#ogl

[disgruntledexplainer]

boy, but i do love watching companies burn because of their own greed, callousness, disassociation from reality, and short-sighted decisions. It's delicious.

[thetownsendsw]

I like to imagine the in-world reason for Pathfinder ditching spell-schools is that everybody held on to this ancient Thassilonian system, and then the actual Thassilon starts showing up again, and we see how different they are from the mythology and go “oh, this whole taxonomy is gobbledygook.

“In retrospect yeah, some wizard despots who lionized their own personality flaws all declared the kind of magic they liked to do an innate classification, and we all just went along with it. Gods’ sake, half these ‘schools’ do 6 unrelated things, but DIVINATION is their waste bin taxon?”

[dmdarius]

Let's Try Dawnsbury Days |01| THE FIRST PATHFINDER 2E CRPG

Look to the indie badasses to make the first Pathfinder 2e game accurate to the system itself! Behold character creation to the cheap, beginner friendly Dwansbury Days!

#dawnsburydays #pf2e #crpg

[wodealto]

Okay, hear me out TTRPG nerds:

Maybe, DnD would be a better franchise is all 5 of its core editions didn't exist to spite each other, but to coexist.

Imagine a world where there was support from its parent company to produce 5 different games, focusing on their strengths instead of just becoming a homogenised mess.

Is that a better outcome? What do you think?

[theonyxpath]

On this day in 2020 we took you to the Festering Fields — a region overrun by undead — as part of Vigil Watch for Scarred Lands! Vigil Watch is NOW available in a collected pdf and POD through our partners at DriveThruRPG https://drivethrurpg.com/product/348192/Vigil-Watch-Collected-Volume-5e-OGL?affiliate_id=13&src=OPPTumblr

[thecoppercompendium]

For people working on their own systems, and those that have published their own systems already, what licenses do you recommend? I'm obviously aware of the OGL (and its flaws) and Creative Commons, but what else is there? I've also come across Paizo's ORC license (though I haven't looked into it so far) and heard mention of the Shadowdark license, but I wondered if anyone here has advice or use-cases for the different licenses available.

[emilynyaaa]

Okay, so i have a question for myself, and others

Should I buy Baldur's Gate III?

So, people know WotC sucks. You know, with the Pinkertons, and the OGL, and maybe other things i haven't heard. So this is a good argument against buying the game

On the other hand, I've heard that the game doesn't do the predatory monetization tactics that most AAA devs do. No season pass, microtransactions, massive DLC plans, multiple "deluxe", "gold", "collector's" or whatever else editions you can buy. (edit there is some of those, but it's not too outrageous)

And also, it's apparently a very good game.

So like, should people boycott it? It's already released and had massive sales records, so it's more of a token gesture, that doesn't hurt WotC in any way. And it also doesn't hurt the devs to not buy it, in theory.

Also, we can still hurt WotC, by not buying other products they make, such as the books, and dnd beyond content. (just pirate it, it's so easy with books and rules). On the other hand, the devs of Baldur's Gate III did make a game outside of the shitty AAA attitudes, for now. And supporting that might be worth, though again, it's a token gesture.

I haven't heard if the studio culture sucks or something, with crunch and worse, like I've heard with Bethesda and Starfield (not buying that one fo sure). But if it's better than the industry standard, that's another reason to support the game.

So basically, what's people opinion on that? Should I buy it or not?

Please, give out any informations and opinions both ways

[illogarithmil]

Warning: some unmarked spoilers for most official 5e campaigns below. Also, long post written over several days with resultant tonal shifts.

If, like me, you find yourself terminally dissatisfied by D&D 5e (and horrified by OneD&D or whatever they're calling it now) but still wanting to run its major published adventures because otherwise what did you *buy them all for*, here are some suggestions! I'm going to steer away from stuff that's too straightforwardly a retroclone or "D&D but with X rule changed," because that's boring. For each adventure, I will explain what I think a good adaptation needs, provide a "played-straight option" which is a system to pretty much directly port the adventure into, only requiring some rules conversion and maybe minor setting flavour, and an "offbeat option," which is going to require major narrative changes and often shift the entire genre. With two exceptions I'm going to recommend games I've played or at least read many times over; if you know of other things that would work then feel free to comment or reblog with them!

So, in chronological order of the adventures I own...

Lost Mines of Phandelver

The important thing about LMoP is that it's a starter adventure, taking characters who start off as basically nobodies but who have either personal connections or moral ties that draw them into a pretty morally straightforward conflict with several groups of bad people working on behalf of a single villain. In the process, it shows off a bit of travel and exploration, a bit of social activity in phandelver itself (mainly of the obtain-quest-hooks variety) and a lot of combat, easing people into the game.

Played-Straight: 24BLUE

A solid but simple old-school fantasy-oriented but setting-agnostic hack of 2400 with light, intuitive but flavourful rules for creating characters and monsters and good guidance on how to convert over from other systems. It's also cheap as chips ($3) and 4 pages long, meaning it puts very little work on a new gm. Frankly, I think flexible and rules-lite systems are the best way to get people into rpgs, so this is ideal. Also, it has something of a tendency to depower more powerful monsters in conversion which might be an issue with larger-scale games but really isn't with the 1-5 scale of Phandelver. Just maybe fudge a bit to preserve the sense of threat with the dragon.

https://deep-light-games.itch.io/24blue

Offbeat: All that I Am

So Phandelver's a game about good-hearted nobodies rising to defeat evil, right? But they're good-hearted nobodies with magic and sword-skills. What if they kept the drive but lost the power? What terrible price might ordinary folks pay to defeat an evil which they are unequipped to face? Also cheap (PWYW, $11.36 recommended) and also simple (albeit less so,) All That I Am is a game about people who have made a pact with a demon and slowly realize that this was Probably A Mistake. It has a really cool basic mechanic based on tossing coins into a magic circle - not one for online play! - and a very flavourful list of demons to mess about with. It's naturally darker in tone than D&D, which is going to affect your story through play, but the setting could honestly probably go unchanged and the only plot alteration you might want to make is reshuffling the adventure so that it starts in Phandalin and goes 1. Get bothered by Redbrands; 2. MAKE PACT TO DEFEAT THEM (going into wilderness to conduct the ritual in secret); 3. Get ambushed by Goblins on way back from wilderness; 4. Return to phandalin and go from there, rather than the standard goblin lead-in. If you wanted to change the setting to the more Renaissance Europe default assumption of ATIA, you could easily enough make the Goblins into bandits or wicked faeries and Nezznar into a human schemer.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/271265

Honourable Mentions: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Burning Wheel if that's your thing

Princes of the Apocalypse

I know a lot of people don't like PotA. Cards on the table: it's my favourite 5e adventure, and I've run it once already. It is, to me, the archetypal D&D story, which made it really hard to pick alternatives which aren't just branches of D&D. It's got a fairly balanced mix of combat, social and exploration/investigation elements through which the characters uncover the works of four tactically diverse elemental cults which are often remarkably subversive of typical expectations of their element, led by well-realized and psychologically interesting villains, all of which both tie together into a single core and branch out into loads of loosely related side quests and plot threads.

Played-Straight: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Four divine cults tied to a single powerful evil force, you say? Warhammer's Moorcockian forces of Chaos fit pretty much perfectly. You could keep the elemental theming, even, with the cults venerating the Four Gods in elemental aspect, or switch elementals for daemons and just retain the front organisations. I recommend associating Tzeentch (god of change and magic) with the fire druids, Khorne (god of honour and violence) with the earth monks, Slaanesh (god of pride and excess) with the air knights and Nurgle (god of health and sickness, who already has a substantial maritime followinh) with the water bandits. True, the game might be a bit more gory and lethal thanks to random injury tables and lower power levels, but if you're playing the 4th edition by the book it probably won't be enough to shift the tone of the adventure especially if you're generous with the Fate and Resilience points. It supports social play, particularly player character psychology, very well, and has some simple but workable exploration rules on a similar level to D&D's (but with a better, more narrative-focussed random encounter table!) Additionally, the adventure doesn't have any major "pay X gold to get some benefit" moments, meaning that warhammer characters (who might well start play as a poor refuse collector or peasant farmer due to random character generation) won't find they're gated out of elements by different expectations of character wealth compared to D&D.

https://cubicle7games.com/our-games/warhammer-fantasy-roleplay

Offbeat: Avatar Legends

OK, so this is one of the ones I haven't played, though I hear good things. I'm recommending it on the strength of the setting, because get this: elements.

More seriously, a major theme in the original AtLA (haven't watched Korra) is "the gang show up somewhere where people have some cool powers/tech/fighting style but there's also Something Creepy and Bad Going On. You could bring the elemental powers of the cults more into the foreground, making them organisations of highly trained benders dominating an isolated region and connected - this being the element that remains a secret - via their mutual corruption by a powerful, trapped dark spirit (replacing the Elder Elemental Eye). The fact that there's an air cult means you'd probably need to set it before the Air Nomad Genocide unless the air knights being a special unique school of different airbenders was a plot point.

https://magpiegames.com/pages/avatarrpg

Honourable Mentions: Worlds Without Number, Burning Wheel, Pendragon, Rennaissance

Out of the Abyss

My favourite adventure that I've never run, Out of the Abyss' key feature is survival and exploration, followed by power scaling. The characters are going to start off nearly naked in an alien environment and end up killing several demon lords, if they don't starve or go mad first, and it's important that a game be able to capture that.

Played-Straight: 18XX Dreams

Sort of played straight. Another 2400 hack, this one works if you accept that the underdark of OotA was set up as a dreamlike space inspired by Alice in Wonderland, because it's a setting built entirely around the dreamworld. Who trapped the characters in the shadowy world of nightmare which is our underdark here? Drawing on Lovecraft's Dreamlands, maybe it was the slaving Men of Leng rather than the original module's drow, or maybe some wicked drowesque fairies will do. At any rate, from there you can pretty much run the thing straight from the module, just with a bit more creative license. The game's player powers might seem excessive at first, but they're really just exploration-oriented where D&D's are often combat-oriented; you'll quickly get used to working around them and if you don't it's an easy game and easily hacked. (Incidentally, Dreams requires a 'waking world character' as a bass for which I recommend you use the compatible 24BLUE system mentioned above. You could also pull advancement from that system, which you'll want to do if you aren't going to emphasise the final ritual as the only way to defeat the demons).

https://deep-light-games.itch.io/18xx-dreams

Offbeat: FIST

Kidnapped by esoteric Nazi explorers, our band of late-80s urban fantasy action hero mercs are now trapped in the Hollow Earth! Will their scavenged gear and hard-won skills be sufficient to allow them to escape and/or best both the pursuing fash and the terrible cthonic deities they have unleashed in their excavations?

FIST is a fast-paced near-modern setting game with one of the most enjoyable and simple combat systems I've seen, which should make the near-endless random encounters a bit more breezy. It's core ethos is that the characters are an overmatched A-team style force (often with surprisingly little gear) who are going to have to lie, cheat, steal and McGyver their way to survival let alone victory, which fits *perfectly* with early OOtA. The alternating zaniness and horror also mesh really well, though you might need to port madness mechanics over. And yes, it already has basic stats for demons of various degrees of power!

https://claymorerpgs.itch.io/fist

Honourable Mention: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Curse of Strahd

Curse of Strahd is a game that I've run twice,neither by the book, and my key takeaway is that it really feels like it should never have been made in 5e. A great, interesting horror story is just broken up by having to have a set-piece fight with a monster every half an hour. That said, what's important to adapt is clearly the sense of dread and the social webs between characters, as well as the power differential between heroes and villains that makes the latter scary.

Played-Straight: Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Strahd is an abusive, manipulative prick who wants to toy with the PCs' emotions more than kill them. Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a game where emotional breakdowns generally replace death (which makes it feel a lot less like the GM is just playing the genius villain as an idiot) and defeating abusive pricks is a big part of the power fantasy. Even if it doesn't initially sound like your thing - it didn't to me - I *seriously* recommend giving it a look. It's an awesome game. No setting or adventure change is really required, but the focus on having action and fights be less a constant than something that happens when and where it's emotionally impactful gives you permission to cut some of the needless violence in favour of more creeping gothic horror if you want to. Also, it has to be said that having rules around romance and relationships is probably a good thing for the game sometimes affectionately known as "5e's dating sim".

https://evilhat.com/product/thirsty-sword-lesbians/

Offbeat: Old World of Darkness (Hunters Hunted+Sorcerer+Ghost Hunters+Mage: Victorian Age)

This was the idea that made me write this post: a Victorian factory town in the hills outside Manchester where the characters become trapped, not by the physical bounds of mist (or not *only* by them) but by ties of class and social obligation, forcing them to remain in the twisted demesne of the local industrialist, a man who is more than he seems (a vampire? An utterly corrupt and evil mage called a Nephandus? World of Darkness has lots of options.) Barovia is shrunk in scale to the town of Barrowdale and its immediate rural environs, creating claustrophobia without breaching the lower-fantasy constraints by having the Strahd equivalent hop on his magic horse. World of Darkness has a modestly complex system, but it's a little lighter than D&D especially for the relatively normal mortals the characters will be playing. They might have a spiritualist medium, a Sorcerer or Psychic capable of a couple of tricks or perhaps somebody whose True Faith in God can protect against the unholy, but for the most part they'll be relying on mundane skills as they uncover the town's shadowier side. I love the idea of the Keepers of the Feather as a group of socialist agitators, the Baron's Vallaki as a disjointed and ineffectual trade union or Argynvostholt as the cellar network left behind by the families whose estates were cleared to build the new rows of red-brick tenements. Just one thing: please don't have Strahd be Eastern European in this set-up, the vampiric foreigner invading British soil is an unpleasant trope.

Rules for vampire powers so you don't have to buy a whole vampire book as well are to be found here:https://saligia.fandom.com/wiki/Saligia_Wikia - use the White Wolf Wiki for guidance on what you're looking for.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/401413

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/114261

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/368774

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/412531

Honourable Mentions: Dread, Dark Age Cthulhu

Storm King's Thunder

SKT is another story reliant on power scaling to make its premise work. It has a massive, almost sandbox-y setting in which the characters gradually pick up plot threads explaining why bad things are happening around them, fight their way through one of several dungeons and then use their trophy from that to unlock the finale in which they go head-to-head with giants, a kraken and a dragon in pretty short order. Honestly, I don't like it as an adventure, but if you're wanting to run it you're going to want at least some support for interesting travel and a solid power scale that will allow some pretty big fights at the high end.

Played-Straight: Worlds Without Number

It may only have 10 levels (sort of), but its lack of bounded accuracy means this fantasy game of wandering experts, mages, warriors and adventurers scales impressively into the higher of those. It's travel rules maintain the interesting elements of resource management whilst being more streamlined than 5e's. Also, and this is a side-note, characters are very customizable with everybody getting a couple of free feat-equivalents. It's very solid and entirely system-agnostic, meaning you can use the great big highly-detailed map and chapter of encounters which are without a doubt the best part of SKT.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/348809

Offbeat: Traveller

Of course if you *wanted* to adapt the map...

Traveller is a sci-fi game, known for extensive and random character generation but which also likes big hex grids! Seriously, look at this thing.

It is pretty setting-agnostic, meaning you can create your own sci-fi setting (and map!) that fits in equivalents to the adventure elements (some people have even made historical or fantasy hacks, for which check out Mercator or Halberts). It has extensive rules for travel, of course, and also modular rules for just about everything else so that whether your characters want to be merchants or mercenaries you can patch in more complex rules to serve that need. In what is essentially a massive sandbox with loose themes that coalesce into a plot at the end, that works really well, and you can still have the big threats that the adventure relies on in the form of enormous alien battleships. I think I'd be using the K'Kree, murderous centaur like vegetarian absolutists, as my giants if running in the official Traveller setting of the Third Imperium golden age, but honestly any of humaniti's alien neighbours could work if they turned hostile.

There are a lot of editions of traveller, but the 2nd edition book by Mongoose is a great modern entry point.

https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/collections/traveller-rpgs

Honourable Mention: Forbidden Lands

Tomb of Annihilation

ToA, the last of these I've run, is to my mind a much better hexcrawler than SKT and indeed 5e's best pure exploration adventure. The PCs have a goal, a timer, and an immense, confusing, murderous obstacle in the way in the form of the jungles of Chult. Once they beat that, it's time for a different sort of crawl as they explore massive puzzle dungeons. A game that works for this needs to be good at both map-scale and site-scale exploration, not just in the evocation of travel in the narrative but also the nitty-gritty survival details of whether you contracted throat leeches today. Oh, and it needs to be a setting that allows for big powerful mass-influence magic or something and for resurrection so the death curse plot point can be set up.

Played-Straight: Forbidden Lands

A game *about* exploring a hex map, with a die-based supply system that reduces bookkeeping to a minimum whilst keeping resource tracking central, detailed travel and camp actions and a slightly low-fantasy tone that fits well with how I conceive ToA. Nothing here would stop you using the official setting, though some of the assumptions about D&D magic it makes might need tweaking.

https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/forbidden-lands/

Offbeat: Eclipse Phase

In the mid-distance future, the shock of an AI uprising that decimated humanity has led us to flee earth, embrace transhumanism and conquer death through the practice of resleeving into new bodies. 10 years after "the Fall," sapients - humans, uplifted animals and limited AIs - live throughout the solar system and, via a series of weird teleport gates, beyond. But now (this plot proposes) something in the outer reaches of the solar system is broadcasting a rare strain of the ai-created Exsurgent Virus, which twists its sufferers into monsters - this one affecting not active sleeves, but backups. Whenever somebody resleeves- like, say, if they broadcast their mind into a new body on the edge of the solar system to find out what's going on - they have limited time left before they become an abomination. EP has pretty solid survival rules, greatly expedited by sci-fi technology, and a system of mental stress that'd fit ToA's horror elements well, but I won't pretend it wouldn't be a faff to convert. It doesn't have much support for something like hexcrawl, though it'd be easy enough to set up a map of outer system habs in a given area of space, and its characters tend to be hypercompetent in a way that could reduce the sense of threat. With the themes of death and resurrection, terrible elder entities and horror embedded in a way that not many sci-fi rpgs do, though, I think it'd be worth it if you're willing to deal with some crunch. All of the big books for it are also available for FREE from the publishers, though I recommend supporting them - they're awesome people doing good work.

https://robboyle.info/#eclipse-phase-pdfs

Honourable Mention: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Other than OotA, this is probably the adventure (I mean, anthology I guess but it's an anthology with some very strong connective tissue) that I'd most like to run some day. The thing Saltmarsh needs most is of course good sailing rules or the ability to adapt the ones in the book naturally, but a functioning mass combat system for the attack on the sahaguin lair would also be helpful, as would anything making it easier to run a horror game.

Played-Straight: Cthulhu Dark Ages+Corsairs of Cthulhu

One of them's set in the 1000s, the other in the 1700s, but between them that basically averages out to the medieval mishmash that is D&D and provides rules for anything you might want. The dark, gritty human-scale tone (well-suited to Greyhawk) can be made low fantasy by using some of the 'folk' - read non-sanity-blasting - magic found in Dark Ages and from there you can pretty much run the setting straight, either in the original setting (you'll need to homebrew some rules for nonhuman species) or in our own (removing non-monstrous nonhumans altogether). Call of Cthulhu's rules in general bring in a system for character sanity that's very well suited to the frequent horror of Saltmarsh - there's even an asylum already in one of the adventures should your character go mad! - whilst Dark Ages brings some detailed, brutal rules for combat with armour and swords and Corsairs, in addition to ships, adds the blackpowder weaponry that always felt it was missing from Saltmarsh. You should probably keep using the random ship events and Encounters in the 5e book, but if you just keep a comparative list of dice difficulties in the two games they won't be hard to convert even on the fly. Honestly, the big issue here is price, because you're going to need the core rules and two supplements to get started. If that's unfeasible, grab the quick-start or starter set rules and corsairs and then send me a message; I'll give you the relevant extracts from the dark ages rules that I think would help. You can find rules for converting between D20 and CoC's D100 systems online, but honestly the game's standard array of monsters should be fine for representing most stuff in Saltmarsh.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/388056

https://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu-dark-ages-3rd-edition-hardcover/

https://www.chaosium.com/call-of-cthulhu-keeper-rulebook-hardcover/

Offbeat: Exalted

OK, hear me out: exalted is a game (d10 system similar to world of darkness but, weirdly, much better social interaction rules) about being reborn, hunted godlings in an almost ridiculously high-fantasy setting, doing incredible things with an array of powers and skills that take competence porn to and beyond the levels of epic D&D 3.5. The world they live in, however, can be as dark and desperate as it is strange and wonderful, and does have a fair number of Normal People who would live in a place like Saltmarsh. That setting also makes the appearance of random island encounters and magical storms popping up out of nowhere feel a lot more natural than it does in Greyhawk. Most importantly, the core game has not only rules for mass combat and sailing, but specific powers to make specialist characters supernaturally good at those things - six pages of options for sailing alone. It might lose some of the classic Saltmarsh horror, and you might want to raise the crew of the first pirate ship to more reasonable levels because even starting exalted will punch through 13 minor enemies with ease, but trust me: it's worth it for how cool it will make your pcs feel and how many rich exploration opportunities will open up to them with increased resilience to harm.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/162759

Descent into Avernus

Most noted for a wide gap between character level and apparent threat, though that's really just illustrative of 5e's design philosophy, for me DiA's main 'deal' is tonal diversity, sometimes to the point of whiplash. You go from morally-ambiguous intrigue in a dark den of crime and iniquity to similar except now in hell and with cultists to Brütäl Mäd Mäx Räcës, aided by a flying golden elephant on a quest to redeem a fallen angel. At the same time, the story isn't really meant to be zany in the same way as something like OotA, so the key is probably finding a system that doesn't enforce any particular tone rather than one that enforces tonal dissonance within scenes like Dreams. Given the critical choices between fighting and negotiating the module presents at points, it's also important that the system chosen not make one of those dramatically better than the other.

Played-Straight: Between the Skies

Using a very loose, modular system - it literally lets you choose your dice system! - Between the Skies is basically a collection of systems for inspiration generation to service a plane- or world-hopping campaign. It makes characters varying from the mundane to the weird (should you want to run DiA as the planescape game it cries out to be) interesting through a lifepath generation system which is a bit more than the usual; how often do you find the option to die in character generation *but keep playing that character?* Then it provides guidance for travel, vessels (in a way that'd work quite neatly with the Infernal war machines) and adventure across the planes with a philosophy of maximising the role of the GM as opposed to the system. Its combat system works mostly narratively rather than relying on dice, but still allows a good deal of complexity where needed: you can zoom into or out of combat scenes according to how necessary they are to the plot, either resolving them quickly without losing danger, useful for many of Descent's random encounters, or running more detailed fights. It is ultimately a toolbox game, and will reward a gm who's also willing to be a bit of a designer.

Offbeat: Dark Heresy

A story in which characters begin investigating corruption amongst mortal powers and then delve into literal hell might be an excellent fit for a mid-high level game of the classic Warhammer 40k game of inquisitorial agents rooting out heresy in the grim dark future. Baldur's gate can easily be a significant garrison world, Elturel its Daemon World neighbour from which the characters venture into the Eye of Terror or Great Rift in search of a rumoured way to "redeem" (read: bring back to the Imperium, itself a theofascist nightmare state) a Daemon Primarch, one of the lost children of the Emperor. Given this is 40k, and that Dark Heresy is full of rules for corruption and horrible death, it's likely to end less hopefully than DiA typically does, but you never know!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/65872

Honourable Mentions: Exalted, Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Rime of the Frostmaiden

It has been well-noted by now that RotF is quite a good horror story and quite a poor D&D adventure. Honestly, I think even as horror it's a bit of a tonal mess, but it definitely has some strong elements there which are weakened by the characters throwing around resurrection magic and fireballs as the solution to all of their problems. This isn't to say they aren't allowed fireballs - it's pretty solidly a fantasy story - but that the game needs to be about problem solving and fear first and foremost, with of course the ever-present threat of the elements.

Played-Straight: Dread

One for the confident improvisers, dread has a single mechanic: if a character does something they aren't confidently capable of, they pull from a Jenga tower. If they make the pull, they succeed or avoid a threat; if they chicken out, something bad happens; if the tower topples, something very bad happens. Normally this removes them from play; for a longer campaign I might have the first topple lead to the character's secret (a very fun part of RotF is that every character is hiding something, often something nightmarish like an alien parasite growing inside them) being revealed and the second killing them/driving them mad/leading them to flee Icewind Dale and return home. Other than this, the major adaptation would be working out how to narratively implement PC archetypes. I think you can be generous with this - for a barbarian PC, they might be able to crush obstacles or slaughter minor foes without a pull, for example, whilst a water wizard could melt large areas of ice or breathe below the surface of a frozen lake. In short, step away from 5e's highly-defined abilities, let PCs do anything that makes sense and focus on threatening them with the things they *can't* control, which is likely to be a lot. When fights, the weather, stress and magic all threaten a single, communal resource, you'll find the kind of tension and caution the module seems to expect much easier to evoke.

https://dreadthegame.wordpress.com/about-dread-the-game/

Offbeat: Doctor Who: Adventures in Space

This is the other game I've not played (though it's designed by Cubicle 7, whose work I trust implicitly). I'm recommending it mostly for the narrative, because it seems to lend itself so well: the doctor and companions find themselves drawn to an 18th-19th century Russian arctic Island/planetary colony where a powerful cosmic being has brought down eternal winter, the cybermen are building a new cyber-king and an ancient alien city lies frozen in ice. You probably need to think of an actual reason why Auril's frozen Ten Towns, possibly something to do with the fallen city, because your resolution is going to be a result of investigation and clever plans rather than fighting, so be willing to put in the work there. On the easier side, the time travel element that can appear at the end won't be as sudden and jarring in a setting predicated on it!

Quickfire Round of Books I Don't Own

Dragon Heist: Dusk City Outlaws/Fiasco/Royal Blood

Dungeon of the Mad Mage: Advanced Fighting Fantasy

Wild Beyond the Witchlight: Changeling the Dreaming

Tyranny of Dragons: HârnMaster/Pendragon

Candlekeep Mysteries: Amber Diceless/Rennaissance

Radiant Citaedel: Between the Skies/Mage: the Ascension

So there it is! My challenge to you is as follows: if you were considering starting a new 5e campaign with one of these campaigns, expose your group to something new and try one of these instead. Let's break WotC's near-monopoly on this hobby, because they sure as hell don't deserve it. If you do do anything with any of these (or, as I say, if you have better ideas) please let me know!

[racefortheironthrone]

Regarding your recent D&D rules discussion, isn't there some irony in that D&D (due to recent controversy) has lost players to PF2, which has been described as similar to 4th Edition, when PF was created in the first place because a large group of players didn't like 4th Edition?

Well this was my attitude when the whole OGL controversy kicked off: I thought the whole framing of "everything's been copacetic for twenty years and then the Fire Nation attacked" was bullshit, because the whole fight over the OGL 1.1 was exactly the same fight as the fight over the GSL in 2008. Indeed, I'd be willing to bet money that the same execs at WotC who pushed for 1.1 were the same execs who had pushed the GSL, trying for a do-over.

So I found WotC's behavior shitty but totally in character, and I thought the public statements of some of the 3rd party/ORC license folks rang a bit too self-righteous, because it's not like a bunch of them hadn't profited off the backlash against 4th Edition and wouldn't be profiting off this backlash.

Regarding Paizo/Pathfinder specifically, I think the number of people who went to PF2 is probably pretty small in comparison to the growth of D&D's playerbase since 2014. But I seem to recall a bunch of the people who had worked on 4th edition started working at Paizo, so maybe they brought their ideas with them?

[bethanythebogwitch]

I don't know anything about video game creation but im geting the same vibes from the Unity controversy that I had when Wizards of the Coast tried to repeal the OGL and replace it with one that basically gave them ownership of any popular homebrew content

[dartagnantt]

Open Source Boats

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here!

This was something I was going to do at the start of the month, but I learned that there were official boats that did pretty much what I wanted to do. But then I decided that 1) the two books that boats officially feature in, aren't consistent with one another and 2) there aren't any boats (or siege engines) in the 5e SRD, so I'd make my own from scratch, using the singular object in the SRD, (the apparatus of the crab) as a base, and some fun with pathfinder. Which, fun fact: most of the stats of the saltmarsh ships, and the pathfinder ships are the same.

And what good is a template without an example, so I made a ghost ship to go with my variant ghost pirates from two weeks ago.

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

Oath of Mundanity

Lorekeeper Bard

Low-Magic Environments

Harnessing Magic without Spellcraft

[nerdythebard]

The Loxodon in the Room...

Hi, everyone.

My friends, my lovely readers, my gods and goddesses and every deity in-between... we need to talk. Or, well, I need to talk and would like you to lend me your ears. This is not an easy thing to talk about, and as of writing these words I still don't have an answer or a clear path of where I will go from now on, but what gave me the incentive to come out and say something was the post by the inspiration behind this here blog, @grailfinders, which you can find [here]. Just to make it clear, I don't want people to think I'm copying the GrailFinders crew or that because they said something I need to as well; you can recall I've dropped a hint at that some time ago... but I feel like inaction is worse that any statement I make, so here goes:

Recent actions of D&D owners, Wizards of the Coast, were simply vile. Disgusting. Without any empathy for their customer base. It showed that the corporate minds behind Hasbro will stop at nothing to have their goal of annual financial growth fulfilled. Please also note that this is directed at the upper echelon of the company; from what we know, the creative team behind D&D and other employees still care about us and our experience. But the situation with the OGL, the MtG anniversary, the Creators' Summit, and now with sending the literal Pinkertons over something that could've been resolved peacefully... the future does not look bright for Hasbro or WotC.

On the other hand, the basic rules and mechanics of D&D 5e are now under Creative Commons and blogs such as this one are not targetted since I do not earn money from it. So why am I complaining, one would ask. Because it doesn't feel right. Because after the community rose up and forced Hasbro to change their policy on the OGL, I saw the power of the fandom. It's real, and I want to contribute my fair share. Since the OGL situation, I have ceased to support any new products coming from Hasbro or WotC; I've cancelled my D&D Beyond subscription and any pre-orders I've planned to get. For the foreseeable future, I don't think I will get any new books or materials (even if they were to release my longtime dream: official guide to the Feywilds with a stat block for Baba Yaga). I'm not telling you to do the same, no. Quite the opposite: you do what you feel is right. Educate yourself about the whole situation and then decide whether or not you feel like supporting WotC. I will not praise or condemn you for your decisions.

As for this blog, that remains an unknown. What I am certain is that I will finish all backed-up requests; I do owe you that. I don't know if I shall accept new ones yet, or what to do with the blog later. Maybe I will remain with D&D but will put more (or exclusive) focus on third-party content and build your requests using fan content. Maybe I will switch systems - I've recently began dabbling in City of Mist and that brought me a lot of fun. Or maybe you think I should ignore the subject alltogether and reclaim D&D for you, the people. I am open to your comments and suggestions. Because in the end, it's you who build this blog by providing me with materials. I only turn them into a story.

And the story of this blog is not yet over <3

[pocgamer]

Bailing on the OGL: 3 Companies, 3 Directions

When Wizards pulled their OGL nonsense back in January and February, several major companies made announcements about their plans to forge ahead on their own. Now it’s nearly a year later, and we’re seeing the results. Three companies, three directions, let’s dive in. Continue reading Untitled

[rpgbot]

Lin Codega is a Journalist! - RPGBOT.News S3E97

On this RPGBOT.News, we talk to award-winning journalist Lin Codega. We talk about Lin's recent work, including breaking the OGL story, journalism's precarious but crucial position in today's world, and what the future holds.

[dungeonmalcontent]

You mentioned a while back when the OGL stuff was happening that you were thinking about porting grimdark and dangerous to pathfinder. If you were to do so, would it need to be purchased again if I already bought the 5e one?

This is a good question, though I admit the answer is at least a little disappointing.

So, because of other licensing legal stuff, I am not confident I would be able to sell a generic/Pathfinder variant of G&D. Partially because I've already sold the content under the DMsGuild licensing agreement, but also because of things that prevent you from selling Pathfinder compatible content without jumping through some more dramatic hoops than I had initially understood. In short, it would be an incredibly in-depth re-write. And if I did do the re-write, I would not be able to bundle it into the package on DMsGuild—so it would need to be a separate purchase (since I wouldn't do that work for free and I can't track my previous buyers).

However. And this is the good news, a large chunk of the concepts present in the content of G&D are already in Pathfinder 2e. A lot of it is scattered throughout different books; however, because most of my content is player options, you can just use the Paizo endorsed character building tools (like Pathbuilder) and libraries to get access to all the expanded player character building content for free. The only major thing I'm fairly confident that Pathfinder doesn't have is a sacrifant stand-in, but the oracle class option isn't terribly far off.

So, for everyone that loves this content but not WotC (myself included) you aren't missing anything by not playing 5e d&d and you can still enjoy this kind of content (if not G&D itself) with other systems. Pathfinder has a lot of this baked in. And, from what I've seen, the Kobold Press RPG (currently code named Blackflag) is 5e compatible enough that G&D should be fully compatible with only very minor tweaks (mostly with race and background options).

I'm very grateful for everyone that has stuck with me on this project and been supportive (really, ya'll have been so supportive and I love you for it), especially with all the dickery on the part of Hasbro and WotC. Sadly, I don't have the resources at the moment to re-write Grimdark & Dangerous for another RPG. What I'm lacking right now is mostly time and psychological/emotional drive. I will absolutely stick by my commitments regarding G&D, because I do love this project and want to make it the best version of the book I can. I am a man of my word, and I have made no promise regarding this book that I am not willing to fight tooth and nail to keep. But I don't think any new promises will be forthcoming.

Again, thank you to everyone that has supported this project and continues to do so. I wrote the book for you, so that you can have characters that suffer like we all do (maybe a little worse).

-WorryWrite

[theonyxpath]

20 years ago today Relics & Rituals: Excalibur was released by Sword & Sorcery Studios. This sourcebook blends the trappings of Arthurian myth with the 3.5 OGL. New spells, magic items, prestige classes and more to build an Arthurian-style campaign