#tales from the dms

[thatraccoonthing]

So my friend just realized that for multiple weeks my pfp has been possessed by bill cipher

[grey-joys]

Wherever there is a @ship-ambrosia post about “hot” anime boys, there is a judgmental @grey-joys behind a screen somewhere

[banannabethchase]

Welcome to the chaos.

[grey-joys]

@ship-ambrosia I told you. Southron heresy.

"The Old Bear was particular about his hot spiced wine. So much cinnamon and so much nutmeg and so much honey, not a drop more. Raisins and nuts and dried berries, but no lemons. That was the rankest sort of southron heresy."

Its so funny that this is Jons job. Jons this heroic, badass warrior and here he is with a measuring spoon out making sure theres the exact right amount of nutmeg in this wine. Like jumping up with a no if someone brings lemons.

[moregraceful]

:3 two days

[psychopomp-namine]

you know, I think neji would enjoy playing dnd. getting to write stories and play characters with no limitations, and having to improv with the other players because he would never have full control of where the story was headed? it would be a dream come true, and also therapeutic. neji would of course be the dm who would "yes and" anything his players want to do. the story would be something everyone has input on and would help shape. an adventure that neji himself couldn't predict or write on his own. also, just imagine him describing his setting and doing all his character voices, he'd love that so much

I think it would be a good exercise for quartz too, because they'd have to make their own characters and backstories and roleplay in character without a script to direct them. especially to kisa "transparent vessel" tachibana, who can act out any character but is afraid of letting herself be seen through them. similarly, kai as well, since he'd be in charge of his own character instead of propping someone else up

on the flip side, fumi would get to enjoy playing a character but not having the pressure to be the lead/spotlight of a story. he's there to play, not perform

sou would also LOVE dnd. I think he'd be really into the character creation and lore, and is probably the next person I can think of who can try being the dm when neji is sick/tired/wants to be a player. he's the player who takes down notes and remembers one small detail neji mentioned four sessions ago that becomes relevant to the current session. neji loves him because sou is the one who appreciates his world building the most

suzu and fumi would instigate so much in the adventure, which neji would love. suzu makes a character everyone loves (like hachipochi) and always brings snacks to the table

fumi has read all of the player handbook, and mitsuki has read maybe a quarter of it (only the relevant parts to his character and how some dice rolls and combat work). mitsuki is also the one who doesn't put much effort into his character's backstory but unexpectedly gets big character development during the adventure, surprising everyone in the table including both the dm and himself

otori is very good at both roleplaying and combat, has created a compelling character, and tries to go on solo adventures but eventually gets roped into the party because he can't adventure alone in neji's setting

[hamletunfortunately]

sometimes when i think of the infinights campaign i get so fucking mentally ill and want to cry and scream and shake and draw my feelings and talk to someone. but just because I think about how much fun it must have been to create and be apart of. imagine how much fun they all had while it was going on? oh my.goodness

[stormlit]

it takes several hours of trudging through unfamiliar forest before ylfa has to admit that she's lost. whatever door she fell through, between the lines between and whatever this world is, closed so firmly behind her that she'd swear she heard it lock shut, and she can't find it again. and sure, forest is fine...but night is drawing in, and she's getting cold. she draws her red cloak tighter around herself, and starts looking for a place to shelter. if she shifts, she'll have fur to keep herself warm. she's survived worse, and she can look again tomorrow.

she smells the fire before she sees who built it, but ylfa still spends a long time circling at a distance, watching (and preparing, so he'll let her stay), before she makes sure her hood is tugged up over her hair and approaching. ❝ i don't know if a camp counts as a house, but my grandma told me it's rude to come without a gift. i-i don't have any candies, or...anything, actually, but— ❞ she holds out a freshly caught rabbit; it looks more like it was killed by a beast than a girl, ❝ —i got you dinner? if you want it. maybe it's stupid. ❞

it's definitely stupid.

she steps closer. ❝ please may i share your fire? ❞

@dryadologist liked for a starter

[cpirits]

(( ARE YOU OKAY? || @phasmascript said: [ ❤️‍ to find my muse trying to hide and injury || guy and sync ]

★ ━━━━━━ His eyes were narrowed, what did his master care about his pain? He never showed anything before, so Guy's heart was hardened toward the one who gave him the curse slot that burned his arm underneath his shirt.

The blonde's voice held venom, but he still respected Sync as the other could make the slot more painful, or control him to an extent where he had no agency. "You don't care, why bother checking on me?" He didn't bother to uncover his leg, he had gotten sliced while fighting someone, and had slunk back to his master to give his report after he had taken care of himself.

[britneyshakespeare]

i genuinely have a hard time remembering urls that are frequently in my activity that im not mutuals with, versus ppl on my dash frequently that im not mutuals with. and sometimes when i see smth when im trying to remember "wait does that person follow me back" i just open DMs to see if ive messaged that person before, bc if i have then it will say "mutuals for (amount of time)" in the messages. but sometimes when im not mutuals it will say "this user only accepts messages from people they follow" and im like. wow. rude. even though that's literally not personal at all

[grey-joys]

New Theon lore drop apparently

@ship-ambrosia

[chloecorvid]

Oh, to spend 3 days on a comic about a sad part of your DND character’s backstory… but you’re unable to share it with anyone other than the DM and your not-in-the-game friends…

I’ll probably post it here but it’s… very gorey. So i gotta figure out these new posting filters first haha

[wyntersecret-a]

!! Okay anything that was my turn from old blog I will be continuing as they're in my drafts. Anything that wasn't my turn before I moved I will be dropping. Doesn't affect current threads or new ones I'm doing here.

[causticcontemplation]

Met Gabe last year at a con and got to tell him how much I love his storytelling as a DM. He does a lot of really cool shit in the ttrpg space.

"My name is Wyll, but the people of the Sword Coast call me the Blade of Frontiers"

Gabe Hicks cosplaying Wyll Ravengard. (Twitter) Photographer: molkerphoto (Instagram)

[queenwendy]

I’m running the 5e version of Forge of Fury for my family’s D&D campaign, and they’re about to descend into the Glitterhame level, which had underground rivers. This has reminded me that the hydrology in the Forge of Fury is extremely confusing!

The adventure takes place in a series of caverns and a linked dwarven fortress under a mountain called the Stone Tooth. We know that level one (the mountain door) is about 800 feet above sea level. We also know that on the opposite side of the mountain is a lake called the “Dark Mere”, which sits around 150 feet above sea level. From level 1, one can plummet 200 feet (down to 600 ft elevation) into an unknown underground river.

From level 1 you descend to level 2, the Glitterhame. Based on the fissures and the orc tunnel, we can say that the top parts of the Glitterhame are at around 600 foot elevation—so maybe the river that runs through this part is the same one that you can fall into from area 1? The lower section is 15-20 feet lower, but there’s no water there. It does lead to The Foundry, but first the water on the upper portion ultimately flows east to 60 foot drop, where the waterfall deposits in the sinkhole (around 540 feet elevation, then).

In the sinkhole, the water flows west and the waterfall is but one tributary. We don’t know what’s upstream the other one, but we do know the water continues to flow five miles west until it reaches the surface on a hillside.

All of that lines up. Where it gets weird is the foundry; from the lower part of the glitterhame (580’) a “steep staircase” leads down to the foundry for 30 feet (laterally). If steep means 45 degrees then we’re 30 feet deeper (550’), then there’s 25 feet more of stairs leading to the rest of the foundry, which I assume means we’re at 525 ish feet elevation. Here we find ANOTHER UNDERGROUND RIVER, this one flowing east, so this isn’t the earlier river in the sinkhole (it would be too low anyways) until it reaches a different waterfall, this one 120 feet tall. It puts you in the Black Lake, (around 405 feet elevation, then) where the waterfall joins yet another underwater river, flowing WEST! Upriver (i.e. to the east). We are not told where this river lets out. It’s source is a lake, the Black Lake, and the western side of that lake has an adjoining pool with an underwater passage. That passage leads 700 feet west to… the Dark Mere…

We are told that one hundred feet from the western lake shore and 40 feet down (so either in a crevasse or the western lake shore is a fucking ledge) is the entrance to that 700 foot long passage. Recall that the Dark Mere’s surface is around 150’, so this passage runs from a 405’ lake to the 110’ bottom of a different lake. That means that the Black Lake feeds into the Dark Mere.

But the river from the foundry feeds into a WESTERN FLOWING RIVER, which is also fed by the Black Lake to the EAST! The black lake cannot have two outlets! It would immediately drain into the Dark Mere!

The easy fix, of course, is that the river on the black lake level flows east, and whatever that western branch is is a tributary. That would make it all sort of make sense; of course, where the two different underground rivers are being fed from is a different question. The Stone Tooth doesn’t have a glacier atop it, and I doubt there’s a fucking aquifer 1,000 feet up in the sky.

What’s weirder is that we know the Sinkhole flooded at some point due to “unseasonably high rainfall”, which means the first underground river must have access to the surface. That could be through the orc tunnel, but it seems to me any rainfall that entered that tunnel would flood the lower parts of the Glitterhame before it reaches the underwater river—and that would be a TON of rainwater to cause the flooding we see; the troglodyte caverns would also partially flood!

Alternatively, the rivers’ headwaters were fed by the rainwater. To me that’s a little more believable than the orc tunnel, but means that an underground river that finds the surface five miles away must have surface level headwaters. The stone tooth is fairly conical and isn’t a volcano so there’s no caldera. Is the entire underground river system fed by rainwater through crevasses? Is there a spring from a deeper aquifer that reaches these caves? It’s really a confusing system.

[isthereplothere]

I've put together a really nice physical handout prop for our Dragon Heist Campaign... but I don't even know whether the event in which the PCs might gain it will ever happen. Just wanted to have it ready... and now it's Abwarten und Teetrinken (waiting and drinking tea).

I love the collaborative and slightly unpredictable storytelling just as much as I love to channel some crafty energy in making props... but not getting to use the props I have made always makes me a liiiiittle sad...