#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.

[sevilemar]

Hey,

anon beginner to dnd from before, with many additional and build-on questions. Thanks for answering these!

What's some ways to find a dnd or rp group? What if I'm bad at acting or get really nervous and closed-off with people I don't know? How can I make the time for this? What materials would I need to bring?

What are good strategies to start a dnd or rp group? Do you have to be dm, as founder? Is it from scratch and from the ground up? What materials would be needed to start off? What if there are people you know and think might be interested? And what if there's no one you know that may be interested in such a group?

You rock!!!!

I'm glad to share what I know, since I believe ttrpg is just awesome! 😍

- My first table was just me and my friends trying something new. But not everyone's friends are interested, so for my second group, I googled if there was a local ttrpg, roleplay, or DnD forum. I found a national one, with sections for each region, so I answered someone's post there. I would have asked in my local comic book stores next, or in other stores that sell nerdy stuff. Maybe you already have a coworker or acquaintance who is playing and can hook you up with some people, or at least with some links?

If you don't find anything locally, you also can opt for online groups. I don't have any good starting spots, but you should be able to google it pretty easily. Look for people who are roughly in the same time zone than you, it makes scheduling easier^^

- You do not have to be GM to look for or found a group. It's very common to look for groups as a player, though it might take you longer to find one. People who want to GM are rarer, and usually a GM has an easier time finding players than the other way around. If a group cannot find a GM, people who wanted to be a player sometimes take up the mantle so that they can play.

- Most groups who find each other start from scratch, but it is possible to enter an already established group as a new player. Both have their own challenges and advantages.

- If there are people you think might be interested, just ask them. Role play is all about communication and relating to people, and this is a good start. If there's no one in your vicinity, find a new group. It's very interesting how easily strangers become friends when you regularly slay monsters together 😉.

- I find that a regular playing schedule works best for everyone when it comes to sessions. My two online groups play regulary every other Monday and Wednesday for 2-3 hours, and my local table meets roughly once a month on the weekend for longer sessions. When our GM didn't have the time to prepare, he tells us so, and we just drop the session. That gives him two more weeks of preparation.

GMing is a lot of work for me. I find myself thinking about campaign stuff while doing mundane tasks, or while crafting. I also spent hours as needed writing notes, or drawing maps, etc., mpstly a day or two before the next session. I find session logs are best written down the next day, so I tried to give myself half an hour for that the day after a session.

- The only materials you need as a player are your character sheet (physical or digital), some way to take notes, and either a set of dice or a digital dice roller. As a GM, you also need monster stat blocks, your campaign notes, and whatever rule set you're using for references. That's all you need to get started, really.

It is helpful as a GM to use some kind of grid for encounters, and something that represents PCs and monsters. In a physical space, easel paper works well, or a grid-based map. You can draw a battlefield or locaton on it in preparation, but it's not necessary. In our first campaign, we just used whatever pens where at the table to make a battlefield, and we used dice or random snacks as PCs and monsters. White Othello or Backgammon pieces are nice, because you can write names on it, or whatever damage your monster has taken with a removable marker. In a digital space, you can use tools like map tool or roll 20 to upload maps and PC tokens on to it, but don't bother if it's too much hassle.

- A good strategy to start a new group is talking to each member individually while recruiting them, making a group chat for orga stuff, and having one or multiple session zeros where you get to know each other and can talk about what kind of game you would like to play, and create characters together. Recruitment and orga can be done by anyone in the group, session zero(es) is (are) usually lead more or less loosely by the GM once they know more about their world and the kind of story you all want to play.

- Every person in the group will be nervous when you meet for the first time, especially when you play with strangers. That helped me a bit when I met my group for the first time. It also helps that ttrpg is something that takes a lot of love and passion for something that's still a bit weird to most people. It's still very much the domain of nerds and theatre kids, so chances are high that you are one of those types, and you will have both types in your group. I meet more nerds in DnD, and more theatre kids in larp, but thats highly subjective.

- There are things you can do to help you with role playing, either as GM or as player. It's too much to list it all, so let me give you a few online ressources I found helpful:

Ginny Di's role playing tips

Matthew Coleville's thoughts

[dungeonsandblorbos]

Welcome and Tag Masterlist

hello and welcome! i love playing TTRPGs, and as it says in the bio, i have Too Many Thoughts about my PCs from my various campaigns to keep them to myself anymore. so i made this sideblog to infodump about my beloved PC blorbos!

as a general note, this is not a family-friendly blog. there's a lot of adult language, adult themes, and written descriptions of TTRPG violence that can at times get pretty gorey. i do tag potential triggers by the specific post and try hide more triggering parts of posts under cuts, but i am only one human. please feel free to let me know (either publicly or privately) if i missed a trigger tag or if there is something you would like me to tag for!

also please feel free to send me asks about any of the characters or campaigns, or even just TTRPG things in general. i love these topics and will gladly take any opportunity to chat about them!

finally. there's a lot of blorbos on this blog, and a lot of NPCs, and a lot of campaigns, and a lot of tags, so under the cut here is a handy little guide to help keep them all straight!*

*disclaimer: nothing and no one here is straight. i am incapable of making characters and stories that aren't queer and so are most of the people i play with.

without further ado, the campaigns! i will probably be redoing my campaign intros and character intros at some point, and will add the links for those once completed. these are listed as Campaign Title, System Used, in reverse chronological order.

Curse of Strahd, DnD 5e my current obsession. this is a heavily homebrewed version of Curse of Strahd (like, we're talking a good 80% or more homebrew) DMed by my husband, @somethingclevermahogony. it's all of your dark queer gothic horror dreams come true! this campaign is just absolutely chalk full of dead doves like body horror, child abuse and death (almost entirely off-screen), animal cruelty, body horror, gallows humor, cannibalism, oh my god so much gore, and body horror. but don't let that get you down; there's also a lot of very funny and very heartwarming moments in this campaign and the worldbuilding our DM does is so fucking cool. this is also technically two campaigns, as we have both a present day game with two PCs, based on the Curse of Strahd book, and a prequel campaign with just me as a player, which delves into some of the history around when Barovia was first closed off from the rest of Faerun, roughly 400 years before the main campaign. in the present day, i play a human tempest cleric named Cerris Dalca Tempescu, who is just so very very tired. our other PC is Shalden Broadfist, a purple half-orc paladin who serves a desert worm cult. our party is rounded out with a couple of NPCs; Vasillica, a flesh golem made out of pieces of the bodies and souls of at least a dozen different people by an insane angel, and Milo, an adorable little klepto halfling boy who used to be the Bagman and still has Bagman powers. in the prequel, i play Kire Dalca, a human eldritch knight fighter who came to Barovia as part of the original war effort against Strahd and then got trapped in Barovia. coincidentally, she's Cerris's many many greats aunt and she's also so very very tired (and maybe pregnant shhh). the tag for the present day campaign is #curse of strahd homebrew, and the prequel is #curse of strahd prequel, and you can find them both or general CoS things under #curse of strahd. recurring character tags include #cerris tempescu for my cleric, #shalden broadfist for my companion PC, #ireena my beloved for (of course) the brilliant NPC Ireena Kolyana, #meow meow milo and #the bagman for Milo, and #kire dalca for my fighter. pretty soon there will also probably be tags for the secondary PCs we made as backup characters in case our first PCs die, as they have actually both been introduced in canon now.

Hot Gay Pirates in Your Area! Avatar Legends: The RPG my other current campaign, with my college TTRPG group (which includes my husband as a player). it's set in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, during the era of Kyoshi. specifically, it's late summer in 250BG (Before Genocide). there are some promised darker elements, as well as a lot of enemy deaths, due to the nature of this campaign, but overall it's a very fun, chaotic, and queer story! we play as a party of pirates/smugglers on a small ship called The Confusion, working for the Ruike clan, a coastal Fire Nation crime family. our total ship crew currently numbers 10, with four PCs, but it might very well get bigger given that we started with a crew of 9. i play Aila Ruike, granddaughter of the head of the clan and heir apparent after her father. she serves as The Confusion's sort of second in command, and is a talented firebender and swordswoman, though she's much better at environmental control and defense than offense. she's stoic and stern and kind of mean in a hot way, and has two priorities in life: upholding her family honor and taking care of her team. my husband plays Bo of the Foggy Swamp Tribe, a waterbender who ran away from home to avoid the pressures and responsibility of leadership. he's flirty and silly and a little bit vicious in battle (his bending style is based on the US "boxing" style rough-and-tumble), and pretends to be a lot dumber than he actually is. we also have Onartok of the Southern Water Tribe, a sweet but naïve waterbender prince who, like Bo, ran away from home to avoid the pressures of leadership. before joining the crew, he was "roommates" with Aila's cousin Jai. and finally, the enigmatic Lì, a former EK child soldier who ran away from the army and is now a fabulous genderfluid pirate who goes off on violent side-quests with Aila while the waterbenders are doing nice people side-quests. tags for this campaign include #hot gay pirates in your area!, #our ship is called the confusion for a reason, #atla, and #aila ruike.

Acquisitions, Incorporated: Cauldron & Kettle Questing Company, DnD 5e this was our second campaign with our college TTRPG group, and was a fun romp set in the world of Acquisitions, Inc., an actual play podcast by Penny Arcade based around the idea of "classic adventuring parties but make it capitalism." it was primarily played out of the official Acquisitions, Inc., playbook, with some additional homebrew expansions and a nice little extra homebrew arc on the end that introduced us to the incredible chaos of the D10,000 wild magic table. we played as the Cauldron & Kettle Questing Co., a subsidiary branch of the larger Acq Inc. corporation, based in Phandalin. at our branch, we also owned a tea shop named the Cauldron & Kettle Cafe, and we had a steam-powered teapot-shaped vehicle dubbed the Tea Trolley. this campaign accidentally ended up going very hard on the found family vibes. i played Jun Vyardes, a half-elf light cleric/bard, travelling priestess of the fire and revelry goddess Vestia. she's very devoted to her found family, and after a life of wandering, is finally starting to learn how to settle down and grow roots. my husband played Tim Cobbletoss, a half-orc barbarian primarily raised by a blind halfling woman, so in personality he's basically a british grandma with occasional anger issues. he and Jun share a human father we affectionately referred to as Daddy Bard, who is such a terrible father that complaining about him is actually part of how these two started bonding. we also had Briny (played by the same person as Onartok), a goblinoid blood hunter who likes shells and the ocean and gambling even though they don't actually know anything about gambling; and Taku (played by the same person as Lì), a whooping crane aarakocra monk who is very smart and powerful and unfortunately also fragile, and whom Jun regarded as a little brother and became very protective of. tags for this campaign include #acquisitions incorporated, #Cauldron & Kettle Questing Co., #bard is only one letter away from bad (for Daddy Bard nonsense), #jun vyardes, and #tim and jun.

The Orphic Uprising and The Amazonomachy, Cypher these were two continuous arcs that together formed the first campaign with our college TTRPG group. they were set in the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, so we sometimes refer to them collectively as the PJO campaign. we played as a group of Camp Half-Blood kids, all in their late teens by the end of the story. in The Orphic Uprising, it was a group of four of us sent on a prophecy quest to the Underworld to rescue Dionysus and prevent the children of Nyx's attempted takeover of Olympus. in the Amazonomachy, it was a group of five sent out to prevent the Amazons' attempted takeover of Olympus, because apparently Olympus just cannot catch a break! i played Nina Grayson, daughter of Nike, a talented gymnast, dancer, and rock-climber lowkey obsessed with victory and willing to fight a little dirty if that's what it took to win. i had a lot of fun with her mechanically, as she was basically an unkillable damage- and debuff-dealing machine--she just, ya know, also didn't really have any social skills and was very much a himbo. iconic himbo acts of hers include solving a puzzle by punching a horse statue in the face, getting set on fire and then putting it out by drenching herself in monster blood, solving a locked door problem by punching the lock open, splitting the party to go undercover with the Amazons without telling her friends she was only fake-betraying them, and punching a bitchy goddess so hard it temporarily killed her. i love her. at some point she acquired the nickname Larry. my husband played Chuck Hickey, an Italian-American son of Dionysus who lived on his grandparents' vineyard who really embraced the chaotic side of his godly heritage. silly and goofy but also a talented battle strategist, highly charismatic, and capable of turning into a fire-breathing leopard. cause, ya know, Dionysus. the other character present for both arcs was Beatrice Starveling, a NY-based daughter of Apollo raised by her two gay dads. she was an incredible performer, a true bardic legend, and alongside Chuck, played a key part in helping Nina come out of her shell. for The Orphic Uprising, our final party member was . . . i gotta be honest i don't remember his name, just that he was kind of an obnoxious Mary Sue type son of Aphrodite, who the rest of us all had a grand time poking fun at and complaining about when the player did not return for the second arc. for The Amazonomachy, we welcomed two new players and their PCs, Bryce (played by the same person as Onartok and Briny) and Murph (played by the same person as Lì and Taku). Bryce was a dumbass (affectionate) son of Eros who was sweet and well-meaning but generally clueless, and somehow had really good game with the ladies. Murph was a son of Epimetheus (hindsight), a surfer bro and himbo extraordinaire with amazing luck and an incredible knack for having just the right tool for the job, somehow. tags for this campaign include #confusion crew, #the orphic uprising, #the amazonomachy, and #nina grayson.

North Pines Camp, Monster of the Week, and Grovington College, Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terrors these two campaigns were my first dives into TTRPGs, both with the same GM and both with slightly altered versions of the same PC for me, so the GM and i had a few fun inside jokes and callbacks during the second one. these were played before i met my husband and before i got good at note-taking, so my memory of them is very hazy. tbh any content posted about these two will be undetailed, completely out of context, and full of holes, but the basic shenanigans are still very fun to look back on. North Pines Camp was a kids' summer camp in ?????, built on top of what used to be monster-hunter training grounds. our PCs were all camp employees, and our main goal was typically to keep the kids safe (or rescue them) from whatever ~monster of the week~ showed up to wreak havoc. there was a deeper mystery element running through it, about what happened to the old monster-hunter camp here, but we never got far enough into the story to really get anywhere with it. Grovington College was a decently sized college with greek life located in Grovington, ?????, USA; it housed a chapter of the Brotherhood, a demon/monster-slaying organization. our PCs were all members of this chapter, tasked with taking care of various demon and monster problems around campus and the town as a whole, in between doing college student/professor things. in these campaigns, i played Indigo Sullivan, a queer psychic with both a caffeine and an attitude problem. technically they were two separate characters for the two campaigns, but like, the version of him that continues to roll around in my head is an amalgam of both PCs plus all the additional things i've tacked onto him as time has gone on. most of those additions can be summed up as "he's now even more queer and has even more problems." tags for these campaigns are #north pines camp, #grovington college, and #indigo sullivan.

and that is all of them, phew! that's a lot thank you for reading this all and please enjoy my blog!

[klysanderelias]

there's a post I saw recently that unfortunately I can't find again, but basically it was saying 'not every ttrpg group has to be dimension 20 or critical role, you don't have to hold yourself to the standard of tolkien-esque narratives, sometimes a dnd game is a guy who's read the rules a couple of times copying the story from dragon age 2'

and as usual for me, I thought too much about that and I'm mad about a thing that's only really tangentially related to the original inspiration.

tl;dr it drives me crazy when people treat ttrpgs like playing call of duty with your buddies after work, where you're just going through the motions, instead of engaging with the story and getting invested. (and I know. not everyone needs to play games the way I do.)

But it's this problem where I have played in SO MANY GAMES where it's so clear that no one is bought in. I've had so many DMs who ran the adventure like they were trying to clear a level. It's rote - it's not just railroading, it's like being on a tour that's timed down to the minute. There's no time to stop and ask questions. There's no time to explore. Everyone is tapping their foot and looking at their watch any time you're not walking to the next thing to look at for twenty seconds.

And yeah, not every game has to be a professionally written campaign with a theater kid GM doing voices, but sometimes the other direction is 'everyone sits at the table on their phones until it's time to roll your attack for the round' and that's so goddamn frustrating for me.

And like, I get it. I really do. Hell, I've been the guy who brought a character to the table with no backstory and no plan, it's just a stat block and a smile, but so much of that feels like a response to apathetic players. It's saying 'if I don't care about who I'm playing, then I can't get hurt.'

And like, sometimes I play a character that I really care about, that i think will be a lot of fun, and I get hurt.

And almost exclusively it's because everyone else at the table sits there and looks at me like cows facing down a butcher when I try to roleplay, and even the people who aren't dismissive are still entirely uninvested.

And I guess it's just the general frustration of putting a thing out into the world and having zero engagement. It's doing a presentation to the class and everyone is zoned out. It's bringing food to a potluck and like three people try it, and no one says anything aside from maybe a quick 'it's good'.

I get that everyone plays games differently, and I know that a lot of people who play ttrpgs are just there for the social activity. Especially for a weekly game, there are going to be weeks where you're just worn out. You're there to be there, and that's kind of the best you can do.

But I can't understand where the fun comes from if it's not from getting to tell a story. Where's the joy if you're not making decisions and having silly conversations and bringing out a part of yourself that you don't get to do in your everyday life? You're a fucking space wizard, and you can't muster the emotion to do more than cast magic missile?

And it's so frustrating, it fucking kills me, to play in a game where I spent a lot of time and effort making a character that's interesting to me, that has a lot of potential for conflict and resolution and emotion, and like six months later realizing that no one's engaged with it at all and that I'VE checked out because it's easier than being upset.

I guess at some point, the umbrage I'm taking here is that every time I see a post like 'don't worry about being perfect, dnd is just about having fun with your friends!' I'm like yeah, it is, and I can't really disagree with you without being the asshole here, but also I want you to have higher standards for the fun times you have with your friends. You're in a creative hobby, not a consumptive one, fuckin' act like it.

Or maybe, I think the vehicle is wrong for the thing you're trying to do, and that's just how DnD works these days - you can find DnD 5e hacks of anything, including gundam. And Hasbro has specifically engendered a marketing strategy where DnD is the end-all be-all party game, and it's insane, but also it's completely understandable why people think that all you really need to worry about is having a character sheet and a set of dice.

But at the end of the day I'm trying to write fanfic with my friends and all I'm getting is blank stares from people who really would be better suited to lord of the rings monopoly.

[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*