i realized that there’s a mistake towards the end where his flute switches hands in the very last shot of him. because i’m at that point where i have to see every facial expression from every character in that (musical!) episode, including nixie and evandra’s glorious background actions.

there’s also another earlier musical episode, which happens to be the best-rated episode of the series. the party’s been captured, and antrius (mis)uses bardic inspiration to get them out of it—and it’s beautiful. it’s just beautiful. wonderful cinematography, wonderful singing, wonderful lyrics, wonderful acting, wonderful script, just wonderful.

the episodes are short which is great if you have a wildly fluctuating attention span like me. the characters are often terrible people but they’re somehow still likable and hilarious. tw for extreme fantasy violence and sex jokes, but it’s a great series with great humor and the rest of tumblr needs to watch it so i can see fanart and fanfic without having to make it myself. you guys would love annandale

[muse-soup]

Get to Know Me Meme

Name: Gyro (Enough people called me Gyro-mun back in the day that once, when I was in a group chat with two other people who had the same birth name, I said "fuck it" and just started going by Gyro. It's been ten years lmao.) Pronouns: They/Them Sexuality: Yes Single or Taken: Taken

THREE FACTS

- I've danced in a West End production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. There was an audience participation number and some of us got pulled up on stage. - I run a D&D game on Saturdays. We started out playing Curse of Strahd, but it's kind of mutated from there. The party pissed off a night hag who is now making two of the party members collect souls for her as reparations, adopted a gate guard, created a power vacuum by killing both major political leaders and started a peasant revolt in the main hub town, "rescued" a flesh golem and left her to her own devices in the forest, may or may not have lit an abbey on fire, melted a pack of werewolves with acid, lost a party member who they are now seeking (the irl player had other commitments lol), went into a Bag of Holding to fight the Bag Man, and are currently investigating a spider cult who are a splinter faction of the canonical demon cult they stopped before the plot could unfold. It's been a wild ride. - I always type "DRAFT" on replies I save for later in case I accidentally post them.

EXPERIENCE

HOW LONG - Since I was around 12-ish? So nearly 18 years.

WHAT PLATFORMS - Neopets, an ancient Nightmare Before Christmas fan site, GaiaOnline, Facebook DMs, DeviantArt, Skype, Tumblr, and Discord. Pretty much just those last two these days.

BEST EXPERIENCE - If I could be sappy for a moment, it was probably meeting my partner (and many friends besides!) through Tumblr RP. But if we want something more specific, I was part of that giant vampire story that @dreamsofalife mentioned in her meme (x); I was the guy whose head got cut off and came back as a robot. Also worth mentioning was a big thread I did with an old pal, where their muse was turned into a swan via Magic Anon, and they decided the anon (now known as Greyfellow) would take his place as his doppelganger and try to take over the kingdom. Shenanigans ensued, a parrot trapped my muse in a pantry and lit the kitchen on fire, the Queen almost had her soul sucked out-- good times.

MUSE TYPE

FEMALE OR MALE - Any and all.

FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT - Honestly? Too much fluff or too much angst becomes stale and one-note after a while, and smut's something I tend to do sparingly since it rarely adds to the plot. They're seasonings, not the main dish. I CRAVE VARIETY AND NUANCE, BABY!

PLOT OR MEMES - I'm good with both! Although I admit I default to memes if I'm feeling low energy or if I don't know my partner well.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES - Either! Sometimes you need multiple paragraphs to set your scene, and other times a simple "Oh, fuck." will suffice. As long as the other person has enough to work with, everything's fair game.

BEST TIME TO WRITE - Honestly I do my best writing either right when I wake up (whatever time that may be) or after dinner, when I get my second wind. Sometimes I get random spurts throughout the day, though.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSES? - Some of them are aspirational, and some of them are just me in a hat. For the most part, though, I try to find a good balance of how much of myself I allow to slip through. And every once in a while I'll try to write a muse who's nothing like me at all, only to realize we're more alike than I thought.

[hollowleggedwolf]

I posted 97 times in 2022

That's 63 more posts than 2021!

1 post created (1%)

96 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@toastyglow

@nentuaby

@thechekhov

@kosmonauttihai

@joe-england

I tagged 1 of my posts in 2022

#dnd - 1 post

#d&d - 1 post

#dnd character - 1 post

#dnd dm - 1 post

Longest Tag: 13 characters

#dnd character

My Top Posts in 2022:

D&D what a game

I am running a DnD game online for my friends that live all around the country.  Just some details to put these shenanigans in perspective. 

1)I am a first time dm to DnD.  I have dm other games but not dnd. Most of my players are first time dnd players or first time ttrpg players. All members of this dnd game are neurodiverse.  I have OCD, we have mutiple people with adhd, autism, mental health shit going on.

2) I am homebrewing my world, many of the species inlcuding bbeg/player races, monsters, items.  I also am making maps for everything because I have one player with Aphantasia so no inner mindscape to do things off of.  My game has a fear/madness component due to my homebrew bbeg which add a horrer eliment to the game.  I have a very good imagination and love discriping things.

3) My main badies are a homebrew monster called Phobias.  These things are made of shadow and black icor, can posses people, can drive people insain and intrap them in their own minds.  They feed off of magic and fear.

Ok all that put together makes for a game that needs to stay on focus has tight schedualling and should be viseral/spooky.  I am going for some serouse things here. Reallity is nope.

Players cats jumping up into the screen and doing something cute everytime I start to set the mood for horrer.  Enough to the point I made a joke about making the cats npcs because they show up so much.  Now next arc of story has tabaxi pirate passed off eveyones cats.  Horror 0 comedy 1.

Phobia bbeg of first arc killed in a shower of glitter because bard convinced me to let them add glitter effect to atatcks with a crit (also character bassed on liberachie).

Our fighter every time fear/madnes is rolled and they fail roll and gets hit with either feingting or stunned so can move.  Fighter has fainting goat condition.

Our forest gnome has used speack with animals very well.  In second arc of game the party needed to pull a heist to rescue some people.  I ahd planned for many ways for them to get in and out.  I never planned for speak with animals to lead to the party using squirrels to figure out the gaurds schedual and then using racoons given firecracers to distract the gaurds.  My mutliple plans where defeated by small urban creatures bribed with food and shines.  (also my mistake for making creatures on university grounds more intelligent due to radiant magic and idea that bleed over from discworld series)

Highly intelligent racoon demanded payment in gold and reserving books on organizing goverment from local bookshop.  Only thing stoping them is language barrier.  Squirrels have obbsetion with icecream and need writting instiments in their size.  Joke has become give it 10 years and there will be two more sentient player races in my world.  Squirrels new jersey, Racoons yakouza. 

The idea of phobia and confertations so far have left an imprettion and they do do everything smarter.  They don’t just bash in and play big damn heroes.  They take time and find tools and do things I love.  They play so smart and don’t leave a trail of bodies behind them.  I atually have a problem that sometimes I need them to push a button and they are like nope not going there it might be spooky.  We laugh so much which makes the times the horrer/phobia are present more viseral, more dangerous.  

I am still a new dm and mess up on combat alot, many times I plan for comboat and my player go nope and walk away from the fight.  Barbarian intidation rolls have stopped combot even before it started and has actually gained allies. 

I adjust them game every week to fit what brain capacity my players have.  You having a bad adhd day ok throw out this puzzle lock and throw in a new idea I made up on the spot.  Player feeling sick from real life stuff ok throw out this combat and discripe an awesome sceen.  You want to be quiet in your character because you have autism in real life but your quiet character does the most amazing things with speak with animals/plants that just skips whole enire issues sure.  But they adjust back with me my OCD sometimes doesn’t allow me to add flavor to stuff because I am managing to many things, but they are cool with it.  Do I refrence shows and moves directly to discripe a scenn for my player with  Aphantasia yes, does it diminish my world no.

I wanted to run this spooky serous game but most of all I wanted to laugh with my friends that I don’t get to see because they all live in diffrent places.  I love my little home brew world I love that I get to scare my friends but also laugh with them so much my face hurts.  Do I do everything right, no.  Do I throw in stuff and allow people to do stuff because it makes them happy yes, rule of cool is present.  Rule of smart is the heart of my game.  Tell me why and how and we will see if its possible (example damening sound of armor with sacks to not have disadvantage on stealth but keep armor on, yes historic presidnce and using smarts, hell yes you can have that).  Use those overly intelligent animals I made up in a second and grabed a random accent for.  

I didnt get into dnd for years because eveyone I know who played it where murdohoobs, I didnt like the premade campains, and my firends wheren’t close enough to play at my home.  Things change, critical role showed my dnd was a fun game, other ttrpg games helped show me I loved being a dm where I only kinda liked being a player.  I want to play other ttrpg games.  I cant wait to do the next arc of my current dnd game with pirate cats and get my players to the heart fo where my Phobias come from.  I think its going to be a laugh.

0 notes - Posted May 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[eponymous-rose]

Wanted to add, if anyone’s curious: Critical Role is starting its third campaign tomorrow (Thursday, October 21)! If you’ve been looking for a jumping-on point for the show that doesn’t involve watching hundreds and hundreds of hours of content to catch up, this is it. Each campaign takes place in the same overall world as the previous ones, but at enough of a remove (different continent, set some time later) that the impact of prior campaigns is usually reduced to the odd NPC cameo and no knowledge of those plots is needed to enjoy the story.

I know D&D actual-plays are much more mainstream than they were back when campaign two was first getting started, but in case that hasn’t been your thing: it’s literally just listening in on someone else’s game of Dungeons and Dragons. They’ve got great production value and an absolutely absurd new set for the new campaign (projections????), but the game itself is totally unedited, which means you get the full experience of table talk, flubs, and occasionally having to take an early break because everyone has the giggles. The players are all experienced actors and longtime friends, though, so they’re very good at sharing the spotlight, building each other up, and occasionally messing with each other for maximum humorous effect.

Matt Mercer, the DM, is clearly living his Dungeons & Dragons dreams - he’s mentioned that this set is something he’s daydreamed about since he was DMing in high school, and on top of creating the world, he has control over the visual effects during the game and builds the battle maps himself. The seven players (plus occasional guest players!) buy in to their characters in a huge way; it really does feel like reading a book or watching a show where every single character has a writer who’s always in their corner. They’ve got a great crew (including, now that they’re pre-recording, subtitles for every episode as it airs) and the show’s getting more and more polished without losing the fun side of the chaos of it all.

The episodes are free-to-watch and air every Thursday (except, starting in November, for the last week of each month when a one-shot will air instead) at 7 PM Pacific Time on Twitch, typically running for around 4 hours. That’s long as heck, so if you’re not super into watching something for that long in one sitting or if the time zone’s not in your favor, you’re in luck: they rebroadcast on Twitch at midnight Pacific Time and 9 AM Pacific Time on Fridays, then post to YouTube the following Monday. You can also subscribe on Twitch to be able to watch the VOD immediately after (and even during) airing - if you have an Amazon Prime account, you get one free subscription.

They also post episodes in audio-only form to a podcast feed a week after airing - you may have to poke around a bit because the earlier episodes were on a different feed due to the changeover to CR becoming its own company.

Anyway, I do really love this show - I think it’s an incredibly fun example of creativity and communal storytelling, and the throughline always hews back to found family and deep friendships. It feels like watching a fantasy epic that’s somehow had the goofy cast shenanigans integrated right into it, with the added intensity of a really good sports game - after all, everything is unscripted and the nature of D&D means that a character can permanently die at any time.

It’s great fun all around, and even if you do fall behind on it and only poke your head back in occasionally down the line, jumping in at the start of a new campaign is a pretty wild experience all around.

If you’re interested, the Twitch channel is here and the YouTube channel is here. Watch live at 7 PM Pacific on Thursday, October 21st!

[xyloophones]

Hey Cher, seen you posting abt dimension 20 a bit, and yeah I could Google it but it looks very cool and I'd rather hear it from you if it's that cool 💜

helloooo my beloved pal <333 yes yes lemme talk about dimension 20 !!

dimension 20 is an actual play dnd show (theres also an audio only version if you prefer podcasts !) !! there are several campaigns, some with wildly different settings & different players, most of them DM'd by brennan lee mulligan who is an INCREDIBLE storyteller. d20 has a diverse cast & really memorable characters and i've kind of passively watched for a while but i recently finished watching one of their campaigns and Fell In Love

i'm just gonna list the campaigns ive seen so far in order of my favorites:

fantasy high. 6 teens go to a high school that like. specializes in adventuring parties, found family and shenanigans ensue. everyone is gay and neurodivergent. i'm very attached to the characters and their dynamics with each other AND the npcs <33 season one is on youtube for free, however season 2 is my favorite bc it contains probably my fav dnd npc to ever exist (i am an ayda aguefort stan until i DIE). i'm making my way through The Seven right now, which is a spin-off of another adventuring party that are friends with the original 6 in seasons 1 & 2.

a starstruck odyssey. fun campy space romp feat. more found family. this one is has the same players and dm as fantasy high! it has a sci-fi spacey setting and the party is the crew of a spaceship that looks like a giant hotdog. the fights in this one are absolutely wild.

the unsleeping city. an urban magic setting in new york city! another one with the main player cast and dm and once again the party dynamics and character relationships are just !!! so good !!! you will cry over a rat man !!!!! i think these two seasons definitely made me the most emotional. i aspire to get to this level of world building in my own writing.

a court of fey & flowers. ok this one is still ongoing but !!!!!! the only reason it's not number one on this list is because it's not done yet but hsajkf holy shit it's so good?? it's dm'd by aabria iyengar and it's basically using dnd in a regency fey setting to play around with high society gossip and court expectations and AAAAA i have never been so invested in wanting someone to roll well when sending shady letters to other members in the court. it's so good.

there are a ton more campaigns + one shots but i'm still making my way through them! unfortunately, most of it is only available with a dropout subscription so i'd recommend watching the first season of fantasy high on youtube to see if you like it before diving in!

if anyone else has any questions about dimension 20 feel free to send me an ask!! i could probably talk for hours about my favorite characters and details but i'll leave it here <33

real quick edit: if anyone needs trigger/content warnings for things please send me an ask !! every episode has content warnings in the description, but some campaigns in general have darker themes so let me know if you need warnings !)

[anthurak]

Random Concept: Team RWBY at the Table

Okay, so over the weekend I got back into a couple Dungeons and Dragons streams (shoutout to TeamFourStar’s ‘Natural Oneders’ and CRWBY’s own ‘The Grimm Campaign’) and because of that got hyper-fixated on a ‘Team RWBY plays D&D’ idea.

So! After spending way too long playing around with D&D Beyond’s character-creator, here is my half-crazed ‘Modern!AU Team RWBY plays D&D’. Featuring Qrow as a doting uncle and DM who maybe should have thought better of all this…

--

Ruby: A veteran player of several campaigns run by her Uncle Qrow, Ruby is particularly excited for this one. It’s the first time in a while she’s gotten to play, she’s getting to play with Yang again, AND she’s managed to convince Weiss, her friend from university to join them! Up to now, Ruby has really only played rangers, rogues and other ‘sneaky’ roles, so she’s really wanting to be a front-line powerhouse this time around. And ho-boy, does she ever…

Ruby ends up playing an Eladrin (nature-focused elves with a season-based abilities) Oath of Vengeance Paladin multiclassed with a Hexblade Warlock. Not only that, but thanks to some good up-front ability scored roles, she’s able to start picking up feats like Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master and Elven Accuracy. In short, Ruby is an absolute Murder Machine, able to teleport spam all over a battlefield, zeroing in on the strongest enemy and turning it into giblets within a round or two.

Pretty much the only reason she isn’t giving Dungeon Master Qrow constant headaches every session is because Ruby is also really into roleplay and likes making use of her capped Charisma score to try and talk her way out of the party’s problems. While Qrow at first thought this was a good trade-off, except that as the campaign went on, this created a knock-on-wood effect where the party, particular two members who we’ll get to later, realized that could actually get away with pulling crazy, stupid shenanigans, confident in their (mainly Ruby’s) ability to just murderize their way out of any bad situation. Which is exactly what tends to happen.

Ruby also grabbed the Investigator background of all things, styling her character as a sort-of Monster-Hunting Private Detective… despite having a -1 Intelligence bonus.

In short, she is Ruby Rose. Literal Flower-child, hilariously OP Edgelord

--

Weiss: Having never played D&D before, Weiss was at first skeptical when her friend Ruby offered her a place at the table. However, she became intrigued when Ruby started telling her about all the cool stuff spellcasters could do. And while looking through one of Ruby’s source books on their first day, Weiss took one look at the Bladesinger subclass for Wizard and instantly knew what she wanted to play. She also decided to play as a Half-Elf, mostly for the extra Ability Score bonus’s and Skill Proficiencies, though that ended up having surprising role-play value later on.

Weiss also has the… ‘honor’ of being the holder of ALL the team’s brain cells, seeing as how she’s not only the only member of the team to actually invest in the Intelligence stat, she is also the ONLY member of the team with an INT modifier higher than negative one.

However, despite being the ‘smartest’ member of the team on paper, it still took Weiss a while to figure out a few key things. Like how Hit-Die worked and the fact that, as a Wizard, she has constitution of wet tissue-paper. This of course lead to Weiss spending a good chunk of the early campaign charging off into a fight alongside her teammates and getting almost or outright incapacitated in almost every combat encounter. This in turn leads to Ruby being rather… protective of her, to say the least.

--

Blake: Like Weiss, Blake has never played before, and was brought in by her girlfriend Yang. Blake wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to play at first, but then Yang told her that she could totally be a catgirl Inigo Montoya and at that point Blake was IN. To that end, Blake plays a Tabaxi Swashbuckler rogue, with a few levels in Fighter after realizing that she was the only one in the party that wouldn’t get the ‘Extra Attack’ feature and also loving the Echo Knight’s ability to summon a clone of herself.

Also, due to Blake not quite understanding the value of the ‘soft stats’ when she made her character, she has a +0 to Wisdom and -1 to Intelligence. However, Blake is actually super into the roleplay aspect of the game, and after a few hilariously failed Intelligence and Wisdom based ability checks early on, Blake has taken the idea that her character has absolutely ZERO impulse control and RAN with it.

Blake is the brooding rogue with a dark backstory and a hidden heart of gold who wants to help those in need. And also kind of a dumbass with a habit of diving headfirst into harebrained schemes without a plan. And some of the funniest Natural One roles in the party.

--

Yang: Like Ruby, Yang hadn’t gotten to play in a while and was super excited to get back into a campaign, doubly so with how she’d be able to play with her girlfriend, Blake. And also because she had a character concept that she’d never really gotten the chance to try.

Yang starts the campaign as a Gold Dragonborn Monk of the Four Elements school, but quickly branches off into a Zealot Barbarian with all the raging and general unkillability that entails. In short, Yang really wanted to see if she could make a DBZ character, and she… sort of succeeded.

Also, because Yang knew she was ultimately going to be prioritizing Barbarian over Monk, she did a Point Buy and dumped as much of her starting Ability Score Points into Strength, Constitution and Dexterity. This in turn means that Yang has a Negative One score in BOTH Intelligence AND Wisdom. Yang is fully aware of this fact and EMBRACES it for as much fun roleplay potential (and causing headaches for Uncle Qrow) as possible.

--

Other Shenanigans:

Due to a miscommunication about the requirements for the spell ‘Warding Bond’, Ruby and Weiss are now married in-game. (Warding Bond has a material component described as ‘a pair of platinum rings worth at least 50 gp each, which you and the target must wear’)

With all the times Weiss goes down, Ruby has gotten EXTREMELY protective of her. To the point where Qrow has homebrewed a rule that whenever Weiss hits zero hitpoints, whoever attacked her instantly becomes the target of Ruby’s ‘Vow of Enmity’, essentially the laser-pointer for the Vengeance Paladin’s Murder Energy. Basically, whoever knocks Weiss out is about to fucking die.

Blake subscribes to the theory that roles made on skill checks determine her character traits. For example, early on in the campaign, after rolling a Natural 1 on her knowledge of the Fae, Blake decided that this meant her character not only knew nothing about the Fae, but was convinced that the Fae are a MYTH and don’t actually exist. Despite standing right in front of a dryad when that role happened.

Because Blake is playing a brooding, edgy loner and Yang is playing an absolute ray of sunshine with big himbo energy, and because they are both MASSIVE weebs, they quickly hit on the idea that they are basically playing a shounen Rival and Protagonist respectively. They quickly adjust accordingly, making their characters have a deep-seated and EXTREMELY homoerotic rivalry that plays out over the course of the campaign. Blake and Yang have WAY too much fun with this.

(Other ideas possibly to follow, depending on interest)

[rush-wing]

ahem hem, soooo any OCs you have been ✨hyperfixating✨ on lately? or in general??

where do i start

It’s all d&d characters, all the way down btw. I’m a forever DM so I tend to make characters whenever the whim strikes but these guys never get played much, I just rotate them in my head sadly, waiting for the day…

I might throw you some art for visualisation but I’m still.. eh.. learning so enjoy little extremely stylised doodles

Everyone here you can find me reblogging things for over on @hearthkeep too!

First!

Is Jaisarie AKA Jaise – she was primed to be in a Saltmarsh campaign but that’s not going ahead now so she’s just sitting on the pier in my head, kicking her feet above the water idly. She’s my undead pirate : ) Jaise started unlife because I got my mitts on the Wildemount campaign guide and thought an Echo Knight’s echoes could make a fun reflavouring as something ghosty. Originally she was a Hollow One, but I’ve since altered her to the Reborn "race", but it’s all dead things at any rate~ She doesn’t know how she died, and isn’t sure she wants to know! Last thing she truly remembers is being dragged out of the ocean as bloated corpse, but the open gash on her neck and her abdomen seems to point to the idea that she was murdered by someone good at their job. Well, aside from glimpses of memories of an old crew she’s fond of, but she couldn’t pick them from a crowd if they stood right in front of her at the moment. I have some ideas for what she was involved in, but the great thing about this is I am pretty happy for any and all of that to go out the window for whatever a good game requires.

Second! Is a constant returner:

My boy Keats. He was my first PC I have made, so yess it’s trueee… he’s a bit special for me. I’ve played him the most out of anyone (which I can count on the one hand), and every time he’s just such a hoot to play. God I love him. And he’s “just” a half-elf battle master Fighter! (I will throw hands on anyone saying he’s boring for that though--) He’s an acrobat-turned-gladiator and a complete dumbass so he is big on stupid stunts, and most of the time, bounces right back up when he eats the pavement face-first. Honestly I think I just wish I had his confidence and bravado.

Third:

This is the gentlemen who I’ve been playing Thousand Year Old Vampire as - Madieren. He started out as a half-elven scholar from an isolated monastery dedicated to the study of magic, but he decided he liked blood magic and went off on a tangent. So you can call him a “vampire” of some description, but I refer to him officially as an immortal blood mage. I’ve had a lot of fun with him over the past few months, watching him evolve, go through the shit (his only student got murdered, has been kicked out of his home at least three times, oh, and had his arm accidentally cut off, just to name a few things), and eat his own hubris whole. He actually started life known as Alezaren, but due to certain shenanigans he’s shed his original name. Madieren ended his run making up with his rival who’s been chasing him down across the continent (who also ended up immortal due to the influence of one of the other player’s characters) and like there was only so much those two could stab each other before the tension went elsewhere.

And lastly:

This is Eon! He’s had a nostalgia resurgence after watching something last night and like I want to do something with him now but what??? I have an Eon-sized itch and I cannot scratch it!!!! Anyway, Eon is my sad wizard tiefling. Well, “wizard” in quotation marks because he’s technically an Eldritch Knight. Eon’s a blacksmith by trade, but dabbles in magic because there’s a quiet passion there for it that was nurtured by an eccentric mentor he hasn’t seen in a long time. So, yes, he has the tragic backstory, to the point I somewhat recently realised I gave an 8-year-old PTSD to get him so. Um. Sorry, Eon. He’s got a very stand-offish, stoic exterior, but he really is such a soft creature at heart. Eon’s my nerd. The oxymoronic buff wizard. I have a set of dice someone in my group made from scratch specifically for him so one day I need to play him so I get to actually roll them for him.

[hiccanna-tidbits]

The RotBTD+ Gang Plays DnD! (Feat. my ships, sorry not sorry XD)

So highkey I’ve actually been wanting to do a “The Gang Plays DnD” type post for AGES now, but then I saw @hobie-brown and @ohlooksheswriting-wips do DnD AU posts for RotBTD, and then I was like “Ah shit, I really should finish mine, eh?” So thank you to both of you for inspiring me to get off my ass and actually write the post!!!

Hiccup DMs. He comes up with this super complex plot revolving around dragons (because of course) where the party has to dismantle this society ruled by evil knights who want to genocide all of the dragons. Imagine his chagrin when the party wants to do nothing but fuck around in towns and aggravate NPCs 90% of the time.

They usually end up playing at Jack’s apartment, mainly because Hiccup’s dad doesn’t really want a bunch of loud nerds yelling about 20-sided dice in his household while he’s trying to work, if he can at all help it. Jack’s sister regularly barges into their living room and roasts the fuck out of Jack and his friends for being such damn nerds and eats all of their DnD snacks they’ve set out. If they’re in the middle of a combat session, she always gleefully proclaims that they’re all going to die. While Jack is annoyed by this, the rest of the party finds it deeply hilarious.

Jack Overland plays the absolute mayhem warlock Jack Frost, who got his powers through making a deal with the archfey Prince of Frost and has absolutely no qualms about being an evil god’s mortal Sower of Chaos. He spends the vast majority of the campaign doing such useful things as creating ice slicks under annoying NPCs and freezing people’s drinks. He also plays a Tiefling because absolutely no one can talk this boy out of playing the creepy demon race.

Rapunzel plays a woodland nymph druid who is also the party healer (because of course she is). Her name is probably Sunlily or something else suitably hippie-esque. Whenever there’s downtime (or whenever the rest of the party is also dicking around, and she can get away with it), Rapunzel likes to go into the nearest forest and pick the best berries and nuts for the rest of the party. She also loves baking fruit pies and cooking the best nymph food for her companions when given the chance. Definitely the party Cinnamon Roll (every party has one!). She often will turn into cute animals to distract the guards while the party infiltrates a building.

Merida’s character is the party archer and general ranged weapon master, as well as a raging lesbian. Hiccup learns very quickly that any male NPC who tries to flirt with her will very quickly get impaled with an arrow. She can’t ever decide if she wants to be a ranger or a rogue, so she multiclasses in both for flare. She also plays a Tiefling, and continually insists that her character is both scarier and sexier than Jack’s. In combat, she either Leeroy Jenkins her way in with a sword and just starts slashing every which way, or just shoots 90% of the enemies with arrows before the fight even starts. There’s really no in between. She can get away with this because she’s highkey one of the party tanks, and consistently deals a shitton of damage.

Anna plays a human bard, basically having read over the class options and going “Wait, in this one I get to make stylish medieval music??? And wear dramatic and garish outfits and a dumb hat??? And cast wacky illusion spells??? And do silly little magic tricks??? And INSPIRE EVERYONE??? Hell yeah, I’m in!!!” She mostly uses magic attacks in combat (definitely favors Tasha’s Hideous Laughter), but occasionally when she’s out of spell slots she’ll just take to slamming enemies in the face with her lute. She also has WAY too much fun with Vicious Mockery, let’s be real.

Elsa, upon hearing Jack’s character concept, rolls her eyes so far up in her head she can see her damn brain, and vows to play his concept, but serious–solely out of spite. She rolls up a super OP elf Chaos Sorcerer, filled with lots of brooding angst about how uncontrollable her winter powers can get if she isn’t careful. She combines it a bit with Storm Sorcerer so she can create literal blizzards, and Hiccup ends up allowing it just because he thinks it’s cool. Although Elsa’s character is undoubtedly aggravated by the rest of the party’s antics, she starts becoming grudgingly protective of these idiots and can deal some pretty crazy damage when her companions are threatened. She also contains one of the party’s only brain cells.

Eugene of course plays dashing rogue master thief Flynn Rider. Although his high deception and lockpicking skills certainly come in handy, he’s the most chaotic neutral fucker you’ve ever met and will take any excuse to rob NPCs blind or cheat them out of every cent they have in a tavern card game. It’s nigh impossible to get him to cooperate with the rest of the party much of the time, and often Elsa’s character has to either bribe him with some of her family’s gold or threaten to freeze him to stop him backstabbing one or more party members. Eugene’s character forces Hiccup to add in many more heist plotlines than he originally intended. This delights Eugene immensely, and sometimes he goes a bit crazy planning elaborate heists.

Moana plays a sorcerer water genasi. She can control any body of water, but she has a special affinity for controlling saltwater (i.e. the ocean lol). She also requests an animal handling bonus, but only with marine animals, solely because she thought it would be funny. She’s also an ex-pirate who robbed a lot of wealthy merchant ships and freed their slaves back in the day, which Merida thinks is incredibly badass. Moana tends to get bored and unengaged when there are no bodies of water to play around with, so Hiccup ends up having to add a lot more lakes, rivers, and oceans to the campaign than he originally planned on. Moana also takes a sailing skill, and thus the party often ends up traveling by boat. Typically Eugene and Rapunzel will infiltrate and hijack it, and Moana will sail it. Moana probably contains the party’s only other brain cell.

Astrid plays a gigantic berserker orc barbarian who is never without his trusty axe. Astrid is hands down the party’s top tank, and unquestionably deals the most damage every combat session. Much like Merida’s character, Astrid’s character is absolutely a shameless power fantasy. Hiccup pretty easily picks up on this, but is too polite to say anything about it. Jack also picks up on this, but is hardly as courteous as their DM, and teases Astrid mercilessly. Astrid is not amused.

Rapunzel requests that her weapon of choice be a frying pan, her justification being that her character found a discarded one at the edge of a human village outside her woods and mistaked it for a highly-dangerous human weapon. Hiccup is like “…you know what? Fuck it” and rolls up stats for a goddamn frying pan. Jack has nigh-endless admiration for Rapunzel for choosing such a goddamn memey, absurd, yet oddly effective weapon and it definitely makes the poor boy even more smitten with her than he already is.

Eugene and Merida have a bet going on who can sleep with more sexy barmaids. Merida is currently winning, much to Eugene’s chagrin. She’s not even inherently better at seducing NPCs, she and Eugene have the same charisma stat–she just consistently rolls better than Eugene. Eugene is incredibly salty about this.

Anna and Elsa want to be sisters in-game as well, but neither want to change their race–so Anna decides her character was adopted. Hiccup and the rest of the party go along with it, mainly because there’s something deeply hilarious about a regular human bard being adopted and raised by a family of high-powered elf ice mages.

Astrid is absolutely the sort of player who tends to get bored and restless outside of fights, and tends to fidget and twiddle her thumbs waiting for the next combat session. Jack picks up on this, and purposely does more roleplay for longer just to piss her off. He’s also just a very dramatic fucker and highkey loves roleplay.

When she’s not causing mayhem around the town or sleeping with hot women, Merida tries to entertain Astrid between combat sessions by offering to spar with her. Unfortunately, this does not usually end well for poor Merida, as even the most hardcore and badass of tieflings is prone to getting dumpstered by an 8-foot-tall barbarian orc with an axe. Astrid is, nonetheless, grateful to have someone to fight.

Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana will humor Hiccup and attempt to actually play the main plot. Meanwhile, Jack, Merida, and Eugene are a DM’s worst nightmare. They constantly derail the damn campaign to fuck around, cause mayhem, and do inane shenanigans in every. Damn. Town. They go to. Anna is kind of a wildcard–she’ll typically go with whatever group looks like they’re going to be doing something more interesting. Astrid will go along with whichever group is more likely to get into a fight–which, often as not, is Jack and his posse of terrible Chaotic Neutrals (who have definitely pissed off a number of NPCs into attacking them).

As the campaign goes on, Elsa and Eugene become the beleaguered Party Mom and Dad. Both are quite aggravated by this–especially poor Eugene, who just wanted to play a morally-gray charming rogue who stole everything and got away with it and then accidentally ended up caring about these idiots he got stuck with.

Anna initially joins the campaign because she has a planet-size crush on Hiccup, and inevitably is the one who dragged Elsa into it too. Being the hopeless romantic that she is, Anna writes a love interest into her backstory. Hiccup eventually has the party run into said love interest, and Anna is overjoyed. He starts flirting with her as the love interest, and it’s easily the best 30 minutes of Anna’s life.

Moana and Elsa also give Hiccup pretty detailed backstories, and he works in little subplots for them. Moana gets to bring water back to a dying part of the jungle in the middle of a draught, while Elsa gets to go on a whole sidequest to explore her family history and how they came to be sorcerers.

Jack, Merida, and Eugene also give Hiccup fairly elaborate backstories, but Jack’s and Merida’s are like 99% memes and Dumb Shit. Hiccup tries to give all of them backstory-related plot hooks, but inevitably any hooks he provides are either stabbed, robbed, or frozen. Honestly any plot hook offered to these 3 will be all but spat in the face of and tossed off a cliff.

The one relevant part of Eugene’s backstory is that he and Rapunzel decide they used to be partners in crime before the campaign started. Rapunzel would infiltrate and scout out places he wanted to rob as small, unobtrusive animals (her preferred Wild Shape is a chameleon) and later distract the guards as a bunny or kitten while he went in and took every gold coin in sight. In return, Flynn Rider would bribe builders to not develop into Sunlily’s forest. Rapunzel and Eugene partly came up with this For Funsies, but also it was Rapunzel’s sneaky way of tricking Eugene into having prior connections in the party so he’d be less likely to betray them. It works pretty well–although the entire party is protective of Cinnamon Roll Sunlily, Flynn is certainly especially protective of her.

Astrid does the absolute bare minimum as far as backstories go. She is literally just here to smash stuff, slice people, and beat some fuckers up.

Rapunzel has a backstory, but she’s typically so invested in the main plot and the other party members that Hiccup rarely needs to bring it in to keep her engaged. She’s highkey the party emotional rock, and probably the only one keeping them all together.

On that note, Rapunzel’s character is the ONLY one who can get Jack’s character to take the plot even REMOTELY seriously. Like he’ll be dicking around in the nearest tavern challenging the nearest orc to a drinking game, and Rapunzel will come in and ask him to help them on a Main Plot Quest. And he’ll be like “come onnnnn I’m having funnn” and she’ll be like “Jack pleeeeeease?” and you just. Can’t resist Sunlily’s puppy dog eyes. At all. Also, whenever Sunlily is genuinely threatened, any silliness immediately goes out the window and Jack Frost is OUT FOR BLOOD.

For better or for worse, Rapunzel is not immune to being looped into Jack’s shenanigans. Occasionally if either Merida or Eugene have a particularly hare-brained scheme she’ll go along with it, but by and large Jack is the most successful in convincing her to temporarily abandon the plot and cause mild mischief with him. They once wasted half a session creating an elaborate “ice theme park” for some squirrels in the forest.

Hiccup tries to get Merida to play the main plot by eventually having there be no more sexy female NPCs to seduce in the towns they go to. Unfortunately, this backfires–Merida just hooks up with Moana’s character instead. When asked to roll for how good the lay is, Merida gets a nat 20–and thus her character and Moana’s character end up hooking up regularly throughout the rest of the campaign.

Hiccup introduces a few Wise Old Mentor-type NPCs to guide the party throughout the campaign. While Rapunzel, Elsa, Moana, and Anna actually try to listen to them and take their advice, Merida, Jack, and Eugene absolutely refuse to take them seriously and mercilessly play pranks on them.

At one point, Hiccup gives the party the option to attempt to tame a group of wild dragons and use them as mounts. They all have to make animal handling checks. Anna, Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana pass. The rest of the party fails, with Jack and Eugene crit-failing. Hilarity ensues.

Hiccup ends up bringing back Anna’s backstory love interest as an NPC regular. Anna thinks he’s just being a good friend and a good DM and trying to incorporate her backstory as much as he can, but really, he just wants an excuse to regularly flirt with her. He hardly has the balls to out-of-game.

Merida comes out as gay toward the end of the campaign. Everyone in the group is extremely supportive, of course, but everyone is also like “Merida…with the amount of barmaids you’ve banged…and the amount of times you and Moana’s character hooked up…this isn’t exactly surprising.”

Hiccup actually finds a way to use Jack and Elsa’s same-concept-opposite-execution characters to the plot’s advantage. He decides one of the main villains will have a prophecy saying he’ll be taken down by a powerful ice mage. The party manages to fool this guy into thinking this ice mage is Jack, and sends Jack to fight him. As soon as the villain sees Jack, he’s like “WHAT??? THIS clown???” (word has absolutely spread throughout the land of Jack not using his ice powers for anything besides mildly annoying trolling). Naturally, the bad guy lets his guard down after thinking he’s going to fight this literal joke, and then Elsa crashes in from the side and absolutely dumpsters him.

Jack tries to defeat the final boss by just annoying him so much that he leaves. Unfortunately, he just annoys him so much that he attacks Rapunzel’s character. Jack’s just like “oh HELL no” and attacks with absolutely nothing held back. Turns out he’s pretty terrifying when he’s not using his magic for Dumb Antics.

During the final boss of the campaign, the Big Bad tries to one-shot Moana’s character, and Merida’s character super theatrically jumps in front of her to take the blow instead. Rapunzel just barely manages to heal Merida’s character, but it’s a really close call. During all this, Merida is like “ah shit...maybe I’m NOT just in this to get fantasy-laid.” After the fight’s over, her and Moana’s characters have a big dramatic love confession and share a Big Damn Kiss in front of everyone. It’s pretty epic.

After the final session of the campaign, Merida drags Moana outside Jack’s apartment and sputters and trips over her words for a solid minute before she finally gets out that through all this nonsense...well...maybe it’s not just in the game that she thinks Moana is hot. Moana just gets this HUGE grin on her face and says “c’mere, Leeroy Jenkins” and just pulls Merida in and kisses her. Cue the rest of the party barging in on them. Merida and Moana freeze, and there’s a moment of terrified silence...and then the entire party starts cheering them on like “took you long enough!”

The entire rest of the party could detect the sexual tension. Literally all of them.

But Eugene is like “HA, THIS MEANS IF WE DO A SEQUEL CAMPAIGN I’M WINNING THAT BET! BECAUSE YOU’RE GONNA BE DATING MO’S CHAR AND THUS NOT ABLE TO SLEEP WITH ANY MORE BARMAIDS!”

By the epilogue session, Jack and Rapunzel are dating. Merida and Moana are also dating. Hiccup and Anna STILL haven’t figured out why they’re so prone to spending half the session flirting when Anna’s love interest shows up, and Hiccup STILL hasn’t figured out why he likes to have Anna’s love interest show up so often. Bless their souls. Maybe they’ll figure it out next campaign...?

Damn I actually really like this...maybe if people like it I’ll do some incorrect quotes or a drabble or something??? Or maybe some HCs from next campaign???