#maybe one day i can dm or play in a dnd (or other ttrpg) campaign where ocean. sea. water...

[artphantom]

dont know why but i just realized i always get attached to the characters associated with water. huh

i gotta watch avatar the last airbender and see who i gravitate to and test if i actullay always gravitate towards the water ppl. probably not

eh idk just bored throwing my thoughts at the wall. blogging on the blogging site for once i guess. i think this is blogging. maybe

[mrpenguinpants]

let me put EVEN MORE PRESSURE ON YOU! Our second session is TOMORROW NIGHT!!!! And yeah 100% all the times as a player (my DM, before the campaign was scrapped, was a SAINT and I'm so happy he's at my table as a player this time around) was mostly just to see what shenanigans uncovered plots or that I could get away with. I was chaotic in trying to dig up plot (it didn't help it was my second campaign EVER so I was not the best at picking up plot hints that were dropped in front of me) I played two characters in the campaign, a druid and a wizard/rouge. My sweet children, I love them both dearly. The campaign may have ended but they live rent free in my head.

Druid - Uncover a plot hook early as a cat dramatically trying to get attention from a stranger in an alley, sneak past guards without being questioned as a cat mysteriously in an underground villain lair, CONVINCE AN OWLBEAR TO SPARE US???, Strike up a deal with a dracolitch (though I think the DM wanted That outcome, but no one else did), Strike up a deal with MOTHER NATURE, and try to hide a murder by burning down a house (it did not work)

Wiz/Rog - instead of writing out the list, I'll just write to you her introduction to the party: basically my PC steals baguettes from Sargent Armstrong (but french); runs into the group but gets snatched TM by our shifter fighter, interogated, has the best conversation ever ("You know, other people sell food here!" "I am the! Only! Baguette! Person! Here!" "Mmm."), two of the party members are about to pay on her behalf just to no longer be implicated, she casts cause fear on the guy and he sprints (and the party blames the wizard for it), and then SPRINTS INTO A SCHOOL SHE DOES NOT GO TO, GETS FOLLOWED BY WIZARD AND SAID PREVIOUS FIGHTER, DISGUISES HERSELF AS A STUDENT (THE BUFFEST ORC KNOWN TO MANKIND) AND FUCKS WITH THE FIGHTER JUST CAUSE as in the fighter rolled SO LOW

I'd recommend dnd but ONLY like,,, with your friends - new tables/playing with strangers is scary, especially bc the game's... old; I could go off on the racism and sexism baked into 5e and especially the earlier editions for WEEKS asdfghj so you gotta find a table/group that agrees with you, yk? ALSO!!! I saw on twitch/tiktok FOREVER AGO someone actually made a Genshin TTRPG System! Aka you can play DnD in the world of Teyvat as vision holders! There's a few, but the one I saw is "Roll to Ascend" on Youtube

-Lucky

Answering these out of order but how did your second session go if you remember? Aww, I'm sad that the campaign ended but I guess every story needs an ending. I think bittersweet nostalgia is the worst and best feeling ever because you're happy it happened, but sad it ended.

If I ever brush the dust off my Baldurs Gate save file, I will put all my stats into charisma because speech is the most OP thing ever. But I think the funniest part of listening to DND stories is that you take all the crazy events and condense them down. So to me, this sounds like you did all of this in a day rather than several campaign nights (or maybe you did do all of this in a night. That would also make sense).

I have a friend group that plays DND but I don't think I'd "fit in" with them. Not that they are bad at DND or I think they wouldn't accept me, but I feel like I'd need to find the right people to be okay with it. New tables are scary as hell because I have no idea how much rp they do or if I'm doing too much rp. I will check out that youtube channel tho :0 my friend actually recently recommended me a DND podcast that he listens to.

[dare-to-dm]

I really liked your posts about D&D and how it's good/bad at certain things — given that I'm a player-turned-DM of several years who's never played any other TTRPG, could you recommend some so that I can get an idea of how to try to improve my game mechanics?

Unfortunately, not really. I'm a DnD/Pathfinder fan girl. I've enjoyed every version of DnD I've ever played more than every other system I've ever tried. So it would be less of a list of recommendations and more of a list of complaints.

That being said, you did ask! So here are the other systems I've tried and what I think about them.

Call of Cthulhu: This game is about normal people investigating mysterious horrors, and I do not like it. It turns out, I just don't enjoy playing people who are incapable of being heroic. Mainly, Call of Cthulhu characters are good at sucking at things, going insane and dying. If you like horror, maybe you'll like this. The only way I could enjoy it was pretending I was a Scooby Doo character so that all my failures were at least slapstick. Which may or may not help with the desired tone.

D20 Modern: This is very similar to D&D, and shares most of it's strengths and weaknesses. I personally liked it. If you've only ever run/played D&D, and you want to try a campaign in a more modern system, this one will not be a difficult adjustment.

Exalted: I personally really hate Exalted. You play a demigod, and that's a big turn off for me because you're so powerful it's not as exciting. Also, you really have to buy into the lore for this game, and that's not something I like in a system. The ruleset is also more set up so that you're bullshitting the results of what you do, rather than giving clear guidelines of how things work out. I'm sorry, I have friends who are fans of this game, but I really don't have anything nice to say about it. I think maybe it would appeal to people who just want to do Rule of Cool all day every day and are okay with learning a bunch of lore.

Mage the Awakening: I remember enjoying Mage the Awakening, though as I'm looking over their website now, it all looks like Greek to me. I may have had a game master who put in a lot of effort to make this the best possible experience for me personally. You play mages, but it's lower power than D&D as magic has a significant cost and can get very complicated. I think it was a D10 system? I don't remember. My character manipulated probability in order to be really good at punching things, which was fun.

Mutants and Masterminds: I've only played this a couple of times, and I'm not sure it even works. Like, it's a classless character creation system where you use point buy to make a dizzying array of superhero characters. Which is fun! But definitely not balanced. I want to like it, but I've never played anything beyond a couple of one shots, and I can't even say that those were successful. It seems like a difficult system to DM.

Starfinder: This is just Pathfinder in space. It's not as well balanced, but it's still good.

Anyway, those are the other systems I've tried, other than a few completely homebrewed systems that aren't published anywhere. I personally would take AD&D (my least favorite version of D&D I've played) over any of them. I don't feel a lot of motivation to venture outside of D&D/Pathfinder, since it gives me what I want. But I'm always willing to try something else (at least once) if a friend wants to run something different.

[bogariel-frogariel]

Looking for Players for DnD Campaign

Ok so I'll probably put a poll out looking for players sometime in the next week or so if people are interested. I’ll be looking for about 3-6 players.

Feel free to send asks or replies if you want to know more.

Basically the info for the campaign is.

The players are each one of the nine lives of a witch's cat familiar. She dies and they all come back to life in a humanoid form. The players can pick any type of cat or humanoid to play except tabaxi.

They are in world called Etrar. The players will need to collaborate so that everyone knows which number they are. The only other constraint about their backstory as a cat is that they wholly and completely love the with, Nedeya. You are devoted to her.

The witch was essential to the ending of the last war against Hell. This is about 50-60 years later so whoever has wants to be the first will probably have caught the last few years of the war and the next two to three in line may have caught clean up but for the last couple of decades she has been hidden in the woods deep in the rural part of one of the countries called Uskya, living peacefully in retirement.

I am currently making the more detailed map as we speak. There is a set story line of intrigue and stuff so I would hope that any players take narrative hints but its also not set in stone.

Would anyone be interested in this?

I'll post times that I'm available in the next two days and maybe even some stuff about the backstory of the war if you guys want or even the mechanics of how the Familia race is going to work.

Things you should know about me:

I am 18. My pronouns are she/her but I'm fine with they/them as well. I am bisexual. I am obsessed with dimension 20 and NADDPOD.

I am a first time DM but I've played DND and other ttrpg's. Not a lot but I am comfortable with them.

Player requirements:

I would ask for over 18

Experience amount doesn’t matter only a willingness to get really into the roleplaying of the game and learn the rules.

The standard no homophobia, transphobia or racism will be allowed at the table. There is a no tolerance policy and people will get kicked off of it for that. I will also not be allowing fantasy racism at my table. So you can't have an intolerance against a certain race. It especially doesn’t make sense cause you guys are cats.

[omnipah]

re: your tag - tell me more about why D&D is a bad ttrpg! I get so frustrated with people trying to mod D&D for different settings & campaigns when there are so many other systems out there that might do exactly what they're looking for and better!

Okay so first of all, disclaimer needed: I’ve only played dnd before, all my experience of other systems is from actual play (please I’m begging u to listen to Friends At The Table), but even that level of exposure is enough to see how dnd is, uh, Very deeply flawed and only gets by on the fact that people don’t know that better stuff exists (or, they do but they don’t wanna try it on principle, I guess).

My main thing is, and this is a matter of both the mechanics and the culture surrounding the game, that dnd is very bad at doing what a ttrpg sets out to do. Which is, a ttrpg is supposed to be a way of generating story in a way that’s spontaneous and collaborative, and of course there are a lot of ways to do that, but everything about dnd is designed to resist that drive. The amount of power the dm holds (both socially and mechanically) automatically sets them against the character players, and creates a space where the other players are encouraged to be completely passive and allow the dm to essentially have final say on what does and doesn’t go. Obviously this is partly an issue of who you’re playing with and whether they know how to be respectful, but the game leans into it by encouraging the dm to do all worldbuilding work themself and often hold secrets about it, and also through the way the dc of a roll is always the dm’s discretion. It doesn’t matter how well you rolled, at the end of the day, they can just say you failed, and if they’re smart they’ll just never tell u that they changed the dc behind ur back, but they’re perfectly capable within the rules and culture of the game to just change it based on what they like. This, needless to say, does not exactly cultivate good faith.

This is what I was saying in my tags: the issue of character players being passive and expecting to have a story told at them is a real problem, yes, and those players should engage and take responsibility for their part in generating plot and characterisation, but it’s an artefact of an extant (and now cyclic) problem, wherein the players with different roles aren’t encouraged to communicate or work together.

Like, one of the other things that feels really overlooked in dnd circles is the idea of consent and negotiation, the idea that the players should be able to, at any point, say to each other that they don’t want to touch a topic, or that they’re uncomfortable with where the story is going; a lot of people seem to implicitly think that it’s just not a big enough deal to actually talk about those things, or, at best, they assume you’ll say something without encouraging you to. There’s this assumption that if you don’t like something it’s your problem, rather than a collaborative effort to create a space in which everyone feels secure, and trusts the other people at the table enough to speak up without fear of getting dismissed.

That also leads into the issue of excessively built-out combat mechanics, with disproportionately little by way of anything else. It’s never encouraged by the rules to set boundaries for what kinds of violence you’re willing to see or commit in-game, or discuss the implications of depicting those things; and it’s assumed that combat is the main thing you’re there for. Combining that with the shocking level of bioessentialism in the lorebooks (whether overt fantasy racism or subtler stuff), it makes for a very narrow, and colonial, band of stories available to tell without excessive hacking, and hacking is excessively difficult because of how number-crunchy it is, in that, if you change anything or add anything, it’s very possible you’ll just break the game statistically.

The crunchiness also is something which can work and I’ve seen work well in other systems, but the way dnd does it actively discourages creativity on the character players’ parts. Other systems codify types of actions, and types of success and failure, which deliberately have wiggle room so that the mechanics can be massaged to take whatever weird and wonderful thing u wanna try to do, and they do it in a way that makes failure an interesting outcome that drives plot forward; dnd wants every single possible action to be codified in one specific way, or else not be accounted for at all (see previous, you also then can’t hack it in without several hours of work), and failure, as I’ve said, is a matter of dm discretion and whether they personally want to hinder you, which is something that’s honestly terrifyingly prevalent.

Also, in terms of longer campaigns, there’s no real structure to the game other than just an assumption that the numbers will get bigger, which is an incredibly false and boring way of attempting to raise stakes. Like, if your health has increased, AND your damage has increased, AND your ac has increased, AND all of those things have also increased for your enemies, what has actually changed in terms of how it feels to play the game? This is why so many people end up multi-classing, because it’s the only codified way to force some kind of lateral progression out of the game. Even then, nothing changes as you progress, except you’re maybe more terrified about killing off your own character in a way that you still have no control over, because again the character players have no control and are expected to just take it when they’re told something they don’t like. The attitude of ‘well, the dice said so’ is not a bad one, as long as you’re careful, but it’s acting as if the matter is out of the players’ hands, which is patently false; it’s a narrative that YOU are constructing, and you can and absolutely should make it a narrative that is safe for the people making and consuming it.

This comes back to the idea of ‘spontaneous and collaborative’. Dnd is viscerally opposed to any kind of actual working together, either between dm and character players, or between members of the party, but it’s also forcing the worst kind of spontaneity, in that ‘the dice said so’, while still codifying in advance everything you’re ‘allowed’ to try to do, and encouraging the dm to prep so hard that there’s nothing going on in the world that they don’t know about, which again puts all the onus on them for story- and world-building. You literally cannot do real collaboration if you have this attitude, and vice versa, you cannot have real spontaneity if you insist on setting yourself against the others.

Tl;dr: dnd is a game which goes out of its way to be hostile to the people playing it, and even when those people actively resist the competitive mechanics and culture, the story they end up making is just plain boring, and has a ton of unaddressed, unanalysed colonial baggage.

[grayisholi]

@ the DND ask game: ALL OF THOSE QUESTIONS, I CAN'T CHOOSE!! XD (or if not that, the ones you rlly wanna do!!

BOY OH BOY OH BOYIve been answering these throughout the day and I’m too lazy to reread the full document so sorry if I’ve left gaps or whatever but here it is! All 35 questions about dnd! Matt you unstoppable Madman.

1. A favorite character you have played.

You can’t just make me pick between my children!!! I think I might have to say Atticus Sallow, my faeborn bloodhunter, partially because he’s like 100% homebrew content which I LIVE for, but also because he’s probably the most kinda self-insert character I’ve ever played? Almost became the kinda angsty, brooding asshole character before he was like “get your shit together” and learned that loving people isn’t so bad.

2. Your favorite character that someone else has played.

I almost, ALMOST had the pleasure of DMing for @no-more-good-omens and their character was gonna be SO RAD and I’m a little heartbroken he never came to be. A half-drow paladin of Vecna, pretending to be your typical good and wholesome paladin? Dude, I love that kinda two faced backstabbing in a player. It’s such a shame it never came to anything (although if yall still wanna play hmu ;))

3. Your favorite side quest.

Ooh, there’s been so many good ones. Probably when i was playing as Adrian Smirks and went off on a tangent to rescue his brother ? That was the first time I ever got to see Adrian’s more raw and emotional side beneath the suave mask he wears and it was fun to explore his character in that way ^.^

4. Your current campaign.

That I’m DMing? It started inspired by Guy Fawkes and was gonna be “your party blows up parliament” but I got bored of following historical accuracy so it ended up being “blow up the palace in a magical city that just happens to be called London”. I accidentally wrote myself into a hole with this campaign tho, so once they’ve finished this arc I’m handing over the DM hat to my sister @philosophical-wanton because she seems to love it and I kinda miss being a player lmao. I can’t wait for it.

5. Favorite NPC.That I’ve written? Probably Hai Shen, the youngest son of a group of circus performers who were killed and the party got blamed for their murder. He had such a great attitude and his dynamics with the party kicked ass. And the twist that he was actually dead the whole time and it was his soul that had stayed behind to help solve his family’s murder? ICONIC.

6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc).

NPC death would probably be Hai Shen, actually. After the party had brought the real killers (A cult to the demon Prince Orcus) to justice, Hai’s time on earth had come to an end. He had really beautiful moment with the party before being reunited with his family. Alternatively, the time I broke my entire party’s hearts? “Artagan’s staff comes cracking into Ellios’ chest, forcing him onto the ground. Artagan raises his sceptre in hand, pointing it menacingly at the young prince. And for the first time, you see him. Like, REALLY see him. He’s not the strong and powerful leader you’ve all come to know him as, he’s not Prince Ellios of the Four Realms. He’s just a boy. A boy who is much too young to be involved in such a grand scheme. And the fear in his eyes. You see the fear he’s managed to keep buried for so long, finally coming to the surface. And then? You don’t see anything, aside from his cold body hitting the ground.” I got punched three times for that moment, but GOD was it worth it.

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

Like in game? A healthy lil bit of vandalising the local law enforcement buildings is always a good time.

8. Your favorite fight/encounter.

Aw man, how can I pick ? I gotta say, that one time we, a level 6 party, managed to take down two earth elementals was pretty rad. The DM kind of expected it to be one of those encounters that we saw and immediately tried to run from, but what she didn’t take into account was that ALL of us had chaotic alignments so we just went crazy. The DM was rolling really badly (thank God) and we were getting really creative (“I use the produce flame centripetal to light my bottle of ale on fire and create a molotov cocktail” “you do WHAT”) and after like an HOUR we won and it was amazing. The rush I got from that victory was better than any drug my dood.

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

I know I say it a lot, but I legit can’t choose. There’s so many great things about ttrpgs that a lot of people don’t really think of. The creative fulfilment I get from a session is incomparable, the friendships you can build that you couldn’t form in any other way. And like, not to get too real for a sec here, but I grew up with undiagnosed autism and didn’t understand how a lot of social situations worked, and DnD was such a good mechanic for me to try communicating with people without many real world consequences, and I appreciate that experience so much. It’s just such a great thing my dood.

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

Can they be the same thing lmao? I mean, I’m obviously partial to Count Cassius, the vampire lord that Adrian slept with lmao. I also always appreciate a good beholder, until I get hit with three disintegration rays IN A ROW.

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

We’ve got kind of a monthly schedule with my main campaign, and I manage to get a couple online games in-between them, but honestly I’d kill to be the kind of group that got together every weekend.

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

Oh MAN. “I say we do this.” “Yeah, but that’s coming from the guy who decided to tie 3 50ft ropes together to escape the palace.” “iT wOrKeD dIdN’t iT ???” i.e that time I forgot I gave the gnome rogue flying boots so when I planned for them to get arrested at the palace, they managed to escape by tying their ropes together, sending the gnome with it to the top and climbing the wall. I had to improvise the rest of the session. Also “FLINTON BELINDA SKINTON” bc as a role-play exercise I got my party to come up with rumours about their characters and the gnome rogue called Flint AKA Flinton B Skinton decided that one of their rumours was that the B stood for Belinda, and it was GLORIOUS.

13. Introduce your current party.

My current group consists of Flinton B Skinton, gnome rogue. He’s a quick-fingered, silver-tongued gay disaster who can sell anything to anyone. He’s a charming flirt, and a veritable genius in his own right. Kava Daardendrian, dragonborn ranger who loves nothing in life more than her animal companion - her pig Snortin Norton. She’s fun and sassy and shameless, she’s great. There’s Sparks, the fire Genasi Monk, and full embodiment of a disaster lesbian. She drinks, fights, and gets laid, and doesn’t deal with her problems in healthy ways. An icon. And finally Milo, the halfling Bard who falls in love at the drop of a hat and just wants everyone to get along. I call them “The Shenanigang” and I love them.

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

A party I joined late? We had Sylvia Moondrop, the half elf sorcerer who was just trying to get along with everyone despite what the world seemed to want. Orland the half orc bard who was just trying to shake off the Barbarian stereotype his family left him with. Rose Morleen, air Genasi fighter who was literally born to kick ass and take names. I joined as Mason Terrai, the Earth Genasi Alchemist with a perchance for explosives. The very definition of chaotic neutral.

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

Of COURSE. What manic wouldn’t ?

16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?

I used to play online a LOT back before I had friends who were into dnd, but I VASTLY prefer playing in person. The chemistry that’s built not only amongst the players, but also the actual characters themselves is unparalleled. It’s just such a great experience.

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

Anyone can attempt anything, the only restriction is the dice. Don’t question the DM unless it’s out of session, then bully the dm on the groupchat until he’s so pissed off he gives you inspiration just to get you to shut up. And also canon lore and canon rules are bullshit when it’s convenient. That’s about it

18. Does your party keep any pets?

Our ranger, God bless her, has her pack pig Snortin Norton, sold to her by one Flinton B Skinton. And Flint really wants a monkey, he’s been trying to find one for ages.

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

Not really ? I’m the kind guy that if my dice rolls a 1 I will bench it for a bit, but tbh all my dice are cursed af and I’ve kinda just learned to roll with it by making my characters canonically terrible at everything lmao.

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

Aw man I can’t remember when or how, it’s been so long. I had a couple friends who were kinda into it, but all the games they tried to run were complete disasters. I only really started playing I’m the past year or so? Maybe a little more ? Adrian was my first character, and he was a very RP heavy character in a party of tanks and they all hated him but MAN was it fun.

21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done?

Oh all the time. One time my character was careless and didn’t check for traps on a legendary artefact and it lead to the death of a party member. One time my character got angry at his party and walked out. My characters don’t make good decisions, but that’s part of the fun.

22. What color was your first dragon?

White! I thought it was silver at first and went to go say hi, and it clawed me within half my HP straight away lmao.

23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns?

Oh dude, original all the way. I live for that shit.

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

Depends on the session, but usually a good few hours, couple of days if I’m DMing.

25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for?

“You wake up in a mysterious forest. The strained autumn sun shines through the trees. The only thing you can see it each other, the trees, and an old sign post leading to a path that says "Myrrill” on it. What do you do?“ "We walk in the opposite direction of the sign deeper into the forest.” “…of course you do.”

26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters.

I wrote a full carnival show one time for them to watch, and then it got derailed when a horrific monster attacked. But writing all the characters and their acts, and watching my players get entranced as I described it ? Magical, my dood.

27. Do you allow homebrew content?

I live and breathe homebrew content. I don’t know what my games would be without it. I LOVE homebrew.

28. How often do you use NPCs in a party?

I make some pretty sick characters if I do say so myself, so I throw them in a LOT.

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

Oh dude, role play all the way. Fighting and killing stuff is great, but role-play is just so good. We can go from laughing with a bartender to crying over a backstory reveal and it’s just beautiful.

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

Depends on the party, but i find the best players are a little bit of both XD

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

Official ? I’m a fan of the hexblade warlock? Bards are always a good call, and to be real playing monks make me feel like an absolute badass. Race wise, there are just so many. If we’re only talking players handbook stuff, half elf is always rad. Outside of that? I’ve been researching the Shadar-Kai lately and I’m LIVING. They’re so rad.

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

What would you call the disaster gay? I don’t really gear my characters towards usefulness in combat, so it’s just whatever the class happens to lend itself to.

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

I usually write my character, personality, backstory, alignment etc, before I even pick a class or even a race. I basically just make OCs and apply them to dnd rules, and it’s SO much fun. 10/10, would recommend.34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

FLAVOUR. My party usually hates me, but what I lack in combat utility I more than make up for in creative out of combat skill checks XD.

35. How much roleplay do you like to do?

Boi, I even RP my combat, and the great thing is it rubs off on my party too. I’ll have a really low initiative and everyone else will be like “I attack and do 10 points of damage” but then on my round I’m like “I use my staff to leap across the battlefield towards the opponent and launch out with a spinning kick to their jaw” and everyone else is like “oh, okay, that’s what we’re doing.” and the battle becomes so much more dynamic and cinematic, it’s amazing !

[fathersmashmas]

1. i'd honestly have to say Kyle DeLacey/ Spartan 045 "Falchion". he's from a Halo homebrew that's currently on indefinite hiatus, and he was an absolute fucking badass. second choice would be my Mandalorian Jedi padawan Tethen Treth from a homebrewed Star Wars campaign, but i wasn't able to do much because the DM can never commit to one game... ever

2. good question. i'd say it's a tie between Lopez Ladrillo, Aether Stratos, or Shade Cinereal. all of them are from a homebrewed RWBY campaign i DMed before a player went and sabotaged everything. Lopez was the mad scientist of the bunch, Aether was the medic, and Shade was the only one whose background i was able to incorporate into a questline

3. probably the Mansion Heist i ran for a Vanilla game in a homebrew setting. by this point, the players had finished the main quest early, so i decided that quests would be episodic in nature. basically, players had to steal an ancient tome from a minor noble. end result was a wave of spiders, one player trying to steal a bunch of jewelry and getting caught (naked, i might add), and another player getting a really powerful weapon/armour set

4. don't have a current campaign, but i'm working on two at the moment. first one is set in my homebrewed setting, where the end-goal is to prevent an ancient Lich Queen from invading a kingdom for personal reasons. the second one is a homebrewed Fallout game set in my hometown of Baltimore City, though with the newly announced Fallout TTRPG coming out i may use that system

5. portrayed by me, i gotta say my rendition of Neo from RWBY. she was sassy, snarky, devious as fuck, and was legit friends with one of the PCs. portrayed by another DM, imma go with Hailey, Kyle's/Falchion's childhood friend from Mars. she was tough, mischievous, and helped Kyle realise that maybe the UNSC wasn't all that great

6. the bandit chief that served as the antagonist for Shade's plotline. she proved to be an extremely tough to take down boss that managed to split the party thanks to her absolute units of henchmen. in the end, she had the cybernetics in her back destroyed, rendering her paralysed and allowing Shade to deal the killing blow

7. for me as a player, it's advancing my character's story in some way. i was trying to mold Kyle into a rebellious Spartan who would try to lead an insurrection. wound up become the leader of a bunch of corsairs made up of different Covenant species. was planning on Tethen learning about Darth Revan and hoping to one day emulate him, eventually becoming the future Mandalore. as a DM, it's letting the players get into their own antics and creating storylines based on those antics. in my Vanilla DnD, my players had arrived in a city looking for a group of escaped convicts (who were PCs from a one-shot). two of the players went into the slums to look for clues and wound up getting offered a deal by a local crimelord. if the game hadn't ended there due to schedules, it would have been interesting to see where things went

8. favourite encounter where i was a player would probably have to be when Kyle/Falchion and the other Spartans fought a literal Forerunner Mechadragon. we nearly got TPK'd before a combination of luck and rule-of-cool saw us take the damn thing out. as a DM, probably any of the encounters in the Shade story arc or Wendigo story arc. high stakes, high tension

9. for me, i'd have to say it's the ability to train your acting/voice acting and your storytelling abilities

10. as a player, Hunters were the absolute BANE of my existence. Flood too. as a DM, Colossi (RWBY homebrew) were always a ton of fun: giant one-eyed walking laser cannons that were as intelligent as they were dangerous

11. ideally, i'd play once a week. unless it's West Marches. i don't like West Marches

12. All-Flight, the Number-One Hero/Hulk Jump: Lopez was basically a giant of a man. he had some equipment that literally allowed him to jump like the Hulk. add to that his immense strength and his propensity to laugh like All-Might, and we had our own bargain version if a MHA character

13. unfortunately, don't have one. West Marches doesn't really allow for a fixed party in the my board-game club's game

14. i DMed two groups: in the RWBY homebrew, there was Lopez Ladrillo, Rize Inazuma, Aether Stratos, Quasi Viridian, Michael Corbos, Olive Katsaros, Ursa, Shade Cinereal, Violet Black, Lupo, and Bishop. in my Vanilla campaign, there was Agamemnon (high-elf paladin), Kai (tiefling monk), Nyx (wood-elf rogue), Deamanus (human fighter), yuzuru (wood-elf rogue), and Aicantar (human warlock)

15. not really. should do that, tho

16. i primarily played online, but i'd rather in-person

17. don't be a dickus, don't min-max, cooperate, and hold the DM and other players accountable. i had one player in my RWBY campaign (person who played Rize) that broke all these rules. they were constantly a selfish dick to other players and pouted whenever they didn't get their way (dickus), made it so that they had equipment that guaranteed them hits and raised their AC (min-max; DM divine intervention), refused to listen to other players' concerns and even DM's concerns (cooperation), and constantly cheated on their roles (accountability)

18. one of my Vanilla players had a tabaxi familiar and another was looking for a Golden Dragon egg. in the Halo homebrew, one of the players had a Grunt companion named Nub-Nub

19. some people, even with online dice rollers or Discord bots, roll shit no matter what

20. i first heard about DnD when it was still 3rd Edition. mind you, this was way back when i was 7-8 or so. tried it once, didn't like it, but kept wanting to play. got to college, joined a couple of games freshman year and a whole bunch of games in sophomore. so been playing DnD for about 4/5 years now

21. i/Kyle/Falchion decided it'd be a great idea to test out Spartan-115's/Mad Doctor's machine that would allow me to create an AI clone of myself. long story short, the entire process went to shit. went blind and deaf, and had to have cybernetic implants. immediately afterward, got those implants fucked up by an EMP grenade that some rebel scum decided to lob at me. thank god for Mad Doc's engineering skills, otherwise Falchion would've been out of commission for good

22. Copper. the party that consisted of the convicts ran into a Copper Dragon in a random encounter that took the party to his lair far in the northern mountains. the wizard wound up seducing the dragon and the bard joined in on the fun. suffice it to say that both the wizard and bard then got painful rashes in their groins

23. original campaigns, tho i should take a look at official modules to get a sense of how to structure future campaigns

24. i usually plan out the starting quest and end goal, the different factions and countries, and the random encounter/loot system. other than that, i know better than to plan every single quest before they even start and thus usually take things one step at a time

25. Quasi joining the White Fang. that created a totally new story arc for him that saw him act as a double agent (and nearly get killed in a field mission that resulted in a very-nearly botched rescue by his team)

26. either the encounters at Mountain Glenn or at Mountain Pass and Borderland in the RWBY homebrew. all three locations had some type of high tension. in the Vanilla campaign, when the party got back and had to fight off an enemy assault. somehow a then-party of four managed to defeat a 420-man force

27. i homebrew, so so long as a player brings it up with me first i'm fine with it

28. not that often, unless a player needs to be NPC'd because of circumstances or because the quest includes them as a party memeber

29. RP

30. i've had both simultaneously, unfortunatley

31. i honestly don't have a preference

32. i'll take whatever role best fits my character

33. i randomly roll everything in the Background section (unless i've got an idea or some info is super contradictory) and base the backstory on that

34. flavour, all the way

35. i love roleplaying my characters. it allows me to practise acting, which i used to love before hating it for a long time. DnD really got me back into it

D&D ask meme

1. A favorite character you have played.

2. Your favorite character that someone else has played.

3. Your favorite side quest.

4. Your current campaign.

5. Favorite NPC.

6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc).

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

8. Your favorite fight/encounter.

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

13. Introduce your current party.

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

18. Does your party keep any pets?

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done?

22. What color was your first dragon?

23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns?

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

For DMs

25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for?

26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters.

27. Do you allow homebrew content?

28. How often do you use NPCs in a party?

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

For Players

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

35. How much roleplay do you like to do?

[testosterxne]

lately i’m enjoying infodumping on here so here’s a comprehensive list of my ttrpg characters so i can see it later

unknown name kenku: don’t remember the class either. joined dnd club on campus, mad character, played maybe three times, covid hit. i do remember using a pad and paper to get around the speech issue and making some great gags out of the repetition thing. also had cool art of the lil friend.

nick: we tried to reflavor dnd to work for a “the magicians” themed game even tho the one person with enough experience to dm had never seen the show? idk it worked decently well for a bit but it trailed off. loved my skater boy character tho

arson: fire genasi fighter, captain of the guard in a medieval campaign. i think we only played one session and i’m still mad cause it was such a fun idea but the school year ended. my friends still remember this character even tho i didn’t think he was that cool and he had a cameo last time i dm’ed so i may try to bring him back one day.

im forgetting someone here but i think they were just for a one shot anyway.

micah: this was a fate system superhero game. we only played a bit because we were having issues with players but he was a speedster journalist with gray morals and i’d love to revamp him someday

jasper: ok finally a game we finished. we replaced the fate game with a city of mist game. jasper was a loki mythoi with mind control and minor illusion powers who was a private investigator. accidentally rly OP but mostly cause my dm (as much as i love them) kept forgetting i had that power. his backstory was good- after he witnessed police brutality as a child, he decided to find a way to fight crime AND the police force and find real justice elsewhere

vallia: oh my sweet baby. classic tiefling rogue (and later a dip into warlock). their characterization was pretty inconsistent cause i’m a dummy BUT i played this character for like 6 months and loved it. i did many shenanigans bc the dm is very good at mitigating the shenanigans. backstory was just that they did a crime and were shunned because of it and decided to lean into crime and then assassinated the father of another PC.

- some of the best things with vallia were in game. like when they used a wish spell to force a dragon to lose all magic except for the Summon Chair spell. or when they got a gun (which was rly just a crossbow that was beefed up a bit so as not to break the game too much). the other characters in this game were also awesome so it was just a great time

then i dm’d a game i called “Solaria” or “The Red Sun Order” even though most of the play time occurred in the post apocalyptic wastelands outside of that area

kazatar (kaz for short): i don’t think this game is going to happen but the character… i went classic half orc barbarian but his backstory was that his father was an adventurer and accidentally got a curse of bad luck on the whole family so every bad thing that happened, kaz would blame on the curse. he also had a remarkably bad INT score so that was funny, and then i wrote up a cool religion for that game cause the dm approved it. i’ll keep the religion for future stuff.

max and tu’vek: teens in space is a cool system. i’m playing a cephalon with a human host which i’ve reflavored to work like the symbiotes in marvel. the host, max, is the crew’s pilot and used to be basically a pod racer bc he was too scrawny and sick to fight or anything else cool. the cephalon, tu’vek, needed a host to hide him from bounty hunters. tu’vek’s regenerative powers help bolster max and the two get along very well now and are currently on an adventure.

rhys: half elf paladin. he was just for a halloween one shot and was intentionally a self insert. super fun tho and i now get why ppl like paladins

matthias: just finished writing this guy for an upcoming curse of strahd game!!! he’s a high elf cleric who is literally just the fleabag priest but in dnd. i added more drama to his backstory and the fox thing is more haunting than silly but his attitude about religion and overall personality are the same. i love the idea of a priest with a cathedral in the gothic horror setting of COS but i can only play that with a grain of salt so lol. hot priest

“this is the best character i’ve made in so long!” *it’s just a rip off of someone from a show i like*