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theresattrpgforthat · 5 months

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Have you ever done a post about wizard school games? If not, any you'd like to recommend?

THEME: Wizard School

Hello there, I have two recommendation posts that you might be interested in: Magic School Mysteries and Magic School. However, I have a few more games that I can talk about in case you haven’t found the right game for you yet!

Dusk Academy, by Skullery Maids.

Dusk Academy is a spinoff of Blades in the Dark. It uses much of the same systems and mechanics, deviating slightly to fit the setting.

It is set in the hallowed halls of, well, Dusk Academy — a private school on an English island, far away from society. This school caters to girls fresh out of school, unsure of what to do in their futures. Dusk Academy helps these girls sort out their interests and passions, but it is special in its own way. The school is home to magic — and teaches it as part of its curriculum. This fact must remain secret from the rest of the world, but the school aims to provide a healthy environment for students to unleash their mystical potential.

If you are at home with Forged in the Dark games, Dusk Academy should be pretty easy to pick up, as it follows a number of hallmarks of the Forged family, including action ratings, playbooks with special abilities, clocks that represent consequences or projects, and Position and Effect. This game also adds something called Zap, which represents energy or strength that is needed to help your characters cast spells.

Characters in Dusk Academy organize themselves into clubs, so the stories you tell will likely revolve around the kinds of things you expect your club to do. Many of these clubs resonate quite closely with the crews of Blades in the Dark, so I don’t think your school experience is meant to be safe or easy; this school may be prestigious, but it looks like you’re destined to be troublemakers while you’re there.

Let’s Rob RJ McElhenny and Steal Her Golden Quill, by Glaive Guisarme Games.

You're a wizard, and don't let anyone tell you any different. Especially not RJ McElhenny. She's just about the richest author on the planet, all thanks to her series of banal, lowest-common-denominator stories about wizards. Stories that make it pretty clear just what sorts of people she believes deserve to be called "wizards." If you weren't born magical, if you needed to learn how to wield the arcane or if your power stems from a patron or charm… well then you're an almost-wizard, as far as RJ McElhenny and her fans are concerned.

Let's Rob RJ McElhenny and Steal Her Golden Quill is about taking on a fantasy novelist because you're tired of the shitty takes she keeps unloading on Twitter. It is, notably, a game with no subtext whatsoever and legally you can't prove otherwise.

Talking about magic schools can put me on edge sometimes because one of the most popular magic schools in media is tied to a lot of real-life bigotry, but that’s certainly not an issue I have with this game. Let’s Rob RJ McElhenny is short and sweet, using a deck of cards to generate obstacles as you move throughout the famous author’s mansion, and dice to help you overcome those obstacles using your elaborate heist-planning skills. This is not really a game about magic school per se, but it is a game about magic users using a lot of familiar references.

Children With Wands, by Joe Kiewra.

Children With Wands is a rules lite, all ages, Table Top Role Playing Game that mostly focuses on having fun adventures where the players solve open ended puzzles and problems. You play as children who have just come into their magic powers and as such don't quite have a grip on their spells yet. This leads to a lot of hijinks where the children often have to fix problems their spells have caused.

Children With Wands is a game currently in beta, so the document isn’t pretty but it’s entirely free. The system is d20-based, with simplified character creation that looks relatively kid-friendly. Much of the dice-rolling relates to the magic that your characters will be attempting to cast - roll too low and you might not get the effect you want, but roll too high and the magic goes out of control. Since your casting is about precision, you’ll use your modifiers to determine an acceptable range of numbers that would grant you success, rather than simply add to your dice roll.

As a document, right now the game is just rules on how to play, no fluff or world description. This means that if you decide to give it a go, you have quite a lot of freedom in determining what kinds of creatures there are and what kinds of problems might be affecting the land around you.

Welcome to Camp Merlin, by KingBim.

Welcome to Camp Merlin - it's time to learn some magic! Cast spells, befriend monsters, save ghosts, earn badges, prank some fairies and summon goblins, all whilst exploring a magical forest full of ancient enchantments and mystical creatures.

Welcome to Camp Merlin is a tabletop role-playing game about non-magical kids attending a summer camp in preparation for their first year at magic school.

While it’s not exactly a magic school, Camp Merlin is definitely adjacent to one, and it’s got a lot of the pieces you might be looking for : spells, monsters, and a regulated schedule for your (likely) child-aged characters. The tone is meant to be whimsical and light-hearted, and good for short sessions. If you want something lighthearted for your friends with a slightly different setting than your typical magical school, you might want to check out Welcome to Camp Merlin.

Arcane Academia, by Oracle Engine.

A GMless tabletop roleplaying game, in which you play a group of students at a magical academy: companions through the tumults and turmoil of a day in the life of wonder and whimsy. Bond over meals together, attend arcane lessons, socialize during your free time, and go on daring, mischievous escapades at night.

Arcane Academia seems like a great game for replicating school-age hijinx and escapades, and all of the trouble you can get in when you’re supposed to be doing your schoolwork. It might also be a good option for tables who don’t have a dedicated GM in the group. If you want to get a little bit of a taste of what the game is like before you buy it, you can also listen to the episode on Party of One where Jeff Stormer plays it with the designer of the game.

Arcana Academy, by Jordan Palmer.

Arcana Academy is a tabletop role-playing game where you get to play as students attending a magical school. Solve mysteries, get into trouble, learn magic, and forge lasting friendships or bitter rivalries.

If you've ever wished you could attend a magical school like Brakebills, this is the game for you. Players will get creative with spells, wander the halls after dark trying to solve mysteries, and explore a world unlike any they've yet encountered. Arcana Academy uses a light tag based system that lets you choose what's important to the story. Along with the spells you've mastered, your character's personality or talents are what drive the action forward.

Arcana Academy provides a loose framework using the PbtA ruleset, with the expectation that you will want to build a magic school that fits your group’s tastes. Character creation is very descriptive, asking you to write down specific adjectives or phrases that match your character best, rather than choosing an option from a pick list. I think this game is probably better suited for players that already have a very good idea of what kind of school (and students) they want to play, what kind of magic you want to use, and what kind of tone you want to set the story for.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg #magic school

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jq37 · 2 years

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Twice Upon a Time - Neverafter Ep 1

The Times of Shadow

What is up y’all? A new season of D20 has started and I’ve been lured back to recapping by the siren song of fractured fairy tales. Fairy tales are one of my first loves (my thesis project for school right now is a fairy tale retelling in fact) and it’s very exciting to see that the D20 crew is digging into the darker side of these foundational stories.

I hesitated in starting recapping this season because as much as I love doing these, it’s a big time commitment and I am A Busy Person BUT the premiere ep was just so fun that I couldn’t resist. So, here’s the deal. I will do my best to keep up but no promises, OK? And I’ll be messing around with the formatting a bit to see if there’s a way to make the process a bit easier for me so bear with me.

And with that we start our story in the only way we really can…

Once Upon a Time.

Rosamund Du Prix (Siobhan’s PC)

We start with Brennan mesmerizingly telling the traditional tale of Sleeping Beauty–it goes down exactly like the Disney version. Three fairies. A fourth who isn’t invited and crashes the party after the first two have given their gifts and curses the baby princess to prick her finger on a spindle on her 18th birthday, killing her. The third fairy uses her gift to soften the curse so death turns into a 100 year sleep. Parents try to protect her by getting rid of all the spinning wheels but magic’s gotta magic and on her 18th birthday she finds a spinning wheel in an old tower and pricks herself anyway. She falls into a deep sleep as does the rest of the kingdom and the kingdom–the kingdom of Reverie–is covered in briars.

Rosamund (who I will be calling Roz) wakes up, 100 years later, unable to close her eyes or mouth because of the briars that are growing out of her body and all around her, completely encasing her. Everyone at the tables is visibly and audibly gagging at the description which I will spare you. Roz is horribly claustrophobic but also feels a weird sense that she’s holding something that feels like a troubling sort of sixth sense (not fully explained but I’m wondering if it’s some kind of Ranger ability because she is a level 1 Ranger).

She manages to get a hand free with minimal damage to herself (one fairy did give her the gift of grace after all) and painfully pulls the briars out of her mouth and nose. As she does, she hears whispers in her own head that she can’t understand and which stop when the root of the briars are out of her stomach.

Roz shakes the Briars that surround her, looking for the prince who was supposed to rescue her from this fate and, as she does this, pricks her finger. A tendril of the massive plant pokes out and drinks her blood, giving her a vision of the hundreds of corpses of the princes who have tried and failed to rescue her. The briars seem to think they are keeping her safe from the world outside and are fearful to let her go.

Now, well past the point of uneasiness, she tries to tell the plants thank you for the hospitality but it’s time for her to go. The plants do not agree and after she fails at trying to lull them to sleep with a lullaby, the plants try to stick her with the spindle and put her back to sleep. There is a bit of a tussle which ends with her diving out of her tower window and barely making it to the bottom in one piece. When she calls out to see if anyone is around, she gets no answer and decides to make her way out of Reverie–a process that takes months of traversing the thorny landscape. The kingdom seems fully destroyed.

By the time she escapes, she is in *rough* shape and she’s fashioned herself a bow of thorns.

[Note: Sleeping Beauty as a ranger is an interesting take. I wonder if she’s going to go Beastmaster for the traditional Princess With Animal Companion? Maybe Drakewarden if she wants to play with the Maleficent angle from the Disney version. Would be pretty cool to take on some of the traits of your captor–and she does already have the thorny bow. Fey Wanderer is an option because she was fey-touched upon being born.]

Now, in the present, Roz is a part of a traveling caravan in a wagon that’s going to the town of Shoeberg. In her wagon, she finds something damp and unpleasant being covered by a threadbare blanket and when she removes the blanket, she finds herself a surprise.

Gerard of Greenleigh (Murph’s PC)

Ger is prince turned frog turned prince turning back into a frog. He’s at the halfway stage so he’s still human height and build but with huge bulbous human eyes and damp, mottled, green skin.

He still has the bearing of a prince though and quickly identifies who he is and insists that his situation is temporary. Roz realizes that she’s related to him via marriage (“I think we’re cousins 3 times”) and is happy to join the self-gaslighting about how everything is fine and good and will be back to normal soon enough. They’re royals after all.

Ger says that though his kingdom is taken and his wife is missing, everything is fine and the fact that he’s turning back into a frog has NOTHING to do with his relationship with his wife which is FINE–something that Boffit (the trollson manager of the caravan who tells them they’re stopping for the night) doesn’t really buy.

From there we’re thrust into Ger’s flashback.

It is post-curse break and he’s doing pretty well. Except, he’s starting to realize that his frog traits are coming back. First his throat swelling. Then his eyes start migrating to frog positions. Then his tongue gets all stretchy. (“We fixed this though,” he says with a pathetic but kind of charming dismayed petulance). He tries to ignore the changes, even as he has a tense dinner with his wife–Princess Elody. Elody is discussing war-time matters with three of her generals–the kingdom is at war with Snowhold, the kingdom of the ice queen–but Ger just wants to talk about the upcoming ball and leave the unpleasantness to the soldiers.

Elody is baffled by her husband’s lack of interest in actively protecting the kingdom and his desire to hole up in the castle while others fight and die for them. It’s the Time of Shadow, she says. Never After is being overrun with giants and witches and sea creatures! Why is he so content to coast on their supposed happily ever after? Though Ger clearly isn’t the fiercely protective active ruler she is, he says he’ll try to take a look at his fencing books. And she says that she’ll try to give him what she can. But that night, she doesn’t come to bed because she falls asleep at her war table with her generals. And the next morning, Ger’s nose is gone. Bad!

[Note: Ger is a fighter. I don’t really have a good guess on his subclass. I am fascinated by his relationship drama with his wife, though. I really hope she shows up again soon because the dynamic of these two people being in love but having such opposed life philosophies is very interesting–especially when it’s having the mechanical consequence of forcing Ger to turn back into a frog. To be in denial about how things are going as you’re literally turning into a frog is so indicative of character.]

Back in the present, we shift to another carriage in the caravan–a very nice shoe being pulled by 4 white horses. Inside is the pompous Lord Bandlebridge of Shoeberg who is toasting two figures–a cat wearing a cape and boots and a puppet of a little wooden boy (with a splintered nose–I’m guessing it was removed to allow for lying without an obvious tell).

Through a back and forth, we learn that Puss in Boots (also known as Pib to his friends–I’ll be going with Pib or Puss interchangeably) and Pinocchio are scamming this man. They’ve told him that Pinocchio is actually a prince who stole 40 pennies from a witch and was cursed to be a puppet. They just need to borrow 40 gold pieces to break the curse and then they’ll pay him back in platinum. Lord B is so desperate to believe the story that he doesn’t look too deeply into it and goes with everything they say.

Puss finds that he is very hungry and slips into a flashback.

Puss in Boots (Zac’s PC)

Pib is living the good life in the Kingdom of Marienne. He’s straight up chilling on a pillow in a shaft of sunlight and his breakfast is brought to him–100 live mice!

The king comes in to talk to him privately and, as soon as they’re alone, starts freaking out. This is the miller’s son–Tomas–who in the traditional Puss in Boots story–is thrust into king-ship by Puss’s trickery. That’s all well and good but now it’s wartime and Tomas doesn’t have any idea how to run a country! Giants are attacking. He doesn’t know statecraft! He can barely read! And he loves his wife but he’s been tacitly lying to her for years and it’s all getting to be far too much.

Pib just brushes it off and is like, hey buddy. Don’t worry. It’ll all be fine.

Spoiler alert: It is not fine.

The kingdom falls to giants and Puss flees. And he has no idea what happened to Tomas and his wife.

[Note: Puss is a tabaxi re-skin and a rogue. Also don’t have a guess/hope in mind for subclass but I do love the bringing of the Puss In Boots story to its logical conclusion of–yeah, this guy doesn't know how to run a country. Of COURSE it’s gonna end badly the second times are bad and you can’t let the kingdom run on autopilot.]

Back in the present, Pinocchio is being a little brat and rubbing Lord B the wrong way. To calm him down, Pib calls Lord B his best friend and hugs him–checking his pockets as he does and finding a scroll which he notes but doesn’t steal.

Now, we check in on the third carriage in the caravan. Inside are two figures–”Mother” Timothy Goose and Ylfa Snorgelsson (better known as Little Red Riding Hood). Red knows Tim because he’s an older guy who used to read stories in her village. When things “got bad” (we’ll get to that) she met up with him.

They both get the announcement that the caravan is stopping for the night from Boffit (and that payment will be due in Shoeberg which is a problem because they don’t really have money). They have to stop in the Blackwoods (a primeval forest) which isn’t safe and they both offer to help with keeping watch (Red clearly being the more physically capable of the two).

As they stop, they also see two notable carriages that haven’t been mentioned before (a teapot drawn by a giant rabbit–clear Wonderland ref–and an uncovered chariot drawn by a ram with an older gentleman in it). They also see the shoe carriage which sparks their interest because Tim has this magic book that he writes words in that disappear. But the word “Shoe” stuck. So it has to be somehow relevant to his quest.

They go talk to Lord B who is going off about how much of a thriving metropolis Shoeberg is even in these hard times. While he does this, the guy in the ram chariot calls him a fucking idiot under his breath. Tim tries to respond to Lord B but is haunted by a vision of something behind Lord B and flips out, calling it a fucker and a piece of shit–freaking out Lord B so much that he runs off.

“I saw him again,” he confesses to Red and we jump into his flashback.

“Mother” Timothy Goose (Ally’s PC)

The Lullaby Lands are a really sweet place that’s mainly farmers and animals and doesn’t need a king or a queen to rule it.

Tim walks home with his son's bones in his arms.

His husband–Henry Hubbard–is horrified as Tim explains that their son, Jack, didn’t actually find whatever egg he said he found and was clearly mixed up with something shady. Tim said he saw Jack talking to some giant, black, demonic looking gander (a male goose) and say “I need my third wish” and then watched him age rapidly into the pile of bones he’s holding.

Then the gander said, “Do you wish to know what just happened?” and when Tim said yes, he was trapped in his own set of three wishes. He then wished for something to get his son back and was given the leather-bound book we saw him with before.

As a veteran bard and witch, Tim isn’t a stranger to magic. He opens the book, looking for an answer and finds the pages blank. Undeterred, he starts writing in the book and finds that everything he writes in the book disappears except for the word Jack that sticks.

He writes all day long and in the back of his head he hears the demonic whisper, “There’s no way you’ll find them all in time, Goose.”

Eventually, he notices a stain on the floor of the house where his son made a mess as a younger child, jumping over a candle and tries to just describe the person he wants. His son. He writes in his book the nursery rhyme (which it seems like he wrote in the world about his son) Jack be Nimble, Jack be quick, etc.

As he does, light fills the room and he sees a window open in the pages through which he sees his son, healthy and well and in a version of Pottingham that doesn’t seem afflicted by the floods tormenting it IRL.

“Dad I’m still here,” the Jack on the page says. “[The book] can save more than me. You’ll save them, I know you will.” Before he can say more, he is cut off and starts running. The book in the story sticks and Jack’s bones disappear in motes of golden light.

Tim realizes he has a LOT of work to do.

[Note: Tim is a bard. I could see College of Lore. Maybe Eloquence or Spirits? Also, I HATED how he got roped into his wishes. That’s some fey/lawyer B.S. “Do you wish to know?” Get out of here with that B.S. I hate the gander. All my homies hate the gander.]

Back in the present, the three groups of PCs are starting to get acquainted. Pinocchio introduces himself as a prince and, as a princess, Roz wants to know where he’s the prince of. Maybe they’re related! He lies and says he’s the prince of Shoeberg which Lord B overhears and knows to be false because he’s from Shoeberg.

Lord B starts accosting Pinocchio who is defended by Tim and then the Ram dude who comes to back Tim up. Ram dude is muscular and has armor and a sword. Though he backs up Tim in telling Lord B to step off, he also whispers to Tim that Shoeberg sucks and he shouldn’t talk about it so much.

Lord B retreats to his shoe carriage and on a Nat 1 insight, Pinocchio thinks that, despite his lie, he’s fine to still go in there. Everyone tries to stop his “chaotic entitled” ass and Red ends up stopping the sword of one of Lord B’s guards with a hairy paw and she goes into a rage. Flashback time for Red.

Ylfa Snorgelsson (Emily’s PC)

Red is outside of her home she is returning to. Apparently, she strayed from the path when she shouldn’t have and shit went down. She knocks on the door, and calls for her mom. No one answers. Red pleads for them to open the door, saying that her grandma is dead and she doesn't have a place to go but her mom says that her daughter is dead.

Read assures her that she’s alive and says somewhat fearfully that she doesn’t know what she might try to do to get in.

Inside, there’s some whispering about wolf-trickery and waiting for a woodsman but Red is eventually let in.

She manages to quell her churning thoughts and tells herself that everything will be fine once she’s in. Her mother will help her fix everything…but as soon as she steps in, a silver dagger falls on her while her mom calls for her siblings to run out the back door. It was a trap.

Her rage boils over and she flips the dinner table. A voice tells her to remember to breathe. She does and then, just like in the story, she huffs and puffs and blows her entire family away. Yikes!

[Note: God, talk about trauma. Love the weaving in of the Three Little Pigs story here. And man, Red is so young. Just a pre-teen. Emily plays her so unsure and awkward. I can feel Emily readying some emotional killshots with this character. Her pleading to be let in (which I realize as I write this is very “Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in) was so sad. Also, she’s a Barbarian in case that wasn’t clear. Path of the Beast would be the obvious subclass but we’ll see if she throws us a curveball as she is wont to do. Also,what’s the over-under on her multiclassing into bard? She already has a bard mentor in Tim and we call know mama needs her spell slots.]

In the present, the guard flees at Red’s display of strength and Tim hugs Red.

Pinocchio admits he’s not a prince but he and Pib tell a very sanitized story about how times are hard and they’re just been taking care of each other.

The stranger who helped them reveals himself as Old Cole (ie: Old King Cole was a merry old soul–but he doesn’t seem very merry anymore). He explains that Shoeberg was founded by an unkind woman who gave lordships to all of her shitty sons (ie: There was an old woman who lived in a shoe). It’s a rough city that chews people up and spits them out and it sucks that it got to survive while many other better cities crumbled in the Time of Shadow.

He’s–as far as he knows–the last survivor of his kingdom–Jubilee. Ger asks if he knows anything about his wife and Cole says she was a brilliant warrior on the battlefield (she’s a mace-wielder btw, and ad props for her to being a queen who actually gets her hands dirty) but he doesn’t know if she’s alive right now. Pib asks about Marienne as well but Cole only knows it was overrun by giants.

[Note: This probably isn’t important, but Cole is essentially making Stone Soup by his carriage which is another famous childhood story I wanted to point out because it’s glossed over.]

Everyone is told that they don’t get to eat if they don’t help with the food so Roz tries to do the princess thing of calling birds to help her. Of course, they’re in a gnarly, ultra-cursed forest so on a Nat 1 a fucked up ostrich comes to help her and she politely declines.

Pib and Pinocchio figure they can just steal some food and bring it to “help” but, when they go to do that, Pinocchio notices a coach with a key in it. When he opens it, he sees someone familiar is in there and sends Pib away while he talks to them privately (though Pib tries to eavesdrop).

Inside is a shadowy silhouette that Pinocchio nervously addresses as “Mom” Brennan says he’s only ever seen her shadow.

His mom says that Roz is very important and is being hunted so he needs to help keep her safe and hidden. She’s too busy caring for his father. Pinocchio asks for an assurance that his dad is OK and she says that she promised to keep him safe when she married him. She says something about some candle “burning low” and reminds Pinocchio of the night they met.

[Note: I can’t believe I’ve gone this far without mentioning that Lou had committed to this Mickey Mouse sounding squeaky voice for Pinnocchio which is Certainly A Choice. Also, not sure what the candle refers to yet. The most famous candle story is the Jack Be Nimble one and that doesn’t fit. Will think about this more.]

Pinocchio (Lou’s PC)

Pinocchio is in his town (Amarti in the kingdom of Marienne) up later than he should be. And he’s a real boy. A pointy woman in all black carrying a staff shows up and Pinocchio recognizes her as the second fey he’s met in his life.

The woman has a ball of magical energy which looks so so fun and says each child will get a chance to play with it if they answer a question honestly. Behind her, going into the village, something shadowy flickers. Maybe rats?

She asks a child what their father’s name is. He answers. There’s a scream in the village. She moves on to the next child. Same thing happens. The kids start crying, realizing something awful is happening.

She gets to Pinocchio. She asks for his name. Then she asks for his father’s name. He lies.

Instantly, he drops dead and wakes up on his strings in his father’s house as his dad breathes in and turns.

Back to the present, Pinocchio’s mother says that he’s been telling a lot of lies and she hopes he can keep them straight. And that’s where we end for the week!

[Note: OK, this is my big Pepe Silvia moment of the week. I have this fraught relationship with the show Once Upon a Time but I feel like it’s prepared me for the analysis I’m about to do.

When the character card shows up for Pinocchio’s mom it identifies her as “The Stepmother” (who is his patron btw–he’s a warforged warlock) and it identifies her as being from Cinderella. BUT it doesn’t say she’s THE stepmother from Cinderella.

Let’s think about this for a second.

She’s presented in silhouette. Why? It could just be patron dramatic-ness. But it also could be to set up for a reveal later.

We never get a name–just a title: Stepmother. And it’s totally normal that Pinocchio would just call her mom. But that also could be a setup for a reveal.

This is a weird pull but there’s an apt quote from Disenchanted (the other thing I’m currently obsessed with). “Stepmothers are wicked but they’re not usually very powerful.” Cinderella’s stepmother as a patron wouldn’t be my first guess, you know? Like, of course in this world she COULD be magic, like Tim is, but I think there are better candidates here.

Let’s think about the flashback now. Pinocchio’s mom leads into it by telling him to remember when they met.

He describes the fairy that he meets and her features. But Brennan also says he’s only ever seen his mom in silhouette. So the fairy and the mom don’t seem to be the same people even if that is the night that they met. Brennan also says it’s the second fairy he ever met which means the first is likely the Blue Fairy. So this isn’t likely a twisted version of the fairy from his story.

So the fairy this is likely to be is the one from Cinderella. The Fairy Godmother. And it seems like she’s controlling rats which tracks with the Cinderella story–rodents to horses, right?

(Though, sidenote, because I’m going full Pepe Silvia, I will also point out two other possible links. The first being something Pied Piper related. And the second being a Pinocchio pull as the Pleasure Island owner in the Disney version has these shadowy minions. Oh and while we’re talking shadows–Peter Pan. None of this is part of the analysis proper, just throwing out possibilities.)

ANYWAY, if this fairy is Cindy’s fairy and I’m skeptical the stepmom is The Stepmother then what if Pinocchio’s stepmother is Cinderella herself? The OG Stepmom in the story never had enough proximity to magic to be a patron but Cindy did. I could see her getting magic much more easily. And it would be a killer reveal story-wise.

I don’t know what the motivation would be yet and I don’t even know if she’s evil or just shady. But there was clearly a lot of intentional vagueness during this section, and this is my best attempt to parse it. I look forward to getting more puzzle pieces as the season goes on!]

#dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #d20 #neverafter #neverafter spoilers #twice upon a time #aww shit here we go again

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yeehawpim · 1 year

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Hi!! I love your fanart for d20! I've been watching a lot but also listening to gameing podcasts with sone of the d20 crew (naddpod mostly) and I'm always looking for more. What are your favorite/go to dnd or role play podcasts?

thank you so much!!!! a;ljsfidk I love d20 so much, it's so cool that other people who like it enjoy my stuff too

I watch a lot of stuff, Worlds Beyond Number (Erika Ishii, Lou Wilson, Brennan LM, Aabria Iyengar) which has a long term campaign going on and a really funny one-shot Erika DMs is hitting non-patron space soon

There's this charity one shot I'm obsessed with (B Dave Walters, Patrick Rothfuss, Taliesen Jaffe, Aabriya Iyengar, Brennan LM, Saige Ryan, Anna Proster) It has a follow up and a sequel with a slightly different cast that's also really fun

This unfinished Wanderhome one shot that's my comfort listen. It's got Alex Song-Xia in it who's in Mentopolis being Conrad rn!!

And if you want more horror vibes Critical Role's Candela Obscura is super cool, I haven't watched the first chapter yet but chapter 2 started airing and the first ep is up on youtube.

#q&a #dnd recommendations

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cripplepunkbarbarian · 4 months

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Never Stop Blowing Up player manifestations

Intrepid Heroes: Murph (only IH left who hasn’t been on a Side Quest Season) + Ally (technically came up with the name and maybe the premise?)

Non-IH Return Players: Rekha + BDG (I just miss them both being on d20) + Danielle + Ify (Danielle and Ify are a combo manifestation because they’ve both been on multiple Side Quests but never together and I simply need to see them at the same table. thank you)

New Players: Ruha + Vic (the answer for both of them is just that I think they’d be neat, plus the crew has gone on record that this season is incredibly funny and they’re both incredibly funny <3)

#there are many other people I would love to see at the table but these are my top manifestations I guess #and I also am fully prepared for absolutely no one on this list to be there lmao. I’ll be excited no matter what I think.#also if the concept really IS somehow the same as what Ally joked about (which I kind of doubt) I would not be suprised by an Oops! All DMs #but yeah just generally I doubt they’ll do that. they probably just took the name Ally proposed and repurposed it

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thessalian · 11 months

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Thess vs MCM Comic Con, Day 3

So before I start with the rundown of today, I will say this:

It was worth it.

I may not entirely believe that now, when everything fucking hurts and the stress and frustration of that level of people and noise and exertion and pain is still pretty much flattening me? But I know it was. The memory of how worth it this was will stay fresh long, long after the pain of the actual doing of it is gone.

So. Anyway. Day 3. Starting from after I made sandwiches and prepped to get an exchange on my d20-less gold sparkly dice.

We managed to get there in good time for the Critical Role panel. Now, obviously not in good time to get a seat in the main stage area where they were actually doing the panel, but giving it some thought, we didn't really want to be there anyway. We'd already been up close and personal with the Critical Role crew; we didn't need more than that. Plus the noise would have been way, way too much. So instead, we went over to one of the stages that was streaming the panel on their big screen. Which was better because the camera crew zoomed in when a question was directed at a particular person so we actually got to see them. And the panel was really good. It was so endearing when an audience member asked how they managed the whole thing with being business partners and friends and they talked about how Matt insists that they all hang out just as friends outside of the game space and the business space, and how Travis is this really supportive protective Big Poppa Bear of a CEO, and how it's easier with a group of friends than it is with a two-person partnership or trio because you've got people who can step in and mediate when tempers run a bit high ... and most of all when Ashley said she literally didn't know what she'd do without them (and then had to hand off the mic because she was about to start crying) and Sam said how he really just wanted them to be doing this - being the friends and family they'd become - for the rest of their lives ... and to wear a T-shirt with Matt's face on it at Matt's funeral. I honestly have zero worries about Critical Role LLC and its potential effects on their friendship. Seems like they're doing just fine.

There were no problems with taking my dice back. Thankfully, I got the same guy who sold them to me in the first place, though given the ambient noise and low light levels in the area, it was a bit of a struggle to get him to understand the problem. When he finally understood, he did go the extra mile finding me a replacement set. I repaid that kindness by stopping him when he went to put the dice set I was returning back into the box of merchandise for display / sale. Didn't want him to go through that again, y'know?

(Side note: turns out that the little golden shinies in my Alisaie-themed dice set are, in fact, small golden capital As. That's serendipity on a ridiculous level, right there.)

After that ... I admit it all caught up to me and on top of the body aches, spasms, and migraine, I remembered just how difficult it is to wander a convention hall with someone whose interests in terms of art and entertainment kind of vary from yours. So I suggested to Marion that we split up for an hour and a half, and meet up somewhere to devour lunch and see where we were going from there. I browsed a bit, but mostly I just found a place to sit down and watch the cosplay go by. I mean, I did make an attempt to go outside, partly for a smoke but mostly for someplace where I could be more than two feet away from any human being ... but it had started to rain and so I still ended up crammed under the awnings with my fellows who also wanted fresh air and/or nicotine.

By the time I met up with Marion again, I was getting to that "I am struggling to form coherent sentences" level of migraine, holding it at bay with some co-codamol that I took with the first can of A&W root beer I've had in years, and it was just what I needed, thank you. So we scarfed down lunch. I was honestly ready to leave right then, but Marion wanted one last turn-around to look for a couple of things she hadn't spotted in her first trip. I couldn't really deny her that no matter how much I wanted to go home, so we agreed to meet up in about an hour at the "Reset Room" (they had a room especially designed for people who just needed to decompress; probably the most useful thing they actually did in terms of accommodations, I have to say).

In that time, I caved and bought a copy of Flavours of the Multiverse - a D&D themed cookbook. It wasn't my only purchase of the day, mind you. I also got three pin-badges - one "That's How I Roll" one, one "Shiny Math Rocks" one ... and one that just reads "They/She". That and a "They/Them" nonbinary flag-coloured lanyard. At least there, I could wear those things without being too afraid. Anyway, after my few purchases and another trip outside (where, thankfully, it had stopped raining), I read my new cookbook until Marion rejoined me and we headed home. Unfortunately, on top of all the stairs at London Bridge and Elephant and Castle stations, there were a surprising number of people cramming themselves on the 363 at 5pm on a Sunday. So my Time of Squishening unfortunately got a little bit extended. Still, I am now home and have had coffee and more painkillers and I feel a bit better.

That was probably my last MCM Comic Con. It's definitely the last one I go to for all three days. The accommodations were insufficient (though in all fairness, that's entirely down to the organisers - the stewards were so nice and tried so hard to make things work when it was clear that the original organisational scheme was a shit-show), and the attendees ... well, most of them were really nice but I cannot count how many people I had to nearly throw myself at a wall to avoid because they were walking through a crowded convention hall while looking at their phones. Or just anywhere but straight in front of themselves. And public transport ... well, some of that "step-free access" is only on a technicality, put it that way, and it's actually easier to just struggle with the stairs if you can. I think the worst part of this has been that it's basically opened a window on another part of how hard my life is going to be now.

But never mind. I'm going to decompress a bit. I am going to make breakfast-for-dinner in the form of French toast and bacon, I am going to sit Marion down through the rest of Arcane, and I am going to enjoy my last evening with my houseguest. And at some point I am going to look into the work of the Hire A Bard guy I saw at the convention, who will set your character and/or campaign to music for a fee. This might be worth considering as a Christmas gift (however delayed) for the Cupcake Coterie.

Anyway. Yeah. I hurt. I am very much not at my best. But it was worth it.

#mcm expo

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agueforts · 1 year

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THE BAGEL GRID ON THE MAP............ EVERYONE SAY THANK YOU D20 CREW <3333

#SO SO GOOD. INTEGRATES FUNCTION INTO AESTHETIC SO WELL #AND THE MAP IN ITS ENTIRETY IS SO FUCKING PRETTY............#I JUST WANT TO LOOK OVER IT FROM EVERY ANGLE I CAN GET FOR AN HOUR #dimension 20 #the ravening war #trw #d20 #aspen tag

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gideonthefirst · 5 years

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Excerpt from the chapter of Rat Bastard I’m currently working on

#the thing about this character dynamic. is it makes no FUCKING sense #thank you d20 crew for making me have to actually think about character relationships because none of this shit comes easily at ALL #my writing #dimension 20 blogging #the unsleeping city

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theresattrpgforthat · 2 years

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hey! love the blog, could you recommend any tactical combat games in the vein of lancer/icon? I'm hopelessly addicted to moving little dudes around on a grid rn

THEME: Tactical Combat Games

Thank you! Here are some games that centre tactics and combat. Enjoy crunching those numbers and moving around those dudes on a grid!

Trespasser, by tundalus.

It's clear even from your place of rustic isolation. Hideous beasts run roughshod through the countryside, roving bands of marauders reduce settlements to smoking rubble, wide-eyed prophets babble madly at the sky, and common folk like yourself live in a constant state of terror. Well, you've had just about enough of it. No more tilling the fields in obscurity. Of course, that's all assuming you survive your first day.

Trespasser is a tabletop roleplaying game about peasants-turned-adventurers carving out safe refuge amid the long collapse of their dying world. Designed for player-driven sandbox campaigns of survival and dungeon crawling, Trespasser borrows themes of early tabletop and pairs them with a tactical combat system inspired by 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

You’ll get good use out of a number of dice with this game, although most checks will require a d20. Rather than a power fantasy however, this game prioritizes survival: your characters are but mere peasants, trying to make their way in a large, dark fantasy world. It is expected that your character die, and another character will have to replace them. If you admire the principles of old school gaming but also enjoy picking character options and pushing miniatures around a grid, Trespasser might be for you.

Rotted Capes, by Paradigm Concepts, Inc.

The Golden Age of Superheroes has ended, not with a BANG, but with a BITE! The Dead overran the world and humanity's protectors are missing, dead or worst of all, Z'ed!Once dismissed as the B-List Superhero, you are now mankind's last hope for survival in this horrific world where the Super Zombies sit atop the food chain, looking hungrily down upon you.

At its core, Rotted Capes is a roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic survival in a world overrun by zombies with a particular twist; this event has taken place in a typical superhero comic book world and the players take on the roles of superheroes struggling to protect what’s left of humanity.

If you want to crunch numbers, Rotted Capes is the game for you. You have Attributes, Skills and Powers that all add up to give you modifiers on every roll, with special abilities and moves you buy with XP at the beginning of the game. With both regular zombies and zombified super-heroes, you’ll be up against varying levels of difficulty that require teamwork, strategy, and an urge to give in to the flaws that your character carries with them in order to survive. The book itself is a bit difficult to navigate, but once you get used to the system, you’ll have freed up some brain space to figure out where (and when) is the best moment to strike.

Zafir: Tactical Roleplaying Game, by Zafir Games.

Zafir: Tactical Roleplaying Game is a fast-paced, tactical, cover-shooter, tabletop RPG that brings something new to the genre. The setting is inspired by ancient middle-eastern themes and Zoroastrian mythology, with a unique magitech twist, bringing the world into a magical analogue of the industrial revolution. Guns, magic, airships, and energy crystals all coexist in the world of Zafir.

Set just two decades after a massive world war, the nations of Zafir are at an uneasy peace. Banditry and sky-piracy are rampant, and the need for muscle and guns is at an all time high. Will your crew help fight back the tide of outlaws, or become outlaws themselves?

Zafir requires 4 different-coloured six-sided dice for play, each dice representing stats and trackers, as well as a battle map and tokens in order to keep track of what your characters are doing. Characters are broken down into your standard categories of Class, Origin, Attributes, Equipment, Abilities and Proficiencies. Your character also has a Responsibility, which gives your character non-combat skills, and languages, which hint to the complex lore of the setting for this game. The bulk of your tactical play will take place inside Missions, although there will likely also be as many social role-play opportunities as you like in between each mission. With a large world to explore and a wealth of character options, feel free to min and max to your delight!

Gone Rogue, by QuickWit.

The world is in chains, having willfully relinquished control to the automata known as the Legardien. You are members of the Rogue, the last bastion of resistance against our metallic overlords, on your way to their shining capital of Sion. You are desperately outnumbered, outmatched and outgunned, perceived as the enemy by the sheep licking at the Legardien heel. You will enter Sion to overthrow the despotic Legardien from their seat of power and restore the reigns of humanity back to our own hands. No matter the cost. To yourself, or to mankind. The time of peaceful obedience is over, the age of the Legardien at its end. We are the Rogue.

In development since late 2019, Gone Rogue is a tabletop roleplaying game in which players take on the roles of fearless revolutionaries in a futuristic pacifist dystopia. Skilled, audacious and armed with advanced weaponry, you must enter a city unaccepting of your ideals. Your mission, to reclaim mankind’s freedom in an uncompromising battle against an army of autocratic war machines.

Gone Rogue uses a series of archetypes to determine your character’s role in the party, each with starting stats and abilities. Your character will also choose a Suit that will give you traits, upgrades and inventory items. This is a game that cares about inventory, movement, hit points, cover and more, so expect to pull out your grid maps and start crunching some numbers! However, don’t forget that there’s lore and worldbuilding involved as well - at the beginning you will need to answer some questions as a group, about what the resistance looks like, what the characters’ stake is in this fight, and what kinds of NPC’s the party has access to. This game has only a starter kit right now, but as starter kits go, it has more than enough to get you playing!

FIST, by claymorerpgs.

Now: the second half of the twentieth century. The powers that be are locked in a tense nuclear standoff, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Away from the watchful eye of national intelligence, a cadre of exceptional misfits is assembled. These soldiers of fortune are uniquely equipped for covert and unusual operations. In these uncertain times, the line between science and superstition has been broken, and the new arms race is only beginning. You, or your associates, may be faced with weapons, tactics, and actors unlike any you have ever seen. For a price, those exceptional misfits can help.

When you’re all out of options, it’s time to call FIST.

FIST is a tabletop roleplaying game for one referee and two to six players. It draws heavily from Chris P. Wolf and Olivia Gulin's Offworlders and John Harper's World of Dungeons, as well as being inspired by Metal Gear Solid, The A-Team, and Doom Patrol.

Characters take on traits that act as building blocks; each trait gives you a special skill, an item for your inventory, and a stat modification. Character advancement adds on more traits, making for highly customizable characters. FIST also has community-made supplements for additional traits, foes, and missions to give you the experience that works best for your table. When it comes to dice mechanics, the roll instructions are fairly simple. The game is designed for theatre of the mind: the tactics come into play when it comes to how you solve your problems. Thematically, you’re looking at supernatural warfare: think about modern mercenaries going up against strange horrors beyond our mortal ken.

Beacon, by Pirate Gonzalez Games.

BEACON is a high-fantasy TTRPG inspired by LANCER, D&D 4e, and Final Fantasy. BEACON is a tactical, highly-customizable game where you are encouraged to mix features from various classes, like the teleporting Shadow Dancer or un-killable Gravewalker.

Design the details of your setting together (your Reflection), create your character (your Beacon), and get ready to do battle against the cyclical, everchanging threat of the Scourge. Will you and your fellow beacons be able to defeat the Scourge this time, or will you find a way to break the cycle forever?

If you like LANCER and ICON, you will probably like this game. Like both of the aforementioned games, Beacon uses two different systems for narrative vs combat-style play, and also uses d20s and d6s for your character’s roles. The bulk of Beacon revolves around quests, which are the adventures your characters will embark on, each with information and preparation requirements, a number of stages, specific rewards, and downtime between each quest. Highly structured gameplay allows for a wealth of resources for GMs - and with over 400 pages of character options, combat information, NPCs and setting information, Beacon at its playtest stage is a game to be reckoned with. If you’re looking for a tactical RPG with a fantasy element, I highly recommend you check this one out.

The LUMEN System, by Spencer Campbell.

LUMEN is a rules-lite system for making and playing RPGs focused on telling the stories of powerful characters. LUMEN was first developed for the games LIGHT and NOVA, and has been converted to this genre agnostic SRD so that you can use it to make your own games with the same system.

At its core, LUMEN is designed to tell power fantasy stories. The characters played have access to incredible powers, and use those powers relentlessly in pursuit of their objectives. It’s inspiration comes from video game genres such as looter shooters (Destiny), hero shooters (Overwatch), and dungeon crawlers (Diablo).

LUMEN uses d6 dice pools, 3 attributes, and a series of classes that give players something unique that sets them apart. While the system relies on players determining how they will go about solving their problems, much of their problems will involve combat. Games can include status affects, health tracks, spells and similar special abilities, and more. LUMEN focuses on fast and lethal combat, so you won’t be moving around on the map, but players will use the tools they have at hand to gain the upper hand in stressful situations, invoke consequences and complications, and look cool while doing it.

Some games that use the LUMEN system include Hedge (Wardens fighting off a Faerie Apocalypse), Blazing Hymn (Mech pilots protecting humanity from monstrous Angels), and Lords of Eternity (Superhuman beings of immense power, duelling with swords).

#dnd #tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #tactical games #crunch #asks

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crazyness-overpowers · 3 years

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the a starstruck odyssey trailer…. yes please

#intrepid heroes with 18 episodes in SPACE? thank you d20 crew for my life #a starstruck odyssey #dimension 20 #intrepid heroes #intrepid heroes my beloved #brennan lee mulligan

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straws-and-stats · 3 years

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Rusty Quill Gaming Stats! (Part 3)

[part 1] [part 2]

As a tribute to the crew who made the show so special, I'd like to end the stats by taking a look at a statistically interesting tidbit for each of the 9 characters featured in the book.

Here goes:

SASHA - In the table below, I recorded when the party arrived in each location and compared that to when Sasha used the skill Knowledge (Local) for the first time in that location. Sasha acclimated to location changes quickly, using Knowledge (Local) within an average of 2.5 episodes after arriving somewhere new.

ZOLF - Since Zolf did the bulk of the party's healing across the campaign, below is a bar chart containing all 27 of his heal checks across his days as both cleric of Poseidon and cleric of hope. Overall, he does exceedingly well at it, which is part of why he healed the party for the most points.

BERTIE - Despite his insistence on his own greatness, Bertie was largely statistically uninteresting. However, as seen in the table below which contains stats on the saving throws in the campaign for character, he rolled the most saves per capita, averaging nearly 1 save per episode. This is likely due to a combination of James antagonizing Alex & Bertie antagonizing everyone.

GRIZZOP - I have zero idea how Ben pulled this off, but the spread of nat 1s and nat 20s for Grizzop is ridiculously beautiful. The tables below contain information on the crits for skill checks, saves, and attacks, as well as a combined total for all three metrics. Skill check & save crits were perfectly balanced as all crits should be, and there was only a 3 crit disparity in attacks. Plus, the total number of natural 1s and natural 20s was just about 10%. This is incredibly close to what you would expect to see using d20s in an ideal system, which our world patently isn’t, so wow!

HAMID - You might have trouble remembering, but Hamid used a little spell called "fireball" once or twice amidst other firey attacks. Here's a nice bar chart comparing just Hamid's fire damage, which was 71% of his total damage dealt, to everyone else's total damage. Cel is the only one whose total damage just barely eeks out Hamid’s fire damage, and that only happened in the last 3 episodes of the campaign!

AZU - A bar chart of Azu’s Knowledge (Religion) rolls. Of the 16 rolls, 3 were natural 1s, which had a 3.6% or 1 in 28 chance of happening. Understandable it did, though, Azu had better things to be doing than paying attention in seminary...

CEL - From Cel’s 28 Knowledge (Engineering) rolls in the bar chart below, we can see that they really know their stuff! Nothing was below a 12, and a decent portion of rolls hovered around 30.

WILDE - And for my next trick, I shall perform the most difficult of statistician's techniques I toiled for years to perfect: glaring in the vague direction of London and spamming memes.

(thanks to serhawke (@cityelf) for the Dragon!Alex Dice Hoarder doodle)

SKRAAK - A bar char of Skraak’s 8 stealth rolls. These checks themselves rolled a natural 20 on stealth. They look deceptively poor until you remember to look at the scaling on the left (how are none of these values below 25?!?!).

And now, weary, my labours completed, I shall impart upon you all one last tidbit:

WHY SKILL CHECKS PER MINUTE (SCPM) IS THE SUPERIOR UNIT FOR CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS

So I’m sure you all can hear the voice of my PhD supervisor in the background shouting “Straw, skill checks per minute (scpm) is an utterly meaningless measurement for evaluating episode content across a large campaign since the small amount of interesting information it could give you is in a format that is difficult for humans to conceptualize, what could you possibly use this for? What are you even trying to say with this unit, Straw?!”

And, well, to an extend, he (and literally all of us who are thinking this) would be correct. However, and hear me out on this:

- You can pronounce scpm as “skip-uhm” and that’s just the kobold’s knees - Anything above 1 or really close to 0 is an obvious outlier and should be easy to spot in the mass of data. Sure, you could find them just as easily in other formats, but this range is fun and perky. -It’s just a really neat unit and you can pry it from my cold, dead claws.

In all seriousness, to all who worked on RQG - thank you. If not for you, we would not have had this fun sandbox of numbers to play with, nor this wonderful adventure to all embark on together.

Thank you.

If you liked this post, friendly reminder to check out “LOLOMG - A Performance Review by Oscar Wilde”! It contains more stats, and elaborate maths joke I made with “loads of hitpoints” as the punch line, and tons of really cool art, some tailoring notes for each character, and really funny text ghostwritten by Oscar Wilde from my friends! My friends did such a good job, y’all! Seriously, go check it out!

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