In a game a while ago there was a FtM prince turned hosteller. Left court and royal duties due to disillusioned and wanting to do actual good. But then they were a PC and quickly needed some help from granddaddy the king. I wondered what the king wanted in exchange. And it was clear - the royal line continued. In other words get an heir.
I checked with the player that this was an OK path comfort and safety wise. Afterall one way to solve it was for the prince to get pregnant, force upon themselves a gender they did not want etc. We talked about it and had regular checkins.
The moment that made this an awesome world building moment was when I realized magic impregnation wasn't an impossibility. Nor pregnancies without the biological bits. Because Magic!
Unfortunately we never to to that part before scheduling did its thing.
The more abstract the map is the more of a support for TotM it becomes. I selfom do a map, rather a flowchart. Quicker, easier and knocks out the last desire to measure things.
This brings us back to zones, a good middle ground. Draw rough map, or great map, and on it mark intresting combat zones. Some are separated with emptiness, others by obstacles.
For example a tavern brawl. Zones could be the Bar, Kitchen, Common Room, Balconies, Private Rooms, Out Front and Out Back.
Fighting on the Balconies could be tight, only one in width and with the risk of being thrown off it into the Commonroom. In the Kitchen there would be fire hazards, improvized weapons, knifes and the Stew. Not to forget other ways to spice things up in there. Around the Bar there would be some cover fighting someone on the other side, bottles to be broken and combatants to glide alond the bar for maximum mental damage.
And so on. Make each zone memorable and with special features. Did I mention drawing it out really helps?
The mythology of my world is an interpretation of Glorantha. Pretty much near eastern bronze age. So there are Gods abound, with their respective cults. Most/all cults have rites and mysteries for those deeply devoted. None have came up in play so they are secrets even for me.
A set of secrets/mysteries that I've started working on are the Nysalorian secrets. According to Gloranthan lore when Nysalor was born/created Time stopped to allow the birth. So yeah Nysalor is a big deal. The Nysalorian secrets I'm divining are about the nature of Godhood. I don't know how deep I want to go with them, I could make them the very blueprints of Creation. Perhaps I should tie them to my meta-loredump mystic society/cult Followers of the Blind Idiot God.
I would have the top level tag "Rulebook" and put "Core Rulebook" as a sub-tag. Under Rulebook also have "Player Handbook", "GM handbook" and "Splatbook". Keep the rules together.
Also tags for your dominant systems (ex DnD, PbtA) including "System Agnostic". Perhaps add subtags "Pre-made" and "Generators" under "Setting". Publisher tags? Language? Decade/year of release? Have played?
TL:DR "Taiwanese voters have chosen William Lai as their president in a historic election, cementing a path that is increasingly divergent from China."
Something that is also helpful in this situation is to ask what their Intent is with their action. The why they want to do it. Often striking up that conversation looses some blocks.
I take two to three real world languages that help reinforce the impression of that culture and mush them together. From that I take either similar sounding names or similar meaning names and see what feels right.
I had a game centered on a culture with a (generic) slavic feel that during the last century or so been heavily influenced by the "fancy" "high class" totally not french. So I took slavic names and then either frenchified them or just added french parts (or whole names). Especially true for aristocrats and cosmopolitan folks. The poorer and the more rural the less the french influence was felt which created a nice social dynamic.
In that same game there came a need to name characters from the neighbouring fading empire. And what empire is more empire than the english so that became the base. But we wanted a more tonal shift from just english. As we looked at the culture of that empire we wanted it to be a bit in opposition so one of their defining traits became meritocratic. And somehow we felt adding an east asian melody to the english names would fit. So triple- and quadruple- names it became such as Jane-Ellen-Nicole. And no surnames, only titles.
D&D is hard. Sure the core of it is straight forward but then things start to add up. It is a game that wants you to care about minutia. How far travelled, distance between two points, the height of dungeons ceilings, how long passed since that spell was cast, how much you ate yesterday. And it wants you to arbitrate spell interactions, players weird schemes and prepare a lot of stuff. Also it wants you to actually run the narrative. Some love this difficulty, find the intricacies challenging and desire to master it all.
The good news is that the behemoth of D&D isn't alone out there. Really lots of good stuff can be found. First problem is knowing what one want to find. Second is finding others that have similar taste to you. But it is doable and a good thing to do is ask for help. Because if it is something we like here it is to talk about ttrpgs. Getting us to shut up... better ask santa for a dragon.
But then do really need the d8? If we toss that in the bin we can go to the universal d60. This one dice will allow us to get
d2 (even/odd)
d3 (d60/20)
d4 (d60/15)
d5 (d60/12)
d6 (d60/10)
d10 (d60/6)
and d12, d15, d20, d30
tissek @ tissek @ttrpg.network Posts 25Comments 135Joined 2 yr. ago
How easy it for those speaking the different languages to understand eachother?