This Kickstarter is for odd-numbered dice: D9. D11, D13, D15, D17 and D19. Available in Black, Red, Yellow, Green, Indigo and Purple. $12 plus shipping for the set of six.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impactminiatures/cursed-dice

I’ve backed Impact! Miniatures before and it’s always been great.

I really like that odd-numbered dice even exist. It sounds like a what-if that was taken too far. And it turned out great.

> What about a unique way to show curses and disadvantages to your players. Impact!'s cursed dice allow you to give your players a unique die to use for the session to show the effect of their misguided actions. A D19 to show a curse that prevents criticals and natural 20s. Along with several other different dice to disadvantage rolls in many creative ways. > >These dice were designed to be as fair as possible for an odd sided die. All the sides are equal sized and equal distant from the center mass. Each die was created by a specialist trained in working with geometeric design. > >These odd dice are all new molds and modified designs by Impact! We've learned from our attempts to make odd sided dice in the past and these dice are brand new designs to make sure the dice stop faster by being larger and designed to have better defined stopping surfaces. The new designs are also easier to read with larger fonts and better extras to show you the top value being rolled.

Apparently there was barely any change from the playtest version.

Key points:

• Bastions are acquired at lv5.
• Each player has their own bastion. Bastions can be grouped together into one bastion, but they are still treated as different bastions for the purpose of mechanics, except that grouped bastions can defend each other from attacks.
• Bastions can be populated with "basic facilities" (whose only purpose is flavour, apparently) and "special facilities". The latter provide actual tangible benefits by issuing orders to them during the "bastion turn" (once every 7 days). Special facilities are acquired as the players level up: two at 5th and 9th level, and one more at 13th and 17th level.
• Both types of facilities come in three sizes: "cramped" (4 squares), "roomy" (16 squares) and "vast" (36 squares), and can be upgraded later on. Some special facilities may have a minimum size requirement.
• The article provides three examples of special facilities. I'm not going to copy-paste them (click the link, you cowards).
• Project Sigil (WotC's own Virtual Tabletop) ad. Multiple ads, actually. My God stop talking about Sigil pls.
• Attacks seem... Lackluster. "In the event of an attack on your Bastion, a number of d6s are rolled. For each die that rolls a 1, your Bastion loses that many Bastion Defenders. If you don’t have any Bastion Defenders or lose them all in an attack, a random special facility is shut down for your next Bastion turn." Bastions that are grouped together can sum up their defenders total.

From what I'm reading, there are very few changes from how it worked in the playtest. I guess they were either lazy, didn't have enough time to integrate feedback, or both. This thing only exists to sell Sigil.

I am looking for a stat stick build where I just hit stuff really hard and a lot. Which do you think is better in phb 2024?

DM: "You exit the warehouse and make your way across the crowded market square. What measures do you take to avoid the suspicion of the guards?"

Paladin: "We walk like people who aren't covered in blood."

What did your group get up to last night?

The new College of Dance Bard subclass looks like it will be really fun. Unarmed strikes whose damage scales with Bardic Inspiration dice and uses Dex. Unarmored Defense that adds Charisma. Bonus action unarmed strikes when you use Bardic Inspiration.

You get to be 3/4 of a Monk, but also be a Face, and also be a full caster, and also get half proficiency in everything. And then the level six stuff buffs your party’s initiative and movement to the point it’ll be very hard to get the drop on you.

A fantastic new subclass all around.

We take a look at a workflow you can use to make running a campaign with multiple factions more manageable. We implement the concept of user stories, story mapping, and backward planning to create an evolving and flexible campaign.

It's a long one so grab a snack and something to drink. Feel free to use it to help you fall asleep :)

Hey folks! What's better than having a party of optimized characters? Having a party of optimized characters that work well together! Let's look at the concept of T-shaped individuals and how they can help us create parties that are resilient, and can do anything.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, I've never posted anything before.

I randomly got reminded of a webcomic I read around a year ago about a goblin priest(?) and orc paladin for the same god. The last bit I remember was the orc buying a dress using an enrichment fund that had an acronym starting with the goblins initial (it may have been KEF).

I've tried looking on Google, Lemmy and Reddit but I'm pretty sure I saw it on here. I believe it on the artists website but if anyone has any idea what it was called I'd be super grateful

Players who only have access to the 2014 Player’s Handbook will maintain their character options, spells, and magical items in their character sheets. Players with access to the 2024 and 2014 digital Player’s Handbooks can select from both sources when creating new characters.

Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh

I will try and dm Ghosts of Saltmarsh in a some weeks. To ad a twist and some flavour, i thought bringing in a bbeg who controls all three of the factions. I just need some ideas to weave it together. Any tipps and ideas on how to do this? @dnd@lemmy.world

I made this a year ago for dragon friends, a wonderful D&D show with a bunch of Australian comedians bullying their poor dungeon master.

Highly recommend

Hey folks! Conflicts between player characters are very interesting when it comes to the narrative, but can be dangerous to the health of your gaming group. If you want PvP in your games, you best know how to do it safely. In this video we discuss some strategies to do just that. How do you navigate inter-party conflicts for drama that does not make your group implode?

This guy breaks down just how bad the layout of the new PHB is. The cross referencing is non-existent and the subsections seem to go in the order someone thought of them. I'm sadly unsurprised that they've not improved on any of these problems which existed in the original 5e PHB.

Hey folks! Here's an approach to roleplaying / finding your character's motivation that you've probably not seen in a D&D or TTRPG setting before. A lot of us, I think, could fall into the skyrim stealth archer trap. We start our campaigns thinking we're gonna play a PC that's unique. But as the sessions go by, we find out that we've been "roleplaying" ourselves after all. With this approach, we learn about the CHAMPFROGS - ten moving motivators that make up most people. With them, we can hopefully stop roleplaying ourselves, and instead graduate to Capital R roleplaying (if that's what we want to do of course - you're not doing it wrong if you're having fun).

Hi friends!

I wanted you to know about the City of Arches Kickstarter going on right now!

The City of Arches is a 160 page PDF and hardcover high-fantasy city sourcebook built for Lazy DMs and usable with any version of 5e or other fantasy tabletop RPGs. In this book you’ll find

• a high fantasy city setting surrounded by countless adventure locations.
• a setting easily dropped into any existing published or homebrewed campaign world.
• a setting where any race, species, origin, heritage, and culture makes sense.
• over a dozen adventure “biomes” with hundreds of adventure locations.
• three 1st to 20th level campaign arcs.
• an intro scenario, three adventures, and an adventure toolkit for building your own heist or infiltration adventure.
• beautiful full-color art, dungeon maps, and overland maps.
• a player’s guide with background hooks and setting-specific backgrounds.

Download the free 42 page preview on the Kickstarter page! I hope you’ll back this fantastic new book.

Thank you so much!

So the 2024 Players Handbook (PHB) is set to release in September. I've already bought and paid for the book. In fact I get early access in early September.

However a bunch of YouTube and other folks got the books much earlier and the embargo for them to talk about it lifted in early August.

So now I have to learn piecemeal how the new rules work. I have to hope whatever YouTube video I watch got the rules right. My only reference is random videos.

Luckily someone did write down a rough outline at https://rpgbot.net/2024-dnd-5e-transition-guide-and-change-log-everything-thats-different-in-the-new-players-handbook/

Anyone else find this to be bullshit? It's like Christmas morning for "influencers" but my gifts arrive in a month.

In short if folks know of a good copy of the 2024 PHB I'd love to read it.

Hi friends! I recently came across an interesting topic in D&D that I wanted to share with you all: creative use of items. For example, a rope can become not only a tool, but also a trap or a weapon. In one of the games I played, a mage dissolved a grate with acid instead of attacking. Have you ever had any unexpected situations with items? I'd love to hear about them!

As the title says.

If you don't know the discworld books by Pratchett, Granny Weatherwax it the most formidable character. She is a witch, but doesn't generally use magic to solve problems; preferring to use persuasion and manipulation. In saying that her magic is extremely powerful.

Maybe a bard with huge wisdom, persuasion and intimidation.

Tryjng to create a character

@dnd@lemmy.world I try to build a Brooklyn 99 character, I think i will try an go for Rosa Diaz

As class i will go for a fighter/warlock multiclass..any tipps for subclasses?

Hey folks! We often praise our DMing heroes for their many skills like improv, enhancing immersion, compelling roleplay of believable NPCs, and the like. There are resources aplenty for how to speak in accents, how to not use accents but still have distinct voices, how to plan campaigns, or speed up combat encounters. But are these skills really what make our favorite DMs great? I argue no. I believe great DMs begin with a foundation of values that guide how they use their skills, and I discuss my version of those values here.

I read the lyrics for this on reddit a few years back, and just learned there was a recording. Would be great for for a bard doing an adventure at the Yawning Portal.

Hey folks! This week we explore a potentially controversial topic: Is your D&D Group dysfunctional? If you have that nagging feeling that something is not working well in your gaming group, but you can't quite put your finger on what it is, then this video will hopefully expand your vocabulary and set you on the path to making things better.

I say it in the video, but I will also write it down here explicitly. A dysfunctional group does not mean it's a group made of bad people. It's just a group that does not function as well as it should.

Hey folks, here's a different way of organizing your notes for your campaigns. It actively helps you run the game, rather than just being a big document for you to read. The system only has two rules to follow, but you would be surprised at how much it helps when it's time to actually play. The method itself is also quite powerful when you use it to organize your to do list, especially during the times in your life when things get a bit hectic and overwhelming. I hope it helps!

Hello Everyone! Long term Dungeon Master Lazorne here and also maintainer of RetroDECK😅

Several members of the RetroDECK team are members of the D&D community.

As we are finishing up the RetroDECK Logo but we still have about 26 hours remaining I thought we can do something more with the D20 and the RetroDECK logo to make them blend more.

Now I'm no pixelartist but I know the D&D Community (that I'm also a part of) has some.

My suggestion is:

Where the face of the D20 hits the RetroDECK logo on the right side (where the 20 is), parts of the RetroDECK logo breaks as being hit by a critical hit.

This is our current template:

RetroDECK Template

If someone can make them blend more together we can make it even better in the final 24 hours!

I would like to see some dnd representation. Which is why I would try to make this 62×62 D20 above the perchance logo on the second canvas Any help is welcome (I did not find a nice dice with better resolution)

Here's part 2 of my tactician series, now about generating buy-in. I use these techniques for work. There were times when I caught myself treating my work colleagues better than my friends with whom I play d&d, especially when my tactician tendencies bubbled up. It seems the things I do on the job translate well to my gaming tables, and I hope they can serve you too.

From a blog post by Ben Riggs. I thought it was interesting. \------------

“Damn right I am a sexist. It doesn’t matter to me if women get paid as much as men… They can jolly well stay away from wargaming in droves for all I care.” -Gary Gygax, EUROPA 10/11 August-September 1975

Do TTRPG Historians Lie?

The internet has been rending its clothes and gnashing its teeth over the introduction to an instant classic of TTRPG history, The Making of Original D&D 1970-1977. Published by Wizards of the Coast, it details the earliest days of D&D’s creation using amazing primary source materials. Why then has the response been outrage from various corners of the internet? Well authors Jon Peterson and Jason Tondro mention that early D&D made light of slavery, disparaged women, and gave Hindu deities hit points. They also repeated Wizards of the Coast’s disclaimer for legacy content which states:

“These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. This content is presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”

— Making OD&D

In response to this, an army of grognards swarmed social media to bite their shields and bellow. Early D&D author Rob Kuntz described Peterson and Tondro’s work as “slanderous.” On his Castle Oldskull blog, Kent David Kelly called it “disparagement.” These critics are accusing Peterson and Tondro of dishonesty. Lying, not to put too fine a point on it.  So, are they lying? Are they making stuff up about Gary Gygax and early D&D?

Is there misogyny in D&D?

Well, let's look at a specific example of what Peterson and Tondro describe as “misogyny “ from 1975's Greyhawk. Greyhawk was the first supplement ever produced for D&D. Written by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz, the same Rob Kuntz who claimed slander above, it was a crucial text in the history of the game. For example, it debuted the thief character class.  It also gave the game new dragons, among them the King of Lawful Dragons and the Queen of Chaotic Dragons. The male dragon is good, and female dragon is evil. (See Appendix 1 below for more.) It is a repetition of the old trope that male power is inherently good, and female power is inherently evil. (Consider the connotations of the words witch and wizard, with witches being evil by definition, for another example.)

Now so-called defenders of Gygax and Kuntz will say that my reading of the above text makes me a fool who wouldn’t know dragon’s breath from a virtue signal. I am ruining D&D with my woke wokeness. Gygax and Kuntz were just building a fun game, and decades later, Peterson and Tondro come along to crap on their work by screeching about misogyny. (I would also point out that as we are all white men of a certain age talking about misogyny, the worst we can expect is to be flamed online. Women often doing the same thing get rape or death threats.) Critics of their work would say that Peterson and Tondro are reading politics into D&D.

Except that when we return to the Greyhawk text, we see that it was actually Gygax and Kuntz who put “politics” into D&D. The text itself comments on the fact that the lawful dragon is male, and the chaotic one is female. Gygax and Kuntz wrote: “Women’s Lib may make whatever they wish from the foregoing.”

The intent is clear. The female is a realm of chaos and evil, so of course they made their chaotic evil dragon a queen. Yes, Gygax and Kuntz are making a game, but it is a game whose co-creator explicitly wrote into the rules that feminine power—perhaps even female equality—is by nature evil. There is little room for any other interpretation. The so-called defenders of Gygax may now say that he was a man of his time, he didn’t know better, or some such. If only someone had told him women were people too in 1975! Well, Gygax was criticized for this fact of D&D at the time. And he left us his response.

I can’t believe Gary wrote this

:(

Writing in EUROPA, a European fanzine, Gygax said,

“I have been accused of being a nasty old sexist-male-Chauvinist-pig, for the wording in D&D isn’t what it should be. There should be more emphasis on the female role, more non-gendered names, and so forth. I thought perhaps these folks were right and considered adding women in the ‘Raping and Pillaging[’] section, in the ‘Whores and Tavern Wenches’ chapter, the special magical part dealing with ‘Hags and Crones’, and thought perhaps of adding an appendix on ‘Medieval Harems, Slave Girls, and Going Viking’. Damn right I am sexist. It doesn’t matter to me if women get paid as much as men, get jobs traditionally male, and shower in the men’s locker room. They can jolly well stay away from wargaming in droves for all I care. I’ve seen many a good wargame and wargamer spoiled thanks to the fair sex. I’ll detail that if anyone wishes.”

— -Gary Gygax, EUROPA 10/11 August-September 1975

So just to summarize here, Gygax wrote misogyny into the D&D rules. When this was raised with him as an issue at the time, his response was to offer to put rules on rape and sex slavery into D&D.

Peterson & Tondro are truth-tellers

The outrage online directed at Peterson and Tondro is not only entirely misplaced and disproportional, and perhaps even dishonest in certain cases, it is also directly harming the legacies of Gygax, Arneson, Kuntz and the entire first generation of genius game designers our online army of outraged grognards purport to defend.  How? Let me show you.

That D&D is for Everyone Proves the Brilliance of its Creators

The D&D player base is getting more diverse in every measurable way, including age, gender, sexual orientation, and race. To cite a few statistics, 81% of D&D players are Millenials or Gen Z, and 39% are women. This diversity is incredible, and not because the diversity is some blessed goal unto itself. Rather, the increasing diversity of D&D proves the vigor of the TTRPG medium. Like Japanese rap music or Soviet science fiction, the transportation of a medium across cultures, nations, and genders proves that it is an important method for exploring the human condition. And while TTRPGs are a game, they are also clearly an important method for exploring the human condition. The fact the TTRPG fanbase is no longer solely middle-aged Midwestern cis men of middle European descent, the fact that non-binary blerds and Indigenous trans women and fat Polish-American geeks like me and people from every bed of the human vegetable garden find meaning in a game created by two white guys from the Midwest is proof that Gygax and Arneson were geniuses who heaved human civilization forward, even if only by a few feet.

So, as a community, how do we deal with the ugly prejudices of our hobby’s co-creator who also baked them into the game the world loves?

We could pretend there is no problem at all, and say that anyone who mentions the problem is a liar. There is no misogyny to see. There is no shit and there is no stink, and anyone who says there is shit on your sneakers is lying and is just trying to embarrass you. I wonder how that will go? Will all these new D&D fans decide that maybe D&D isn’t for them? They know the stink of misogyny, just like they know shit when they smell it. To say it isn’t there is an insult to their intelligence. If they left the hobby over this, it would leave our community smaller, poorer, and suggest that the great work of Gygax, Arneson, Kuntz, and the other early luminaries on D&D was perhaps not so great after all… We could take the route of Disney and Song of the South. Wizards could remove all the PDFs of early D&D from DriveThruRPG. They could refuse to ever reprint this material again. Hide it. Bury it. Erase it all with copyright law and lawyers. Yet no matter how deeply you bury the past, it always tends to come back up to the surface again. Heck, there are whole podcast series about that. And what will all these new D&D fans think when they realize that a corporation tried to hide its own mistakes from them? Again, maybe they decide D&D isn’t the game for them.

Or maybe when someone tells you there is shit on your shoe, you say thanks, clean it off, and move on.

We honor the old books, but when they tell a reader they are a lesser human being, we should acknowledge that is not the D&D of 2024. Something like, “Hey reader, we see you in all your wondrous multiplicity of possibility, and if we were publishing this today, it wouldn’t contain messages and themes telling some of you that you are less than others. So we just want to warn you. That stuff’s in there.” Y’know, something like that legacy content warning they put on all those old PDFs on DriveThruRPG.  And when we see something bigoted in old D&D, we talk about it. It lets the new, broad, and deep tribe of D&D know that we do not want bigotry in D&D today. Talking about it welcomes the entire human family into the hobby.    To do anything less is to damn D&D to darkness. It hobbles its growth, gates its community, denies the world the joy of the game, and denies its creators their due. D&D’s creators were visionary game designers. They were also people, and people are kinda fucked up.   So a necessary step in making D&D the sort of cultural pillar that it deserves to be is to name its bigotries and prejudices when you see them. Failure to do so hurts the game by shrinking our community and therefore shrinking the legacy of its creators.

Appendix 1

Yeah, I know Chaos isn’t the same as Evil in OD&D. But I would also point out as nerdily as possible that on pg. 9 of Book 1 of OD&D, under “Character Alignment, Including Various Monsters and Creatures,” Evil High Priests are included under the “Chaos” heading, along with the undead. So I would put to you that Gygax did see a relationship between Evil and Chaos at the time.

Page 9 of Book 1 of OD&D. Note that the “Evil High Priests” are also chaotic.

\--------------

Additional Note from me: Images where he sourced the original quotes are in the blog post. They didn't copy over right.

As a DM or a Player, I find tactician players are awesome. However, they seem to have a bad reputation as disruptive, bossy, no-fun party members. In this video I share why I think they are awesome, and instead of giving advice for how everyone else should deal with them, I try to give tips for how the tacticians themselves can get better at tacticianing.

This is part 1 of a loveletter to my older self, in whom I saw tactician tendencies and may have behaved suboptimally from time to time. But when I recognized a few of these things, I've not had bad table relationships since.

Do you have any thoughts on the topic of tactician type players? Do you think the approach I described would help the problematic tacticians you've encountered before?

Good Archfey patron for a warlock?

@dnd

I have made a Jorasco halfling warlock who is a priest of Kor Korron, which I will be playing in an #eberron campaign. (Specifically, he is a priest of Kor Korron, pretends to be a wizard among his peers, but likes to pass himself off as a cleric in public.) I am not very familiar with Thelanis, but I understand there is a fae court there. Do any of you have ideas for which archfey I should suggest to my #DM?

\#dnd #ttrpgs #rpgs #ttrpg #rpg #roleplaying

On June 29, 2024, at 6:30 P.M. Pacific Time, Roll20 learned that an administrative account was compromised. By 7:30 P.M. Pacific Time, we acted to ensure that all unauthorized access was blocked, and we began the process of investigating the incident to determine the scope.

Following our investigation, we learned that the unauthorized third-party had access to administrative tools, which may have resulted in the exposure of personal information, such as your: first and last name, email address, last known IP address, and the last 4 digits of your credit card (solely if you had a stored payment with us).

Notably, the compromised administrative tooling did not expose your password or your full payment information, such as your address or credit card number.

While we have no reason to believe that your personal information has been misused, we are notifying you out of an abundance of caution.

We take your privacy and security very seriously, and we deeply regret that this incident occurred. We will be implementing an action plan to further enhance the security of our administrative tools going forward.

If you have questions, or if you would like to view a copy of your account data that the third party may have had access to, please reach out to us at https://help.roll20.net and create a support ticket with the subject line “Incident Data Request” and we will be happy to assist you.

Here are some resources containing good best practices for protecting your information online which we recommend: https://consumer.ftc.gov/online-security

Here I share the concept of backward planning which, when combined with Story Mapping, allows you to drive towards your singular inspiration without resorting to railroading your players. I hope it helps anyone struggling.

cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/7655321

> All premieres at 9am PDT: > > - Monday, July 1st - Spells Tuesday > - July 2nd - Crafting Sneak Peek (this is a short video; no premiere) > - Monday, July 8th - Monk > - Tuesday, July 9th - Sorcerer > - Wednesday, July 10th - Cleric Thursday > - July 11th - Bard Friday > - July 12th - New Dragon Designs

The funniest Out of Game moment I have ever had at the table was in my previous IRL group. We rotated who was in the DM chair, but this session our host, lets call him Phillip Barker, was running his Pathfinder campaign. The problem player, a hustlebro i shall name Emmett Roe, decides to flirt with an NPC. Phillip reciprocates but reveals the character is asexual. Emmett lost his shit, calling Phillip r♡♡♡♡♡♡d and asking “why are there f♡♡♡♡ts everywhere now” and yelling something dumb about genders and mental illness. Phillip calmly pulls down one of his zweihanders from a display rack and unsheathes it, walks over to him, and tells him “You're going to leave now.” Emmett leaves, Phillip sits back down, and we continue the game as if Emmet was never there.

This group, by the way, was the worst I have ever been in. I have never felt so lonely in a crowded room before. I've provided bios of the players below, including myself, with fake names taken from famous people. Have fun figuring out which one is me!

1. Phillip Barker (19): Does not smoke, but drinks and pretends to be a wine snob. Ran Shadowrun 5e and a homebrew PF1e campaign, and uses an old-school impartial referee mindset behind the screen. Hes also autistic, which mainly shows in him through rigid ethics about fairness. As a player, he was the Heart of the group, and kept our in-game squabbles from getting the game off-track or spilling over to real life. His Pathfinder campaign had lots of diverse groups that were fairly represented, and whenever an NPC judged one of our rainbow-flavored party members it was clear that this was the character being an asshole, not him. He put a lot of work into his sessions, sometimes extending to making a whole soundboard for background music, and he made sure to incorporate each of our characters into the plot in an organic way. Out of game, he was an aspiring catholic priest, and boy was he living up to the stereotype. He made a suspicious number of jokes about being both a nationalist and a socialist and therefore being a national socialist (he definitely was not a socialist), was a big fan of several “"alt-right"” personalities, made several very racist and homophobic jokes in public, tried to flirt with another player's underage little sister, and tries to hide the fact that he thinks most of the other players are going to hell for their sexuality. But he’s also super hot, so at the time I thought that balanced out.

2. Emmett Roe (19): Shadowrun DM, is a bit of a railroader. Looked like he was about 12 years old. Bullied me in high school, and has not significantly changed. After being kicked out, he cofounded a FLGS with his dad, but at this time his gigachad sigma male grindset was flipping Funko Pops.

3. Dave Arneston (19): The main Shadowrun DM, uses a “DM as Ringmaster/Entertainer” mindset. Autistic bisexual twink, and a hot one at that. Smokes, drinks, deals drugs. Dropped out of college, possibly because of the drugs. Is the reason Phillip has a “no smoking indoors” rule. Ran horror sessions that literally gave me nightmares. Dude method acts his characters. When he's playing, you are going to be sitting at the table with his character until the session is over.

4. Pablo Pineda (21): An AuDHD Shadowrun DM, uses a “DM as mediator/collaborator” mindset. Bisexual, but in denial about it even though he was dating a guy at the time. Does not drink or do any chemically addictive drugs. Dropped out of college after 1 semester because he didn't do any classwork and expected to just coast through, but maintains he's just “on a gap year” when questioned about it. Cannot stick with one fucking character for longer than a fucking month. Preferred to run heists with unusual stakes, locations, or macguffins. Had no social life outside of the game and was still doing the job he had in high school. Would engage in distracting sensory-seeking behaviors during game sessions; for example, during one session he wedged a d4 up his nose and had to go to urgent care to get it out. Overall, I would say that Pablo ruined my enjoyment of the actual game the most.

5. Henry Cavendish (19): Audience member. Does not smoke, drink, express feelings, or roleplay. Stereotypical autist. Plays a human fighter whenever possible. Keeps breaking up with Amy and getting back together. Usually a helpful person. On that sigma grindset with his long-term life plan.

6. Amy Winehouse (18): Femme-presenting nonbinary pansexual disaster. (she/them, prefers femme pronouns) Smoked weed to self-medicate, often while driving since driving scares her. As a result, she was generally too blasted during game sessions to read her character sheet or the tiny numbers on the dice. Also had trouble with maintaining a job, which resulted in periodic homelessness.

7. Theresa Berkley (19): Was Amy's best friend, and was invited by Amy. Vapes and drinks. The dudes all very much liked her gigantic tiddies her personality.

Unfortunately, no actual horror stories happened in this group. There were bad moments, and there were horrifying moments, but thats all they were: moments. So, here's a short list of the moments i can remember:

● As stated above, Henry and Amy would break up and get together repeatedly. When they were together, they would sit together snuggling, and Henry would help out Amy when her high ass needed support. When they were broken up, Amy was on her own. This resulted in a sad space of time when Henry had helped Amy make an Alchemist which exploited some complex rules interactions, but then let her just flounder after they broke up. He also went well out of his way to scare off any potential partner that might replace him when they broke up; Amy has told me about how she would be at a rave flirting with some hottie and suddenly Henry is right there calling her Babe and Honey until his competitor backs off. Apparently he used to only chase off men, but after Amy called him on this he worked on his internalized homophobia and now he walls her off from all partners equally. (Good for him, I guess?) This effectively made him the only option, and when they got back together he would smother her with appreciation and love. Carrot and stick, like a fucking cult leader.

● In our Shadowrun campaign, Emmett founded a Corp for our runners to work for. Normally, this would be mostly fine, especially for a group like ours. What wasn't fine was all the times an in-game argument would be resolved with Emmett's character saying “You work for me!”.

● Dave had a habit of not prepping for his sessions. Fair, he's got a life, he's hustling the good stuff and holding down a day job too. But this is Shadowrun! You have the material plane, the astral plane, and the Matrix to keep track of! You've got one player that has a bow that can shoot through walls, one player with a high-specced cyberdeck and a lot of experience using it, a vampire that can turn into mist and astral project, a guy who is basically We Have Tony Stark At Home, and a character who gets closer to being Robocop with every paycheck. You can't show up and wing it, because there are 5-6 of us and one of you. We can both outsmart you and outstupid you at the same time!

● Pablo's characters tend to make the table uncomfortable or be awkward to play with. Examples:

○ A human fighter going through a midlife crisis. He has a wife and child at home who think he is going on a business trip, when in reality he is putting his life in danger on a daily basis and bedding any woman he can seduce. This character was actually pretty similar to many of the other players’ actual parents, and was retired unceremoniously after he made Amy cry.

○ A dissonant technomancer. In Shadowrun, technomancers work their computer magic through Resonance, which is essentially the light side of the force. Dissonance is like the dark side, which encourages destruction, chaos, and insanity. Importantly, the compulsion to destroy vanishes the moment you unplug. Pablo spent a lot of time thinking about how to manage what is in effect a chronic illness when buying equipment. This made Amy uncomfortable because she plays to escape the reality of having a chronic illness. Phillip, on the other hand, was made uncomfortable by the murder hobo hacker they had to work with, since this caused interparty conflict and he Is Not Down With That.

○ His first Shadowrun character was a troll who had a very chaotic relationship with his size queen orc girlfriend. Their on-and-off relationship prompted the rest of the group to make fun of Amy and Henry for a bit. He also got some criticism from Phillip for establishing that the orc girlfriend was only dating him because he had a massive dong with subdermal cartilaginous bumps and ridges, but Dave LOVED role-playing the GF and made her existence a part of several sessions until Amy told him that sex stuff made her uncomfortable at the table.

● Pablo also used his (metal) dice as fidget toys, often loudly, sometimes disruptively. There were multiple times he has flung a d6 across the table in the middle if tense rp, and multiple times he had to be asked to stop shaking and rolling his (metal) dice when his characters weren't active. He also tended to chew on his nonmetal dice, especially his d20s.

● Pablo had a serious caffeine addiction. Like, it was actually a problem. He needed an intervention. The games often started at 7, 8, or 9 PM, and would show up with one or two thermoses of black coffee and drink it all before the session was over. He was often so jittery from the coffee that he couldn't focus during RP, and he often went without sleep (which probably made everything worse) to the point where he was hallucinating quite often. He bragged about this, like it was something to be proud of. Thankfully, when Covid hit he went cold turkey for all of quarantine, which fixed the problem.

● During one of Amy's unhoused periods, Phillip let her stay in his spare room in exchange for sex. She took him up on this, because what the fuck was she supposed to do? She had no job and no car at the time! So, she accepts, and Henry finds out and dumps her for it.

● Around the time that Amy invited Theresa to the table, they started renting a house together. For context, Amy had previously gotten back together with Henry after he forgave her for the previous story, but have at the time of this story once again broken up. Amy and Theresa had some problems with the basement. They would hear bumps, bangs, and the sounds of movement. This freaks them out so much one night that they call Henry, who tells them “You're not my gf so you're not my problem”. Amy then calls Pablo, who drives over at 2 AM and helps them clear out their basement until they feel safe. They continue having problems, and eventually determine that there is something evil down there. To fix this, they get Phillip to come over and exorcise their demonic basement, which works. Basement is no longer evil. They eventually lose the house because Theresa made all the bills Amy's responsibility to pay and did not contribute anything other than drama.

● You may notice I sound like I hate Theresa as a person, which would be an accurate statement. As a DM, she was infuriating to run for, mainly because she was so dependant on her vape that she would ask for a smoke break what felt like every five minutes. Made me question my abilities as a storyteller whenever she would interrupt to whine “fuuck I need a smoooke 😭”. As a person, it quickly became obvious that she was terrible to everyone. Her dating habits were especially horrendous; she had a toxic ass rebound boyfriend, but would preferentially bed men that Amy had expressed an interest in, including Henry. At the table she initially focused her attention on Phillip because he is a solid 12/10, but he got pissed right the fuck off with her constant smoke breaks so she ended up plowing furrows in her mattress with Dave a lot. Thankfully she left after we all got frustrated enough with her to stop giving her preferential treatment.

All in all, we were losers and stuck together because we were losers. I stayed for as long as I did because I thought I didn't deserve better. Besides, bad D&D is better than no D&D, right?

Thankfully I know better now. I left the group after Covid, and I almost immediately started making real progress. I got a better (but smaller) group of friends I play D&D with now. I also am no longer dependant on the magic bean to function, found my passion and have an actual big boy job now, and went back to college and am actually doing well this time! I honestly think keeping these losers in my life just held me back socially and emotionally.

In case you are as slow on the uptake as me, I am Pablo. If you are also a Pablo, don't be so hard on yourself. You'll grow at your own pace. At the time this story took place, I believed that I had peaked in middle school, and that it was all downhill from there, that I had missed my shot to be a complete person and no one would love me for me, least of all myself. It's easy to forget that your story is not over, because that story never existed. You likely define yourself in reaction to how others react to you, mixed with your memories. None of that is “real”. Your friends likely only remember you by the first impression you made on them, plus a few highlights. They aren't gonna remember your stutters and fumbles unless they are hilarious, and what they do remember will be broad strokes. On the other hand, your (non-traumatic) memories change slightly every time you access them until they are completely unusable. A good chunk of your memories are likely so mutated that they might as well be completely made-up. “You” is not a solid concept. “You” changes on a month to month basis. So take advantage of that. You can practice making a good first impression on people by going out and meeting lots of people. Pick up some new skills and hobbies. Make new friends, drop toxic ones, and don't look back. Keep trying new things. Nobody is going to remember how bad you were at it in the beginning, and you're not even going to remember your fuckups after a few months or years. That said, keep records of the stuff you did. You can't see how far you've come if you can't compare it to the garbage you made when you were a beginner, and we just established that your memories are not accurate. That's my advice. Go out and grow!

cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/7479802

> 2024 Player's Handbook Reveals (all premieres at 9am PDT) > > Monday, June 24th - The Rogue > Tuesday, June 25th - The Warlock > Wednesday, June 26th - The Druid > Thursday, June 27th - The Wizard > Friday, June 28th - The Ranger

Wow, what a cashgrab. I wish they'd just announce six already. We should totally buy Hasbro and carve out Wizards as a community

Edit: It seems I never spelled out what my issue with 5e was. My grievance is that as a player the game doesn't empower me to do what I feel is the core fantasy of most classes. I can't fault the DMs for forgetting to include spell scrolls as loot or not do overland travel or whatever, they are small easy-to-forget things. It just gets frustrating when I ask the DM to give out a certain kind of loot or let me interact with other druids to do Druid things and then they (understandably) forget.

------

A while back, I got into a heated argument with a friend about 5e; I wanted to play a new system becuase I was getting tired of how generic 5e is, but my friend insisted that i could hombrew 5e to create any style of play i wanted. This was back in 2017 and we have not been friends for a while now, but I've been pondering how to homebrew 5e into a shape that encourages a specific style of play.

My main issue with 5e after all this time is that I don't feel like the classes actually encourage you to behave like your class. Druid is personally my favorite class because it's the exception (i liek da aminals) but every other class is at best somewhat samey and at worst actively frustrating (looking at you, PHB ranger).

Here's my thoughts about what I think the core fantasy of each class SHOULD be. Lmk what you think. I want to know if I am really off-base with these.

Bard: I think you play a Bard to be a drama queen and an artist.

Barbarian: s t r o n k

Cleric: The main appeal of being a cleric, for me, is promoting a god, proselytizing, doing outreach, building a temple, and most importantly asking the DM very specific questions about their setting and making them very happy. It's all about that faith babyyyy.

Druid: i liek da aminals. (fr, the actual appeal for me is similar to cleric but with Druid stuff)

Fighter: the only reason for me to play Fighter is the Battlemaster Archetype, so I can play 5e like the wargame it sometimes seems like it wants to be. I also like the Champion for the expanded crit range, but if you like being stronk like bull you could just play barbarian? (Starting to think that Barbarian should have been a Fighter subclass).

Monk: wuxia/xianxia. Kinda out of place, but I can dig it. They should have leaned more into that.

Paladin: The only class that I think was incredibly damaged by WotC's decision to make alignment not matter mechanically. IMHO, the concept of Oaths should have been more fleshed out, and there should have been consequences for breaking your oath included in the rules.

Ranger: the one time I played a ranger, I worked with the dm to homebrew some cool stuff for traveling so I could be the ultimate master of the wilderness. (We then went into a dungeon and spent the rest of the mini-campaign there.) I think a better ranger would have more cool stuff for traveling, and maybe let you make more animal friends.

Rogue: Stabby glass cannon skill monkey. 5e's rogue knows what it wants to be and it is very good at being its best self. I have never played a rogue, but I totally get the appeal. IMHO, best class in the game. I think the only way to improve the rogue would be to make skills better.

Sorceror: I have mixed feelings about the Sorceror. I like sorcery points, and I like being able to do more with a limited spell list. That said, if I want to play as a magical boy who casts spells as easily as breathing, I think there should be a way to slam together a spell-like effect on the spot with nothing but your Wits.

Warlock: My favorite misfit child. As a DM, I love how I can use this class to yank a player around my cool setting under the threat of [REDACTED]. However, I have noticed multiple players seem thrown off by this. As a player, I love using my Warlock pact to exploit the hell out of the setting for my own game, but the way it's spellcasting works runs completely counter to how every other class works. Ultimately, could be a better power fantasy, all things considered.

Wizard: I have a bone to pick with this class. Yes, this class offers a path to ultimate power. However, the main way you do this is by shoving spell scrolls into your spellbook like a kid on Halloween grabbing fistfuls of candy from a bowl labeled "Please Take 1". This means going into dungeons to find them, and hopefully also the gold to copy them into your spellbook. However, every DM I have played with seems to forget that spell scrolls, especially Cantrip spell scrolls, are a thing that exist and can be found as loot. More importantly, we rarely even go into the dungeons that these scrolls are in! In my opinion, the best way to make wizards playable is to make 2 changes to all or most of the other classes:

> 1. Give the other classes abilities that similarly depend on the Dungeon. Maybe give them stuff to spend copious amounts of money on?

>

> 2. Give some of the other spellcasters spellbooks so more people are hungry for scrolls. (Bard could definitely use a spellbook, since they are kinda like music wizards.) Then, all you would need to do is give the wizard some tiny boons to their spellbook usage to make it slightly more efficient than the other classes.

Artificer: Inventing stuff is cool! I just wish that WotC wasn't so scared of giving players the freedom to customize stuff. Maybe in another timeline we could have gotten an Artificer that functions like the PF1 Summoner. Also, guns. Not sure why they are so afraid of guns. Any table that bans Artificer is also going to ban guns, and any table that really wants guns will also really want Artificer. The venn diagram of Artificer enthusiasts and people who want guns in D&D is a circle.

Here's my thoughts on what I would need to do to make 5e conform to a style of play I like:

1. Cull the redundant classes so my work is a bit easier. Barbarian and Paladin become Fighter subclasses. Druid becomes a Cleric subclass. Eliminate Sorceror, Monk, Warlock, and Artificer until I know what to do with them. This leaves Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Wizard.
2. Rework the lower levels to incentivise the core fantasy of each class.
3. At higher levels, give each class ludicrously expensive stuff to buy so they still want to go into the dungeons and get loot. Move the currency system to be based around copper pieces so I can more easily deploy the overcomplicated currency systems that make me happy.
4. Make skills a little more fun to work with. For example, maybe whenever you use a skill successfully yoh can increase your proficiency with that skill by 1?
5. Circle back to Sorceror, Warlock, Monk, and Artificer. Make new classes to replace them. Artificer gets a whole framework for fully custom inventions. Monk gets proper cultivation genre mechanics, diving deep into eastern alchemy on top of the standard martial arts flair. Sorceror has spellcasting, but also gets a toolkit for slapping together spell effects on the fly. Warlock gets a full point-buy system with their pact boons. I do not think this is very doable, though.

Lmk if I am completely off-base.

Are there FOSS alternatives to Roll20?

@dnd

I did a little googling and spotted Foundry Virtual Tabletop, but I haven't been able to explore many alternatives yet. Which ones are good?

\#foss #opensource #DnD #ttrpg #rpg #dungeonsanddragons

\#DnD DMs of the #Fediverse: Have you ever made a PC race illegal?

@dnd

I am feeling inspired by #mcdm\_productions worldbuilding where all Dragonborn have a bounty on their heads, which was set by the current king. I would like to do something similar in mine with Orcs, but I'm not sure how to handle that lore-wise.