#i have such a cool lore idea for the drow race i need to use it in a game asappp

[oriato]

Finally finished this concept sheet

Meet Mírín, traveling weapons merchant

[bmaxwell]

Baldur's Gate 3

Baldur's Gate was my first-ever PC game. I came home with a shiny new PC a coworker built for me, and stopped at Best Buy to pick up the MicroProse Magic the Gathering game and Baldur's Gate. The game was positively mind blowing. It used AD&D rules (my first tabletop system) it had gorgeous isometric graphics, and FIVE (5) discs. Console gaming had nothing like it.

5 years later I was burned out on the genre* and maybe the rest of the world was too, because that style of game stopped being made. Years later when Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Divinity Original Sin came along, I spent time with each but was never truly enamored with them. I figured that, like RTS games, Metallica, and kart racers, CRPG's were something I used to like.

So when Baldur's Gate 3 released in early access, I largely ignored it. I'm not going to spend time playing an unfinished story-centric game, and even if I did? I haven't finished One of These in some 20 years. It's a bad bet.

However.

I'm like an alcoholic that drives past every bar in town every day. I listen to video game podcasts, and I talk games with friends. A couple of friends' enthusiasm for the game was infectious and, near release, Larian Studios announced that they were upgrading standard preorders to the Deluxe Edition for free. Well, if I ever do want the game I'll want the deluxe edition, and I can get that upgrade for FREE now? I'm basically losing money if I don't buy it. Right?

Buy it I did, and I was immediately hooked. I even spent an eternity in the character creator,** mostly debating my race and class. I get major FOMO with games like this. I want to see everything there is, and that's just not possible. I can't pick every lock AND smooth talk every conversation AND be a follower of every god, and so on. I finally settled on a Tiefling Warlock, a patron of The Great Old Ones.

Oh Aremon. I have so much I need to warn you about. But alas, I cannot.

It turns out there's a lot more than your character and class keeping you from seeing everything Baldur's Gate 3 has to offer. The game gives you an incredible amount of freedom. The studio touted the game's "17,000 endings" which seems nonsensical. After putting a hundred hours into the game I can believe it now. There are choices and events - big and small - whose outcomes ripple out into what feels like an ocean of possibilities.

The game reacts to everything you do. I've played a few saves and have friends playing their own campaigns, and the way we swap Baldur's Gate 3 stories feels like the old days on the playground. "Oh, you saved the druid grove? Well I heard you can assassinate the leader and there's a war and the whole GROVE is basically destroyed! Billy says he went and saved their missing leader and Susie says she helped an evil Drow elf raid the grove and burn it down!"

Susie that bitch.

And that's all true. Every action you take, every quest you follow through on or ignore, every area you miss altogether - these all have tendrils that spread out and touch every other thing in the game. It feels like there's a DM with a folders full of wrinkled papers of hastily scrawled notes alongside their binder of carefully written world lore that the players may never see.

The story revolves around mindflayers, opening with your character being restrained and infected with a gruesome parasite. It's a pretty good impetus to set you off on a quest to get that teethy little tadpole out of your head. No one needs to tell you that the kingdom is in danger, you have your own personal stakes in the form of unwelcome parasite in your brain. You can just watch that opening cutscene again if you need reminding of the situation's urgency. *shudder*

Or, perhaps not. Maybe this tadpole gives you cool powers. If one tadpole is good, more must be better!

Right?

As of now I am into chapter 3, exploring the titular city of Baldur's Gate, and I have no idea how this is all going to play out.*** The shades of grey and the way the game subverts expectations speaks to the quality of its writing. Dungeons and Dragons is some 50 years old now. Creative works carry the world view of their makers - hopes, fears, sense of justice, and prejudices are all along for the ride. They HAVE to be.

It's a black and white world where the monsters are evil and the heroes are heroic. The black skinned Drow are born evil and cruel, orcs are wild, savage, dumb, and violent. Mind flayers are cruel, thriving on enslaving others for their own ends. Thankfully the writers have gone outside the tired stereotypes pretty often with Baldur's Gate 3.

It makes me happy that I have a female Tielfing demonic barbarian who is somehow big hearted and vulnerable while also being powerful and kickass. My cleric is worships Shar, goddess of darkness. She's not necessarily evil per se, but she's definitely not about holy water and rays of holy light shining down from above.

And those mind flayers? Maybe they're not so bad. Not all of them. Some of my best friends are mind flayers! Or maybe that's my tadpole parasite thing speaking. I've met monsters who were not monsters at all. It's a lot of shades of grey and I DIG that.

The game gives you some weighty choices. I've had a handful of moments where I had to sit back and ponder for a few minutes, and these usually involve my party members. Each party member I've recruited (I have missed a few that I know of also) has been wonderfully written and voice acted. They each carry their own baggage and their own backstory that they will eventually share with you. We're all in the same parasitic boat together, but we each have our own demons.****

I have a vampiric theater kid, a spunky demon lady, a melancholy mage, a heroic warlock, an emo cleric, and a fearsome warrior traveling with me. Well, had. I ended up killing one of them when their morals went too far off the rails for me. It's not a choice I made lightly and I do not regret it. My friends have had their stories play out differently. The world reacts to your decisions and so do your party members. They're not just blank ciphers to blindly follow in whatever you do. They'll make their opinions known up to the point of leaving or even attacking you. I've seen their stories play out in very different ways based on who was in my active party at the time of a key story event.

Video game stories are very hit or miss for me. With RPG's I'm usually there for the combat and systems as much as the story. Baldur's Gate 3's main story is engaging and kept me invested from start to finish. Every party companion felt like a fully fleshed out character who I wanted to learn more about and hear more from. Even some of the game's side plots were engaging - one involving a hag comes to front of mind. There's just so damn much DETAIL here, and none of it feels extraneous. The developers have clearly played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, they know the sorts of things players want to do, and they made a game that says "Yes, actually you CAN do that" surprisingly often.

That freedom extends to the game's combat as well. You can throw objects, ignite pools of oil or alcohol, electrify water, push people off ledges, and on and on. My concern was that I'd get overwhelmed like I did with Larian's previous game Divinity Original Sin 2, but the combat threads the needle of being challenging without typically being overly long (spending an hour plus in combat only to lose and have to start over feels bad).

I can't close this review without mentioning that Larian did a great job replicating the act of rolling a die, a key component of tabletop games. The die clatters about and settles on its number in a satisfying way, and the excitement of a natural 20 on a long shot or the deflation of a crummy roll are intact here in this digital translation. The game handles luck streaks too - there's an option called Karmic Dice that you can toggle in the system menu, which prevents long runs of bad die rolls. After all, the dice add some welcome randomness but they should never play a huge role in determining how things play out.

The inspiration system is also wonderful - the game grants characters an "inspiration point" that can be spent on a reroll either in combat or in a skill check. These points are earned by essentially roleplaying your characters; smooth-talking Astarion will get inspiration points whenever you lie, persuade, or otherwise bullshit your way through a situation while no-nonsense bruiser Lae'zel is inspired whenever you mop the floor with foes in battle. The game is full of these thoughtful little touches.

The game writes a LOT of checks in the opening act, and somehow manages to cash them all. Choices you've made, people you've helped or hurt or ignored will come back around to you in the final act. Major events will play out wildly differently based on who is in your adventuring party. When it came down to the end, I made choices that felt right for the people in my party. It felt more like an ensemble cast rather than my character being the star of the show and everyone else supporting him. I'm writing this the morning after finishing the game, and I'm debating whether to reload my final save to see how other options play out. On one hand, I'm curious; on the other, it feels like the ending I got was my canonical ending, and playing tourist with it would feel dishonest.

As someone who hasn't seriously played D&D since 3rd edition (and not at all with the 5th edition ruleset used in Baldur's Gate 3) I'm not sure which elements are from the tabletop and which are unique to the video game. All I know is that, while no videogame can wholly replicate the experience of spending a Saturday afternoon at a table rolling dice, talking in bad accents, and poring over rulebooks and character sheets with friends, Baldur's Gate 3 does a better job than any game before it. *After Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale II, Planescape: Torment, and Baldur's Gate 2 **At least 15 minutes! ***I've since finished the game ****Figurative and otherwise

[whumpster-fire]

Having several thoughts about how gnolls are really cool as a basic concept but hot damn D&D 5e’s lore for them is absolute garbage, and... seriously, Tieflings are in the fucking Player’s Handbook now but gnolls are just Too Demonic For Players? Does someone at WotC like, have something against hyenas or something?

So I’m posting my fanmade gnoll rework concepts that I’ve had for years and I’m finally accepting I’m never gonna fucking use.

Just

Fucking

Base it off actual hyenas as a starting point. Think about what hyenas are actually like compared to other predators.

For ability scores, A lot of the playable gnoll races I’ve seen give them high strength or dexterity, which is kind of a weird one because I don’t think hyenas are particularly dexterous, not compared to other predators like cats. They’re pursuit predators with relatively good endurance, they have really good immune systems that make them effective scavengers, and they’re pretty darn hard to kill. Gnolls’ biggest physical stat bonus should be Constitution, absolutely no question, with strength next. For mental stats... hyenas are really smart by animal standards, and good at cooperative problem solving in particular. Being bad at any particular mental stat in D&D/Pathfinder doesn’t really fit with that, but if the system requires a stat penalty for balance reasons Charisma is probably the best one to put it in to represent the cultural and body language barriers between gnolls and... well, non-furry humanoids.

7′ tall, 300 lb gnolls is kind of bizarre since spotted hyenas are pretty close in weight to humans. Wikipedia lists 198 lb as about the heaviest weight for them. My headcanon for this is that gnolls are supposed to be human-sized-ish, but the clans a heroic adventuring party is most likely to get in a fight with are, y’know, the ones that are basically demon cults, and have a significant number of 7′ tall monstrosities as a result of interbreeding with demons.

Spotted hyenas are matriarchal and females are bigger and stronger than the males. This shouldn’t be reflected in RPG stats other than a difference in the height and weight stats basically get ignored unless someone needs to carry an unconscious character or something, for the same reason that ability scores ignore sexual dimorphism for every other race in the game and... does any culture in D&D canonically have strong gender roles by default besides the Drow?

Having a super-short lifespan is technically not “unrealistic” for an animal-based race, but it’s... just really player unfriendly, especially when half the party’s probably playing elves and dwarves that live like 300 years.

Other traits: Give ‘em low-light vision, disease resistance (not poison: disease specifically). Gnolls have powerful jaws and should have a natural bite attack, but like... most of the time natural weapons on a humanoid shouldn’t actually be very useful in armed combat because... yes it can do serious damage, but so can a fucking spear, and you can run someone through from a lot farther away than you can bite them, and not have to expose yourself to someone driving a fucking knife through your chin while you’re trying to rip their arm off. If you give gnolls any other gimmicky combat ability, it should be based on teamwork or survivability / making it a miserable process for someone to attack you.

I’m kinda ehhhh on gnoll subraces, other than maybe giving demonblood gnolls their own stats.

Okay so for gnoll culture... first of all we have to figure out how to handle Yeenoghu, and there’s two ways of handling this that I like.

Option 1: Yeenoghu is actually just the gnoll war goddess, but is believed to be a demon lord by most other cultures based on rumors spread by people at war with gnolls, and... like, literal demonization your enemies’ gods is a common phenomenon throughout history IRL. This is best for a low-magic campaign where the gods don’t get involved enough to correct these misconceptions.

Option 2: Gnolls are a cautionary tale of what happens when demon cults aren’t stopped early. Gnolls actually have/had their own patron deities, but they’re now powerless to protect their people from Yeenoghu’s followers, and they’ve overrun a significant portion of the species. Not so much through conversion as through conquest as subjugation and extermination, except now they’ve reached such a critical mass and become so much of a threat to other cultures that it’s turning them against the surviving non-cultist clans, and some of them are starting to convert by “choice” because they see it as the only way of surviving that’s left.

With this one, I really like the idea that Yeenoghu is actually female and the widely known lore gets her gender wrong due to a translation error / misinformation / because of very human gender stereotypes causing people to assume that female demon lords are all the sneaky, subtle, corrupting/tempting types and that a demon lord of sheer brutality and destruction would obviously be male. This misconception persists because Yeenoghu’s followers are too busy eating people to discuss pronouns.

The other really important factor driving gnoll culture to evolve in certain ways is that gnolls are obligate carnivores. Their diet needs to be mostly meat, whether living or dead, and in a medieval-tech society, unless it’s really high magic I don’t think a sedentary gnoll community would be able to produce enough food to support themselves. However this doesn’t require gnolls to be hunter-gatherers / survive by raiding.

Seriously guys. Nomadic pastoralist gnolls. Or at least transhumance. Gnoll shepherds, using domesticated hyenas as herding animals. Or if you’re doing a Western AU... consider, and I’m just saying consider this as an option: Gnolls in cowboy hats.

However, in warfare this also creates the darker side of even non-demon-worshiping gnolls. They’re predators, and biologically adapted to be scavengers, and in any premodern setting an army marches on its stomach. It is way harder for gnolls to keep a fighting force supplied, especially if the enemy is burning their own fields and any livestock they can’t take with them. Why would they pass up free meat? Even if they have a taboo against cannibalism unlike real hyenas, do humans really count as cannibalism for a gnoll? Not eating enemy corpses would be a huge handicap for them.

This, of course, tends to make most other cultures hate gnolls if they’ve fought them in recent memory, and resort to tactics like poisoning livestock or corpses, or infecting them with contagious diseases (disease resistant doesn’t mean disease immune, IRL spotted hyenas can still catch diseases like rinderpest). Unfortunately in gnoll culture that is considered a war crime.

Seriously though, hyenas are cool, gnolls are a really cool concept if you actually make them basically anthropomorphic hyenas, IDK if I have to eat my “Not A Furry” card over this.

[moonloredraws]

Have you ever considered putting together some kind of setting primer for Manala? It is so cool and everything you say about it seems like stuff I would love

I have, actually! At first I wanted to create a book on all of the elves, orcs and other homebrew races that I have in the setting, but then... the information just kept growing and growing and things are KIND of out of hand and I’d probably need a legit 100  page book MINIMUM to get most of my brain thoughts out in a coherent way, aaaand as much as I think of myself as a good writer I’d have to pass on this idea now.

 Since there’s way too much information to get down in a smaller book and I don’t really have the spoons or editing capacity to make a huge online pdf, everyone’s mostly going to have to settle on what I post online when the brain gremlin gets on the hamster wheel of ideas. I’ll be tagging world related posts with “The World of Manala” as best as I can so that’d be something to peruse through at a later date for more world building, and I’ll probably release the homebrew races in one of those “Fake Monster Manual Statblock Pages” kind of thing for free for people to use. 

For now though, there isn’t going to be any book, or guide to my homebrew world. 

HOWEVER HERE’S AN EXTRA TIDBIT THAT I POSTED TO MY TWITTER FOREVER AGO THAT’S ELF WORLDBUILDING AND LORE bc this stuff is fun and might give you ideas for your own D&D homebrews.

True Elves (so all apart from sea and wood elves) have this insatiable need to kill things called “The Hunt”. Most elves now want to appear as refined and cultured as possible and dive head-first into arts and whatnot to get themselves away from this. Eladrin and Shadar Kai are not bothered by The Hunt and gladly go on huge hunting parties where they end up devouring their prey as soon as it’s dead. Or... in the Shadar Kai’s case as soon as it’s immobilized. Yes, the Shadar Kai are SO unhinged that they literally start tearing into a creature while it’s still alive to eat the raw meat. High elves try and stay as far away from the actual hunting themselves lest they get overcome by it, but eating lil chunks of raw meat is very typical.Drow, since they mostly farm creatures in the underdark and have a largely vegetarian diet, don’t get affected by The Hunt as much, but when they do? They’re ALMOST as savage as the Eladrin and gorge themselves on their prey in the tunnels before dragging the rest back home (less to carry and you get energized, and must go away bc the underdark is dangerous)

Sea elves do not get affected by the Hunt at all. Wood elves get affected in a different way. They get excited to simply follow and track the prey, they get a thrill from seeing large predators suddenly overcome in panic and run from the skilled wood elves, and hunts can last WEEKS. 

Elves are weird and feral  in my world, they’re definitely not as refined as most depictions of the race, and it cracks me up that in the Shadowfell, the ELVES are the savage ones while the Shadow Orcs are the refined ones that prefer assassinations to brute force attacks.

[dicecast]

Blast to the Past: Why do people like Baldur’s Gate II

What did it Bring to the Table

If Baldur’s Gate is the first modern CRPG, Baldur’s Gate II is the first Bioware game.  Bioware gets a reputation for formulaic story writing, but if you look at BG, that doesn’t really prove to be the case.  BG II is where the Bioware Formula and story eccentric role-playing really take off.  Some of the new additions include

1) Romance story-lines with companions, something which would eventually become one of Bioware’s main selling points, BG II was the first RPG to have full romance lines, though they are really wonky compared to the current iteration 

2) Stronghold quests.  BGII introduces the idea of you getting a special location that you can fix up, run, and do various quests for, it all starts here

3) Companion quests, which you do for them and improve your relationship with them

4) Multiple Endings.  BG doesn’t really have variable endings, while BGII does, which reflect your play style

5) Companion banter.  Technically Baldur’s Gate had banter, but it was very occasionally and had no follow through, in BG II you have actual companion relationships growing over time

6) A steady act based plot, with actual story events changing the events of hte world 

Ok so that is what it brings to the table, so what makes BGII unique 

1) Like BG 1 its grounded in the D&D universe which means mechanics as character, deeper lore, and confidence in its setting

2) If you like sidequests and hubworlds, this is your game.  BGII is absolutely packed with shit to do, and variety is the name of the game.  Not only does the game have more sidequests than you can possibly imagine, many of these sidequests have so much story in them they could easily be the plot of a whole game.  And they have variety.  I mean just in the first act you can

Investigate an order of Fallen paladin who have started their own vigilante/fight club

Deal with a cult of blind people who worship beholders and to defeat their leader you need to access a dead god and save it from the personified rage of its betrayed worshipers 

Find a place where animals and nature have gone crazy and challenge the head druid to a druid off to claim the circle

Negotiate a Peace between a bunch of monster races and the local town

Defeat  Child Murdering gnome serial killer and his party of flashed skin monsters

Clear out a inter planar sphere full of extraplanar creatures which appeared in the city

After seeing a group of actors get kidnapped for pissing off an extra planar patron, follow them to Caceri the Red Prison to free them

Battle a Lich who is living in the back room of a tavern

Clear out some battle pits in the rear of a tavern

Find a teddy bear for the ghost of a child 

Help a paldin fix his marriage issues 

And that is just off the top of my head

3) Takes full advantage of Dungeons and Dragons.  Most Games based on D&D use the standard fantasy monsters, not so BG.  You will encounter almost everything in the 2nd edition playbook from Drow, to Mindflayers to Gods to Jinn, if you want a game that will illustrate the sheer amount of options D&D has to offer, BGII is probably your best choice 

4) Stuff.  I don’t say this lightly, but BGII is a packed game. While the storyline is pretty good, it isn’t anything to write home about, what really impresses you about this game is just how much is in it.  not just tones of monsters and quests, but also a massive amount of magic items, cool locations to visit, a main quests which is impressively long and devolved, some really challenging fights, a large number of companions and just the sheer amount of stuff to do in this game is mind boggling.  

5) Epic play:  No other RPG in history makes you feel more epic than BGII, especially with the Throne of Bhaal expansion pack, again partly due to the grounding of the D&D universe.  You might be powerful in Dragon Age or Mass Effect, but because of the structure of those games, you are always fighting enemies roughly scaled to you.  In BG, you started out as humble as they come, and by the end of Throne of Bhaal you are level 40, in a universe which usually tops out at 20.  Two 1/2 absolutely epic massive games deliver an experience no other RPG comes close to in terms of feeling accomplish, because of how small you start and how long it takes to advance, and how incredibly difficult htis game is.  

6) The Party Structure.  Especially when you reach mid level play, you really can engage in the mechanical variety and complexity that D&D offers, which few other RPGs can do.  Coupled with the variety of enemies and location, if you like controlling a whole party, this is the game for you 

[micahbhunter]

:D yay, a fellow DnD'er!! What do you play as, and do you have any artwork of them?

Yay! Hey there!

Sadly I don’t have any art of my characters, but I’m tempted to put a chart of all of them. I have so many that I play, since our group runs so many campaign’s and gives everyone a chance to DM (we actually just halted my campaign for now and just started a new one)

I guess I’ll list them from class, race and level

Teal'o Hopefield. D&D 5th Edition. Homebrew, Monster Hunter inspired. Tiefling, Bard. Level 13 College of Lore.

He’s my fat lovable Tiefling Bard who tries to solve everything with kindness and food. He’s probably my highest level character from my longest running campaign and I love him. I even have a Heroforged miniature of him.

I’m actually working on a more elaborate back story from him right now, which I’ll post later and I’m tempted to take a level in Cleric with Sune (Forgotten Realms goddess of love and beauty) as his deity, since our old group needed a cleric. Plus I love the idea of him being a traveling minstrel writing powerful love ballads and helping with match making after retiring from monster hunting lol

Madcap the Magekiller, also know as “Squishy”D&D 5th Edition. Homebrew. Myconid, Soulknife level 7? Seeker.

Another fave of mine from a heavy homebrew monster campaign a friend ran. I really can’t remember what level he got to? Maybe level 7? Because I know I got all my cool stuff for my class than. He started off as a regular old myconid (which are completely neutral and only speak telepathically) than got captured by a warlock and experimented on (slightly less natural and now can only live by absorbing magic) and was than sold to into slavery to goblins. To make a very long hilarious campaign story short ( I’ll tell more later if asked ;) ) he than met a troglodyte barbarian and a thri-kreen (think antro-mantis that likes to eat elves) ranger along the way and they traveled through the Underdark into an active volcano, fought some drow (whom the trog hit on the only princess while the Thri-Kreen ate her family), punted gnomes into lava, roasted some mind flayers and ate their brains, got stuck together while fighting a gibbering mouth, had the most amazing use for a swan boat ever and disturbed a gnome grave site after the trog peed on an grave marker and had to fight several very angry gnome spirits, than finally got to the end where they fought and sealed a volcano goddess into a silver snuff box. Also the trog is now a god/chosen one…flying mad with power somewhere in the world with Madcap, who the trog literally drove him insane through out the campaign doing stupid shit that got us all in trouble and turned him evil because of it. So now he wants to experiment on everything, like his former master did to him!….he also has a fire peytron that he hatched from an egg on top of the volcano that he rides. Lol that campaign was so insane! I wanna go back to it some day just to see what happens to those three.

Anacharis Delevanti, the Jasmine Bard Pathfinder 3.5 Homebrew, Legend of Zelda inspired.Merfolk. Another Bard (duh), level 7. Dervish Dancer.

Online campaign with some friends from my hometown and their buds on Skype. I play a posh, pompous pretty boy who was born to nobility with a jerk of a father who’s an Ambassador to the world’s capital, that didn’t like him out of his 14 brother and sister’s because he wasn’t “pure blooded”. He basically told his dad to fuck off and traveled to the capital to make a name for himself, which he did! He had a giant tea/poison empire that got destroyed after mysterious forces burned it all down (they killed his butler!) and started the campaign with basically nothing but what he could salvage from the wreckage. He’s a lot of fun to play because he’s so spoiled and flamboyant and the only male and neutral character in the group of good hearted females and is constantly bickering with the dirty wild and Russian dwarf raised ranger (my sister’s character).

Plus he’s one of my only characters that is asexual and aromantic, though very charismatic to all. Oh right and he’s also a belly dancer that sleeps with a night mask and a plush octopus names Mr. Scallops :D

The DM always starts the campaign with a fish joke at his expense lol.

Dross, aka Mithras Oakeneye, from the Salt Wolf Clan.D&D 5th Edition HomebrewGhostwise Halfling. Necro-Druid. Level 2. Circle of the Deathbloom.

One of my most serious and somber characters that I’m currently playing. Ghostwise Halflings are more tribal in nature and Dross lived in a very strict one that hated he practicings the “Old” and “Forbidden” ways. Basically a form of druidism and necromancy that made new plant life from the corpses of dead bodies. The only friend he had was the son of the head elder, who was also the most skilled Hunter that stood up for Dross. But when the clan faced an orc skirmish, his best friend died protecting him and Dross used all his power openly to save the clan. Without the elders son to protect him, the rest of the elders exiled him, stripping him of his former name (hence why he took the name Dross) and smashed his sacred clan item, which usually if a Ghostwise Halfling lost said item, they would have to go on a quest of atonement. He still has his but he used the pieces to turn them into a boulder opal stone pipe. He than made a flower from his former best friends remains and is sailing, with others, to a new land so he can plant it at an ancient tree, per his friends dying wish to see it.

He’s the most creepy character I’ve played. He doesn’t talk, only to one person at a time telepathically (Ghostwise powers, yo!) and is covered in his own eco system of mushrooms and moss and plants that are living on his arms and back. His eyes are a dull white but he can still see and his former reddish brown hair is now black from all the stuff living off him. He erie and smells of earth and loom. Plus probably hasn’t showered in like, 10 years lol

And that’s it! I have more characters from one-shots and small campaigns but those are my main four so far!

I’ll put up more later if people ask me lol and feel free to ask more about any of the one’s I listed and the campaigns their in!

Or tell me about yours. I love talking about D&D and character lore, so,much!!

[bedlamgames]

Q&A #99

Settle down with some relaxing tunes and your beverage of choice as we’re going to be here for awhile. 

Today we have the inspiration for Nethemirs, a system of mounts, the mysterious double edged sword of the fel tainting of ogres, WR chests, and a bunch more.

Anonymous said: Wasn't sure where to put an issue with No Haven - Futa's can't perform lesbian training. They are selectable for the assignment, but you then get the message 'You have selected an invalid target for this assignment.' This has been a recurring problem for several releases that I am aware of. I hope that feedback helps.

- That’s currently working as intended as well the idea is that the futa’s are all about their cocks. Saying that I have been thinking about changing how futa’s work to add some more options so that what exactly they have (outside of patron requested descriptions like the Keldan’s) is more specified. Which would be a good time to change that. 

crbdanger said: I know you can play as a lizardman by having one take over your camp, but is it possible to do this with Itzpa'ux? I've been trying to get him to overthrow me for 4 hours and it will always be someone else in the camp.

Anonymous said: Will Itzpa'ux Frozenclutch ever take over an encampment? His text suggests he'd be downright eager to do so, but I've never been able to get him to attempt it.

- Uniques won’t ever try to take over. Those with ambition like Itzpa’ux and Lacey prefer being the power behind the throne rather than working out in the open. 

Anonymous said: What served as an inspiration for you to introduce the race of Nethemir? For some races like draenei and their sub-species it is clear as day, for others it is harder but still possible to discern a source (I see where night goblins are coming from! :D ) But the nethemir(s?) are still a mistery to me. P.S. Do you consider a possibility of adding minotaurs or other, more 'classical' beastmen?

- Nethemir were originally due to wanting to have a male and female demonic race due to people being unhappy due to having succubi and not having incubi who at that time I wasn’t too interested in adding. Changed my mind on that front and now have something a lot more special in mind for them.

Leaving the out of game reasons aside they’re a mix of the idea of having a lowest rung of the demonic realms and a few others to give them some more flavour. 

Minotaurs are already a thing in WR and will be one of the one off advanced races in NH. As for ‘classical’ beastmen I’m happy having the horned ones filling that role. 

Anonymous said: Changed a human slave trough biomancy to be suitable for The Gift, but when i select again slaver training it says: this slave is unsuitable for the gift. I am sure i respected every requirement. Is this a bug?

- There’s some hidden requirements so no it’s not a bug. It also checks their current height and their breast size which can’t be too small or too big for two. 

Anonymous said: Dont know if this bug has been reported or not but when I try and disable the favored/unfavored race bonuses in options it does not and instead removes Dominant from my leader. Also speaking of Bonuses is Ogre supposed to have both a bonus and a penalty for fel tainted? Will it cancel each other out or is one weighted more than the other?

rafaelivri said: Noticed Ogres have Fel Tainted as both favoured and unfavoured trait. Need answers.

-Cheers for the spot. I think that might have been what I was thinking at the time, but now yeah it’s probably an oversight. Will change the unfavoured one to Sneaky. 

Anonymous said: NH: Would it be possible to have a mount system for the full customization? As I see it the mount is generated when you open the game or from the export file. This causes me to restart the game quite a bit to get the mount I want, also it could be seen as a kind of advanced attribute that also counts as 'Fleet' and/or 'Flying' depending on the mount. Also, good work on building NH I quite enjoy the game.

- Thank you! It’s been asked about before and is something I’ve considered for full custom as a way to get some other minor bonuses. It’s on the drawing board on my ‘feasible suggestions, but no real rush to add’ list.

Anonymous said: NH: Once you can use hypnotism to remove/add traits, would it be possible to add the 'reserved' and 'honorable' traits? It would make quite a bit of sense to hypnotise your slavers to be better at guard duty so you don't need to go and find slavers that are made for it. Also, it might just be an idea of mine, but could you expand upon the mantras for slavers so that they would be more inclined to a certain behaviour like 'finding guarding a pleasant? job', 'sense of servitude to you' or other

- When I add hypnotising slavers I’m sure having different ways to make them more likely to do what you say would definitely a thing.

Anonymous said: How many different ways are there to get the 'owned' reputation on slavers, and can it happen to the main character? Also, any ideas on expanding the crit for advanced dominance training? It seems like that would be a good way to start some debautchery

Anonymous said: So I've been trying to trigger a puppet leader for a while, but had no luck - just wondering if it was possible or not. I know certain leaders can acquire a second in command who starts with control of them but I've been looking todo it with a non-recruited character.

- Off the top of my head there’s the lamia on the coast and the succubus in the mountains. There’s also some that come in a pair like the draki in the city, and findable drow unique who can find a specific owned slave of her own. If that slave gets made a slaver they will continue the owned relationship.

Sure will add it to my notes to see if I can flesh that one out more.

For now the puppet leader status is the equivalent of you being owned. It’s currently just available at start, but I’d like to add more ways to get it like for example as a different outcome to you losing the leadership challenge.

Anonymous said: Is there a way to check the status of a slaves hypnotic mantras without ending the day and going through the menu during night activity? Also, and I haven't rechecked to make absolutely sure so I could be wrong, but seems to me it happened twice to me: You lose the ability to control your camp due to having planned them during the night if you then change your nightly activity to planting triggers.

Good shout, those really should be listed on the examine. Will also check that out.

doof-ex-machina said: Thanks for the previous answer about lore! When I was re-reading some of the racial descriptions I found I have forgotten some notions about races currently not presented in the game, like ratfolk and changelings. So, just curious: do you have any plans on adding them in future?  

- Yes absolutely. Though as I do want any race to be unique to NH they will need to wait for a commission. Last year I did a special double month where all the options were purely new races which included the ratfolk as one of them. The True-Angel won last time, and I’d like to do one of those again something this year. Saying that I do want to make sure that all the existing races have some kind of commission representation first which is why I haven’t done one of those yet.

Anonymous said: Hi, love the game. I think I've found two lategame bugs. 1: Winning the game by getting enough gold while your PC is away on an assignment removes "General orders" and "Change nightly activity" as options for the character. 2: Having too many clothes or armors and getting an additional item through crafting freezes the game.

- Glad you’re enjoying it! Cheers for the spots and will check them out.

nh-maikochan said: So this is probably well beyond the scope of RAGS, but just thought how cool it would be to export your slavers (or slaves) to file. They could then be imported into a new game through using something like Recruiter or Strong Right Hand, obviously with some limitations so you don't just have a camp full of clones. It would also allow people to share slavers with other people by uploading them.

- Crazily it’d actually be more easier to do in RAGS as I’d know how to go about it :D

I’m sure it’s also possible otherwise but it would be something I’d need to work out how to do exactly. It is something I’d like to do so you have a way to ‘save’ a slaver or more and then make a new encampment with them as like a new game plus. 

Anonymous said: I find part of the fun of whorelocks s finding new items any chance for an increased chest spawn rate? f your worried about balance just make cursed items more likely as well

- Wow, nice to know some people are still checking WR out :) I really should at the very least finish it to the point of the RAGS version sometime. Combination due to some of the reception the conversion got, getting NH updates out, and starting the NH conversion.  

Sure I’ll likely bump it up a bit when I come back to the game.

Anonymous said: On your game pages you list the version number followed by incomplete. I understand this is intended to mean the game is incomplete, but the number being below 1.0 already implies that, and I've found the added incomplete to instead imply the version is incomplete at first glance. there have been occurrences of me hopping on here and not downloading cause I figure the proper version isn't out yet. Consider removing the incomplete and letting the number tell us that, or using "game incomplete"

- On thinking about it you’re totally right. Updated both the NH and WR tumblr pages. 

Anonymous said: How do you set up a circle for self-biomancy?

- Self biomancy is one of the planned rewards for the biomancy assignment chain. Currently there’s just the first assignment of it in the game with a related reward, but there’s going to be several more before the conclusion. 

And to finish off some assorted bug reports:

Anonymous said: I've found a consistent issue when trying to import an exported character trait combination, where a character that has 2 unique slavers, via Recruiter and Strong Right Arm, instead gets neither. (In case the exact mix is important, futa Succubus Lamia with Hypnotic - Biomancer - Beautiful - Massive Breasts - Immense Cock - Harmony - Recruiter (Evangelina Harrington) - Strong Right Arm (Namaah the Meticulous) - Best of Both.) It does work if I continue on after export, but not if I import after.

Anonymous said: Bug: export on NH doesn't keep the data for the advanced positive traits 'Recruited' and 'Strong Right Arm'. When you load the export the settings of those 2 traits are lost somewhere. Don't know if they aren't included in the export itself or if they are loaded incorrectly.

nh-maikochan said: Playing on 0.863 and had an old bug crop up, relating again to Bimboborn slaves not being properly sold. This time it was a slave from a Male Perfidy assignment. Had a success on that assignment, and then critically bimbo trained the slave before handing them over, got a crit on the hand-over, got paid, and kept the slave.

Anonymous said: For M:Biomancy crits on feminization rather than doing two cock size reductions it instead does none, however it still adds feminine trait and description fluff as normal.

minimen456 said: I'd like to report a bug. A slaver completed Listening to Whispers mission with critical success, 3 Trading assignments were found. But only the first one appeared on Pick an assignment window

Anonymous said: New Perk Chosen: Dark Pact (Strength +0, Agility +0, Constitution +1, Intelligence +3) The corruption flows through your body easily dominating your every thought, warping your desires and even twisting your very memories to bring your degradation to exquisite levels. Error: : bad conditional expression in clause: Elf is not defined Error: : bad conditional expression in clause: Elf is not defined (part 1)

Your back arches in delight as your whole build shifts to better accommodate the weight of the newly perfected circular globes that stand proud and so obviously so upon your chest. They seem to defy gravity in their glory and your nipples are so erect that they ache with need to be pinched and played with. (You gain the Unnatural Assets perk) (part 2) Whorelocks on Twine

New Perk Chosen: Dark Pact (Strength +2, Agility +3, Constitution +2, Intelligence +0) Error: : bad conditional expression in clause: Elf is not defined Error: : bad conditional expression in clause: Elf is not defined The corruption flows through your body easily dominating your every thought, warping your desires and even twisting your very memories to bring your degradation to exquisite levels. (part 3) seems to happen whenever i take dark pact now

 - Thank you all for the spots, and will check them out.