#i love my little goblin druid so much. playing a druid was really really fun actually

[mars-ipan]

had an absurd amt of fun doodling cal last night so take the other dnd character i've been playing this semester (her campaign just ended </3). her name is pellet (full title sir pellet the rambunctious) she is a spores druid and she is Stinky (i love her dearly)

[wealmostaneckbeard]

Critical Role Plays Lancer (hypothetical)

What if the core cast of Critical Role played the table top Mecha role playing game Lancer? Here are the CR cast members paired with the most entertaining mechs for their style of play:

Travis Willingham in a HORUS Balor

In the major D&D campaigns Travis has shown a preference for melee combatants who engage with dark unsavory powers. The Balor is a huge mech that eats other mechs using nanite swarms. Those same nanites probably contain the consciousness of freedom fighters-turned-terrorists-turned-into-a-hive mind. It's a perfect match! If the Balor is equipped with an A.I. called a Non-Human Person then there is a possibility that Travis's pilot-character could get eaten by his own mech!

Laura Bailey in a Harrison Armory Barbarossa

Laura apparently likes long-range damage dealers and typically those are very delicate and agile characters. It would be intriguing to see how she'd handle the Barbarossa. The Barbarossa is a tanky behemoth armed with the APOCALYPSE RAIL, an anti-warship weapon that requires the user to stay still in order to charge. It would be very interesting to see if the pilot that Laura creates would fire into a melee scrum and potentially kill her allies to achieve victory. She could play around with the anxiety her pilot would experience while screaming "Get Clear of the Blast! Firing!" Or she could role play as someone totally ruthless who justifies friendly fire with the fact that dead pilots can be flash-cloned and mechs can be salvaged.

Marisha Ray in an IPS-N Tortuga

Marisha Ray is from Kentucky. The Tortuga has Shotguns. The synergy is naturally there, you guys. Joking aside, the Tortuga would give Marisha a lot of role flexibility, she'd be able to defend her friends from enemy advance or she could push into the fray headfirst. If her pilot is tech-savvy, she could even engage in some cyberwarfare which the Tortuga is kind-of good at. Plus the Tortuga comes with a really boring A.I. that could act as the straight man for whatever jokes Marisha's character would come up with.

Talesin Jaffey in an SSC Mourning Cloak

Mr. Jaffey would probably go with a homebrewed mech if given the choice. Since I cannot imagine the Eldritch Mechanism he would craft, I am forced to prescribe him a Mourning Cloak. It is one of the few mechs capable of teleporting, which it doesn't do very precisely. There is a slight chance that Talesin might roll poorly while determining teleport distance, causing his pilot and mech to go... someplace else... and only reappear after the scene is over. He and the game master could have a lot of fun with that.

Liam O'Brien in a HORUS Goblin (warning: robo-codpiece, or maybe you like that kind of thing, IDK)

In tactical table top action, Liam shows a propensity for complexity. And nothing is more complex than the little Goblin which contains more electronics within it than is physically possible. The Goblin can hack allies to make their systems better, hack enemy systems to make them much worse, and even hack reality to make Things happen. Liam could reprise some of his favorite shticks like "I'm just a little guy, give me uppies," and "This goblin is named Nott and is my best friend."

Ashley Johnson in a Harrison Armory Genghis

In the first two major D&D campaigns Ashley played melee damage dealers and then branched out into a wildfire druid in the third. So a striker type mech that plays with fire would be consistent with her previous choices. Enter the Genghis, the carefree pyromaniacs choice of mechanized chassis. The mech builds up heat from weapons like it's Krakatoa flamethrower or a GMS Thermal Lance and then releases it in a blistering-blinding heat cloud. Incendiary damage continues burning victims until they douse themselves so Ashley can just set and forget. Finally I'd love to see what kind of pilot Ashley would come up with who would use a mech that's just as terrifying as the Balor.

Sam Riegel in an SSC Swallowtail (oh gods... please excuse the terrible mspaint job... hopefully this looks funny in a good way)

In D&D, Sam seems to like playing as unconventional back-line characters. He's been a tricky bard, a sneaky goblin/halfling rogue, and most recently a literal healbot with rage issues. So I think the Swallowtail would be a good fit for him. It's less of a mech and more of a high quality holographic movie studio on legs. It can make simulated stunt doubles of allies, use it's cameras to focus in such excruciating detail that invisible subjects are revealed, and even turn itself and everyone nearby invisible so they don't mess up the film shoot. Sam's pilot character could be some kind of propagandist or movie set manager who is infuriated by how messy actual warfare is.

Finally, Last but not least:

Mathew Mercer in an IPS-N Lancaster

I would be automatically fascinated by Mr. Mercer's interpretation of galactic human society in the year 5016u and the journey he would take his players on. But if he was a player then it would be interesting to see him controlling a Lancaster, the apex of mobile field repair platforms. Anything bad that can happen to a mech (damage, burning, hacked, immobilized) can be undone by the reliable Lancaster and it's limited pool of resources. I'm confident Mercer would be able to manage those resources wisely although it would be funny if he didn't. Role playing as his pilot, we'd get to see Matt do his best futuristic tow truck operator impression, which I think would be a very gratifying experience.

[flowersdaggersviolasandblood]

Flower Girl

Name: Pero Ophiin (She/Her)

Race: Wood Half-Elf

Class: Druid (Circle of the Land)

Background: Outlander

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!

So to officially start our Out-of-ACT-1 phase, we'll go into Pero first. Technically, I did Admaer first, but that was mostly me just exploring mindlessly and seeing what it looked like. Once again, Pero decided to go above to reach Moonrise Towers. Because I unequipped Lae'zel from my party, I didn't get the prompt where she discovers the trail the Githyanki left behind to the monastery. Now, whether or not Lae'zel will stay in the party, who knows. But for now, she's still here.

After fighting some undead, we found a note referencing Wyll's father and his kidnapping to Moonrise Tower. On our way there, we met fucking Eliminster Aumar, a world famous Wizard who is apparently 3 centuries old!

Now, I'm no Forgotten Realm lore whore, but I have seen his name before when I was still playing D&D with friends. So seeing him in the game still got me giddy. The way he talks too is exceptionally great. I love that Larian really committed to him have an even older way of speaking compared to other characters in game. It made it so fun to watch him as he expressed his large appetite. Despite this, Eliminster is not here to serve as a cute cameo for the lore-knowers. Eliminster came to this neck of the woods to tell Gale that Mystra has a mission for him. In exchange for silencing the netherese void within him, she asks that he blows himself up when he reached the heart of the Absolutes' cult. Pero, and pretty much the majority of the camp, are appalled by this sudden suggestion by the literal goddess of magic.

Pero I would say recognizes the gods and their role in the world, only really paying much reverence to Silvanus and Chauntea, goddess of agriculture and plant cultivation. And knowing Mystra's involvement in Gale's situation, although she didn't at all ask him to do the actions he did in the past, is shocks Pero to her core that Mystra's only solution to not only Gale's condition but to the whole Absolute issue is to have him blow up. It left a sour taste in her mouth and it breaks her heart that Gale has solemnly accepted his fate.

Upon entering the Cursed Lands (that's what we'll call this area going forward. No I will not take a second of my time to find the proper name), we were greeted with a Goblin who asked if we were True Souls. Having learned her lesson the first time she was asked this, Pero goes along with the act of being a True Soul. Picking up a torch in one hand and following the little bugger, she was able to meet a small group of Absolute cultist who were looking for Minthara who would come with a particular lyre that would summon the guide. Fortunately, I was able to catch the Lyre because I didn't let her fall in the chasm lol.

Before we continue with this, I wanted to mention the companions for a moment. While lurking around in this shadowed land, Wyll and Karlach get another visit from Mizora. She returned back demanding that Wyll goes and rescue a captive fiend for her, something that wasn't part of the deal. However, Pero was able to sus out that Mizora is currently in a tight spot as she can't afford for Wyll to fail this mission. Because of this, Pero made a proposition in exchange of going forward with this plan. IF they were to get this Devil release, she too would release her hold of Wyll. Though Mizora agreed, with the fact that she's asking Wyll to perform something that was SUPPOSED to not be part of his contract, there might still be hope for an alternative way to get him out of the deal while also maybe not releasing the captive fiend. Especially if this ends up being another Karlach moment.

Shadowheart also expresses wonderment as she's not greatly affected by the shadow curse that plagues the Cursed Lands. This makes her believe that she's been blessed by Shar and that there must be more to the Dark Justiciars trip to Moonrise Towers.

Finally, Pero asked Halsin further about the shadow curse.

Halsin explains that the lands of the Cursed Lands was under the protection of a fey creature by the name of Thaniel and that Halsin hasn't felt their presence since the curse began. He begged that if Pero learned anything about the boy in the forest or even anything about the Shadowfell that she come find him immediately. Pero also asked Halsin if he was comfortable in her camp, and while he did have his opinions, he felt homey with the party. Even "HINTING" that there's a chance for him to relax and wind down once he has dealt with this shadow curse guilt, he's start to feel like himself again.

Pero also got another visit from her Dream Guardian, a visit that has gotten her worried. This time around, they're dressed down, looking a lot more like their appearance in the EA release, but they're starting to show weakness in their current state and starting to express some mild doubt. This causes Pero to even doubt her decision to not consume any parasite they found along the way, mostly giving them to Astarion since he's currently the only eager one in the party. We'll get back to this later.

Back to the Curse Lands, after playing the lyre, we meet the spiderman!

The party was able to travel a short distance with the guide, especially since he currently holds a magical source of light that keeps the darkness at a greater bay. However, the are ambushed by the Harpers who came to take that magical light from them. Pero opted to betray the Absolute cultist and help the Harper, gaining her respect and learning of the inn that they currently reside in.

While getting to the Last Light Inn, we encountered a horrible sight. Like, deadass it nearly made me cry. We found the corpses of the Tieflings we saved back at Emerald Grove. It wasn't every single Tiefling, but it was enough of them where, if you paid attention to who was who at the grove, you'd recognize at least one of them. Reaching the Last Light Inn, we finally meet Jaheira, a legendary Druid/Fighter character whom, if you played the previous Baldur's Gate games, she once looked like this :D

Now she's, reasonably, a much older Half-Elf now. As shown a long time ago in one of the Panels from Hell showings, Jaheira entangles Pero and was close to starting a fight since, regardless if Pero herself ate a tadpole, the parasite still recognize one of its own. Thanks to Pero's honesty and her knowing that Jaheira would be a great ally to have by her side, she truthfully came forward about her condition along with the artifact that's been protecting her and her friends. This along with one of the Tiefling kids, Mol, coming to her aid and the other Harpers expressing how she assisted them, Pero was able to gain the Harpers trust.

Jaheira explains her and the Harpers reason for coming out to the Cursed Lands, even explaining that they currently have a powerful spellcaster that has protected the area. She too is familiar with the figure, Ketheric, though this time around, it sounds like he's an undead as no matter what damage they dealt him, he would just get back up. Because we're not fully influenced by the parasite and have the artifact that protects them from the Absolute, Jaheira asks that Pero and the gang sneak into the Absolute's ranks, posing at a True Soul and deal a killing blow from the inside.

Before ending this, let's do some mild side stuff! So that strange cow you meet back at the Emerald Grove is here as well. Initially, I discovered that this cow was actually a slime-like creature who posed as a animal, wanting to live a life as a farm beast. While I was able to kill it...Dammon got killed after the fact because the MOTHERFUCKER DECIDED TO RUN INTO THE SHADOW CURSED LANDS AND CAME BACK AS AN UNDEAD THE STUPID FU-

Speaking of Dammon! Because we found him again, I immediately had him provide an upgrade to Karlach's infernal machine. Not only that, but he also provided a flaw Infernal Armor (heavy armor so I can't wear it) and said that they could provide more like it in the future. Pero was also able to speak with a few Tieflings who survived the attack and learned that not every Tiefling refugee was slaughtered, as some of them were kidnapped and sent to Moonrise Towers. Although Pero promises to go find these missing individuals, Pero is filled with mild guilt, Especially when Rolan starts placing blame of Pero for the reason why his friends/family got killed or kidnapped.

Pero also met Raphael again! Before going forward, Astarion asked Pero that if they happen to run into Raphael that he be there to speak with him. Pero was at first worried that Astarion has made his decision to take up Raphael on his deal, but this is actually the part that Pero learns about his scar since she didn't start a romance with him. Little side rant, but goddamn Larian really utilizing the fact that Astarion is one of the favored companion in BG3, because they didn't need to strip him down like that lmao. Now in all honesty, this half nudity isn't necessarily for fan service reasons since it relates to the scars on his back, and HOW ELSE are they gonna show it without taking his shirt off...BUT GODDAM-

Pero also finally got her dance with Wyll as she initially watched him perform alone before joining him. Pero rolled a Nat 1 on her performance, which sounds very on par for Pero lmao. This is also the part where Pero could establish a relationship with Wyll, but I decided for Pero to face away from him. Gotta keep the harem strong bby!

Before we end this chapter in Pero's story. We gotta get on Astarions ass again. Pero and Astarion have a brief conversation together about the parasite. Astarion believes that Pero has potential and that embracing the powers of the tadpole could further this. Astarion continues to bring back in the possibility that they could control the tadpole, which is something Pero discouraged...But then this man had to say this!

Now, from what Pero has seen and experienced: The dream Guardians' powers are seemingly wanning, probably due to the fact that she herself hasn't consumed a single parasite. The Tieflings were killed and some of them were kidnapped, and while that was out of her control, the guilt is getting to her. Then there's Pero's desire to just save her friends, not so much from the parasite itself, but from their own personal fuck ups. Wyll and his pact with Mizora, Gale and this netherese shard within him, Astarion and his relationship with Cazador, Karlach and this infernal machine that might even burn her to a crisp. All of this that has happened practically all at once for Pero is starting to weigh on her and her desire to simply help people is making things worse.

Then Astarion decided to, intentionally or not, play with this fact and use it against her by suggesting that these Mindflayer powers could potentially help her not only destroy the evil it's causing, but also help her friends and those around her. Now, she has no one else to look to for why this is a possible bad idea than Wyll. Wyll got himself into a pact all because HE wanted to help people so badly and didn't know where to start and how to be powerful enough to do it. And he never regretted ever getting into the pact. And while Pero should be able to ascertain that based on the experiences of her peers, she is a emotional person and has a bleeding heart.

The next time we find a parasite...She might be tempted to eat one.

[shimmerbeasts]

I played some more Baldur's Gate 3 and boy, did the plot move forward and fast! Probably, because I finally discovered the goblin camp. And funny enough, or well, not so surprisingly enough, Jinx likes this place way more than the grove. Mostly because her weird inklings - like her enjoyment of roasted dwarf - do not come across as weird. Plus she had a ton of fun torturing that druid. Which somehow earned her plenty of plus points with Lae'Zel while Gale and Wyll were less pleased.

Also, my little ranger got herself a nice new, more animal-themed outfit, which she clearly seems to like a lot more. I still adore how all the ranger garb is like warm tones of leather and soft cotton and fur and then you have her Death Stalker Mantle, which is this deep rich, crimson silk. The contrast between simple, earthy tones and practicality, and blood red, fancy cloak is amazing!

In the Goblin Camp, outside of torturing a prisoner for information, Jinx also underwent a strange whipping trial, which got her a permanent buff from the Goddess of Pain. And I love how Jinx spent all this time, basically insulting the whipping man. She basically kept intimidating him to hit harder and suggested they could trade places. I cannot get over what a masochist she is, and yet it feels so in character. Like of course, Jinx would enjoy both the receiving and the delivering of pain.

Meanwhile, storytellingwise, Jinx went through involuntary hell. Outside of being almost found by the Voice of the Absolute, which was one scary trip, the dream visitor showed up. I also really love the way, Thiefling demon eyes glow in that cut scene. Sadly I failed to make a good screenshot here, but oh, well.

However, what I really love is how my design of the dream visitor works with Jinx's design because I had something really specific in mind.

Basically, I made the dream visitor look as much as Vi as possible, and I love that when you put them next to each other, they look like they are related. Plus I think playing with the concept that Durge Jinx used to have a sister, namely Vi, who was killed way before the events of BG3 and whom Jinx cannot remember well, would explain why she trusts the dream visitor. Like "I don't know who you are, but I knew someone like you who I could depend on, and therefore, I feel like I can do the same here as well." We shall see if that trust is misplaced.

I also cannot get over how much of a twink Jinx is compared to the dream visitor. Like you put her next to Dream Visitor!Vi and it is just "Yes, hello, this is a Bhaalspawn and also she is a freaking toothpick!"

[kujakumai]

Sometimes I want to write a fic that’s just “Here’s Bakura running a proper dnd campaign for everyone” but the problem (besides the fact that there has to be 200 fanfics with this exact premise already) is that no amount of antics I personally can think up on my own will ever reach the chaos that occurs naturally in a dnd campaign. You really do need 3-5 different people with no common sense arguing over each other in a single room. 

anyway I still thought about it too much:

Yugi is a ranger (beastmaster) with a level or two of druid. Why isn’t he a mage, you ask? Because they had too many mages already and Yugi is good at every class and this way he gets a cute little friend! :) He will roll animal handling to pet everything and you can’t stop him. Pays so much attention to roleplay. Rolls a frankly statistically improbable number of natural 20s but that’s protagonists for you.

Atem and Yugi can’t really play at the same time but sometimes he guests with a wizard. He’s not very good at coming up with backstories and will just stare in blank confusion but Bakura figures out if you give him a mostly-premade character with a few key traits already outlined he will roleplay them with the skill and enthusiasm of a shakespearian lead. Some people just need a little push, y’know.

Anzu is a sorcerer (divine soul). It takes her 20 minutes to go from sweet innocent just-here-to-help healer to salty i-swear-to-god-stop-standing-in-the-aoe i-will-kill-you-myself healer.

Jonouchi is a Fighter (champion) (with critical hit feats) (lady luck don’t fail him now). Really into the game but new to this. Tries to do a fun character voice but forgets half the time. Bakura loves running for him because he will think of weird outside-the-box solutions and earnestly get into arguments with NPCs they have so much fun together.

Honda is a gunwizard (flavored and slightly homebrewed mostly-rogue with a magic item. he and Bakura worked it out. don’t worry about it.) 

Kaiba as previously discussed is a hyper-optimized combat sorlock who doesn’t want to be here and doesn’t understand how Yugi dragged him into this and is getting increasingly unnerved by Bakura.

Guest stars for one-shots and side campaigns:

Marik is just himself but a tiefling mage with maxed out charisma. His elaborate backstory about being a very talented and tragic exiled prince is almost as overwrought as the description of his outfit. Is he working through some things with this? It’s fine. He will cast Charm Person on every enemy and you can’t stop him.

Mokuba plays a tiny goblin rogue whose inventory consists entirely of bugs and knives

Shizuka guests is a light cleric that everyone expects to be all cute buffs-and-heals until she bashes a monster’s head in with a mace while Jonouchi cheers

[kitsune-kaos]

What's your favourite DND character that you've played? Tell us about them!

Ooo!!! 💖 So I started playing late last year, so I’ve only played 3 real thought out characters of my creation. On top of that tho, I’ve played 3 other one-off characters 😋 I’ve actually already typed out the story of my fave, Squeak, so I’m just gonna give a rundown of all the characters I’ve played, in order:

Marvel one-off:

Bobby/Iceman; Human(?) Tempest Sorcerer

(flavored to primarily use ice spells)

———

Halloween one-off:

Medli; Fairy Bard—College of Lore

(styled after a Majora’s Mask Lost Fairy with Navi’s personality)

———

Xmas one-off:

Sally; Drow Elf Cleric—Twilight Domain

(We were all coworkers in the party and I was HR)

———

First main campaign: Icespire

Pip (and his mouse, Squeak); Half-Orc Barbarian—Path of the Beast

A total sweetie; loved his friends more than anything. Died cause he really wanted that sword. #RipPip

———

Second main campaign: Ravnica

(I joined it in the middle; we probs won’t finish it)

Nyaniki; Tabaxi Monk—Way of the Drunken Fist + a dip into Rogue—Swashbuckler

(Not my official designs, but the only attempts I did)

He was a yakuza member who sought repentance only to accidentally meditate his way into Hell and the Abyss where he saw what his afterlife would be like. When he got back from the astral projection, he became an absolute drunk to forget what he experienced.

———

First main campaign (take 2): Icespire

Squeak; Mousefolk Druid—of Spores

(Used Goblin race stats/feats rather than making/finding a homebrew)

Here is a screenshot of my story of how Squeak the Druid came to be (rather than retyping it all haha)

Squeak is a lot of fun to play ☺️ he has -1 Charisma and a lot of strangers find him creepy, though those who get to know him find him cute and endearing…and odd lol.

He’s quite the tank (despite only being 2’ tall) going into this final battle, with an Armor Class of 19!! His scale armor grants him disadvantage on Stealth rolls, but he’s expert in Stealth anyways so it’s cool haha. His specialty is healing spells, AoE support (especially Entangle), and a few solid damage cantrips and spells (mainly Necrotic, Fire, and a little Poison and Radiant).

He doesn’t talk much to strangers, he just observes and wonders around. Though, he also loves to scamper around/behind the legs of his big friends. When one of his friends goes somewhere, he’s likely to follow out of pure curiosity, and just cause he enjoys following his friends.

———

(And as of yesterday, I finally figured out the class/background choice for my upcoming character!)

Third main campaign: Aedirn

(A 1-20 homebrew by my DM)

Samael/Azrael (name pending); Fallen Aasimar

Cleric—Order Domain + dip into Warlock—Hexblade

(I haven’t attempted drawing him, so here’s an edgy gouache self-portrait I did in high school haha)

He grew up as a Protector Aasimar wanting to join a group, known as The Inquisition, which hunts down and slays creatures labeled as “evil.” After a couple years, Sam/Ezra became a successful interrogator/torture specialist. His technique was to torture til the captive needed medical attention, then he’d patch them back up so that he could torture them more.

One day, out of nowhere, the Hexblade manifested and attached itself to Sam/Ezra. The dark energy from it infected Sam/Ezra, causing him to transform into a Fallen Aasimar. Between being Fallen and being the wielder of a/the Hexblade, Sam/Ezra became one of the top targets of The Inquisition, so he ran away and is now trying to hide and survive.

A big part of his journey will be relearning what “good” and “evil” mean, and how that differs from what The Inquisition preached. Also, as an Order Domain Cleric, he will have to rediscover what Order means to him.

We should be finishing Icespire this weekend, so ideally Samael/Azrael will make his debut next week 😁💕

[friththetraveller]

woah hay i forgot to post this !!

this was just gonna be like a fun doodle supplement for ease of explanation to the campaign im running right now but i let myself keep drawinnng so it ended up being like ... a full-on micro ethnography sketchbook found in a druid enclave’s library on a tribe of friendly goblins instead lol

somewhere down the line i might finish up a copy of these in my usual art style but this was good fun to mess about with, and an excuse to play with some nice fine liners id just bought <.<

i’ll waffle a little more under the cut to save your dashboards :L

an art !! hurrah !!

SO basically i have a subrace homebrew table in my giant folders of Stuff

of the goblinoids your basic gob has the most subraces, and one especially rare one is Woodwose! my D&D contains a heaping cup of nuance because original 70s D&D was a Smashy Game and i like worldbuilding, so not ALL goblins of any subraces are inherently evil, but woodwose are m u c h more likely to coexist with their neighbours than use theft and bonks on the head as a survival strategy than your average bunch of goblins. i think of them as being softly furred like a greyhound with little to no head hair, opposed to the standard goblin which may be more wiry or sparse in hair in a human-like pattern

SO this is what these guys are :’> Neverwinter Woods’ resident band of Woodwose; traders in hard to reach goods from deep in the woods - a pretty dangerous undertaking for those who dont know the mysterious forest well. AND their most prized trade goods are the products of the deep forest bees, especially their honey  - deep and bright like maple syrup, tangy and piney, surprisingly sharp and unsweetened. It makes the most excellent mead in the Savage Territories, if not the world. some herbs the bees collect from can make the honey a little psychoactive if you know what to look for ... the supply channels are narrow and their trust is hard to gain, and they trade for specialist goods they have difficulty crafting themselves - such as metal for prized weapons, special food or cloths, or raw materials their territory doesnt produce in high volumes.

they rehome these bees in large open hive rings as well as keeping an eye on local swarms out in the woods, they maintain a few permanent gardens near big populations but employ hidden slash and burn groves, and they keep the large and sturdy Cragfoot goats - descended from Hotenow Ibex - for work and milk, and then their bodies. materials at the end of their life. what meat they eat comes from some sparse hunting and occasional fishing in the web of rivers.

they live in little stone roundhouses, supplemented by stone-bottomed barns, tall wooden granaries and pit-fridges, tent lean-tos, often all ringed by stone banks, and use wooden vats and coil pots (some of the best potters pattern their work). they are usually adept at moving in treetops too, with networks of pegs and hidden ladders, climbing loops and platforms along trails and around houses

they mostly dress in rough cloth and leather, protection made of bone or wood and with their best warriors using traded mail for extra defence. jewellery is made of wood and bone, and some decorative furs are obtained by chance. the best of these goes to the chief and the shaman who co-ordinate the group. they decorate themselves and the outer walls of their structures with paints of white, green and grey.

ive REALLY grown to love these guys a lot i wanna draw them more and colour this art sometime ... here’s some art labels left to right top to bottom :’>

Page One

seasoned honey-hunter collecting honey from a wild hive

youngster with a large slab of honeycomb

a kept hive filling out the inside of one of the hive-rings

an empty hive-ring with a swarm-catching basket

mashing honeycomb through a mesh to collect the wax and honey ready to separate over heat

the gear of a honey-hunter or hive-tender; their body is rubbed in a coat of fresh ashes, arms and legs more wrapped than usual, they carry a smoke-torch to pacify the bees and a large knife to cut the wax , they wear mesh over their eyes and plug their nose to protect from bees and some of the smoke.

(all jars) a small lightly patterned jar, a much larger more decorated jar with fibre rope on the handles, a large dugout wooden vat, a patterned corked decanter or teapot with fibre string handle and cup.

Page Two

Cragfoot goat harnessed to a simple trundle cart made of a large carrying frame fitted with wheels

a shaman applying new paints to a young Woodwose before a new first for them (like a hunt, trade mission, bee-catching etc)

a senior shaman performing ritual divination

on farming duty, using a digging stick to move soil and a carrying frame to keep young babies safe

typical stone roundhouses with wooden rooves, with a rise and lip to let smoke out of the top

an empty carrying frame made of wood and woven fibres, no straps or wheels attached

using a carrying frame on their back

bribing a goat with fruits to shear its thick fur ready for summer

(tools) bone hooks, toggles, needles, awls, stoppers etc; stone chisel; stone hammer; fishing spear; knitting needles; wooden spoon; wooden digging stick

Page Three

skilled archer in an antler hat and mail skirt

spear-carrying warrior in a fur cape and mail skirt

band of happy hunters coming back with birds and hares

(weapons) stone spear, metal sword, metal machete, metal knife, bone-pointed darts and blowdart-tube

highly esteemed warrior, possibly a chief, wearing a fox skin and mail skirts, and carrying a metal sword

hunter setting up snare traps, showing illustrator how it works with a stick

scout with a blowdart-tube, having fun in the branches of a trail tree fitted with climbing loops and pegs

[candyradium]

Finally got around to typing up my Technoblade D&D build!!! I’ve been working on making these for a lot of the Dream SMP characters, and I thought it would be fun to have him in stat block format, so you too can throw c!Technoblade at your players as a final boss! (Disclaimer: I don’t know how accurate the CR level is, I just set it to 8 since the build is a lv8 build PC build.)

Image description and explanation/rambling below the cut!

[Image ID: A D&D stat block for Technoblade. It reads:

Technoblade

Medium humanoid (firbolg), Lawful Neutral

Armor Class: 18 (Half plate, defense fighting style)

Hit Points: 72 (8d12+24)

Speed: 40 ft.

STR: 18 (+4)

DEX: 14 (+2)

CON: 16 (+3)

INT: 14 (+2)

WIS: 13 (+1)

CHA: 6 (-2)

Saving Throws: Str +7, Con +6

Skills: Athletics +7, Intimidation +1, Perception +4, Survival +4

Damage Resistances: bludgeoning, piercing, slashing

Senses: passive Perception 14

Languages: Common, Elvish, Giant, Goblin

Challenge: 8 (3,900 XP)

Innate spellcasting. Technoblade's innate spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 12). He can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

1/short rest each: detect magic, disguise self

Speech of beast and leaf. Technoblade has the ability to communicate in a limited manner with beasts and plants. They can understand the meaning of his words, though he has no special ability to understand them in return. He has advantage on all Charisma checks he makes to influence them.

Powerful build. Technoblade counts as one size larger when determining his carrying capacity and the weight he can push, drag, or lift.

Unarmoured defense. When not wearing any armour, Technoblade's defense equals 15. He can use a shield and still gain this benefit.

Reckless. At the start of his turn, Technoblade can gain advantage on all melee weapon attack rolls he makes during that turn, but attack rolls against him have advantage until the start of his next turn.

Great weapon master. When Technoblade scores a critical hit with a melee weapon or reduces a creature to 0 hit points with one, he can make one melee weapon attack as a bonus action. Additionally, before Technoblade makes a melee weapon attack with a heavy weapon that he is proficient with, he can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, he adds +10 to the attack's damage.

Warrior of the Gods. If a spell, such as Raise Dead, has the sole effect of restoring Technoblade to life (but not undeath), the caster doesn't need material components to cast the spell on Technoblade.

Divine fury. While Technoblade is raging, the first creature he hits on each of his turns with a weapon attack takes extra necrotic damage equal to 1d6 + 3.

Action surge (1/rest). Technoblade takes one additional action on his turn.

Combat superiority (4/rest). Technoblade can apply the following maneuvers using his four superiority die (d8s):

Feinting attack: Technoblade expends one superiority die and uses a bonus action on his turn to feint, choosing one creature within 5 feet of his as his target. He has advantage on his next attack roll against that creature before the end of his turn. If that attack hits, add the superiority die to the attack's damage roll.

Menacing attack: When Technoblade hits a creature with a weapon attack, he can expend one superiority die to attempt to frighten the target. He adds the superiority die to the attack's damage roll, and the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, it is frightened of him until the end of his next turn.

Trip attack: When Technoblade hits a creature with a weapon attack, he can expend one superiority die to attempt to knock the target down. He adds the superiority die to the attack's damage roll, and if the target is Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw (DC 15). On a failed save, he knocks the target prone.ActionsHidden step (1/rest).

As a bonus action, Technoblade can magically turn invisible until the start of his next turn or until he attacks, makes a damage roll, or forces someone to make a saving throw.

Greatsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) slashing damage.

Heavy Crossbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, range 100/400 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d10 + 2) piercing damage.

Multiattack. Technoblade can make 2 weapon attacks.

Rage (4/day). As a bonus action, Technoblade enters a rage that lasts for 1 minute, ending early if knocked unconscious or if Technoblade's turn ends and he hasn't attacked a hostile creature since his last turn or taken damage since then. He can also end his rage on his turn as a bonus action. While raging, Technoblade deals +2 damage, has advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws, and has resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. Technoblade cannot cast spells during a rage.

End ID.]

Okay. Rambling time.

Holy SHIT I loved making this. I tend to play spellcasters or dex based characters, so it was a lot of fun to make a str character for once.

Stats first. As a barbarian/fighter and also as a force of nature, str is his highest stat. I could have made it 20, but I have a weird aversion to writing up characters with maxed out stats for some reason? Anyway, that’s what he has. He can always boost it if he takes another level in fighter. I also decided to give him pretty high intelligence and wisdom, which are rare in barbarian characters, since, y’know, their main point is to hit things very hard. But Techno is so, SO resourceful, and one of the main reasons that he’s so good at fighting is because he does his research and acquires the best items for it and puts himself in the right place at the right time. Hence the high-ish int. I feel a little bad making his charisma so low, but cha represents several things, most notably the ability to talk to people and force of personality. Also known as: how hard it is to be swayed or controlled, magically or otherwise. Remember what happened at the festival? That’s low charisma. Also I had to give him a low stat to balance the fact that he’s insanely good at so many fucking things. Why.

As a side note, when picking his proficiencies, I was using the homebrew rule that you can use your strength modifier when you roll for intimidation. So his Strength (Intimidation) check would actually have a +7, which is MUCH better than the Charisma (Intimidation) check of +1. Big strong characters are absolutely scary, damnit, and I will die on that hill.

Next up: race. I HAD to make him a firbolg. They’re connected with nature and are often portrayed with animalistic features (e.g. Caduceus Clay from Critical Role), and it means we can have both pig Techno and anime Techno, since firbolgs naturally have the disguise self spell. I just think that’s neat. They also get the ability to turn invisible! Which Techno has been doing a LOT recently! Sure, firbolgs can only do it for a turn, but it still fits.

Onto classes. Barbarian was a dead certain for Techno, honestly - his battle prowess, how he acts when he fights, it just fits so well. Even his use of potions - he gets a lot of buffs from them, increased damage and damage resistance being the two most notable and the two that best translate to D&D rage. Even speed potions - barbarians get +10ft movement speed at level 5. And barbarians are made for two-handed weapons, so obviously I HAD to give him a greatsword. The Orphan Obliterator is a deadly weapon. He also still favours swords even when axes are better in the newest version, so a greatsword was a must. Also I just really like greatswords.

I wavered a bit when picking a subclass, to be honest. I’m not really a big fan of any of the official subclasses (they don’t really fir my playstyle, which is why I homebrewed an entire new subclass for my barbarian character, but that’s a post for another day), but looking through, there were a few that could work. Originally, I picked Juggernaut - this was because of how he fought during the Dream battle, moving Dream around the arena into a more advantageous position for Techno, which is the Juggernaut’s 3rd level ability in a nutshell. They also can’t be knocked prone, and both of these things work INCREDIBLY well for skywars/bedwars style combat - staying put on this island and knocking off your opponents.

However, in the end, I decided to go with Zealot. It was inevitable after he REALLY started building his character on the Dream SMP, which is what this is mostly based on. Zealots have two main points: they follow a God, and it’s very, VERY hard to kill them.

Sound familiar?

Techno isn’t just a barbarian - he also has three levels of Battlemaster fighter. The barbarian/fighter combo is one of the best there is for sheer combat power (bested only, in my opinion, by barbarian/moon druid - those characters are actually unkillable) and the choice of Battlemaster specifically opened up so many options in combat. I had debated going with champion, just for the crit probability boost, but ultimately decided that Battlemaster was infinitely more fun. The three maneuvers were picked for a combination of reasons - they’re all incredibly useful in combat, but I also just thought they were thematically accurate and/or funny. I just had to give him Menacing Attack, because one of the few constants in Technoblade’s combat is people running the hell away from him during competitions. Feinting is for pure combat ability, and Trip is just. Really funny to me. It worked better when he was Juggernaut and literally couldn’t be knocked prone, but I just like the idea of someone using their full action to try and knock over this eight foot tall firbolg (they’re so fucking tall! This bitch is massive!) Technoblade just. Looking down at them before knocking them clean off of their feet with one swing of his Greatsword.

And finally, weapons and magical items. The magic ones didn’t actually make it onto the stat block, because I wanted it to be purely basic character building, but I absolutely had some ideas. Some of these were rolled on loot tables, some were completely homebrewed to fit Techno’s canon weapons. Guess which ones lmao.

magical heavy crossbow (use charge to fire 3 bolts simultaneously, using only one arrow, rolling an attack for each. Each target must be within 10ft of each other. 7 charges per day)

explosive bolts (10ft radius, double dice of the weapon it’s fired from, dex save)

mithral half-plate

ring of feather falling

trident of flight (attunement) (30ft swim and flight speed, 120ft flight speed when its raining)

upgraded cape of the mountebank (8 charges, 2 for misty step, 4 for dimension door) (yes it looks like his normal cape)

bag of holding

sword of life-stealing (attunement) (I don’t know why I added this except Techno’s canon sword would be VERY hard to homebrew and also he can do enough damage with a normal one so he could literally just have like a +2 or something. Do what you want)

[tyk-tyk-tyk]

(its iwontknock, i wish tumblr would let us send asks from second blogs) on my post you said your first d&d character was the lodger and i am SO curious about that!! can i ask more about that, like what his class was? id love to hear about your portrayal!

Well, I hope my fellow players don’t pay attention to this blog lol. If you are GO AWAY YOU NERDS Tw for child death and unethical experimentation juuuust in case, I know Knock-Knock has a lot of that regardless but if D&D folks see this too I want there to be a heads up

Looong post under the cut, adding tags in a sec

I’m actually kinda thrilled that you asked, we haven’t started the reboot yet, but hopefully we will soon! When I first started playing him, I was hella inexperienced and a little shy, so I didn’t quite get to fully do what I wanted with him & had a HORRIBLE backstory, but I’ll give a few details anyways. Then I’ll explain what I’m gonna do with his reboot haha

To also save some confusion, I named The Lodger “Bormot” as that’s what some of his voice files are called, it’s just a Russian name that means “Mumble” :)

I made him a half elf druid! It was a lot to tackle at first, but I really felt like it fit his character. Whereas druids are usually blessed by the Earth and such yadda yadda, I made it so that the Earth borderline cursed him by being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. He comes from this long line of elf intellectuals, and still does his worldology stuff out in the middle of nowhere. After he gets cursed though, his home starts dying and he pulls a “Well, this isn’t good!” and runs away and ends up meeting the party. Did I mention that he’s a half elf that doesn’t believe in magic bc of his sheltered life? More on that later. Some fun stuff that ended up happening is he literally met half plant people (my DM had no idea LOL) and Bormot proceeded to have a panic attack and casted Call Lightning by accident. We were like level 15 btw I came in LATE He also managed to talk down a dragon despite his low charisma score (I think I actually rolled well and my DM took pity on me, a new player)

The ‘rebooted’ version of him is still largely the same, a half elf druid, just with more of a fleshed out story. His Grandfather is kind of this disgraced elf who hates magic since he thinks his peers rely on it too much, they don’t use their braiiiiins. So he then raises Bormot’s (half elf) dad to reject magic, and continue their worldology science that’s Definitely A Real Science I Swear. Bormot’s dad gets married ofc and decides to live in the middle of nowhere where he can conduct his science in peace with his family. The wife gives birth to a beautiful baby girl shortly after! While on a hunting trip, Bormot’s dad shoots at something he thinks is a deer, but ends up being an old & weak God. Oops. So he does what any responsible scientist does and vivisects the thing before it dies, taking lots of samples of its blood. This kinda makes him lose his mind as now there’s real, physical evidence in front of him that higher powers and magic might be a pretty valid thing. So of course he does what any highly responsible father does and puts some zesty ichor (God Blood) into his child just to see what happens! She dies, unfortunately, as the powers that be of a god isn’t something a really tiny elf girl’s body can handle. The mother enters grief and becomes more overprotective. having no idea that her husband accidentally killed their child. She gives birth to Bormot a long while later. Daddy-o doesn’t want the wife to know about his experimentation since she’ll whine about MoRaLs and refuse to let him inject more blood into their son, so he keeps it a secret for as long as he can. When Bormot is older, he tries again, and it works! ... Sort of. Now the poor kid is having constant nightmares and hallucinations, and is having trouble both sleeping and meditating. He’s freaked out about the potential magic that he has, since his dad said that magic isn’t real, and his dad is definitely always right and doesn’t lie! He grows up like this his whole life. Bormot’s mom does actually end up finding out about it and gets into an argument with the dad, so the dad does what any responsible husband would do and kills her after it escalates. At least he feels guilty for this one. Her body is buried next to the sister’s near some pine trees so the roots will hopefully grow over them and conceal the bodies more. Bormot has no idea he even had a sister, and his dad lies and says that his mom left. When Bormot’s old enough to live on his own, his dad peaces out to conduct more research and tries to prolong his own death, even if he has a lot of years left. Bormot starts the game around when he leaves his house, wondering where his dad ran off to & wants to learn what the hell is up with his hallucinations and Not Real Magic.

I left out details since this was already getting so LONG, sorry mobile users Anyway the TLDR is Bormot’s dad makes a lot of bad decisions that leads to Bormot being a druid hermit that doesn’t believe in magic, and his journey with his friends is all about realizing that he’s more than his worldology ‘legacy’ and that magic is indeed real and it isn’t bad to embrace it. But we’ll see if he makes it to the end or dies to a goblin or something

Thanks for reading my self indulgent D&D rambles, I can give updates if anyone is ever curious about it later

[prince-liest]

I’m still totally riding the high of New D&D Campaign, so I’m gonna vent it out here by writing about my character and today’s awesome session. :D

Dramatis Personae:

Basil Greenbottle, played by me. Occupation: Tiefling spore druid, anxious doormat, party moral compass (attempted), being green.

Avokalis, occupation: Drunken wizard with few scruples.

Steve the Dwarf, occupation: Gruff barbarian with a soft spot for cute things.

Highlights:

Basil got abandoned in the woods as a kid, grew up there for a few years (hence the druidic connection), and eventually got adopted by a conman who used him to help run schemes until said conman went to prison and left Basil with some sketchy skills and a guilt complex the size of Saturn (which is what motivates him to adventure).

Basil’s convinced that he is unlikeable but at the same time tries very hard to get people to like him. Being social and socially anxious is not fun. He’s constantly trying to bribe people into liking him.

Steve’s gruffness and default dislike of Basil meant that Basil immediately dedicated himself to winning Steve over while actively expecting it not to work! While Steve originally rejected the offer of goodberry mushrooms, a timely Healing Word and a second offer of mushrooms (“Um - I’m sorry, I know you didn’t want these last time, but please - I promise they’ll help you. Sorry!”) combined with bonding over being from the same forest won him over.

(Basil also earlier knocked out a goblin coming at Steve, Steve was like "Thanks... not that I needed it :/" which prompted more apologies.)

That said, Basil is still convinced that he’s on thin ice, because Steve’s initial reaction to everyone is just... disdain. I really like how their character arcs match up - Steve’s is about learning that not all people are terrible, while Basil’s is about learning that Basil himself is not terrible.

He’s still a doormat, though, which combined hilariously with being the only party member not okay with killing people. They got ambushed by goblins, Basil is the only one who didn’t kill one with his final blow, and his subsequent suggestion that they tie it up as a hostage ended up with Avokalis and Steve peer pressuring him into standing behind a tree with his hands over his ears while they murdered the goblin.

(It bought the goblin enough time to trade information for his life, though, so little dude’s still alive, haha. And we as a party have way more useful info on the next excursion than we otherwise would have. Growth!)

Personal/Meta Notes

Flavoring spells with mushroom magic is very fun. Turning goodberries into sketchy mushrooms and faerie fire into ‘a ring of mushrooms grows around the area and spews fluorescent spores’ is just... I love it!

My solution for being a little bit nervous doing live RP over voice in D&D is pretty much to roleplay a character that is also anxious (significantly moreso than I am) so that it feels natural and in-character, and this tactic has worked splendidly. I had so much fun. Also learned that I’m good at stuttering since I already naturally talk so fast.

Our session went really productively! It was only two hours long, but we got through the social encounter, excursion prep, the battle, and deciding what to do afterwards all in that time. I’m not used to playing in groups where people are efficient at taking their turns and are very gung-ho about RPing and RP flavor, so I am just... so delighted. I loved this so much.

DM has basically everything purchased on DNDBeyond and is sharing it for the campaign characters, which is amazing.

DM also offered to 3D print a Hero Forge mini and let me use his paints for Basil once it’s safe re: the plague! :D :D :D HYPE.

[quasarden]

slams my fists on the ground. please post the paragraphs of character meta for your dnd au

Hi Anon! More than happy to oblige, rest of the characters are after the read more.

Reigen

Reigen is a rogue with a 1 level dip into Bard. I picked Swashbuckler because, let’s be honest, Reigen is all about 1v1 confrontations when he actually fights. Plus, with abilities that use your charisma against enemies to give yourself the upper hand - it suits him perfectly. The Bard multiclass is mostly for the use of inspiration die. Even in a high magic setting, Reigen shouldn’t rely much on magical aptitude. Being Rogue and a Half-Elf allows for a lot of skill proficiencies. Reigen focuses on Cha and Dex based skills, and probably has proficiency in insight given how good he is at reading people.

Adapting Reigen as a character is fairly straightforward too. He’s a Half-Elf, and estranged from the Elven (Mother’s side) of his family. He actually has very little working knowledge of his Elven and Fey heritage, but is able to bluff and embellish this heritage as a selling point for his services as the founder of the Spirits and Such Adventuring Company. Seasoning City is a majority human settlement, so his grandiose nature and charisma makes drumming up business simple.

He’s still a con-man by nature, and embellishes the causes of people’s problems that he solves. A tavern’s stores and ales mysteriously disappearing? Oh, the work of hungry and drunken spirits - make sure to leave an offering weekly at this shrine I have set up for you. When in reality it’s some goblins or kobolds that have dug a tunnel into the storerooms. That sort of thing, he still will always prefer to talk/negotiate a solution before violence.

Mob and Ritsu (+Dimple):

As a side note, I originally wanted to make all Espers sorcerers In this AU because that thematically fits with how Espers work originally. But for the sake of storytelling/party diversity, gonna play around a bit.

Mob is a Wild Magic Sorcerer. Since he already is a wellspring of chaotic energy that is at the risk of surging into strange outbursts at the drop of a hat. Wild Magic is a fun subclass, but often the surges don’t proc frequently enough - so in the hypothetical DM seat I would probably make them happen more often, and maybe make a custom table of results related to emotions. So in this setting Mob’s Wild Magic Surges are tied to emotions as well as random chance. 

Both Mob and Ritsu are Tieflings, born of human parents. The Kageyamas don’t mind at all, they love their sons and are entirely nonplussed about the whole thing really. Mob, even as a Tiefling, is unremarkable in appearance. Small nubby horns, no tail, slate-blue skin. Ritsu has more impressive horns.

This is what brings Mob to Reigen, much like the source material. Reigen’s embellishment of his Fey ancestry and own limited skills in Magic, makes Mob reach out to him to learn how to control his own powers. 

Ritsu is a Warlock, making a pact with the “Evil Spirit” (Fiend) Ekubo. The motivation is primarily the same as the source material, driven by the feelings of fear, self-loathing and jealousy of his brother’s powers. In exchange for helping awaken Ritsu’ abilities and lend him some of his own Power, Dimple gets to chill and try to manipulate Ritsu/Mob like he usually does. I picked Pact of the Chain because having Dimple as both Ritsu’s familiar (probably using the Quasit stat block) and the patron of the pact is hilarious and in character. 

Serizawa (And Claw):

Claw in this setting is Tiamat/Dragon Cult run by Touichirou. Who is a polymorphed Red Dragon, masquerading as a human Wizard until the time to strike. Because....  with the name Claw and the obsession with world domination and ruling commoners, it’s too easy. It writes itself. Claw still functions as the initial primary antagonists, terrorizing Seasoning City and the surrounding kingdoms. 

The Ultimate 5 would be collection of Half-Dragon lieutenants working under Touichirou:

Shibata - White (physical fighter, likes to hunt, not the brightest)

Shimazaki - Black (Smart, sadistic, enjoys playing with his enemies)

Minegishi - Green (Cunning, happy to manipulate others (plants) to do their work for them)

Hatori - Blue  (.....electricity) 

Serizawa - Gold (Odd one out, gentle when removed from manipulation/delusion, very powerful)

This is where things get a little tricky, because in a campaign I would stat Serizawa as the NPC/Antagonist that he originally was. But the half-dragon stat block is not balanced or meant to be used for PCs.

So with the intention of using player character options as a base, that’s how we get Variant Human Draconic Sorcerer (Gold) for Serizawa. Just with some very very very obvious Draconic bloodline features. Sorcerer fits well, since Serizawa functions as a foil to Mob in many ways. Being a variant human means access to a free feat, and picking Elemental Adept (Fire) goes great with the fire aligned Gold Draconic Sorcerer. Serizawa is a blaster who hits hard and ignores resistances.

Backstory beats are the same: fear of himself, his powers, and hurting others again caused him to lock himself away until Touichirou comes knocking. He is manipulated by Claw and further sinks into delusions about his “rehabilitation/reintegration” to justify the acts of terrors he commits in Claw’s name. After the World Domination Arc he joins the Spirits and Such Adventuring Company as a repentant dragon cultist (with the Sorcerer stat block), and seeks to help others with his powers.

Tome:

Tome is a friend of Mob’s and comes to idolize the adventuring work he does, and eventually Reigen. Artificers are basically the conspiracy theorists of the DnD world, and their abilities allow them to replicate thieves tools (Tome wishing to be like Reigen) and Alchemist allows for the throwing of potions (replicating the Salt Splash). Tome has an obsession with the extraplanar realms and spends her time trying to create something that will allow her to contact/visit them. 

So that’s a whole bunch of ideas I have bouncing around at the moment for this, I do have some concepts for Teru (either Tempest Cleric or Divine Soul Sorcerer), Shou (Draconic Sorcerer or Wildfire Druid UA) and some more characters as well. Thanks for asking about it anon!

[utilitycaster]

Class choices in actual plays (D&D and Pathfinder)

Only main PCs (no guests, but I do include multiple characters per player if they played more than one during the campaign)

This does include players who did not stay through the whole campaign or who joined midway through the campaign if they were considered part of the main party at some point

Only base classes, I’ll do a different post for multiclasses. All are D&D 5e except Rusty Quill Gaming; from what I can tell open-source Pathfinder does not have a warlock class but otherwise has the same base classes (including artificer)

Doesn’t include NADDPod which I know is very popular because I may listen to it one day and don’t want to spoil too much

Actual play shows/podcasts considered: Critical Role, both campaigns; Fantasy High; Escape from the Bloodkeep; The Unsleeping City; Tiny Heist; TAZ Balance; TAZ Graduation; Relics & Rarities; RQG up through episode 85 and not including Bertie’s sidequest

SPOILERS FOR CRITICAL ROLE C2, UNSLEEPING CITY, AND TINY HEIST: Nott/Veth, Misty/Rowan, and all of Rick Diggins’ personas are each counted as one character as they are the same person in a different body (and except for Nott and Veth, are the same race as well).

Number of characters considered: 57

Tied for first: Cleric and rogue with 8 each. This makes sense; it’s possible to have a party without them if you have an alternate healer or alternate stealthy/skilled person, but they’re difficult to replace. Props to Relics & Rarities, though, which had neither. Weirdly, the most common cleric domain is grave (to be fair, only with 2) and the most common rogue archetypes are swashbucklers and inquisitive, with 2 each as well, indicating that people really like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.

Tied for second: Barbarian and fighter with 6 each. People like to be big and hit things. Note that these four classes - Cleric, Rogue, Barbarian, and Fighter - account for basically half of all the actual play characters considered (28/57). Of the barbarians, half are berserkers, and of the fighters, half are champions (and Bertie probably would have been a Champion archetype...things get less equivalent on the subclass level from pathfinder to 5e).

Tied for third: Bard and druid with 5 each. This is weird to me, honestly, as druids are one of the hardest classes to play and bards aren’t that hard but are often seen as one of the weaker classes. I assumed that after cleric, the most popular casters would be one of the arcane heavy-hitters, but as a bard player I feel very validated here. All the bards except one started as college of lore, and that one (hi Fig) switched subclasses to lore. For druids, two are circle of the shepherd but as with clerics and rogues there was no clear favorite.

Tied for fourth: Monk, paladin, sorcerer, and wizard, with 3 each. No clear favorite with the monk subclasses, and two of the paladins are from pathfinder. For sorcerers, the favorite is draconic bloodline (which is weird to me because I would assume wild magic would be more popular), and two of the wizards are transmuters. I get why monk and paladin are a little less popular despite loving paladins - monks are specialized and paladins are sort of weird to play as a base class, particularly pre-oath for campaigns that start at first level (Ricky Matsui and all Unsleeping City characters began at 3rd level, and the two paladins in RQG both came in as mid-campaign characters) and I’m guessing sorcerer and wizard split the arcane glass cannon vote, even though they’re actually pretty different.

Tied for fifth: Artificer, ranger, and warlock, with 2 each. I’m a little surprised about warlocks, who I thought would be more popular as battle casters. Artificer and ranger make sense - hybrid classes are a specific taste, rangers prior to revised ranger were kind of underpowered, and artificer wasn’t in the main PHB and has gone through a lot of revisions. As a result it’s hard to tell what the artificer specialties are. Both the rangers are beastmasters, and both the warlocks are hexblades, because everyone loves the hexblade (I love the hexblade too but I just really want to see an archfey or celestial warlock).

And finally: we have one bloodhunter, which is understandable as it’s not released as a class in official D&D material and is still being revised. I was hoping it would be in the guide to wildemount, but I think the latest revision came out after the book would have gone to print (same with the cobalt soul subclass). I kind of hope they come out via Unearthed Arcana though so they’re at least semi-official 5e content.

Some fun facts:

There are three characters named variations of “Rick” among the 57 considered

Gender distribution: artificers, barbarians, clerics, druids, monks, paladins, rangers, and wizards are an equal or roughly equal male/female split. However, all the bards but one (Scanlan) are women, all the rogues but two (Nott and Sasha) are men, and all sorcerers, warlocks, and fighters are men. [note: Ally is nonbinary, but has played a woman and a man in Fantasy High and The Unsleeping City respectively. Molly (bloodhunter) is the only canon nb character; Nott/Veth is a female character played by a male player, all other characters, to my knowledge, have the same gender as their player and the player gender breakdown here is 37 characters played by men, 18 played by women, 2 played by a nb player]. Obviously this is a tiny sample size; also the individual player genders are somewhat more balanced (20 men, 14 women, 1 nb person) but all four of the players who are counted three times here are men (Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, Justin McElroy, Clint McElroy).

Race breakdown by class: is virtually impossible because I have no fucking clue what half the 5e races for the Dimension 20 characters are, thanks Brennan. However, some incomplete observations

Artificers are both human or what I think probably counts as human (bittyfolk from Tiny Heist)

there are two half-orc barbarians

there are two fairy bards which I believe is treated as an elf in Dimension 20

there are two human and two dwarf clerics but it’s otherwise all over the place

I have no idea what race was reskinned to make a drider or rat druid but anyway druids are all over the map

Four human fighters, the most popular race/class combo is real

also all the monks are human or human equivalent

paladins are all over the place too

half-elf and reskinned half-orc rangers, which does sort of fit the ranger archetype

two human rogues, two-ish goblin rogues (with gun), I have no idea what race ‘plastic toy’ is supposed to be (REDDIT IS GOING TO EAT YOUR ASS, BRENNAN) but there are two of them

no clear preference for sorcerers and warlocks (also is Pactwraith a revenant? I give up)

*12 days of Christmas Voice* two elf wizards

*still 12 days of Christmas Voice* AND A TIEFLI-I-ING BLO-ODHUNTER

[warsofasoiaf]

Have you played Fallout 4? What did you think of it?

Joseph Anderson had a phenomenal video on Fallout 4. Although it is enormous, so be careful. Overall, there were things to like and things not to like about Fallout 4. I’ll start with what I liked first. Throwing a cut in here because it’s long.

Combat in the first-person Fallout games has always been clunky, and enemy AI relatively largely consisted of straight charging or shooting from as maximum range as possible. Difficulty came primarily from enemy quantity, high damage output, or incredibly enemy hitpoints. The last of these has been a particular Bethesda problem in their games, with enemies being incredible damage sponges, making late-game fights a boring slog as you slowly whittle down their health while being impossible to damage in any meaningful capacity. While enemy variations aren’t nearly as high as the game’s fans would have you believe if you conceive of them as AI patterns, the AI activity did have some nice variations. Human enemies used cover, ghouls bobbed and weaved as you shot them, mole rats tried to ambush you. It’s got nothing on games with fully realized combat system, but it does make the combat that you do engage in much more enjoyable. 

All of the random crap you can pick up in a Bethesda game having a purpose is another positive. It is a true nuisance to find out when playing a game that I hit my encumbrance limit only to find out it’s because I’ve picked up a bunch of brooms, bowls, and other garbage accidentally while grabbing coin and other worthwhile treasures. Actually having these things mean an object is worthy mechanically, aside from level design; typewriters are useful as items as opposed to something that shows you that the ruined building you’re in was formerly a newspaper. As crafting is a big portion of the game, having these things provide component parts that you use for crafting on their own creates more utility in these elements of clutter which still require modeling, rendering, placement, etc. Now if you need aluminum, you’ll try to raid something like a cannery because it will have aluminum cans, which is an excellent way to create player-generated initiative. It also reinforces one of the primary themes of the game which is crafting and design, where even the trailers of the game suggest building as a key idea of the game. Certainly sensible for a post-apocalyptic game to focus on building a new society upon the ruins of the older one, and given what the game was trying to do with their four factions mechanic, it’s clear that this was their intent, and good job for trying to ensure that things factor back into their principal intent. 

Deathclaws look properly scary, the animations with Vault Boy were funny, there’s some pretty window dressing. The voice work wasn’t bad, the notable standout being Nick Valentine. The Brotherhood airship was an impressive visual. I had a little fun creating some basic settlements, particularly in Hangman’s Alley where I tried to create a network of suspended buildings and Spectacle Island where I had room to grant every prospective settler a shack. Bethesda clearly looked to create a game with mass market appeal, and I believe the metrics bears out that they succeeded in that regard. The robots in the USS Constitution quest were very funny, the writers were able to make the absolute ridiculousness of the situation work (curse you Weatherby Savings and Loan!) and framed it well as a comedic sidequest, with a final impressive visual if you side with the bots and the ship takes flight.

Now that this is out of the way, I think that a lot of what Fallout 4 did was not the right move. 

The quest design was particularly atrocious in this regard. Most of the radiant quests boiled them down to a simple formula - go to the dungeon, get to the final room where you need to either kill the boss or get an item from the boss chest, return. In this game though, the main story quests often were boiled down to just this simple formula. You need to find a doodad from a Courser to complete your teleporter? Go to the dungeon, kill the boss, recover the item. The Railroad needs you to help an escaped synth! Do it by going to the dungeon and getting to the final room. This really hampers the enjoyment of games because the expressiveness of the setting and elements of an RPG is often explored through quests. Quests are meant to get you out into the world and give you an objective, but they are also meant to connect you to the people that you’re dealing with. If every quest is boiled down to the same procedure, that hurts the immersion, but the bigger sin is that when you return you have another quest waiting for you. That robs the player of the sense of accomplishment because there is no permanent solution to problems, even for a minute. There is no different end-state for the player to see the transition from one to the other and feel accomplished that they were the ones who did it. Other RPG’s always understood this - a D&D game might have a party save a town investigate an illness dealing with a town, take out an evil druid who has charmed the wildlife into attacking supply and trade shipments, slay goblins who are raiding cattle, there are a lot of possibilities that might even feel samey: if you’re killing charmed dire wolves or goblin cattle thieves, you’re still going to the dungeon and fighting the boss, the usual flair and variation came from encounter design. After you’d do that though, the NPC’s might say “Hey, Mom is feeling better after you cured that disease, she’s starting to walk again,” “Hey, we were able to send a shipment of wine from the vineyards out to the capital, here’s some coin for the shipment as reward for your service,” or even just a simple “Hey, thanks for taking out those cattle thieves.” There’s a sense of accomplishment even if it’s a fleeting “we did a cool thing.” Computer RPG’s are tougher in this regard, part of the sense of accomplishment in tabletop gaming is also with your friends, it’s a shared activity, but usually in that the reward was some experience and character growth and going to new content. There isn’t new content here in Fallout 4 though, because of the samey quest design and lack of progression.

The conversational depth was also ruined, with so much of the voice choices mangled by the system of conversation they designed. By demanding a four-choice system, they limited themselves to always requiring four options which completely mangled interactivity. The previous menu design allowed for as many lines as you wanted, even if the choices were usually beads on a string. The depth and variation, however, are even lower than what could be found in games like Mass Effect 3, and the small word descriptions were often so inaccurate that it created a massive disconnect between myself the player and the Sole Survivor, because they weren’t saying what I thought they would be saying. That prevented me from feeling immersed, because a “Sarcastic” option could be a witty joke or a threat that sounds like it should come out of a bouncer. The character options were already limited, with Nate being a veteran and Nora being a lawyer, but this lack of depth prevents me from feeling the character even moreso than a scripted backstory. You get those in games, but being unable to predict how I’m reacting is something that kills character. 

Bethesda needs to end the “find (x) loved one” as a means to get people motivated to do a quest, or if they don’t want to rid themselves of that tool in their toolbox, they need to do a better job getting me to like them. More linear games can get away with this, but open world games encourage the sort of idle dicking around that doesn’t make any sense for a person who is attempting to find a family member. Morrowind did this much better, where your main task was to be an Imperial agent, and you were encouraged to join other factions and do quests as a means to establish a cover identity and get more acquainted with combat. Folks who didn’t usually ended up going to Hasphat Antabolius and getting their face kicked in by Snowy Granius. Here though, what sort of parent am I if instead of pursuing a lead to find my infant son I’m wandering over east because I saw what looked like a cool ruin, and I need XP to get my next perk (another gripe, perks that are simple percentage increases because they slow down advancement and make combat a slog if you don’t take them, depressing what should be a sense of accomplishment). By making us try to feel close with a character but by refusing to give us the players time with them, there is no sense of bonding. I felt more connection to James in Fallout 3 than I did for Sean, but even then, I felt more connection to him because he was voiced by Liam Neeson than because of any sense of fatherly affection. The same goes for the spouse and baby Sean, I feel little for them because I see them only a little. I know that I should care more, but I also know that I the player don’t because all that I was given is “you should care about them.” You need time to get to know characters in game, along with good writing and voicework. I like Nick because he quoted “The Raven” when seeing the Brotherhood airship and I thought that was excellent writing, I didn’t have any experiences with Sean to give me that same sense of bonding. 

They’ve also ruined the worldbuilding. The first-person Fallout games have always had a problem with this, with Fallout 3 recycling Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, and other iconic Fallout things into Washington D.C. Part of this is almost certainly the same reason that The Force Awakens was such a dull rehash of the plot of A New Hope, they wanted to establish some sort of continuity with a new director to not frighten off old fans who they relied on to provide a significant majority of the sales. The problem of course, is that this runs into significant continuity problems, now needing Vault 87 to have a strain of FEV and having a joint Vault-Tec/US Government experiment program there on the East Coast, so we can have Super Mutants. Jackson’s chameleon isn’t native to Washington D.C., but we need to have Deathclaws because they’re the iconic scary Fallout enemy, as opposed to creating something new with the local fauna, which is only made worse because they did do that with the yao guai formed from the American black bear (the black bear doesn’t typically range in the Chesapeake Basin near DC these days, but it’s close enough and given the loss of humans to force them back they could easily return to their old pre-human rangings). Some creatures are functions of the overall setting and can be global, ghouls are the big one here since radiation would be a global thing and fitting considering Fallout is a post-apocalypse specifically destroyed by nuclear war. Others though, are clearly mutated creatures and so they would be more localized. Centaurs and floaters were designed by FEV experiments and collared by Super Mutants, they should really only be around Super Mutants. Radscorpions shouldn’t be around, there would probably be instead be mutated spiders. Making things worse are that the monster designers do develop some excellent enemies when they think about it. Far Harbor has a mutant hermit crab that uses a truck as a shell (a lobster restaurant truck, which is passable enough for a visual joke even if it falls apart when you think about other trucks that they might use) and a monster that uses an angler lure that resembles a crafting component - these are good ideas but the developers needed to awkwardly shoehorn in iconic Fallout things that have no place there. This isn’t to say that I’m in love with a lot of Fallout’s worldbuilding, a lot of the stuff in Fallout 2 I found to be kind of dumb particularly the talking deathclaws, but as the series went on it took objects without meaning. The G.E.C.K in Fallout 3 was pretty much a magic recombinator which makes no sense as a technology in a world devastated by resource collapse, something similar can be said about the Sierra Madre vending machines. 

Fallout 4 though, had a lot of worldbuilding inconsistencies that really took an axe to the setting. The boy in the fridge outlasts the entire Great War, but apparently never needed to eat or drink water. This is, of course, stupid, because ghouls have always been shown to need to eat and drink - Fallout 1′s Necropolis section has a Water Chip but if you take it without finding an alternate source of clean water, the ghouls will die. Ghoul settler NPC’s that flock to your player-crafted towns require food and water. The entire thing was ruined from a complete lack of care, to build a quest where you reunite a lost boy with his still-alive ghoulified parents. I think this one bothers me not simply because of the egregious worldbuilding which isn’t even consistent in the very game it’s written it, but it’s done so frivolously for a boring escort quest. It feels scattershot, and that’s the problem I think with a lot of Fallout 4′s quests. They feel disconnected, like every writer worked in a cubicle without talking to any of the other writers. Same with things like the Lady in the Fog.

Are we done with that? Good, because now we’re going into the parts that I really dislike - the main quest and the factions. These are just awful. The developers took what folks really liked when it came to Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas (Fallout 1 did have interesting factions but they were largely self-contained, more towns than anything else) and completely botched it. New Vegas was the clear inspiration for these factions, with the four faction model of NCR, Legion, House, and Indepenedent meaning that there were four different ways to go forward into the future, so we get three factions that fight each other and a fourth more player friendly faction that roughly resembles the Independent Vegas where you can pick and choose which factions you bring in with you and which you get rid of. Thematically, this fits in with the core of the game, crafting is a big portion of what you do and so crafting what sort of world the Commonwealth would be is simply a logical extension of it. The factions aren’t presented well though. The Railroad are impossibly naive and don’t demonstrate any rougher edges like denying supplies to humans in order to fuel their synth effort, even though such a thing should be evident if the post-apocalypse of the Commonwealth is to be believed. The Institute are sinister murderers and replacers without bringing any of the advanced technology that could provide some benefit such as the gigantic orange gourd that can grow. So much of their kill-and-replace mentality seems to be done for no great overarching purpose. The Minutemen are basically blank, pretty much just a catch-all for the player-built settlements, though the player as the leader of the Minutemen ends up getting bossed around by Preston to the point of the faction rejecting your commands to proceed with the main quest, a significant problem with Bethesda factions where you are the leader but never get any actual sense of leadership. There doesn’t appear to be any addressing of the failures of the previous Minutemen whether that be the previous summit, or new problems such as settlements feuding with each other requiring the general to intervene and mediate. The Brotherhood come the closest to a real faction with advantages and drawbacks if you squint, they are feudal overlords with the firepower to fight Super Mutants and other mutated nasties, but also violently reject ghouls and synths as part of their violent dogma except for seemingly not caring when you bring a companion around or killing ghoul settlers in settlements they control. But even then, we don’t really see the Brotherhood providing protection to the settlements that they demand for food, the typical radiant quest to destroy a pack of feral ghouls or super mutants is directed from a Brotherhood quest giver to a randomly determined location, hardly a good way to illustrate whether or not the Brotherhood is actually protecting settlements that they administer. We see little change in the way of the Commonwealth save that certain factions are alive or not because the game needs to stay active in order to perform radiant quests, so not even the signature ending slideshows can give us the illusion of effects building off of our actions. This is contrary to the theme of building a better world in the Commonwealth because there is no building. 

Special notice must be given to the Nuka-World raiders because they show the big problems with the factions. You can be a Raider in Nuka-World but only after becoming the Overboss, which is fair enough. But you’re already a Minuteman, but the Minutemen don’t activate any kill-on-sight order and Preston still helps you out. The game is so terrified of people losing out on content that they make permanent consequences rare, and when you do something like order an attack, it can be rescinded automatically if one of your companions is there. As an Overboss, you do grunt work in the Commonwealth, and the factions get mad and pissy if you don’t give them things despite even if you only give one section of the park to one of the factions, that’s more than they got from Colter. It’s like they don’t exist until the player shows up, which is exactly how a lot of modern Bethesda character and faction building seems to be. While in most computer games a sort of uneasy status quo is the desired beginning state because it gives the protagonist the chance to make ripples while justifying the existence of a status that allows the player to change it, it has to be applied consistently. 

The main quest itself is silly. There’s a decent twist with Sean becoming Father that sort of works, which would have worked much better if we had actually gotten a chance to bond with him, although the continuity of everything gets wiggy quick. When he said that he looked over the world and saw nothing but despair, I was wondering if they were going to actually bring a big question up and a debate between Father and the Player, the idea of what worth the people on the surface have, but it goes nowhere, it’s a missed opportunity. The main quest is just a means to meet all four factions and it’s a barebones skeleton at best. There are some interesting concepts they try, but what they do often falls flat. They try to establish some sort of empathy for Kellogg in the memory den, but it’s lazy and cheap because he kidnaps a baby and wastes your spouse, a wasted effort of empathy only made worse when you get criticized for not showing any sympathy. Kellogg then shows up in Nick’s memory for one second and then that little story nugget is ignored. The half-baked nature of the story keeps being brought back up, which is a pity because we actually saw them do a competent job in Far Harbor. The Followers of Atom are crazy and they really aren’t sympathetic in any way, but some of the folks inside the sub aren’t so bad that it might prevent you from wanting to detonate the sub, or at least you might think enough that you look for another solution. DiMA did some monstrous things, and if you bring him to justice, the game actually takes the time to evaluate whether or not you helped out Far Harbor, with meaningful consequences being taken if you took the time to do the sidequests which imparts far more meaning to them. 

While there’s a lot of problems that show up in terms of binary completion, the question of whether to replace Tektus and turn the Children of Atom to a more moderate path is a good question, it actually gives a lot more merit to the Institute if they were ever to have been shown to enact the same level of care. That only makes the Fallout problems stand out more, because it shows that they were capable of it but didn’t. This isn’t the only missed opportunity, synths themselves become a big problem. The goal was to create a very paranoid feeling but it was so sorely under-utilized that I never grew suspicious of folks because the game never gave me enough incentive to be suspicious of them. I didn’t think that Bethesda made synths that would give you false information or ambush you because that would have been potentially missed content. The idea of whether you are a synth or not is clearly an attempt to give the game more depth than it is presenting. You’re not a synth, Father’s actions make no sense if you are one, and DiMA attempting to make you think you are is silly because you know you aren’t one.

I think the game would have been much better if they had dropped the notion of Fallout entirely. If they had instead looked to create an open-world post-apocalyptic game focusing on crafting and building towns, perhaps with an eventual goal state of building many towns, establishing transportation networks, and rebuilding a junkyard society as a decent place (or going full Mad Max Bartertown complete with a Thunderdome for players looking for an evil and over-the-top option). That might have been an interesting game for Bethesda to potentially develop a new IP, even contracting with smaller studios for those who wish to tell story-heavy games in the setting. Instead, they applied Fallout like a bad paint job, cobbling together weak RP elements and story that made the game feel like a hydra that couldn’t recognize it was one being with multiple heads, constantly tearing the other parts of itself to ribbons. 

If I wanted to further improve it, I think I would have instead made the spouse a synth. It would require some serious reworking, but I would have made it so that Sean did believe that synths were people, or that they were real enough that the difference was negligible, they had free will. During the initial grab, the Institute took the entire cryopod where Sean was, baby and parent both. They used Sean to create the next generation of synths, but something happened with the parent, and they died during defrost. Sean hates the Institute for what they did, but what happened was truly a medical complication, not malicious in any way. When he learns that the player character is active, he creates a synth programmed to believe they are the spouse. He believes that exposing who he really is to the surviving parent would be traumatic, and as he hears that the player character is thriving, he wants to give them a chance at a normal life, and to alleviate the loss that he had in his life with the loss of his own parents. So the spouse is sent to you, and for a long time, you and the spouse have no idea. You adventure together, you build settlements together, the game encourages you to have a good relationship. It doesn’t have to be hunky dory, and I’d argue it’s actually better if it’s not. Have the spouse be programmed with some rough experiences in the Wasteland, so they’re nervous, skittish, maybe even a little resentful that the player character snoozed their way through everything, but slowly rebuild the relationship. That way, when the quest eventually comes where you find the truth, the player character has to confront that reality. Then when you confront Sean, Sean explains himself and the player is given the choice to forgive him, be understanding but still angry, or be hugely pissed at the manipulation. That’s drama that uses the core theme of what synths are about with the whole kill-and-replace motif the Institute does. There’s a plot twist that batters the player, there’s one that’s just messy and gross and tough to reconcile. There’s one where the conclusion the player comes to is valid because it’s the player themselves deciding what the meaning of it is.

So overall, I see Fallout 4 as a bunch of missed opportunities and clumsy writing wrapped up in the popular shallow open-worlds that triple-A games end up having. 

Thanks for the question, Jackie.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[onacloudpine]

1, 11, 12, 13, n if u gm then 21 and 26 too 🤡 ✨

Thanks!!!

1.) Game Master, Player or both? Why? Both! I love to play, and DMing is also fun, but I usually don’t have enough time and energy to run games. I love to introduce new players to DnD though!

11.) Your first character. My very first character was a pregen human druid, who I named Tam Lin after the ballad that I was really into at the time. But the first character I made was... a human druid 😂 Riiva, I loved playing her, a little grumpy, with lot of social anxiety, but so much fun. (Picture was made by Emil, @/thecojsz on twitter.)

12.) Your favorite character. I love all of my main ones 😭 Besides Riiva, I really like playing Vivienne, who is my tiefling bard right now in our Curse of Strahd game, and these days I am also missing Fiona, my aasimar paladin, who just departed too early in another Strahd game... (Pictures by me.)

13.) Your most ridiculous character. It’s Scala, who went shopping to FantasYkea for a door, after he tried playing Shape of Water in his own bathroom, but the door broke. His biggest inspiration is the archfey bard, Hozier, and he is a water genasi bard. He lives with Kana’s character, Mr C. Sharp. (Collage by me, but I unfortunately do not remeber who drew the original art, although part of the watermark still shows up... This was never meant to be shared :’’D)

21.) Your favorite NPC and how the party reacted to him/her Uh, I don’t think I DM-ed enough for this 😭 But I really liked roleplaying Meepo in the Sunless Citadel, especially because my party was really enthusiastic about him and V even made a drawing of him! He’s a little kobold who was charged with taking care of a wyvern but he looses track of it, so he’s in some shit when the party meets him.

I also loved playing Hsing, who is a pseudodragon and also the sponsor of the quest in the Adventurer’s League module The Black Road. I just found it really fun that we have a non-humaniod who technically gives out the quest to the players, although Hsing doesn’t do any of the talking :D

26.) The craziest thing your players have ever done, and how it affected your plans.

I think the Sunless Citadel was my most defining DM experience so far... At one point one of the players gave a gobling some soap, and made it believe that it was poison, so that the goblin spies for them, but comes back to the party. The supporting roll was pretty good, so the goblin was pretty scared that it would die from eating soap! :D

Thanks for the questions! I really miss DMing now :D

[pooktales]

Dannox Does Dalaran

~45min read

In an alternate universe where Kael'thas is king...

*doom music* The quaint Legerdermain Lounge in Dalaran has an amateur comedy night. Dannox, a raunchy Night Elf druid, decides to do his standup routine. You may recognize Dannox from such things as my ‘My Life for My Prince’ fanfiction series. This post is LGBTQ+ friendly. It is also 18+ and NSFW because of dirty jokes. Enjoy!

...

Center stage at the Legerdermain Lounge in Dalaran. A dark-pearl skinned Night Elf man with deep green hair down to his waist strides up to take the Gnomish microphone device. He smiles well, as if he’s been laughing really hard back stage with the staff already. Charcoal gray t-shirt that looks soft. Light blue, linen slacks. Unless your eyes are playing tricks, there seems to be a shadow, or an outline through the thin fabric, of his bare hip underneath and the start of a muscular thigh. He moves again, and it’s gone. Dannox has spread hands and feet apart, bracing as if he’ll have to fight the strange mic device at first, but then cuts that out quickly since the mic is not a toy. Maybe no one noticed.

His joy is genuine and infectious. It’s hard not to smile along with him.

“Hey, so before I begin—Shit, you’d think I’d be used to a moon-white spotlight in the dark, being a Night Elf, but I’m just not. Can you offensive fuckers turn that off? Okay?” Dannox cackles and squints. He looks at his dark hands, while adjusting the mic up to his height. Dannox is magnetizing in a way. Fun to watch his sly mannerisms, his voice is rich.

A burst of embarrassed laughter in the back, while the Gnome techs actually accede to Dannox’s demand. It’s not a joke, they really are trying to fix the lights for him.

“So. Dalaran. The big D. Well, the other big D. They say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Which… is exactly what life is like with a big dick anyway...

“Sorry if you thought I couldn’t say that word—DICK. But back to my joke. You do one guy, or lady—I’m bi—and word gets around, right? So I make it everywhere.

“Oh, Dalaran. Come on, baby. I just got here and you’re turning me on. I’m lit for a magical city right now, and that is so wrong. Wow, what a weird fetish that would be…

“Seriously, though. This place cracks me up. A fancy, beautiful city. Perfectly designed. A beacon of hope. Holy, in a way. Floating majestically through the air. And plenty of massive, purple, phallic objects poking the sky.

“Hey, don’t get mad at me, I know it’s not really like that—that’s not why those spires are there. They have a real functionality. What got my mind dirty in the first place were all the snooty, Kirin’ Tor, tight arseholes walking up and down the streets… Yum.

Shocked, sort of uncomfortable laughter, but Dannox presses on, “Hey, don’t judge me. You guys been to the Underbelly, yet?” He shakes his head sorrowfully, “Don’t go down there. I mean, did you hear what it’s called? The Underbelly. That’s another low-key sex thing about Dalaran. This place is secretly very dirty, believe me. Underbelly. Do you know what’s under my belly? Well, on most nights. He’s not here right now.” Dannox uses a hand to shade his eyes, pretends to look around the room for someone. Loose laughter escapes from the back. “Sorry, that one was too easy. But yeah, so please don’t go down there. Just a lot of nasty fuckers like myself, flagging themselves to get jumped from behind by some rogue, and trying to wrestle each other—” Dannox starts laughing and cuts himself off, “All… oiled up. Well I was, anyway. Okay, I lied. I’ve been here before. Plenty of times.”

To a woman looking very serious and refusing to laugh in the front row, “Ma’am. Ma’am? I’m going to need you to loosen up tonight, okay? You’re in the hands of a professional tonight. I’m serious. I’m more serious than you are right now about that statement, do you know why? I’m fully trained at this, I was once a very successful stripper, I promise you.” Excited whistles and shouts, “I know smut and I’m proud of that, so tonight you have my express permission to laugh at my nasty jokes.

“But I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, ma’am, really I am. Please forgive me. Do you want a lap dance to make up for it? I’m being serious. Would that help? You don’t?

“Damn, I’m getting old then. Anyone here heard of Commando Dan, from Fel Candy? West side of Kezan? There must be a few Goblins in the house.”

A couple of gravelly cheers.

“Hoo, yeah! That’s me. Look how far I’ve fallen. I still got all my clothes on and people are even laughing.”

The blazing spotlight finally goes out, leaving Dannox in a darker room, offset by easy peach candlelight. Some polite applause for the lights being fixed. Then glasses click gently as people drink, begin to enjoy their food once more.

“Hey, great! I can see again, though you all really can’t see me, cause it’s dark. And your eyes have to adjust. Sucks to be you. Shout out to the other Night Elves in the house. The revolution begins now, by the way. Hail to the night, motherfuckers…”

Throaty laughter, especially from some kal’dorei men in the back.

Dannox looks down and snakes the microphone wire around the stand, to give himself space to move with it, “Anyway, I am definitely grateful for my chance at amateur night here in Dalaran.” He winks, “I intend to take the prize. I’m already a prize, I figured we’d go together.”

He turns a little to his left, sticks a hand in his pants pocket. Also, semi-sheer fabric confirmed. Nice.

“So. A little about me to start, other than my being an exceptional stripper once upon a time. Today? I’m a bum. A handsome bum, but my husband reminds me that still means I’m lazy and bum. I do nothing. This is my first thing that I’m doing, after a hiatus. Stripper in retirement. Never thought you’d see the day, right?” Dannox shrugs, grinning anew, “Actually, I do work hard, just not in the way you’d expect. I’m a trophy husband that got picked up years ago in a seedy strip club, I kid you not… stripping my clothes off in Kezan, which is a beautiful, nearly lawless Goblin Island, at least on the redlight district side. Anything goes on that side. A Blood Elf and a Night Elf can meet up, get it on, and have all kinds of adventures together in broad daylight. Faltheriel and I once had a dirty weekend that turned into… ten years now? And so I got picked up by the man who eventually became—who eventually would become—the Chief Advisor to King Kael’thas Sunstrider.

“The king? Yeah, we live in an alternate universe back home. It’s totally normal though, don’t worry. It’s like living in the suburbs—hardly anyone goes there, it’s nice cause it’s less expensive. We get crime, but it’s weirder suburbs, alt-universe crime. Like… whenever we read about Kael’thas’ new fun addictions and various shortcomings in the news. It was Murlocos Tacos last week. His daughter caught footage of him on the floor eating them while drunk or high, probably both cause it’s Kael’thas, and slurring every single thing he said. It came on all the scrying orbs. That was a rough week for him.”

Some snickers. “Yeah, you guys out here have dead, looted body Kael’thas at the end of a Quel’danas Isle dungeon. But back home, we pretty much have the Hearthstone Kael’thas which is way nicer. And funnier. I thought I’d get up here and do a Hearthstone Kael’thas impression but… yeah, he’d send some people over to kill me. He’s still an evil genius with bloodthirsty Sunfury agents. Also, ‘I’m coming doooown!’

“Haha… So worth it. Best part, when I get assassinated by Sunfury agents soon and I die, I’m totally going to ask my wife and husband to put that exact quote on my tombstone. That’ll really piss Kael off.

“And then, what is he even gonna do? Dig up my body and beat me some more?” Dannox looks down, casually kicks the wire for the mic out of his way, “Actually, I wouldn’t put it past that fel-addicted, demon-fucking motherfucker. He’s into everything.

“Anyway, we’re actually cool, me and Kael’thas. Don’t worry. And I truly like him. Since my husband works for Kael, and I am a druid after all—I heal. I heal a body good… I get to talk to Kael’thas himself sometimes if you can believe it. But it’s all so horrible. He’s a good-looking man and he knows that I’m bi. And I’m an awful person, generally. I guess that’s why Kael and I get along.”

Dannox walks to the other side of the stage, “And then Filthy—that’s my husband, don’t ask… Well, you will ask about my husband’s nickname, but I’m warning you not to, not yet, I’ll tell you later—Filthy is practically like Kael’s family at this point, so I always take my chance to rip on our lovely king. Also, Kael’s Blood Knights. Blood Knights are such easy targets. And mind you, in this alt universe, Azeroth is united, the factions are at peace, sorta. Kind of like how Dalaran lets everybody in, we’re sort of like that. Anyway, so we’re out in Netherstorm again with King Kael’thas, waiting on the Sunfury army to show up. Kael’thas looks right at me and he says, ‘I think I really like having a Night Elf man salute me, for a change.’

“And then I wink, ‘…It’s only natural, Kael’thas.’

“Hoo, boy. Poor Kael’thas. I think he was trying to be community-spirited. But, you know, he just tangled with the wrong Night Elf. Or, exactly the right one. Remember, I do like to get oiled-up first.”

More laughter.

“And then these soldiers of his, they’re taking a really long time to arrive. So one of the Blood Knights that’s already there, she turns to me. Everyone’s curious about the Night Elves, I suppose. Daphne goes… and I guess she didn’t let on yet that I’m unbelievably nasty, by some miracle. That’s what happens when hubby refuses to talk about home at work, I guess.

“Daphne asks me, ‘I heard you were the bane of Malfurion’s existence at one point.’

“I say, ‘Well, only for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time.’

Gasps, shocked laughter.

“See? I can keep it professional if I want to. And it’s fine, that’s another world leader I’m cool with. Malfurion and I go… way back. Right. In the back.

“Hey, no judgment. We all have our reasons for leaving the Emerald Dream. Am I right, fellow druids? Or, getting banned from it by a jealous wife. Hey, I’m calling her out, that wasn’t cool. She should know by now, everyone secretly loves Malfurion.

“Then I decided to have some fun with my husband Filthy—Faltheriel—who was standing right there next to me, turning beet-red, ‘What’s this, Faltheriel? You don’t look well, and your forehead is so warm. Maybe you’re coming down with something. Let’s go get you into bed, make you perfectly comfortable… then see what happens.’

“He didn’t like that. And in front of his employer, too. You see why he calls me a bum. I’m so good at being a trophy husband and jobless, it’s like I think everyone else needs to lose their job. Anyway, Faltheriel left to go do something else. Divorce me or something, I don’t remember what he said that afternoon. It’s not important.

“There was also a nice girl with them, a tall redhead named Tempest. I think she’s a retribution Paladin—Blood Knight, whatever. They all get to talking about old times, and she recalls how my husband used to be a zealot for Kael’thas, because he was. Or is. I’ll put it this way, ‘Kael’thas’ is the opposite of our safe word at home. It’s more Filthy’s trigger. Filthy gets one. One ‘Kael’thas’ every evening, and after that he has to stop. Don’t ask me how he works for the guy. I’m a sleaze, Faltheriel’s a fanboy, I guess. We struggle through this life together in our exciting marriage, putting up with all you muggles.

“I’m not joking with you. In person, Kael’thas is a very handsome man ontop of everything else and Faltheriel’s only mortal. Like I said, we have amazing, alt-universe Hearthstone Kael’thas. It’s a different outfit every hour with that guy. My favorite is nineties Kael’thas. He shows up with slicked-back blonde hair, neon shapes on his t-shirt and a giant cell phone, obsessing about how Arthas stole Jaina Proudmoore from him, and he needs revenge in time for the Dalaran Academy dance.

“Hey, I just remembered, you guys would have been there for all that Arthas in ripped stonewash jeans, shoving Kael’thas into a locker stuff. Beat, ba-beat, ba-ba-ba-beat, gooooo Dalaran!

“Anyway. Wow, I keep going off what I memorized. I need a minute.” Dannox winces laughter and pinches at the bridge of his nose, before calming down. “So. Faltheriel and his crew were all zealots back then, doing bad things for Kael’thas, but Faltheriel can get right in the danger zone till this day, remembering weird Kael’thas facts and lore, though I do love him. Tempest goes, ‘Look, I’m a Blood Knight and Faltheriel’s intense obsession over Kael’thas even makes me uncomfortable. Dannox, are you sure everything is alright?’

“I go, ‘Eh. It’s all about energy, where you direct it. Faltheriel can revv up his cute little engine all day if he wants to, as long as, at the end of that day, I’m the one who directly benefits.’

Daphne, as Tempest is laughing, ‘Uh… what?’

“I say, ‘It’s called husband physics.’

“And it is, it really is! That’s how you manage a marriage with a fanboy. I’ll only worry if Faltheriel comes home cosplaying and threatens that we need to take an emergency family vacay to Blizzcon. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But when your husband likes to dress up as a succubus… you keep an eye on it. He’s going as Drag Queen Azshara next year, by the way. And there’s rumor of an ‘It’s Raining Men’ act to go with it, but Rachel and I are mostly letting Filthy have his alone time with the costume and his music for now. We’re all really excited. Albeit—each in his own way.

“Later that day, with the Blood Knights you know--the Sunfury finally arrive and it’s time for us to get moving, mount up to go someplace. I’m on my nightsaber. They’re staring at my beast. You would… I say to Daphne, ‘Let’s have somebody ride up front, and then the other person can climb on the back. Don’t worry, Faltheriel and I do it all the time where we’re from.’

“This guy Sunthraze goes, ‘In Darnassus? Or do you mean Silvermoon where Faltheriel’s from?’

“I say, ‘Wait, my wife wouldn’t want me to finish that joke.’

“Sometimes, Faltheriel does really get annoyed with me when I make those kinds of jokes with his colleagues. I mean, they are his coworkers after all. I guess that’s unkind in a way. But that’s also okay because my husband and I like to fight. Or, that other thing that begins with the letter ‘F’.

“That one too obvious? I can be subtle as well. I’m a centaur if you don’t think about that too much.”

“Now, please ask yourselves... Why was that not put in as one of the male Night Elf pickup lines? It’s excellent.”

Dannox then kindly leans down to the first row again, “While we’re on the topic, ma’am, I see that you’re smiling now. I knew you would. But I wanted to say, I am very sorry that you didn’t want that lap dance before. These are my emergency tear-away pants, as well. They’re not just awesome fitted slacks. But I need you to know, it’s too late now. Like the Goblins say, ‘If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it!’ he snaps, pretending to have real attitude.

He straightens up again, as the laughter dies down, “…Well, in my case, a giant cock ring.”

A raucous reaction spreads from the cheap seats. The laughter makes it hard to hear the next part, as the woman begins talking and gesturing up at him, “… Huh? Haha!” Dannox leans halfway to listen to her, then attempts to stop his own laughter, “After the show? Really?! Wow, you’ve come a long way. Alright, I give in. Ladies and gentlemen, please clap for Offended Lady, I’ve got a convert! Welcome to the dark side. But you’ll have to run fast after the lap dance, my wife’s here somewhere. Thanks, Offended Lady, I’m so glad we’re cool now. Come find me on Tumblr later, too. I can’t follow you back, but I promise you won’t regret it.

“Well, back to me and my husband. Sometimes, I have to be reminded that I’ve got one... Oh! So Faltheriel and me arguing and fighting--it’s alright, really…

“I try not to pull on Faltheriel’s hair unless I mean it.

“Actually, when we first met, it was better. When we first met, I told Faltheriel I was a baker. Go on, you can ask me, ‘Why is that?’

“Well, you don’t let strange men glaze your buns, obviously.

“I really love that joke. I tell that one a lot. You know, usually, there’s an upstanding person nearby—not you, ma’am. We already addressed that, like I said, and you kindly booked me tonight from 12-12:07am,” Dannox gives a sly wink and checks his watch, “But usually it’s someone with these excellent manners who warns that I’m a horrible person. Like I didn’t know that already, but it’s their duty to glare up here, gasp all shocked and say that. Do you know what I tell people who act like that? After I tell the joke, ‘You don’t let strange men glaze your buns, obviously.’ Then they say, ‘Dannox, you are a horrible person.’

“I clarify, ‘No… I’m a baker.’

“Very innocent, just like that. Even funnier when, truth is, I do know how to bake. But I only let Faltheriel find that out years later. I waited until after we got engaged before I baked him anything. I was far more serious about the success of that baker joke than our relationship.

“But it’s true, Faltheriel and I like to fight. We always have. Though, mostly, it’s wrestling. Before bedtime. Aaaaand in this corner…” Dannox raises his voice, as if about to call a wrestling match, “they lived happily ever after.

“Also, now that we’ve been married for about a decade, Faltheriel doesn’t always listen to me. Then again, I don’t always face him while we talk… It’s win-win.

“Though, being totally serious now—You know, when I first met Faltheriel, he wasn’t facing me. Do you know how goddam gorgeous you have to be to look like someone’s soul mate from behind?!

“And I’m a good husband to him. I truly am. I make sure that Filthy never falls in the shower, whether he appreciates it or not.

“You know, I once lied to Faltheriel and told him it was still dark outside. He couldn’t get out from under me anyways.

“Another thing, Faltheriel and I don’t always communicate well. Sometimes, we just grunt and slap each other’s thighs a lot.” Dannox, now raising his voice over the laughter, “Is that weird? Maybe other couples don’t do that as much, I don’t know.

“Being married to such a beautiful man is hard. God, it gets so hard. Sorry—was that a low blow? I’ll put it away now. Though it’s been going on for so long, I’ll have to roll it up, first.

“Anyway, sometimes I say this thing to my husband when it’s bedtime and he’s not in the mood. I totally respect him for that, I do… But I say to him, ‘Filthy--’ I guess that’s his pet name when he’s being adorable, or really irritating. Both a fun challenge for me. I realize I keep switching in and out of that, I tell him, ‘Filthy, I don’t mind if you’re too tired. You can sleep, honey. Just lie on your stomach, and loosen up first.’”

Dannox hangs in there, through a mixture of booing and hard laughter, “See? It’s so simple! It is so simple to make a good marriage, you guys. A dirty, dirty marriage with a lovely woman who puts up with us and a man who used to work for the Burning Legion, and who can END you if your jokes ever fail to land.

“I can tell you, if you don’t like these jokes, that’s fine. You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve already suffered enough. It was bombs over Shadowmoon Valley while I honed this joke routine in my house, I promise.

“By the way, don’t try that at home. Don���t try my sense of humor at your beloved home, not unless you enjoy having done to you what my husband used to do to his prisoners-slash-victims. Well, he still does it. But I-I get out sometimes.” Dannox rolls his big shoulder, pretends to twitch, “Like tonight.

“But I do find Faltheriel irresistible, so I admit that I keep trying to get into trouble with him. This one time, Faltheriel was really fussing at me, he really wanted me to leave him alone so he could read. Now I don’t know if I’m extra horny because I’m a big Night Elf compared to him—he’s a Blood Elf, I hope the Kael’thas thing gave that away—or because I’m just, well, totally nasty all the time, so much so, I like to give my husband a nickname that stops him from forgetting that I’m a dirty alpha male in this thing and I own his glorious ass… Told you I’d explain later in the show and that you didn’t want to know… But anyway, one evening while Filthy was downstairs reading and ignoring me like that, I just decided to compromise.

“I say to him, ‘Fine, let’s play a game to pass the time. I’ll be good if you’re good.’ He’s sensible, so he says, ‘Deal. What would you like to play, darling?’ He goes for the checkerboard. Then I said, ‘Faltheriel, this game I have is so fun. This is so easy. I’ll love it. It goes like this. Can you bend over the couch and not move for a half hour?’ He’s a sweetie and too trusting at times, so he actually does it. Then I say, ‘Also, this is one of those games where you can’t say ‘No.’

“I got slapped for that. It’s really bad when another man slaps you to defend his honor. And of course, truth be told… I liked it. Poor Faltheriel.

“Elune above, my Blood Elf husband is cute! He is so yummy. Fun fact, Faltheriel only wanted a sweet little hug last night, but in for a penny, in for a pounding.

“Though, the Cenarion Circle is probably going to come back into our lives, I think, to take Filthy away and try to find him a forever home.

“I mean, a new home with a good mummy and daddy. And walks in the park that don’t involve shagging behind the trees. And no bear-bottom spankings. Horny druid husbands are the worst, I should know.

“On another night, I told Faltheriel my balls were lonely. He brought his over to play.

“Awww, so sweet of him. Also, Faltheriel is really good at sex, but I would never tell him that. I just ask him to keep trying.

“Another thing about us, I almost forgot. When I first met Faltheriel, I got naked fast. He didn’t like it at the beginning, but he loved it in the end.

“And once, I told Faltheriel I was a piñata so that he wouldn’t stop beating me with it.

“And the most sex Faltheriel and I ever had was on the same night our wife had our first child, our twins. She was… SO mad at us.

“You know, when our wife had the twins—they’re fraternal, one Night Elf, one Blood Elf—Faltheriel forgot for a moment and went wild, accused Rachel of cheating. It was then that I reminded my husband that, um… I have sex with our wife too.

“Uh-huh. That’s right. That’s what you get when you jump to conclusions about your good spouse, Faltheriel.

“He’s not here tonight, actually. Faltheriel couldn’t make it. That’s why I’m really ripping on him, I guess. But my wife’s here, I think I said that earlier. Hi Rach, say hi. She’s a knockout, isn’t she? She’s so sweet and so kind, and hopefully, this wonderful Human woman won’t lock me in my cage later…

“And you know another thing, three-way marriages are interesting. They are so interesting. Women change, their appetites grow or something and you adapt in weird ways. Our wife gets so horny at times, it really does take the two of us. Wow, she looks mad at me now. Guess I shouldn’t have said that. But, then again, when she holds out, it’s like the world is coming to an end for us men.

“Just kidding, Faltheriel and I are perfectly fine.

“Sorry hun, it’s true. You shouldn’tve got us that set of matching spoons for the holidays. It’s just too bad. That cheap gift you got was like homo-erotic Kaja-Cola, it gave us ideas.

“I’m an idiot, I apologize. Anyway, this one time… the best stories start that way, have you noticed? So this one time when Rachel wasn’t there, Faltheriel came straight upstairs after work and found me in bed with another woman. God, he’s so adorable… After I put the mirror back and slipped the pink scrunchie from his soft, soft, ponytail, he calmed down and it was an amazing night.

“Seriously, though. My husband Faltheriel is so man-pretty, we only realized our wife had none of her own lingerie like… a week ago? And we’d been together for ten years? Yeah, it’s like that.

“So Faltheriel buys me my own lingerie, for once. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like any of the fuzzy, silky, or bright colored stuff he brought home. Eh, the see-through stuff was okay. The really super-short, see through stuff I was already poking out of, that we could do each other in immediately—that, I liked. Nice guy, but he really wasted his money on me, I tell ya.

“Alright, last joke. It’s June and I know everyone’s hot in here. You’re all ready to finish up and call it a night. So I’ll try and end on a respectable note.

“It isn’t June? Well, I know that, I don’t care. Listen to the joke, goddammit.

“Ahhh, my wonderful husband, Filthy,” to rising, expectant laughter, “Faltheriel ‘Filthy’ Darkweaver has the best ass in the world. It feels like I’m fucking a magical rainbow in there. Was that one too obvious, because it’s Pride Month? Did you know that big, horny, sweaty, well-hung unicorns fuck rainbows? Nice image. Yeah, enjoy your Pride Month.”

Dannox nervously puts the microphone back and waves once, while people scream laughter. “If you liked my set, please tell the very nice Legerdemain Lounge staff. I’d love to come back. Oh, I never said my whole name. I’m Dannox Silvermoon Darkweaver. That’s right. That was my real last name, I was a dream come true when my Blood Elf husband finally found me and saved me. For me, every day is Pride Month because I’m so proud of my family and so happy to be here these days. It wasn’t always like that.

“And Rachel honey, I’m so grateful to you for loving me and letting me be me. I’m coming straight home to you baby… after this one lap dance,” an anxious laugh, as Dannox checks his watch, “Uh. I want to thank you all for a lovely show. Night, everybody.”

More whistles and another round of cheers. Then, the Night Elf man confidently jogs off-stage.

…

Aww, thanks for reading this far if you made it!

Were you in the audience? What do you have to shout out, or ask Dannox after his set? He might respond.

@elendeare

[silvermoonharry]

Tell me about your top 5 OC’s

Thank you for asking! ^_^ It’s super long, with pictures included so I’m keeping it under this read under! It was super tough just choosing 5.

Beyhana

Night Blood Elf Demon hunter

Bio: 

Neyhana Beyhana Felmoon was one of my first RP characters on WoW. My first character to come to WRA after I migrated from Aggramar. Her backstory grew naturally as I learned more about WoW lore and the game itself. She’s an old Kald-cough-I mean Sin’dorei whose mostly retired after the defeat of the Legion. Once alliances were reestablished, she moved to Boralus and bought a small cafe with her adopted human son Leon. She took to a less action paced lifestyle because it gave her more time to be with her son, and should she ever die, due to demon possession or horde attacks. She hopes that having the cafe around would at least be something Leon could use to keep himself in honest work without having to go through the hardships of war that she once did.

Hobbies:

Walking the harbor of Boralus with Leon.

Trying to learn new recipes that are easy enough to be made blind.

Listening to Leon read her stories.

Top Spotify Artists/Songs: 

1. Myself by Bazzi

2. Defying Gravity by Wicked

3. When You Were Young by The Killers

4. Ugly Heart by G.R.L.

Belnet

Bloodborne Elf Adventurer

Bio: 

Pelnet was the first horde character I really found myself in a groove with. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a nelf belf slut or just because it was my first time trying a fury warrior. I found myself really getting immersed in his character, despite my lamination over the lack of Nightborne themed weapons and plate armor. The lack there of, sort of influencing his more worldly nature of trying out other culture’s weapons and armor. Sidenote, that’s not his current RP gear, just my current questing gear that I have him in and I think looks pretty a’ight. 

Belnet is a wandering sword for hire. Since the revolution in Suramar, he finds his pleasure in traveling the new world and enjoying all of the new cultures, foods, and thrills that have come about during his time in Shiny Bubble Isolation(SBI). Currently, he hangs around the wealthy Troll capital of Zuldazar, finding good money in the few skills he has. For as we all know, Gonk wants heads.

During his time in SBI, Belnet was a beat cop of sorts. A guard who spent most his years stopping minor crime. But once the revolution came into full swing is when things got complicated. Shamed with the things that the Old Regime ordered of him and his comrades during the revolution, he now keeps himself in self-imposed exile. Not yet willing to go back to Suramar and deal with the ghosts that still haunt him.

Hobbies: (I’m not doing a normal numbered list anymore, tumblr is a broken website and it fucks up my formatting every time i click the list button.)

1. Going to new restaurants/bars after a good pay day.

2. Loves going to beaches and swimming in the warm waters.

3. Doing enchanted tattoos as a side hustle.

4. Finding free beds to share with interesting locals. 

(could I have put that any weirder if I tried? No. I rolled a nat 1 in flirting, and now in my descriptions)

Top Spotify Artists/Songs: (He has my 2nd most favorite playlist so it was hard to choose)

1. Blasé by Ty Dolla $ign

2. False Kings by Poets of the Fall

3. I’m Born to Run by American Authors

4. Danser Dans Ma Chambre by Helix Jr

5. Lost in the Fire (feat The Weekend) by Gesaffelstein

6. Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader (it’s the only artist spotify had for that song)

7. Caught in the Fire by Bazzi

Valthendias

Blood Elf Holy Knight

Bio: 

The one character I didn’t have to poorly photoshop at all, Valthendias is the OC I have the weirdest relationship with. A belf Knight who, through some shitty situations, ends up guarding a group of Sin’dorei Mages as they explore the Void. During which he finds himself contaminated and suddenly a new type of elf, being exiled from his homelands for a second time. His wife refusing to talk with him fearing the damage to her station, his family exiling him for the risk of themselves being considered collaborates. He came to the Alliance alone and broken. Surround by those he once considered as the enemy and by Velfs who he feels betrayed him.

I have about 5 different class versions of Velf him, none of them seeming to stick. His past self being a pally worked out perfectly as I find I love playing Belf pally. But post-pally him?? I have a velf warrior, DK, Hunter but none seem to really be exactly how I envision an ex-Belf Knight being in my head. But despite not being able to find a stable class for his current self, I have the most love for him, he has the largest playlist on spotify out of all my OCs, the most written about his story past and present, and yet I hardly ever play him! Poor Valt.

Hobbies: 

1. Learning how to care for his new Voidstalker friend.

2. Drinking.

3. Drinking.

4. Trying to find a stable job that doesn’t involve other Velfs.

5. Not thinking about the Void.

6. Trying to write poetry to get the thoughts out of his head.

7. Drinking.

Top Spotify Artists/Songs:

1. Born Again by Saint Motel (He has so much Saint Motel, so I’ll limit it to this one song of theirs)

2. Hurt by Oliver Tree

3. Nice Guy by Courtship

4. Don’t worry, You will by Lovelytheband

5. Turn the Lights off by Tally Hall

6. Get Used to It by Ricky Montgomery

7. It’s Alright by Mother Mother

8. Saint Bernard by Lincoln9. Breezeblocks by Alt-J

10. Goodbyes (feat. Young Thug) by Post Malone

Bydryn

Night Blood Elf Ex-Druid of the Talon, current Druid of the Ranch*

Bio: 

Mydryn Earthclaw quickly became one of my favorite characters to RP, the calm, peaceful nature of being a druid in quiet isolation was a fun one to do, especially when I was leveling him through Pandaria and built up his little farm house. 

Bydryn Bloodclaw’s main form became the bear form. Coming from my love of playing druid tank, and from that rush you get when you kill some shit geared prick ganking lowbies in leveling zone. Nothing beats the sound of the /claps of level 20s as you achieve victory lmao.

But in character he plays as a soft spoken defender who enjoys bear form mostly for how damn comfortable it is taking a nap in a cushy hill of grass as a bear. After the burning of Teldrassil, he currently finds himself trying to give aid to those in need in Stormwind, offering traditionally cooked meals or healing. If you’ve RPed in the streets of Stormwind of WRA, you could find him walking a route shouting about “FRESH SPICED BREAD! ROASTED KALDOREI FISH!”

Hobbies: 

1. Cooking traditional Kaldorei Meals.

2. Managing his farm.

3. Spending hours wandering the forests, gathering herbs for tinctures.

4. Talking with and eating dinner at his good Draenai friend Siphyr (eyes emoji)

Top Spotify Artists/songs:

1. The Wider Sun by Jon Hopkins

2. A Gift of Thistle by James Horner

3. Healing Elves by Derek Fiechter

4. Moonshadow by Yusuf/ Cat stevens

5. Healing Chant by Heather Alexander

Bcazim

Goblin Boblin gangster

Bio: 

Scazim while not my most fleshed out character by any means, Bcazim is on this list because i’ve had the most fun while Rping him.

A creepy, scummy, drug dealer in Silvermoon makes for some real interesting times lmao. Even if they try threatening him, trying to offer an Orc deathknight, or a group of Blood Knights some cheap blood thistle is the best RP ever if they play along.

Hobbies:

1. Selling Blood Thistle

2. Lying about his name

3. Trying to convince his friend Kyrus to hang out with him at all.

Top Spotify Artists/Songs:

1. Ispy (feat. Lil Yachty) by Kyle

2. King of the Clouds by Panic!

Honorable Mentions

Noalith - The Velf responsible for ruining Valthendias’ life who has #NoRegrets.

Duff - Disgraced Dwarf of few words.

Thylivour - I wanted to include to include her, my Nightborne Mage whom I love. But I suck ass at playing a mage, and i’ve already made this list too long.