#my dm just introduced this npc and i NEED him to be more than a one off character

[b1gwings]

3 AM BONK MOMENT

[nn-ee-zz]

What are your other OC's like? I'm interested in hearing about the stories you came up with for them.

UH OH youre gonna get me talking!

My OCs are NPCs by origin. I was (still am) the DM of my friend group and to get their characters moving along I had to create my own.

Unexpectedly, my friends loved them.

ILYA - unwell henchman

i know its a boys name,

An aiding hand to an ambiguous villain, Ilya was introduced as sneaky, smiling, and untrustworthy. The facade collapsed once she vomited inside a cup after accidentally touching the liquified remains of (unbeknown to her) her younger sibling. The villain is a wizard of great power and transported all the liquid from their body to put out a fire, mummifying and killing the person in the process in an attempt to save several.

She seeks her sibling amongst the city. The tingling awareness of their demise at the hands of the guild she encouraged them to join and growing panic and grief led her to start a fight with someone who is spiraling as well.

She ends up at the local clinic, heavily injured and minus one eye, and spirals further from her injuries, her guilt, and the knowledge her family was correct about her being too mentally fragile to be in the city. Until....

(For now. The overall arc for this character is of recovery and improvement instead of pain and self-destruction. Forgive your past and find value within you that goes beyond self-sacrifice. With the help of others, of course.)

Despite her questionable moral position, a lot of characters feel the need to protect her.

Art - Her wearing another characters shirt and her getting a widdle kiss from said character, because even I (the monster freak artist) have my lovely ships

ED - emo organ trafficker

''Nez, I want my oc to be kidnapped and rescued by another oc'' ''Hm, I'll make up a guy to kidnap them then''

Originally meant to be a minor antagonist that would kidnap a character to harvest their organs and be easily defeated. Villain of the week type.

However, his snarky behavior, violent temperament, fancy victorian-boy-esque looks captured a lot of attention. He is a little freak but his direct words seem to bring out a lot of honesty in other characters.

Fun facts; His name is inspired by Edward Hyde. He is roomates and best friend/adopted sibling to Ilya. He makes an effort to be fancier than he is because he was born a bastard child and forced to be his fathers servant before he murdered his siblings and father and joined the army to escape (where he met ilya and ultimately got adopted into her family <333)

Art - Him, and him as a chibi fighting the guy who rescued the person he kidnapped. They also fall in love

REDD - funny bully

I recently made an oc just to mess around with the players while they were in jail! Well, now one of them drank his blood and is forever connected to him. The other one got her finger broken cuz she poked him. He also had the prision keys the entire time but pretended to be a prisioner as well. What a menace! I love making horrible pests. His name is red cuz thats how the others refered to him, because I described him as having red hair and red eyes.

Isnt it funny how despite being a DM I never use my monster designs?! I find it a lot more interesting to make characters specifically meant to alter the course of the character development of my players. I love to change deeply and irrevocably! : D

[strangerobsession]

I Cast Knock on the Door

Votes are in! I'll probably do more lil one-shots based on ACOC because I'm mentally ill and I'm obsessed with these silly little guys.

Gender neutral reader, and they play a character named Theo who can be imagined as masc, fem, or neither.

Summery: Things are going sideways for the party in Eddie's new political corruption campaign. PCs are dying and betrayals are occurring, but morale is regained when you achieve a small victory and catch Eddie of-guard.

SPOILERS FOR DIMENSION 2O'S A CROWN OF CANDY UNDER THE CUT

Word Count: 1,446

Masterlist

“I think we brought this on ourselves, guys.” You muttered, leaning back in your chair with a heavy sigh. “We did let Eddie do a murder campaign.”

Everyone at the table had been practically paralyzed for the past twenty-five minutes. The incredulous sputtering from the unexpected betrayal by a favorite NPC had turned into silence as Eddie now somberly narrated Mike’s character’s death.

He chuckled quietly, shrugging. “I told you; if you play royals, everyone’s gonna try to assassinate you.”

“It’s okay, Eddie’ll pull an NPC out of his ass that he was gonna introduce later for you to play.” Gareth, who’d also had his character killed off, said kindly to Mike.

“You got one for me, too?” Jeff asked, laughing tiredly.

“Oh, you’re fine, you’re still alive.” Eddie waved him off.

“Cruller just threw me off the roof of my own castle.” Jeff deadpanned. “I might be fucked.”

When Eddie had pitched his latest campaign idea, everyone had been excited about doing something different. The picture he’d painted of the world and the lore had been too good to pass up. Even when he’d explicitly said “I will be trying to kill you every step of the way,” Hellfire still gave him the stamp of approval, and set about creating new characters.

Now? Dustin’s familiar and best friend had been killed, Gareth was on his second character, Jeff seemed close to death, and now Mike needed a new character.

Eddie laughed again. “Well, for now,” He gestured to you. “Theo?”

“Mm-hmm?” You grunted quietly at the sound of your character’s name.

“You are walking through the castle looking for some of the other knights. You find Toby’s quarters,” Eddie said, referring to your character, the captain of the royal guard’s second in command. “They look sort of messier than normal, which is unusual to you because he’s a very neat, crisp knight. As you go in to investigate, you see Sir Toby’s body butchered in a corner of the room.”

Your eyes widened, but Eddie wasn’t done.

“You hear the iron door of his quarters slam behind you and lock. You hear the voices of some of Cruller’s men,” He pitched his voice lower and laughed. “Keep them behind the door. Have fun in there! If you get hungry your friend Toby should be able to help you with a meal.”

You crossed your arms, and shook your head, brows furrowed. “I think Theo’s just running through everything in their head, just like a million thoughts at once. They’re thinking ‘How did I not see this? How did I not suspect this? Where’s the king?’” You sigh heavily, eyes scanning your character sheet and what few spells you have. An idea starts to form. You look up at your boyfriend, perched behind his DM screen. “Can I hear how many people are outside the door?”

“Yeah, only probably like two or three.”

You nod, glancing back at your spells. “I cast Knock on the door.”

Eddie stares at you, eyes wide and mouth gaping as your fellow party members cheer.

“Yeah!” Mike yells from next to you, pumping a fist. Dustin grabs your arm from your other side.

“It automatically unlocks the door.” You finally let yourself smile at Eddie’s shocked face- he’s so rarely thrown off his game, you can count on one hand the number of times you’d rendered him well and truly speechless during a session.

He lets out a stunned laugh, grinning widely. “You hear them snickering outside, and suddenly the door bursts off its hinges, flies and thuds into the wall across, and they whip around to look at you. Sweetheart, if you will, please roll initiative.”

You pick up your d20 between two fingers with a smirk. “Do I get any kind of surprise?”

“You’re gonna get a surprise round, absolutely.”

Dustin frowned as you rolled. “Is it just (Y/N) going?”

“Yeah, well we’ve gotta resolve this before we cut back to everyone else.” Eddie nodded.

“I got an eleven.” You inform him.

Eddie rolled behind his screen. He shakes his head with a rueful smile. “The guards got a three. Go ahead and take your surprise round.”

“Oh my god,” You laughed, scanning your possible attacks and spells. “You’re going to regret not killing me first, asshole.”

With advantage for the surprise round, you quickly dropped two out of the three guards. Eddie marked something off on his notes, still looking a little dazed. “Okay, that’s your surprise round. There is one guy left and you rolled higher on initiative. Go for it.”

You rolled a few more times, rattling off numbers to Eddie as you took out the last guard. “First attack was just five, this is…. Another eight damage.”

Not your best rolls, but luckily the palace guards had pretty low stats. Eddie nods. “Theo, they’ve locked you in this room, and they’re laughing outside. In a swirling helix of magic energy, the door explodes off its hinges, and as their faces follow, you slide out.” He waves an arm, mimicking a swinging blade. “All of these soldiers are dead before they even have a chance to draw their weapons.”

You sigh in relief. “Amazing.”

“We should get a sign or something for the room.” Dustin smirked. “‘It’s been zero days since Eddie’s plans were ruined by an unassuming spell.’”

The table laughed as Eddie leaned forward, pointing a pencil at Dustin with an impassive expression. “You’re still way too proud of that Detect Poison thing.”

“It solved the whole battle, it was awesome!” Lucas protested with a laugh.

Eddie groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Everytime,” He muttered. “Everytime I have a whole fight, one of you does that one thing that fucks it all up.”

“Your goal is to kill us, ours is to make your life a living hell.” You replied evenly, setting your dice back into neat lines. “If we have to follow the rules, so do you.”

“You’re doing a bang up job.” He quipped, before clapping his hands. “Alright, let’s cut back to Cumulous.”

. . .

“You think Eddie’s already got an NPC for Mike to take over?” Dustin asked.

“Knowing him, it’s more than likely. That or they’re working something out right now.” You shrugged. “Either way, he won’t leave him hanging.”

After the session, Eddie had asked Mike to hang back, telling him he “had something for him.” You, Dustin and Lucas waited by your car for them to be done.

“I think I’m still in shock.” Lucas commented. “I think I’ve been in shock for the past four sessions.”

“Me too,” You agreed. 

Eddie and Mike soon pushed through the front doors of Hawkins High. Eddie had an arm wrapped around the younger boy, patting him comfortingly on the shoulder. They were both smiling, though.

“Figure everything out?” You asked, holding a hand out.

“Oh yeah.” Eddie took it, kissing your knuckles. “We haven’t seen the last of Wheeler.”

“Good.” You ruffled Mike’s hair affectionately. “Pile in, boys.”

The kids clambered into your car- Dustin scrambling around to the passenger’s seat after calling shotgun- as you turned to fully face Eddie.

“Hey, that was a really good move with Knock, earlier.” He grinned. “I didn’t even know you had that one.”

“Never had to use it before- I only added after I realized how trigger happy you were with the assassination attempts.” You chuckled. “Figured it’d come in handy.”

“You’re a genius, babe.” Eddie grabbed both your hands, pressing kisses to every finger. 

Lucas knocked on the window from inside the car. “Wrap it up, lovebirds!” He called, muffled.

Eddie shot him a dirty look, then kissed you deeply. You cupped his face in one hand, using the other to flip off the groaning boys in your car.

“We still good for tomorrow?” He asked, pressing his forehead to yours.

“Yup. Pick me up at 12?”

“I’ll be there.” He promised, kissing you again. 

“Okay, I should actually go and get these guys home.” You said regretfully, pulling out of Eddie’s arms. “Thanks for the session, Ed. It was really fun.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart. You were amazing.” He started walking backwards towards his van, a soft smile pulling at his lips. “I love you!” 

“I love you too!” You called as he got further away.

“I can’t believe you just made out with the man who murdered me in cold blood.” Mike scoffed as you slid into the driver’s seat.”

“Sometimes you have to compartmentalize, Micheal.” You replied as you started the car. “In my head, my boyfriend and the guy who’s ass I’m gonna beat in next week’s session are two very different people.”

[the-gboi]

Hello! People of the Multiverse!

I just wanna rant about one of my NPCs/OCs. Since I'm a forever DM, I often introduce characters I'd like to play into the campaigns I run. This one's one of them! I will be writing this from memory since I lost my notes on him when my last phone died. :P

Gorg...

Gorg lives in the enormous city of Ravnica, specifically in the 10th district, between the 3rd and the 4th precincts. If you know a bit about Ravnica, you know it's a plane-wide city, with ten guilds that govern every part of life. Well... except for one.

You see, Ravnica wasn't always supposed to be entirely civilized and urbanized, there were supposed to be wild areas of untouched nature where animals could roam free. The Gruul Clans were supposed to be the protectors of these zones, but the ever-expanding city kept encroaching into these parts, leaving no square foot unpaved and the Clans without a clear purpose. And so, they rage and destroy those cobbled streets, trying to bring back a past that is far gone. Or, at least, that's the Old way's way of looking at it.

Into this mess, an Orc is born.

The year is 10.045. It is a night of revel for the Zhur-Taa Clan, for they have taken down one of the Izzet's main manufacturing facilities around the 4th district. The night is filled with cheers and drinking, and yet, Konik Mons weeps inside the beast pen. The newborn Gorg cries in his mother's arms, his face still bloodied from birth. Their cries are lost in the night, alongside Konik's partner, Murik Baar, who did not make it back from the assault, and his child will not get to know his valiant father.

The year is 10.057. It is a long and arduous summer day for Gorg and Konik, as the latest assault on the nearby "Beast Heaven" has brought about a multitude of captured creatures that need to be patched up and healed since the barbaric and often axe-handed abductors could not care less in what state they brought the animals. As the young Gorg separated the wounded creatures from the rest so they could be treated by his mother, he happened across the most peculiar critter.

The diminutive feline couldn't have been larger than Gorg's fist, yet it fiercely hizzed at the horned alynx, standing his ground on his three pinky-sized legs. The alynx looked annoyed, and it raised his front claw, ready to make a snack out of the defiant nuisance at his feet. A swipe away from ending the creature, a piece of oxen meat flying away caught its attention, and the beast ran behind it. While the predator devoured the succulent morsel of meat, Gorg scooped up the curious ball of fur, and he ran back to his mother to show her his discovery.

"It seems not an alynx youngling," declared Konik, "it lacks the little horn buds on its head". The orc woman grabbed the creature and gently placed it on her table. "Nor is it a simple lynx either, for it is far too small and fragile lookin'." She paused and took a small moment to analyze the little stump where the front left leg would be. She looked for a cut or a sign of bludgeon, yet she didn't find one. "Huh... Must have been born this way." Grog opened the shack's blinds, letting in more light so her mother could work better. "Thank you, my little plum." Her mother doted on him. They both looked back at the table where the light shone the most. The feline's orange and white hair glistened with the coming sunlight, while it took this opportunity to shut its eyes and lay on the desk calmly. "Look at the critter, Gorg! It fell asleep on the table." Gorg looked at it, almost as if he was feeling a new emotion he couldn't describe quite well. He felt relaxed and perceptive, looking at the whole of the creature while it rested on the desk. He placed a hand on it and did as he had done with other animals, stroking its body gently. It started... vibrating? Or growling? The animal did not look in discomfort, yet Konik removed her son's hand from it, unaware of this species' forms of communication. It opened its eyes and looked back at Gorg, emitting a high-pitched sound that almost sounded like a request. It wanted to be stroked again, he thought, and so he did. It pushed its head onto Gorg's hand, falling to the side after it moved its front leg to grab his hand. It spun back on its feet and resumed being stroked.

"I want to keep it," Gorg muttered.

And that's it for now! I'll write the rest when... When I'm feeling like it. Hehe.

Please share your thoughts! And if you've got any characters from a dnd game you're running, or playing, please share those too!

[malcolm-reeds-pineapple]

I managed to convince my family to play D&D with me and by that I mean I held a gun to everyone’s heads and told them to play D&D with me. I am by no means experienced with D&D, however I’m committed to the bit and I just got the essentials kit.

Last time I played D&D with my family (my mom, grandmother and brother), I made the mistake of making everyone a character and handing it to them on the day of to avoid a boring session 0. This time, I’ve entirely changed my approach.

Nanny is playing a sidekick and I’ve built her a modified character sheet that walks her through everything for combat along with 3 parking spots for her dice that tell her which ones she uses and when. Due to sidekick rules, it’s also very easy for me as the DM to play her character during combat if she doesn’t want to. She’s 80 years old and I’m lucky I’ve gotten this far. Because she’s playing a sidekick, she also has different rules than the others which makes it easy for me to explain to the other players why nanny can do something but they can’t (however, I’ve gone over it with my other players in their session zeros and they agree that 80 years is long enough on the planet to bend the rules in dungeons and dragons).

Individualized session zeros. Where I’m working with two brand new players and one player who has played one singular campaign, I’ve found it’s easier for me to have 3 short session zeros for each player rather than needing to have an entire afternoon of a session zero that would 100% make everyone lose interest. For my brother (experienced and interested), our session 0 was character creation where we worked together on a backstory for his character and went over anything he was unclear on in terms of game mechanics. I gave him a brief summary of the world and he was able to craft ways of how he could have depth in his character. That session was about four hours long. Meanwhile, Nanny’s session 0 was 15 minutes long and I had her pick out a sidekick card and then went over the basic game mechanics with her.

Introducing NPCs that allow me to run goofy one shot adventures when not all players are present. We’re running Dragon of Icespire Peak at the moment, but my mom isn’t always around as she lives five hours away. However, my brother and Nanny like the game and would prefer to play more frequently. By introducing a few goofy NPCs in the main town, I’ve been able to have those goofy one shots without breaking the immersion in the world/confusing my nanny. The one-shots loosely tie into the story, but they’re mostly about getting my nanny more comfortable with the game. They have absolutely no levelling or consequences and are more about interaction and role playing.

I’ve also given them each a character folder so that they can keep their stuff all in one place and I can give their characters things before sessions. So for the first session, I had my brother’s character own an incomplete map of the area that was given to him by his mentor. I made sure it was folded to show the area where the characters were on the map but then had a full map of the area be a reward for helping the goofy NPCs I added for one shots. Players were also each given a notebook and a combat cheat sheet in their folders. I take these back at the end of the session so I can see their notes and plan my next session around what they liked enough to take notes on.

I already kinda touched on this but holy shit hand outs and physical props my beloved. So far my players have LOVED getting letters from NPCs or getting an actual map that looks like it’s aged and been through the wringer. For their next quest, they’ll be getting a set of sending stones, so I’m going to the beach before the session to pick out some nice stones that I can give them to actually have a physical representation of them so that way the cards can just be instructions to go along with them.

I’ve also colour coded each one of my characters based on their folder colour so I have a highlighter, pen, page flag, and index card colour associated with each one of them. That allows me to have their race/class/background flagged in my PHB or write down backstory notes on their index cards. They also each have a page in my OneNote workbook affiliated with them just by colour. It’s made things super easy

I’ve put their character sheets in plastic sleeves so they can track HP/spell slots with a dry erase marker.

So far these things are working well. It’s definitely hard to keep engagement, but at least this time I’ve been able to kinda do it. I did all this with a budget of 15 bucks at the dollar store and with shit I had around the house, so I’m not spending money on it either which is nice. Granted, I do have access to a printer and a shitload of craft supplies, so that’s made it a lot easier.

[saltieststar]

Combining DIA and BG3: Chapter 1, Pt. 1

This post is meant specifically for DM's running DIA and would like the campaign to give hints about the events that occur during BG3.

Captian Zodge: The captain is already lawful evil and looking to move up to a leadership position within the fist. This NPC rewrites himself. Zodge is secretly a Banite working for Gortash.

Introduce Wyll: Like EA Wyll, he is a member of the Flaming Fist. Wyll reports to Captain Zodge. Though you can ditch his EA angst, he can be his lovely good-boy self. Wyll is a member of the Fist because Ravenguard believed it would toughen Wyll up. Ulder is a hardass who believes his son is too soft and needs tough love. Let Wyll join the party in helping to deal with the Dead Three cultists causing chaos in the city. Until Wyll agrees to a devil's pact, his class should be a fighter. After learning about the events in Elturel, Wyll is determined to save his father and is appalled by how officials are handling the refugees. PRISON BREAK! If you want to expand on Reya Mantlemorn's story, Wyll would be willing to help the party infiltrate Wyrm's Rock and free Reya's friends.

Alternative informant: Gortash and Thurstwell Vanthampur are working together. Thurstwell knows his mother plans on choosing his younger brother as the successor rather than him, so he helps Gortash plan her downfall so he can assume her place as a Duke. The informant is a maid for the Vanthampurs who tells the party of her employer's strange meetings.

The Dead Three cultists are low-level initiates without knowledge about the cut's grander plans. They're just pawns The Chosen are using to give the illusion that The Cult of The Dead Three has been dealt with to make it all the more dramatic for the rise of The Absolute Cultists. If you enjoy drama, you can allow the party to interrogate them. When the cultist starts to provide any actual information about the cult, such as mentioning Candulhallow's Tombstones or part of a name, they will only manage to utter part of the information before blood begins to pour out of their mouths. They've chewed off their own tongue.

Gortash's Motivation: Gortash is allowing his banites to help Thalamara pretty much for the same reasons she's doing it. It serves the larger Absolute plot for 1) the city to believe they've weeded out the Dead Three Cultists, 2) to make the Dukes and Flaming Fist look bad, 3) She set herself up for Gortash to betray her and come out looking like a good dude with the city's best interests at heart, 4) He can be rid of Ravenguard's brat by sending him on some wild goose chase to save his father.

Candlekeep is optional: Have an NPC, perhaps Thurstwell or someone sent by Gortash, tell the party of a diabolist within Baldur's Gate who specializes in planar travel and all things infernal. Helsik will take a particular interest in the shield found in the Vanthampur estate. Use it as the bargaining chip for information and passage to the hells. If the party doesn't want to part with the shield, choose a suitable price for her services or have her request that the party recover an artifact from Avernus for her. It is up to the DMs discretion whether or not she offers them any information about the shield. Helsik is very self-serving. The highest bidder is pretty much Helsik's only concern. If the shield gives her a good reason to do so, she would be willing to lie to the party about its nature while providing information on how Garguath can be released.

Candlekeep: I'm not too fond of the true nature of the shield being immediately given away. The party can learn about the shield, but it will take Sylvira an extra day or two to research the artifact. It's up to you if you remind your pc's that time is a factor in the Hells situation. If the party chooses to stay, running a session from Candlekeep's Mysteries is always a good choice, or letting them research the Hells and its history. In my campaign, I also included that if Sylvira comes in physical contact with the shield during this investigation, Garguath will attempt to charm her. If he succeeds, Sylvira will tell the players about the shield but stick to Garguath's lie about being celestial.

[allaboutirony]

For a long time, I thought making dnd characters that differ from me greatly would be the most fun. My first character was kinda just me, so i decided to deviate for our next campaign. And when I thought, "what might be a challenge for me to rp?" i immediately thought, "religious." And what's more than just being religious? Relying on your faith. So I went with Paladin.

I'm kinda a furry, so I went from a tiny halfling to a giant dragonborn. The default god for silver dragonborns is Bahamut, so I looked him up. I'm generally very bored with gods as a concept, but I ended up loving Bahamut. He doesn't believe in traditional punishment, he's extremely humble, and very kind. He wanders the world disguised as an old man with some birds. When he bests a challenger in battle, he turns them into sheep, temporarily, which does three things. 1, it illustrates his power, 2, it doesn't kill them, and 3, it gives them time to think about their actions and change themselves for the better. He gave away his money. He'd heal combatants. He took pity on the downtrodden. I loved that. I thought, "He's dragon Jesus!"

Over the course of the campaign, my dm introduced NPCs that were also followers of, or even closer to, Bahamut. And in our version of the game, the Gods are pretty standoffish. Clerics and divine intervention are rare. The Gods haven't been around for a while. But my character grew up in the biggest, oldest temple of Bahamut (who doesn't even really like being worshiped and doesn't need big temples... i'm telling you. dragon jesus.) which was full of the oldest and most "accurate" texts based on Bahamut's philosophies. And these NPCs kept being wrong. They would say or explain things that directly went against what I understood to be what Bahamut would actually want. And so, my sweet, soft spoken, loving dragonborn ended up talking back to these people. They met an adult dragon for who all we knew had met Bahamut before. And my character said, no. You're wrong about him.

For all I knew, this was the DM's actual interpretation of what Bahamut would want. We'd discussed it before, and he'd pointed out that he's a god of Life, but also Justice, and War. I tried to explain that justice doesn't mean killing or imprisoning. And I straight up said War did not fit with any description of him as a character--the only War there was against his sister, who is an embodiment of evil. And like... I get it. But my character ended up being right in the end. He met Bahamut, and he was blessed as his chosen. I was right.

So, I've been thinking about this recently. Was it actually difficult for me to develop and play a character who has blind faith for a God that hasn't spoken to anyone in multiple lifetimes? Well, no. Because it wasn't about the God. It was about the philosophy. It was about believing in a way of life, full of charity, and love, and justice, and anti-evil. It ended up not being about believing that the God will fix everything, or that he was even there, but that he had these ideas about helping people and being humble. And that's what my dragonborn upheld.

It's my main issue with religion, Christianity mostly but not exclusively. I'm sure I don't have to go into the specifics. But to me, I never felt that divine connection. It never made sense to think anyone could hear me when I prayed. And what was praying, anyway? Asking whatever God to help with the world? Whenever I saw help being done, it was people. People who believed that, when they had the ability to, that they could help.

This is all to say that sometimes you think you're setting yourself up to try to something out of your comfort zone only to play out exactly what you've had problems with expressing your entire life.

[thedeadhandofseldon]

The Anti-Mercer Effect

On the Accessibility of D&D, Why Unprepared Casters is so Fun, and Why Haley Whipjack is possibly the greatest DM of our generation.

(Apologies to my mutuals who aren’t in this fandom for the length of this, but as you all know I have never in my life shut up about anything so… we’ll call it even for the number of posts about Destiel I see every day.

To fellow UC fans - I haven’t listened to arc 4 yet, I started drafting this in early August, and I promise I will write a nice post about how great Gus the Bard is once I get the chance to listen to more of his DMing).

Structure - Or, “This is not the finale, there will be more podding cast”

So, first of all, let’s just talk about how Unprepared Casters works. Because it’s kind of unusual! Most of the other big-name D&D podcasts favor this long, grand arcs; UC has about 10 hours of podcast per each arc. And that’s a major strength in a lot of ways: it makes it really accessible to new listeners, because you can just start with the current arc and understand what’s going on!

And by starting new arcs every six or seven episodes, they can explore lots of ways to play D&D! Classic dungeon delve arc! Heist arc! Epic heroes save the world arc! Sportsball arc! They can touch on all sorts of things!

And while I’m talking about that: Dragons in Dungeons, the first arc, makes it incredibly accessible as a show - because it lets the unfamiliar listener get a sense of what D&D actually is. (It’s about telling stories and making your friends feel heroic and laugh and cry, for the record). If I had to pick a way to introduce someone to the game without actually playing it with them, that arc would definitely be it.

And I’d be remise not to note one very important thing: Haley Whipjack and Gus the Bard are just very funny, very charismatic people. Look. Episode 0s tend to be about 50%(?) those two just talking to each other about their own podcast. It shouldn’t work. And yet it DOES, its one of my favorite parts, because Haley and Gus are just cool.

And a side note that doesn’t fit anywhere else: I throw my soul at him! I throw a scone at him - that’s it, that’s the vibe. The whole podcast alternates between laughing with your friends and brooding alone in a dark tavern corner - but the laughs never forced and the dark corner is never too dark for too long.

Whipjack the Great - Or, the DM is Also a Player!

I think Haley Whipjack is one of the greatest Dungeon Masters alive. The plots and characters! The mechanical shenanigans! The descriptions!

Actually, let’s start there: with the descriptions. (Both Haley and Gus do this really fucking well). As we know, Episode 0 of each arc sees the DM reading a description - of a small town, or the Up North, or the recent history of a great party. And Haley always strikes this tricky balance - one I think a lot of us who DM struggle with - between giving too much description and  worldbuilding, and not telling us anything at all. She describes people and events in just enough detail to imagine them, but never so much they seem static and unreal - just clear enough to envision, but with enough vagueness left to let your imagination begin to run wild.

While I’m thinking about arc 3’s party, let’s talk about a really bold move she made in that arc: letting the players have ongoing control of their history. Loser Lars! She didn’t try to spell out every detail of this high-level party’s history, or restrict their past to only what she decided to allow - she gave them the broad outlines, and let them embellish it. And that made for a much more alive story than any attempt to create it by herself would have - but I think it takes a lot of courage to let your players have that agency. Most Dungeon Masters (myself included) tend to struggle with being control freaks.

And the plots! Yeah, arc one is built of classic tropes - but she actually uses them, she doesn’t get caught up in subverting everything or laughing at the cliches. And it’s fun! In arc 3, there really isn’t a straight line for the players to follow, either - which makes the game much more interesting and much trickier to run. And her NPCs are fantastic and I will talk about them in the next section.

Above all, though, I think what is really impressive is how Haley balances mechanics, and rules as written, with the narrative and rule of cool - and puts both rules and story in the service of playing a fun game. And the secret to that? She’s the DM, but the DM is a player, and the DM is clearly having fun. Hope Lovejoy mechanically shouldn’t get that spellslot back, but she does, and it’s fun. The changeling merchant in Thymore doesn’t really make some Grand Artistic Narrative better, but wow is it fun. And she never tries to force it one way or the other - the story might be more dramatic if Annie didn’t manage to banish the demon from the vault, but it’s a lot cooler and a lot more fun for the players if Annie gets to be a badass instead - and the rules and the dice say that Annie managed it.

Settings feel like places, NPCs feel like people, and the narrative plot feels like a real villainous plot.

Anyway. I could go on about the various ways in which Whipjack is awesome for quite a while - she’s right, first place in D&D is when your friends laugh and super first place is when they cry - but I’m going to stop here and just. Make another post about it some other time. For now, for the record I hold her opinions about the game in higher esteem than I do several official sourcebooks; that is all.

Characters - Or, Bombyx Mori Is Not an Asshole, And That Matters

Okay, I said I would talk about characters! And I will!

Just a general place to start: the party! All of the first three parties are interesting to me, because they all care about each other. Not even necessarily in a Found Family Trope sort of way, though often that too. But they generally aren’t assholes to each other. The players create characters that actually work together, that are interesting; even when there’s internal divisions like SK-73 v. Sir Mr. Person, they aren’t just unpleasant and antagonistic all the time. Listening to the podcast, we’re “with” these people for a couple hours - and it isn’t unpleasant. That matters a lot. (To take a counter-example: I love Critical Role, but the episode when Vox Machina pranked Scanlan after he died and was resurrected wasn’t fun to listen to, it was just uncomfortable and angering and vaguely cruel).

All of the PCs are amazing, and the players in each arc did a great job. If you disagree with me about that, well, you have the right to be incorrect and I am sorry for your loss. Annie Wintersummer, for one example: tragic and sad and I want to give her a hug, but also Fuck Yeah Wintersummer, and also her familiar Charles the Owl is the cutest and funniest and I love him. And we understand what’s going on with Annie, she isn’t some infinite pool of hidden depths because this arc is 7 episodes and we don’t have time for that, but she also has enough complexity to be interesting. Same with Fey Moss: yeah, a lot of her is a silly pun about fame that carries into how she behaves, but a lot of how she behaves is also down to some good classic half-elven angst about parenthood and wanting to be known and seen and important. (Side note: if your half-elf character doesn’t have angst, well, that’s impressive and also I don’t think I believe you).

There are multiple lesbian cat-people in a 4-person party and they both have requited romantic interests who aren’t each other. This is the future liberals want and I am glad for it.

Sir Mister Person, the human fighter! Thavius, the edge lord! Even when a character is “simple,” they’re interesting, because of how they’re played as people and not action-figures. And that matters a lot.

In the same way: the NPCs. There really aren’t a lot of them! And some of them come from Patreon submissions, so uh good work gang, you’re part of the awesomeness and I’m proud of you! The point being, the NPCs work because enough of them are interesting to matter. It’s not just a servant who opens Count Michael’s door, it’s a character with a name (Oleandra!) and a personality and history. They’re interesting. Penny Lovejoy didn’t need to be interesting, the merchant outside the Laughing Mausoleum didn’t need to be interesting, but they ARE! And Haley and Gus EXCEL at making the NPCs matter, not just to the story but to us as viewers. I agree with Sir Mister Person, actually, I would die for the princesses of the kingdom. I actually care about Gem Lovejoy of all people - that wouldn’t happen in an ordinary campaign! That’s the thing that makes Unprepared Casters spectacular - and, frankly, it’s especially impressive because D&D does not tend to be good at making a lot of interesting compared to a lot of other sorts of stories.

And, just as an exemplar of all this: Bombyx Mori. Immortal, reincarnating(?), and described as the incarnation of the player’s ADHD. I expected to hate Bombyx, because as the mom friend both in and out of my friend-group’s campaigns, the chaos-causer is always exhausting to me. And yeah, Bombyx causes problems on purpose! But! She is not an asshole.

And that’s important. Bombyx goes and sits with the queen and comforts her. Bombyx gives Annie emotional support. Bombyx isn’t just a vehicle to jerk around the DM and other players; Bombyx really is a character we can care about. To compare with another case - in the first couple episodes of The Adventure Zone, the PCs are just dicks. Funny, but dicks. Bombyx holds out an arm “covered in larva” to shake with a count, and robs him of magical items, but she also cares about her friends and other people! She uses a powerful magical gem to save her fertilizer guy from death! Yeah, Bombyx is ridiculous, but she’s not just an asshole the party has to keep around for plot reasons; you can see why her party would keep her around. And one layer of meta up, she’s the perfect example of how to make a chaotic character like that while still being fun for everyone you’re playing with, which is often not the case. And I love her.

The Anti-Mercer Effect - Or, “I think we proved it can be fun, you can have a good time with your friends. And it doesn’t have to be scary, you can just work with what you know”

The Mercer Effect basically constitutes this: Matthew Mercer, Dungeon Master of Critical Role, is incredible (as are all of his players). They’re all professional story-tellers in a way, remember, and so Critical Role treats D&D like a narrative art-form, and it’s inspiring. Seeing that on Critical Role sets impossible standards - and people go into their own home games imagining that their campaigns will be like Critical Role, and the burden of that expectation tends to fall disproportionately on the DM. And the end result, I think, of the Mercer Effect is that we get discouraged or intimidated, because our game isn’t “as good as” theirs. (And I should note - Matt certainly doesn’t want that to be our reaction).

So the Anti-Mercer Effect is two things: it’s D&D treated like a game, and it’s inspiring but not intimidating. And Unprepared Casters manages both of those really freaking well. Because they play it like a game! A UC arc looks just like a good campaign in anyone’s home game. They have the vibes of 20-somethings and college students playing D&D for fun because that’s who they are (as a 20-something college student who plays a lot of D&D, watching it felt like watching my friends play an especially good campaign). They’re trying to tell a good story, sure, and they always do. But first and foremost, they’re trying to have fun, and it shows, and I love the UC cast for it.

And that’s the other half of it: it’s inspiring! It’s approachable; you can see that Haley and Gus put plenty of work into preparing the game but it also doesn’t make you feel like you need hundreds of pages of worldbuilding to run a game. Sometimes a cleric makes Haley cry and she gives them back a spell-slot from their deity! That’s fantastic! It’s just inspiring - listening to this over the summer, when my last campaign had fallen apart under the strain of graduation, is why I decided to plan and run my new one!

That quote from Haley Whipjack that I used as the title for this section? That’s the whole core of this idea, and really, I think, the core of the podcast.

The Mercer Effect is when you go “that’s really cool, I could never do that.” But Unprepared Casters makes you look at D&D and go “wow, that looks really fun. I bet I can do that!” And I love the show for it.

And I bet a lot of you do too.

[liamfaoisidhe]

I too have seen this film and am prepared to headcanon!!! I absolutely can see this ship happening, I literally love them so much!! My votes are on Xenkin, but you should absolutely make a poll for it!

Spoilers for people who haven't seen it:

I'm currently kinning Simon really hard right now. I loved seeing him punch his ancestor to win, because as the man was talking I was literally thinking "Just punch him!" I'm going to start making edits today with what little clips there are in the trailers, until it comes out more widely and I can access more. I was really needing Simon's story in my life, and I was so happy that he finally got a chance with Doric after he got more powerful because he gave himself a chance. Him learning to love himself was what helped him grow, and while an obvious plot line, it was... fun and lovely.

I have some headcanons about his life, and that the way he was spoken to when the helmet was one wasn't just his own thoughts putting him down, but probably parrots what he'd heard from others after not living up the legacy set out for him.

On Doric, I'm mostly sad we didn't see more of her life, her beliefs, and her struggles. We got a lot of Edgin's, a good but of Simon's (but only so much because it's a movie) and a sprinkle of Holga's, but I definitely am curious about Doric. On that note, I LOVED the way they introduced themselves and the fact that multiple times we got moments that felt straight out of an actual campaign. The "carry you through the story while exposition dropping" NPC we all love to hate and hate to love, the Bard kind of just there during 90% of the fight, the "oops let me trsinwreck past important exposition and fuck everything up so the DM has to pull a Hail Mary of magical items," and the GRAVEYARD SCENE. Oh that was amazing. Also the obligatory backstory drop from Edgin and Doric was so accurate.

And, on backstory drops, another headcanon: Simon feels that giving his own backstory drop or talking about his problems (other than to inevitably claim he is not good enough and leave it at that) would be burdensome, which is why we only got bits and oeuces of his backstory unless the information was relevant directly to the plot (and it was often Edgin mentioning it, and Dimon shutting down the conversation). I also love Edgin and Simon's friendship, where Edgin is the only person eho believed in him and every time he fell down, even if Edgin was an ass about it, he helped Simon back up because he genuinely believed that he could do it, enough he didn't bother to make a plan B until later. I loved how adamant be was that Simon was a good sorcerer, because even if no one else agreed, Egin knew. He knew and he trusted him, and that's what made that scene where he breaks down and admits "yes, I am a fuck up. I fucked up worse than all of you, and I still beleive we can do this" so fucking powerful.

And Edgin's story... Oh. My. God. I typically play a Bard and it is so very refreshing to see a story where the Bard not only has my absolute favourite story arc for bards and rogues- learning integrity and admitting to one's own faults, he also has a found family arc, another favourite, and is finally, finally, not a Bard that is only there for the punchline or overly sexual.

I think that's it for now. Saw this movie last night and the brainrot for it is real.

As someone who’s just seen the movie and loved it, I am now having to face the tragic hell that is waiting for everyone else to see it so I can get my grubby, gremlin hands all over the amazing headcanons, fanart, and fanfics that this film is definitely going to spawn.

Especially with Edgin and Xenk (Xenkin? Edenk?? PalaBard???). I can see the ship already cresting the horizon and it’s beautiful.

[veryimportantsparkles]

I really need to do more shilling for Josh the Boyfriend’s project!  Neon Divide (formerly Callous Row) is a giant VRchat roleplay, played by over a 100 players and streamed by most of them.  It’s so hard to explain that.  Imagine a tabletop game like Dungeons and Dragons, but done over a 3d chat client.  So some interactions are pure improv acting, based on the players being able to speak and gesture to interact with each other realistically.  But occasionally the game mechanics require a DM to roll a dice (mostly for technical skills).  But also, Neon Divide has a dev team that coded a bunch of custom stuff into their maps so that they can use functional weapons and track damage and effects.

I’ve talked about Neon Divide a little, and done art for it (hmmm, I should update the tag to reflect the name change) but I can never figure out a good way to explain it.  I’m not an expert; I’ve never used VRchat myself, nor do I follow any of the players other than Josh.  It’s a huge setting, you can follow one player’s streams and never encounter half the other players.  They’re spread out across four separate maps with their own overarching storylines, there are several factions in-world, and of course there are little cliques of characters who hang out with each other.  I could probably give a good summary for Josh’s season 1 and 2 character, Johnny, but he’s DEAD and it’s TRAGIC.

For season 3, Josh is one of the DMs of the Upper City map.  ND is a space cyberpunk setting, taking place in a galaxy divided up between seven megacorporations.  Each corp has a branch office on the planet Hellion, which is a distant, backwater dump planet, and they’re fighting over resources and exploiting the residents in order to prove themselves to their respective main offices.  The Upper City is where (most of) the corporate characters live and work, meaning that Josh is the dungeon master of villain town.  Josh wrote a bunch of new systems for them to use, he calculates out their company stock prices and officiates “bureaucratic combat” (sneaky contract deals), a long with a bunch of other stuff that has yet to come.  The image above is my art for his character, a mad scientist doctor dog.  Every DM gets ‘DM hands,’ an avatar that’s just two sinister floating arms that can roll dice.  Josh put a skull pattern on his, because that’s how he does everything.

You could watch Neon Divide through nearly any of the gajillion characters.  I’m not familiar with a lot of them, but now that Josh is a DM if you watch his perspective you can see him jump around between characters who need dice rolls and lore info.  Sometimes he voices NPC characters (through a phone or through a generic avatar) to push the plot.  So watching him is a decent intro to the other characters on his map.  ‘Episodes’ happen every Friday, and we’re two weeks in.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Ep 1 had a lot of fussing around with technical stuff and was mostly just characters introducing/establishing themselves.  A slow start, as to be expected.  But episode 2!!!  I’m surprised by how many shenanigans are kicking off, the villains are all villaning at each other and it shows so much potential.

This is my long-winded plea to take a look at Neon Divide.  I’ll probably start posting here when episodes start, so take this as the main explanation of what I’m talking about.  Even if you don’t end up following Josh (we also use the Hundera account for streaming normal video games, in which I usually appear as well), check out some of the other players and see if anyone clicks for you.  It’s way more interesting than I can fully explain!

[mamashitty]

Jack as a DM

I have a lot of feelings about D&D these days. Likely because I've play every other week, and it's just become super important to me. So, of course, I tend to wonder what my favorite characters in stories would be like if they played D&D. And Jack as a DM, I dunno. I feel rusty with headcanons for him, so here's me dipping my toes back into it. Lemme know what your thoughts on him DMing or other Check Please characters :D

• His first session is a little rough. • He had planned out so much, the details of it was incredible. He combed through his player's character's backstories and left little hints and breadcrumbs. But the players went off somewhere he hadn't intended, and while he was able to respond by the seat of his pants (thanks to extensive world-building) he felt stressed by it. Enough so that he wasn't sure he should DM anymore. • But his players kept telling him how much fun they had, so he gave it another go. • Jack is the type to prep hard for his games. He spends hours before each sessions doing his best to make the world and game fun for his players. After the first session, he tries to guess what weird paths his players might go down, and he works on those. He knows he can't predict everything and honestly the longer he plays with his friends, the less he wants to be able to predict everything but for his peace of mind, he still tries to have plans for the different things his players might choose. Lots of plans. So many plans. It is kind of exhausting to think about. • Jack can't do voices. He has tried on a few occasions, but even among his closest friends it makes him feel embarrassed. He will lean into his accent for a lot of his NPCs, but that is the extent. He can paint the differences between NPCs with his words and descriptions. • He has a game he plays in his head, or more accurately a little private wager, over which newly introduced NPC his players will fall in love with and want to adopt. • Bitty's character had the slowest of burn romances with an NPC of Jack's. These two characters were more oblivious about their feelings than Jack and Bitty were OR ALTERNATIVELY: the NPC and Bitty's character got together first, and everyone at the table was just waiting for the other foot to drop. Waiting for those pining idiots to realize half of what their characters said to each other is probably what Bits and Jack needed to say to each other themselves lol • Jack really likes having props and such on the table. Tactile things his players can touch and hold. He does a lot of it himself, but he also outsources bits to his players: • One time he had Bitty bake a pie, so his players could taste what their characters were eating • Another time he had Shitty write up contracts for the characters to sign. • Lardo has helped with maps and portraits. • Nursey has helped compose poems and songs for sessions • Holster and Ransom have spreadsheets about the adventure that Jack will check and reference. • When Jack is having a rough day nothing calms him down quite as well as painting minis. • When Jack first started he tried writing his own notes during sessions but that got too tricky. With his friend's permission, he began recording the sessions and then he watches them later and writes down moments that feel important. • Bitty volunteered his camera for this, and of course, helps Jack set up before every session (it became a thing for them. Such flirting). • One year for his birthday the whole table surprised him by having someone else DM for a few sessions. Bitty DMed. And it wasn't a complete surprise, they gave Jack a two week notice to make a character, and he loved it. He loves DMing but he worried he would always be the DM. After that, every few sessions, someone else takes a turn at DMing. New stories and games are explored, and is fun. • Jack loves history, and he borrows from history, to make some for the game. He loves making historic events, and going into detail about it. He makes documents about historical events in their world. He can recite a lot of them from memory. • The world they play in is precious to Jack, and to all his players. He loves how much it has grown and changed BECAUSE of his friends and the adventures their characters get into. It's a long campaign, spanning years and years. Even when they do one-shots or take breaks from the main story, the playground they usually play in, is the one in the world Jack first created. • They try their

best to play in person, but as they have all moved out of the house, and gotten jobs it is difficult. Especially during the hockey season. So, they play over discord more often than not these days. • Jack has definitely run games for the Falconers • Jack has Hostler and Ransom help him with homebrew classes because they are so much better at balancing the stats than him, and they know how to put his vision into something that will actually work. • Dex has helped build some epic maps with Lardo, that have like moving pieces and mechanics involved. • Around Halloween they all dress up as their characters if they manage to get a session in. • Characters and players have come and gone, and Jack and everyone does their best to honor people of the past while also welcoming in new people. • There has been much laughter, tears, chaos, and shenanigans in these games and Jack loves it. It's another way for him to see his friends and love them. He didn't think D&D would morph into something so important to him, but it did.

[jasminesgardens]

Preparation

Set Up

Musical Episode Mechanics

Conclusions and Links

Heavily inspired by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Musical Episode: Once More, With Feeling, I put together a Musical Episode for my own players that went down beautifully and here’s how you can too!

Preparation: 

1. Have your players (whether subtly asked or not, up to you) send you a playlist of songs that relate to their character, their relationships and scenarios they’ve been through in the past. Sort through these songs into “Main Plot” and “Scenarios That Could Happen”. 

Prompt Examples from my Musical Episode:

Main Plot: Prologue/Opening Narration, First Song (Morning Sequence), The Whole City is Singing, Figuring Out What is Happening, NPC Karaoke Songs, Player Karaoke Songs, A Call to BBEG, Battle Songs, Reveal of BBEG, Revealing Deepest Darkest Secret, Aftermath, End Credits and After Credits.

Scenarios That Could Happen: Dream Sequences (What Ifs, Foreshadowing or Nightmares), Reflection on their Pasts/Families/Homes, Attraction/First Kiss/Getting Together/Examining the Relationship/WooHoo Moments, How the Party is Seen, Arguments/Make Ups, Praying to their Gods, Positivity/Negativity, Stress/Learning to Relax, Fight Training, Opening Up/Confessing Feelings (Romantic, Friendly, Truthful), Cheering Up, Anger/Protests, Celebration/Drunken Songs, Death Saving Throws and Continuing the Fight.

The playlist is public so just search up DND: The Musical Episode by Princess Jasmine Flies Away.

2. Ask your players, if you haven’t already, for their deepest, darkest secret. The secret they would take to their grave. A secret about their lives or a fear they have could be the prompt. (This is what will be revealed later to the whole Party!)

As I was heavily inspired by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Musical Episode, I used the episode to dive board my idea of what my “Main Plot” would be and explore the themes of secrets, speaking your truth and aftermaths. So even after my Musical Episode, my players and their characters were still thinking of what was revealed and what to do going forward with their relationships and themselves. That’s what will make your Musical Episode fun but also thought-provoking and memorable.

Examples from my Musical Episode:

“I’m going to die in six months.”

“I fear I’m on the path to becoming my step-father.”

“I fear my mission from my Goddess is to simply be the sidekick.”

Set Up:

1. Curse your Party. 

Example (taken from DNDSpeak and tweaked, warning a little gruesome): I sent my party on a mission to rid the City’s Sewers of the Oozes and Slimes that lived down there as the previous adventurers sent had not returned. While giving hint, and a child NPC who asked them to look, that recently a lot of pets had gone missing in the area around the Sewers. 

With every Ooze and Slime encounter, a voice would call out asking the adventurers to leave, getting more and more angry, desperate and threatening as they approached their hiding place. 

In this evil Bard’s hidden lair, they discovered the Bard had been stealing pets and using them to make into instruments. Not allowing the Party to leave, they fought and the Bard lost but just before he did, the Bard cursed my party. 

The players killed the Bard with fire so all the set up and hints in his lair burnt with him but if they hadn’t, they would have gotten hints of his worship to a certain demon and how he was planning to give his instruments as a gift to them.

I let my party spend the rest of the day doing whatever they liked and waited until the next day for the curse to take affect (which I recommend).

2. Setting Up Music

As I DM on Skype, I used JQBX for everyone to be able to hear the songs at the same time live but you might find other platforms or just be able to bluetooth to the speakers and use Spotify as you play in person (lucky sod).

Then completely shock your friends by awakening them to a performance. Start with a dream sequence or a morning montage or a title sequence! Have fun!

Musical Episode Mechanics:

1. When to Sing:

After the initial shock of the Opening of the Musical Episode, the party will believe the Musical Episode is a curse inflicted on just them (If you’re like me, it isn’t. It’s the whole city because that’s hilarious.) but unaware of when they will start to sing again.

I recommend it every time a party member gets emotional, reaches a perfect opportunity for a scenario song or simply plot development. These songs hint towards characters’ feelings for themselves, other characters, certain scenarios and maybe even their deepest, darkest secret so every time it happens, play the song that incredibly reads them to filth and ask them to roll a constitution saving roll, needing to beat 13. If they fail, write a tally mark for which player and wait for your finale to reveal what for.

I rewarded my players with 10XP each song as it gave them confidence to perform, improv and just get silly!

2. BBEG:

Through researching into what this curse could possibly be, introduce the demon Kacophony the Musical. They’re dramatic, crave entertainment and force people to sing for them with fiery magic, which can lead some of their victims to become Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru in Star Wars: A New Hope. The party will know Kacophony is responsible as you’ll sprinkle in the hints of burnt victims after each Musical Number, the same amount of bodies as the tally marks you’ve been collecting.

Now in my Musical Episode, I put Kacophony the Musical in the place they were cursed. My players went earlier than I would have liked so don’t be afraid to say “not the right time” for Act 3 and help them circle back to there later, after a full day of singing and dancing.

Example: I had a singing woman lead the party back to the Sewers ominously after quite a hearty song.

When discovered, Kacophony is waiting there with their goons for the “cast of today’s musical”, revealing that the person who cursed them gave a huge sacrifice to troll the city with this ridiculous curse, give Kacophony a few souls and to embarrass the party.

Example: My Evil Bard offered all his gruesome instruments and his own life to Kacophony. 

Kacophony the Musical will reveal two things.

First, what all the constitution saving rolls have been for. Every failure (a roll under 13) has led to someone’s end aka the burnt victims they have seen throughout the day. Tell your players how many people they have each ended with their rolls and if your party is as morally good as mine, you will have people ready to fight. If not, embarrassing them through song is enough for one.

Which brings me to the second reveal, Kacophony the Musical is a Musical Demon (obviously). Musicals reveal what characters are really thinking to their audience; their hopes, their dreams, their deepest, darkest secret. 

Have your party fight this demon only to be unable to not say their deepest, darkest secret to one another (it’s up to you if its based on roll or unescapable), causing a ton of big reveals, suspense and tension, which Kacophony can use as a getaway. 

It’s up to you if you want the party to defeat Kacophony the Musical. I didn’t as I preferred the idea of Kacophony being a showman who hides behind their spells and goons, reads the party to filth and then just leaves when it gets boring, leaving them on the mind of the party long afterwards but if you do want your party to defeat them, then make it so. 

Kacophony the Musical’s Character Sheet: Inspiration from Rahadin from Curse of Strahd and Cantus by u/Jacknerik

3. The Curse and Aftermath:

Finally, the curse lasts for 24 hours, so when your players awaken the next morning, the curse will be gone but no one will forget how yesterday changed their lives and how flipping awesome your session was. 

In the aftermath, my players had a lot of role-play heavy conversations which led them to build up their relationships and their own storylines and a city of people who either were trying to remember the awesome lyrics they sang yesterday or are now afraid of music (possible Footloose inspired sequel adventure).

Conclusion:

Either way it was a lot of fun and certainly went down as one of my best sessions as a DM.

Thank you so much for reading, my name is PrincessJasmineFliesAway on everything else and my credentials in DMing can be described as Wizarding World 2.0, Shifting into the Star Wars Sequels and Barbie Mermaida the Campaign. Goodbye.

[ironmandeficiency]

tf boys + dnd headcanons (bc i clearly have nothing better to do)

pairings: benny miller / reader (romantic) but platonic w the rest of the tf boys

word count: i’m typing this in the post itself good luck fuckers

summary: i got nothing y’all. just know that benny & will have a little extra info idk why

a/n: i’m semi-new to dnd but i’m armed w the player’s handbook and google so i will do my best

benny: i think dnd was a guilty pleasure for him during high school. yeah he was seen as a Hot Popular Guy™️ and played football and baseball, but there is and always has been a nerd living in that heart of gold. had one (1) set of dice he used for every campaign and even kept them with him when deployed. he joined a campaign for the first time in years after coming back from The Mission That Shall Not Be Named™️. creating new characters & a homebrew or two became a way for him to cope with everything that happened there and heal.

details abt (one of) benny’s character(s):

half-orc barbarian-bard multiclass, affectionately known as a bardbarian

college of lore + berserker pathways

himbo af and benny laughs a lot when he gets to act out said himboness

character has a tendency to start bar fights if his talent is questioned, and usually it’s beating them with his fists and/or lute. there’s an npc that owns an instrument shop the half-orc frequents that gives him a glare every time but will always repair or replace said lute

uses vicious mockery against the BBG (big bad guy) every time they face a new one and the guys have never laughed so hard at benny’s random insults

focuses more on utility spells bc it’s just that easy for him to beat the hell out of someone with fists and weapons. becomes a jack of all trades kind of guy (similar to irl) and enjoys the “oh shit he can do that?” questions when he pulls off an intricate

when you offhandedly mention dnd night with your friends while planning for a date, benny’s eyes go wide. “you play dnd?! why didn’t you tell me earlier, lovebug? i love dnd!” precious baby boy will gush abt his first campaign back in high school and find his first set of dice to show you. he’s excited bc dnd is now another thing you can do together as a couple. will ask if you two can make characters with interlocking backstories 🥺

will: he didn’t play in high school but knew some guys in basic training that played who explained the basics to him and his first thought was “oh benny would love this” bc he knows his brother that well benny never had the heart to tell will that he had been playing dnd for years before will told him abt it so will takes credit for introducing benny to dnd. didn’t join a campaign but a character was built & he was gifted a set of dice from that group’s dm in case he ever wanted to start. ends up taking this character with him when he joins one of your campaigns and enjoys it a lot more than he thought he would

details abt will’s character:

goliath male, abt 7’8” and 300ish lbs bc he a big chonk

ranger-fighter multiclass — “warrior who used martial prowess and nature magic to combat threats on the edge of civilization” & “master of martial combat, skilled with a variety of weapons and armor” (pg. 45, dnd player’s handbook)

you can’t tell me that william miller wouldn’t enjoy the FUCK out of this combo without your pants catching fire

favored terrain: mountain, forest at level 6, and arctic at level 10

fighting style: two-weapon fighting

archetype: beast master. prefers a wolf, hawk, or mule companion but isn’t too picky

less of an emphasis on strength (goliath characters already get +1 to strength & rangers need more dexterity and wisdom anyways); instead, put his higher stat rolls into dex, wisdom, and constitution

you mention dnd early in getting to know will partly to just make conversation (and to snuff out whether he was the kind of guy to look down on the game as a whole). he tells you abt benny and a few of his army friends that played, and that he didn’t consider himself a player bc he hadn’t used his character yet. you called bullshit and, after getting him to play once, discovered that will would make a fabulous dm. his memory? impeccable. session plans? infallible, no matter what the party can improvise. is somehow always able to steer the party in the direction he needs them to go without being forceful. no one has ever heard a “you can certainly try” sound so encouraging yet foreboding at the same time.

frankie: poor man is absolutely clueless. he joins in on the dnd fun bc he saw how excited benny was and figured that it would be better than sitting at home by himself watching western reruns. ends up being inspired by said westerns (namely “the rifleman”) when creating his character and is crossing his fingers the entire time hoping that no one calls him on the similarities. despite the emphasis placed on charisma, he’s drawn to the paladin class bc of their self-chosen holy quest and the desire to vanquish evil (trauma 🥺). is learning how spells work as he goes and is frequently apologizing for holding up the session bc of this.

details abt frankie’s character:

half-elf paladin male

neutral good alignment

worships helm, god of protection (forgotten realms)

strength & charisma highest stats

protection fighting style

takes the oath of vengeance — “a solemn commitment to punish those who have committed a grevious sin” (phb, pg. 87). the character’s own purity is inferior to serving the justice they believe is required. to me, this just SCREAMS frankie

with the guidance of helm, his character became the sole caretaker to a child whose village was slaughtered by his character’s sworn enemy. strives to defeat said sworn enemy both in the name of his adopted son’s lost family & simply bc helm was like “dude you gotta stop this guy” shortly before frankie’s character found the child

has a bunch of healing & defense spells instead of combat spells bc why would he need combat spells if he can just fuck someone up with a weapon of choice?

santiago: like frankie, santi was absolutely clueless. but unlike frankie, he did a fuck ton of research during the days leading to the first night of the campaign. he he showed up after actually having done research with a well-rounded character with fitting stats and an intriguing backstory. does what a lot of men can’t and won’t by giving the party a female that is a genuine badass and respected for her badassery instead of being talked down to simply bc she’s a female. enjoys putting feline tendencies into his rp and the guys make cat jokes a lot.

details abt santiago’s character:

female tabaxi monk, way of the open hand

chaotic neutral alignment

was raised in the monastery and became a teacher in the ways for a short time. left the monastery after her curiosity revealed corruption within the ranks & was only allowed to leave freely under the condition of not telling anyone what she found

she was called back to teach when a sickness took down a lot of the elders and despite the reluctance, when she learned her mentor was sick, she went back. taught until his death and is in search of a medicine to save the monastery

her curiosity is fueled by her passion to learn everything she can. sometimes this gets her into some shenanigans but nothing too bad

triple frontier taglist: @pedropasscals @max--phillips @likeshootingstarsinthenightsky @obirain @themarcusmoreno @catsnkooks @battletales @darthadeline @jedi-mando @book-of-anarchy @andysficrecs @purelypascal @whovianwar @lv7867 @kaermorons @princess76179 @greeneyedblondie44

[onslaughtsixdotcom]

Scaling Up Dragon Heist

Around April or May of 2019, I started to run Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, one of the official WotC 5e hardcovers. I’m still not done with it, although that is largely the fault of COVID and my own extensions to the campaign. 

I think Dragon Heist is one of the better 5e modules by WotC. I think it’s got a strong playground for the characters, and Waterdeep has 30+ years of publication history to draw on. The release of the module also heralded in a HUGE amount of third party extension content, including the famous Alexandrian Remix. I hadn’t heard of this before I started running my campaign and having ideas about how to do it, so it didn’t influence me--although I’m sure we came to a lot of similar conclusions and ideas, based on common perceptions of what the actual flaws are of the module.

Still, despite those flaws, I think they help the module rather than hinder it. It gives the DM a shitload of room to improvise and draw in the margins, rather than some other 5e adventures which feel like they can’t be fucked with in the least.

Here’s the kicker: I started my adventure at level 4. We had a pre-existing party that I had run through the classic N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God. (Fun fact: A map that I drew is the 3rd Google Images result for that. Woah.)

The party spent a few real-world weeks traveling across about 7 days of overland travel where I ran some drop in one shots; including Mike Krahulik’s Dusk (a Twilight parody) and a really fun 2 hour diversion where the players saw an ancient blue dragon take off the roof of a church during a wedding. Then they arrived in my city: Dawnharbour.

I don’t run the Forgotten Realms. I find it not to my taste. Most of the names suck. The lore is invariably boring or weird, and not the fun kind of weird. I was going to run Dragon Heist, and I was going to put it in my own city. I gave the players some justification previously for why they would want to go there: The cleric’s sister had been kidnapped by the Cult of the Reptile God and turned into a Yuanti; a snake person. The bard had stolen a golden statue of the Reptile God and wanted to melt it down and plate his violin with it. I told the cleric that they would need a high level magic user and someone in Dawnharbour could probably help them; ditto the bard needing a highly skilled magical blacksmith. The third player didn’t really care where they went since he was on the run from his home country. So, off to Dawnharbour. They reached level 4 when they got to the city.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the details of my city or everything I changed for the campaign. Instead, I’ll talk up some hard and fast ways to make the adventure work for a higher level party. Most of them revolve around the encounters. I’m assuming the party will start around level 4 or 5.

Chapter 1

The book opens with the players in the Yawning Portal, a famous tavern with a big ass well to a megadungeon underneath. (More on this later.) They’re hanging out doing whatever when a troll and some stirges pop out of the well. The book says that the players get attacked by the stirges while the owner of the bar, a typical Forgotten Realms 15th level Fighter running a fucking bar for a living deals with the troll.

A troll is CR 5. They can handle a troll. If they can’t, you have a bigger problem.

Next up the book leads them to a Zhentarim warehouse. When they get there it’s abandoned and there are (ugh) 3 Kenku. Kenku are like tengu if they sucked. They’re bird people who can only speak in mimickry, like parrots. They can only repeat words they’ve heard before. This is stupid as fuck (especially when a player wants to be one) but more importantly, they are incredibly weak. I think the kenku are just hanging out or they got captured by the Zhentarim who left them there after they bail or something like that. Whatever.

I put the Zhentarim there instead. I put like 20 Zhentarim. I used the Spy statblock; they don’t have a lot of CR and at level 4 or 5, the players are real slice and dicey about killing them. They can basically carve through two of these dudes in a turn. It was *really* fun to just have the players mow down these mooks. They used the 2nd floor to their advantage, casting Grease on the stairs and creating a bottleneck and then picking them off with ranged attacks and spells. I think I might have given the Zhents 1hp and treated them as minions (see 4e). 

I think I had the police show up after they were all dead; someone heard the commotion and called the cops. I think I also put an NPC there; I shuffled around a bunch of the NPCs the module uses. (They got their quest to save Volo from Bigby in the Yawning Portal; instead of finding Volo here, I think they found my equivalent of Renaer Neverremember.) There was a day’s break between this and them going into the sewers in the next part.

The sewer introduces the Xanathar’s minions. I believe a Duergar is actually there and I took this as a sign--I made most of Xanathar’s mooks Duergar, and then decided--this dude is a Beholder and he has a Mindflayer for a lieutenant. The Xanathar’s forces should ALL be classic D&D dungeon monsters, like rust monsters and umber hulks and ropers. This gives you a wide variety of weird shit you can throw at your players at different CR levels, and the idea of a gangster Beholder who thinks hiring a bunch of umber hulks to go shake down a local deli is fucking hilarious. But, it doesn’t make them any less dangerous. Throw some umber hulks or something in this lair. Go nuts--the weirder, the better. Xanathar’s crew should have no qualm about hanging out with a gibbering mouther or a carrion crawler.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is the least developed chapter in the book. It also revolved around a bunch of Forgotten Realms faction nonsense that I wanted nothing to do with. I used this time instead to formally introduce the Xanathar, the Cassalanters and Jarlaxle. After they foiled his plans to rig a goldfish competition (think a dog show but for fish), the Xanathar became convinced the players worked for the Zhentarim and invited them to have a sit down about their intentions; if they worked for the Zhents he wanted to formally declare war. The players hated the Zhents--they killed an NPC they liked back during N1, partially to set this all up. Xanny was cool with that.

The Cassalanters were a way to introduce a new player. They call up the Blackstaff to say, hey we have a magic item, can you send a guy here to deliver it? (Magic item possession is illegal on the streets in my setting, but if someone important hires you to transport it, then you can do it. This makes being a courier a very lucrative job; lots of people are just carrying around other people’s stuff for a living.) They almost immediately knock out the new player sent to pick up the item, and replace him with their dofflegagher. The idea was that the dofflegagher player would then infiltrate the Blackstaff’s organization.

Blackstaff is no dumbass and hired a random dude off the street--my new player. Then, Blackstaff hired the rest of the party to go rescue him--mostly as a ruse to snuff out the Cassalanters and get evidence that they were shitty.

When they encountered the Cassalanters, I used a Cambion; one of their servants turned into him. This guy slowly became a recurring lieutenant; he was basically the Goldar for the Cassalanter’s Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa. At the time, I hadn’t read any lore for Cambions; I’m not particularly concerned with monster lore the way the guys who make the game write it. I literally thumbed through my deck of monsters, saw this winged devil horn dude, and said, “Right on, he looks like he’ll work.” A Cambion is CR5, more than suitable for the encounters the party will have with him over the next few levels. The Fiendish Charm ability is fun and can really fuck with the players; I ruled, of course, that anyone under its affect would obviously be free if the Cambion was killed. Even after it was killed, he just kept on coming back, because he’s from Hell and killing him on this plane doesn’t really do anything.

As the players continue to face the Cassalanters, a go-to seems to be spined devils. This is fine but not very powerful for a level 4, 5, 6 party. Therefore I suggest supplanting it with barbed devils. They’re CR5. Adding one or two of those to an encounter with spined devils can make this a real fun encounter that isn’t too horribly overwhelming, especially if at least one of your martial characters has a magic weapon (which they fucking should; they’re level 5!)

IMO you can also introduce Jarlaxle in this chapter; a fun way is through his Zardoz Zord persona. It could simply be that Jarlaxle knows Volo (or any other NPC the players know) and wants to invite them to a free meal to get to know them. In my game, Jarlaxle operates openly as himself (I found it would just complicate things if he was someone else) and invited the players to his yacht shortly after they met the Xanathar, to formally tell them all about the Vault of Dragons, the Stone, and how everyone they have met in the city is after it.

Chapter 3

I am not the biggest fan of this part of the module. I think nimblewrights and similar creatures are really dumb and don’t fit my D&D world. A lot of the stuff in this chapter is investigation stuff, and you can play that out however you like. It doesn’t drastically need scaling up, though you may have to account for something like Zone of Truth that they might not normally have access to. It also helps if you do the opposite of the book, and make the police a bunch of shitheads who don’t care about the city--this way the players are actually motivated to help. I’ve seen a LOT of posts that open with “the fireball happened and my players shrugged and said they would let the police handle it.” Horrible! The police should either be incompetent, apathetic, or (best case) both. They don’t care who did this and if they did, they wouldn’t be able to catch them. Now it’s completely on the players.

IMO it also helps if you do the leg work to make the NPC someone they actually care about. In the book it’s an NPC they’ve never met but they have a mutual acquaintance through--it would be nice if they get invited to a dinner with this NPC or something similar prior to this. Or, change it to be any NPC they like who you don’t mind killing. Hell, they’re level 5 or 6 at this point--if they got a cleric, they can even cast Revivify and wake the dude up. They could even cast Speak With Dead and immediately find out who blew him up or what he was doing here!

Moving on, there’s the Gralland Villa. I retooled the name to actually sound like a good name; sue me. 

The book has a bunch of Zhents hanging out here. A simple way to make this dramatic and hard is to pull the trigger and make the players fight their way in. The stone is right here at the villa and they need to steal it. Sounds simple enough.

Things got complicated for my party when a recurring NPC appeared. She was an ex girlfriend of the bard in our party; they were both Tieflings. She now worked for the Zhentarim and was basically their second in command. And she was here to steal the stone, come Hell or high water. The bard, still in love with her, was perfectly content to let her steal it and even cover her getaway. The rest of the players, not so much, but when the chaos was ensuing and she was literally running past them with the stone in hand, made the decision that it was smarter to try and help her escape and then figure out how to get the stone from her later, than try and get it from her now.

This led literally directly to chapter 4.

Chapter 4

By now it’s obvious: I used all 4 bad guys.

I ran through the chapter and picked the coolest maps and best encounter ideas, including the rooftop chase, the theater, the sewer and the courthouse. I weaved them together carefully, and all the changes I had made to the groups paid off when they entered the theater, chased by barbed devils and our Cambion friend, only to have an Umber Hulk with the Xanathar’s logo painted on his face crash through the stage, flanked by two Duergar. Add in some Drow gunslingers and it was a fucking party.

(the large hexagon is where somebody cast Darkness; the big scuffed circle is a grody spot on my grid tiles. I still need new ones...)

The courthouse had a great scene where the Cassalanter dofflegagher impersonated the chief of police, interrogating the players for the code word to activate the stone (I added one; who cares?) until the real chief of police showed up! The players had to do an entire encounter with this guy while handcuffed; thank god for verbal only spells, right? 

From here the stone ended up with the players, and then it ended up with Jarlaxle who they are working for. Jarlaxle attuned to it and told them the Vault of Dragons is inside Undermountain; 3, 5 levels deep? Who knows? And it requires 3 keys: The Crown of Asmodeus, the Ring of Winter, and the Robe of the Archmagi.

I gave these 3 magic items to the Cassalanters, the Xanathar and Manshoon. This is a pretty common hack and it means the lairs in the book actually get used. I made up one of the magic items (Crown of Asmodeus) and stole another from a module I don’t intend to run as written (the Ring of Winter is, I believe, in either Tomb of Annihilation or Storm King’s Thunder). They’re fun!

So the rest of the campaign has been the players bouncing between going deep into Undermountain, the megadungeon underneath the Yawning Portal, and going to the 3 different villain factions to steal their shit. 

The villain lairs are NOT statted for level 5 players AT ALL. The players have no hope of actually killing ANY of the villains at level 5; to fight the Xanathar is a pure TPK at level 5. But at level 8, like where my players are now? One of them died and then got Revivified; the others all survived or made their saves when they were hit by death or disintegration. (In the spirit of the Xanathar, I rolled every eye beam randomly, rerolling if I had used that ray in the last round.) That’s about the best you can hope for with a Beholder IMO! 

The rest of the lairs you can mostly run as-is. Any very low CR mooks, basically anything lower than 1 or 2 CR, I would probably replace with a higher CR variant. We’ve already discussed what you can replace them with above, and if you’ve made it this far into the module, you should have a pretty good sense of what your players can handle.

[captainkurosolaire]

~Update

Just a mega OOC blog synopsis for the future entails.

Think this shall be my norm wrapping up a month with updating or least attempt to unless something comes up. ------ Achieved a great bit this month though, however, my goals are still much grander and higher than this. Most likely, I’ll be trying for Seven Chapters a month, something of that number, I haven’t confirmed with myself whether to do halve in the first two-weeks or save and burst. Debating also if I do smaller doses which means, I’ll get to quality it up better. Or I can take quantity and actual move the story along these next parts are essentially the quarter-stone, to introduction to crewmates, NPC crew recruitment, dramatic affairs, outright Scourges of the Seas which essentially in my building are these tyrant of pirate crew’s that all will have their own structures, organizations, purposes, powers. Lot of them essentially build up to the Captain confronting his past now in broad-light and gradually get him back to everything that matters. Quality is often a preferred recommendation I’d say, but the bulk of what I need to tell and thing is hugely massive since it’ll span for a longtime. More reason why I need to get my mind and health mastered so I can effortlessly do quality in one sit. I’ve been having a blast doing a daily challenge of photo-sets but I’ll probably put that on hold until I get my story pictures captured as a reward to myself, then I’ll resume. Mainly was utilized to train myself in learning a bit better how to capture stuff, I want to add more visualizations and emotions for my writes. With the upcoming Crew NPC’s they’re all going to have their own functional emotions and weights.My lofty goal outright is to give them sort of a karma system and before [Huge Massive Thrillers] They’ll be determined by Captain’s rolls and decisions and overall since I’ll make a whole grid, they’ll unlock benefits or they’ll succumb more injuries dependent on the Captain’s ability to captivate or sour them. Also got plans to have them unlock their own side-quests and additional things of that nature. I figured if I can write out an entire tabletop game of sixty classes and thirty races and stats alongside world building with that, or DM for groups. I can manage to siphon those passionate antics into my newest. Genre of NPC Crew is going to be an assorted and wild cast that’s largely because think it’ll do service for allowing Captain to display a more healthy arrange of emotions and show sides I normally couldn’t write out or do in previous. By having this assembled cast I get to do more dramatic scenes and relationships not just with the Captain either, but them in a fullness. ------ My goal before the end of the year is to reach the story arc where I do Budokai 3, unlike previously, this one will be hardcore piracy symbolic. Tribunal. It’ll be a type of match stipulation unique, I’ll say...  The result, potentially will start something incidentally that’ll spiral a downturn. Next year the goal is the meat and bones. I’ll be aiming for this huge massive War Arc. It’ll be bloody and gory, traumatic, there will be treaties and all sorts of other crew’s splayed out, islands, all kinds of world building on the big vast blue.This one threat is so massive it’ll take literally everything to overcome and accommodate for the Captain to prevail, if does. Going to be losses and all sorts of fallen death’s. Most my writes going forward are going to have a tag #reader discretion advised that’ll opt you out as option. When we get to overwhelming TW things I’ll do my best to actually put those appropriately with thoughts. We just got to remember we’re still reading and following a Pirate background it’s not supposed to be forgiving in a life that’s constant tides. Though I sort of going to throw again in a lot of ranging emotions and these cast of characters I’ve brewed, they should suffice. Might start off a bit bland in conception but narrative going to allow that to be a driver and let them flourish and bloom on their own to intensify their backgrounds. Also I been scouring for certain mods or just tweaks to get their designs in mind, I’ll probably make alternative costumes as my roomie joked I should give them as a symbolization they unlocked their next stage of perk for the reader. xD As they progress so does the Crew and that’s overall the ambitiously main part that’ll be exciting. Unlocking tag-team techniques, finishing blows to overwhelming enemies, new abilities and perks, resolves of conflicts that won’t just follow our normal character’s narrative since I’m giving reasoning for shine and progress while allow my character to be freed for other narratives, threads and ships all those are paramount for the War. Everything is a factor. ------ Still chipping at threads nearly catching up so I’ll get more taken. I’m working on actually getting decent at couple-posing so I can properly do probably actual ships. Imagine a pirate not having them actively going, I have an excuse why not to do nearly as much NSFW for this blog for this particular character despite how shameless and provocative this character really is but I chose a latter option.  Anyway, probably won’t just me strictly romantic too, I’ll see if people want to collaborate for platonic or any-kind. Or if want the means just to take photo’s of Captain either whether it’s slaughter or w/e just poke in DM. I’ll be working on getting better continuously though. ------ Closing ------ Congratulations to all the people who competed and participated on the FFXIVWrite though so many killer talents and writers. I’ll work on creating a que and system for that to allow me to boost those as well in some time-gaps, when I find the time. Want to create a tag for it. Also my bad on highlight tags. I’d like to be able to comment pacifically more life on each thing with comments, though my brain is a jumbled wire often, I feel like a robot beep-bop. Though lots of glorious blogs and characters I want to showcase and give back especially for the people that have ventured with me this long. Lot’s I’ve seen and notice and appreciate em’ and new people too that are beginning their ascension into this community or refuges my goal is to hoist them directly up. As Captain eventually is too learning that is something important for him to understand fundamentally for him to achieve where all dream’s lay and reside. Ideally it’s introducing people to blog’s too for following or potential contacts. ------- Cheers, hearties.                                                                                              Last Update

[sirpoley]

On the Four Table Legs of Traveller, Leg 2: Patrons

In part 1 of this series, I described how Mongoose Traveller's spaceship mortgage rule becomes the drive for adventure and action in a spacefaring sandbox, and the 'autonomous' gameplay loop that follows.

In this part, I'll talk about the Patrons—questgivers—that are baked into Traveller's gameplay loop and provide opportunities for more 'traditional' (that is, pre-scripted) adventures.

Patrons

Patrons are, essentially, adventure hooks. The 'default' premise is that an NPC offers to hire the party for a job (the reward for which is scaled to the PC's spaceship's cargo hold, so is always competitive with trading for money making). The job rarely goes as planned, and the patron is rarely on the up-and-up, so various twists and turns are ensured as the party attempts to complete the job. These jobs usually require putting the trade 'loop' on hold and doing something else (in fact, they're virtually the only incentive to get out of your spaceship) and are basically the gateway to all gameplay that doesn't involve trading, pirates, and FTL travel.

"Patron" is literally entry in Traveller's random encounter tables, which provides a way for them to enter the campaign, but it's also the kind of thing that can easily just be included by the DM, regardless of what the table says.

Traveller comes with a handful of pre-made patrons, plus tables for generating your own, though I think, as implemented, it's actually the weakest part of the game's procedural content generation, as the ones provided aren't tailored in any way to the subsector involved. Additionally, each one could really use several pages of additional information (for example, "First Lander Thu, Miner," comes to the party to ask them to investigate attacks made on his nomadic asteroid mining clan…

…and that's really all the guidance the DM gets. Investigating an attack like that is way beyond my ability to improvise in real-time at the table. I would need maps, descriptions of supporting NPCs, clues, red herrings, space stations, and who knows what else to run that around the table.

So this is a case where, as a DM, you kind of have to roll up your sleeves and do traditional RPG-esque prep: writing adventures, mapping derelict space stations, planning mysteries, and so on. This obviously takes a lot of work, so you can't easily have dozens and dozens of these up your sleeves. This is why I like to pad out my Patrons with…

"Patrons"

Like everyone else in the world, I saw the Mandalorean this year, so had bounty hunters on the mind. I realized the need for a quick and dirty Patron-replacement (as, again, Patrons are a lot of work that I'm just not up to these days beyond very sparingly), so introduced the concept of a "bounty ticket." This is my first Traveller "house rule," though in many ways, it's more like a campaign setting quirk.

Pictured: bounty tickets. Each is the size of a playing card, and I keep them in a little folder intended for holding magic cards and stuff.

Bounty tickets are Player handouts. Nothing generates excitement like passing around a paper handout. In-game, they're essentially wanted-posters that are faxed directly to the spaceships of bounty hunters and travellers as they're issued (meaning that I literally pull out the card and give it to the players as, in-game, it prints out on their ship's bridge). These involve much less prep than patrons (most of my Bounty Tickets are literally "go here, beat this guy, bring him/her back to this location"). For most of these, I don't have any DM notes other than the card itself (they usually give enough game information, like location and spaceship classes, that I can make up the narrative stuff on the fly). A few more complex ones have a few lines of notes in my binder about twists, secrets, ambushes, etc., but I mostly keep it pretty minimal. This isn't necessarily a recommendation, it's just something that I know about myself as DM: I'm pretty good at making up NPC personalities on the fly, but not names (I once ran an urban fantasy campaign in which I had five NPCs named "Frank" or "Frankie") or stats (except in D&D 3.5 specifically, because I was very cool in high school and as such have the text of that game imprinted onto my immortal soul).

I really went paper-crafts crazy the other day and made a bunch of little handout cards (some with emails to the PC from their contacts/rivals, some with stats for various commonly-occurring spacecraft and stuff. I was about to print out a little card for each weapon in the rulebook before I made myself stop). The other relevant ones are 'encounter cards,' which are basically pre-generated random encounters/events that are a little more complex than the ones that result from the table. These are written with an audience of me in mind, so use shorthand and skim over bits that I know I'm confident improvising around the table.

None of these are technically 'patrons', but all serve the same purpose of injecting hand-made content into the game's procedural content generation to keep things fresh.

Reward-Scaling

Crucial to making Patrons (and "Patrons") work is scaling the rewards correctly. Contrary to most of my DM instincts, this means erring on the side of too much money rather than too little. In D&D, too high of a reward leads to characters that get too powerful, while too low of a reward can be easily compensated for by the DM later with more generous treasure. In Traveller, the prize for doing the task has to be higher than (or at least comparable to) what the party could make doing trading in that same amount of in-game time, or they literally won't be able to afford going on the adventure. The book recommends something like 1,000-2,000cr per ton of cargo on the PC's ship per week of work needed, which is a good starting place, but I'd add even more if the job requires space combat (as damage to spaceships can be very expensive, and worse, time-consuming, to repair). That's why the rewards for my bounty tickets are quite high; most of them involve risking the PCs' spaceship to achieve.

In my experience, there's so many ultra-expensive things in Traveller for PCs to waste/spend money on that you shouldn't overly worry about giving them too much money all in one go. Meaningful spaceship upgrades are in the millions of credits, and there's almost always something on the ship that can be improved, so that money will leave their pockets soon enough.

Patrons and the 'Loop'

Patrons (which are, by default, encountered simply through travelling) add a sub-loop to the Traveller gameplay 'loop'. They lead to adventures (which can include anything: Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…) but that ultimately deposits the party back in the core loop, ideally with their wallets padded with a huge cash reward (which will quickly be taken by the bank).

Essentially, this is how you include anything in a Traveller campaign that can't be easily generated on a random table. Unlike in most other RPGs, this is more like a spice, added sparingly, rather than parmesan cheese, which is eaten in a 1:1 ratio with the noodles underneath it. (You guys do that too, right?). The 'loop' provides enough fun around the table while running on autopilot (DMing players zooming about the subsector mostly just involves rolling on and adjudicating the results of random tables) that you can afford to be very sparing with prep-work on Patrons.

Next up we'll cover how Traveller's (in)famous character creation ties into these other systems.