Ideally, he'd ignore Dex and focus on STR / WIS / CON. The leftover Dex is merely transitionary since the ability replacement won't come online til level 3. It'd be weird if it goes away entirely, or something? Or bump up the Con cap to +3/3rd level, then go +4/7th, +5/10th, unlimited/11th
There are still some base Monk abilities gained that have a DEX slant to them (Deflect Missiles, Evasion and Unarmoured Movement), so you probably need to do something with them, even if it's just a rename/reskin to
- Impenetrable Skin (use STR inst of DEX, if damage hits 0, catch missiles with the muscles in your chest and flex them to shoot them back)
So I've had a lot of personal stuff go down this weekend, and I haven't had a chance to respond to any of this. All of your posts have been wonderful to read, though, and I like the energy in this thread.
On topic note, I always wanted to imagine D&D demons as the front-runners of the Neverending Story's Nothing. So Gmork, but happy and frightening and all-consuming. Like fire on the edge of a burning piece of paper.
I am also excited to see your Bermuda Triangle setting, Penguin
Fire on the edge of burning paper is a great image for the Demons i'm going for. Beautiful and creepy all in one.
Also, seriously, thanks for the compliments and the awesomes - I, like many a creative type, get anxiety super bad about my work. And it's easy to worry i'm just spamming the thread or the ilk, so seriously: Thank you. The compliments mean a lot
Ideally, he'd ignore Dex and focus on STR / WIS / CON. The leftover Dex is merely transitionary since the ability replacement won't come online til level 3. It'd be weird if it goes away entirely, or something? Or bump up the Con cap to +3/3rd level, then go +4/7th, +5/10th, unlimited/11th
There are still some base Monk abilities gained that have a DEX slant to them (Deflect Missiles, Evasion and Unarmoured Movement), so you probably need to do something with them, even if it's just a rename/reskin to
- Impenetrable Skin (use STR inst of DEX, if damage hits 0, catch missiles with the muscles in your chest and flex them to shoot them back)
Unnatural parry: Simply PUNCH the projectiles back at people. "your arrows blot out the sun? Indeed they do... FOR YOU!" *All Might Punch*
Okay, so that's a bit more Exalted than it is DnD, but the principle is CLEARLY sound.
I always wanted to see a Zen Archer/Daredevil archtype for Monks. Requires you to blindfold yourself or otherwise be unable to see for your abilities to work (encouraging PCs to maim themselves is a terrible idea, they dont need any encouragement to do that!), but gives you blindsight out to 30ft or so. Gameplay emphasis would be on being a mobile, short ranged archer
Though it does remind that i never liked how Sorcery and Ki points got handed out - I always felt like players should have gotten a bigger initial pool, and then a slower growth. Choice is good and all.
Between all the talk of my Demons, Devils, Orcs (and eventually i'll share my Hippogres and (Really need a name that isnt) goblin, but they're small cave-dwelling anglerfish things), I'm kinda wondering about sketching all of this into it's own setting.
So far my inclination would be to set it on a massive, mostly unexplored continent. Think like Africa-sized or similar, place is HUGE. The big trick would be that no-one is native here, some quirk of the multiverse results in ships getting lost at sea and crashing on it's shores. Attempts to sail away form the the continent either result in crashing back on the continent, or simply never being seen again. Parts of it have been successfully colonized and are safe, but plenty of the wilds are hostile.
Have things like one city state ruled by a (Good) lich queen, music audible at all hours throughout the city. Another which by a quirk of the tides is where the vast majority of ships wreck themsevles - it s buildings are wood taken from the wrecks, and it's heavily cosmopolitan.
I'd probably want to do something with both the Feywild and Shaodwfell, drawing from their 4e incarnations too, just because i really like both. For the shadowfell, i'd possibly play it as a place of deep history - delving into it, you can find ruined cities, corpse strewn-battlefields, towns torn apart by natural disasters. Perhaps the keys to the mystery of this continent could be found here.
I'll let it all stew in my head, but hopefully the loose idea is interesting.
It is! It sounds like a material demiplane, formed only recently (in geological time). Its interface with the prime material plane of your setting causes the Bermuda Triangle effect. So far, unequipped travelers have set themselves on a one-way journey into it like fruit flies into a trap. There's a way out, but so far their bumbling efforts have largely not succeeded in finding it. Perhaps there was some lure, overt or less overt, to draw travelers there? Or perhaps not. Its relatively recent formation explains the lack of native species, but what relics of its formation await discovery? In a place where every plant species is invasive, what do the emergent ecosystems and biomes look like? One could imagine seeds stored on a vessel from one nation, landing in one sector of this world, creating a wildly different ecosystem than their nearest-landed neighbors. Suppose all plant life in one distant shoreline descended from a single burr of a single burdock species on the back of a single dog who swam ashore after being shipwrecked. The lack of available prey was unfortunate for the dog, but less unfortunate for its passenger...
Oh and that good lich leading a multicultural coastal community with a musical tradition? In another life, perhaps she was known as Marie Laveau.
Well you've just inspired me to thick that somewhere on the continent there's what were elves, or a similar... Perhaps a Neo-Roman culture as run by a mix of eleven groups. That's got good asthetics and let's you do some really cool Shadowfell ruins
Emphasising were though because they've all been overcome by a Cordyceps style fungus (if You're easily squicked, don't look this up it's horrifying)
This was probably a milienia ago, before orcs and others made landfall and started to make homes once more, but the continent has an untold number of ruins. Some still haunted by the fungus possessed corpses of those who came before
If there's any pockets of survivors left one imagines they've gone even hideously xenophobic and slavery-mad.
Oh man, perhaps the lure is a relic of this culture, something they used to provide themselves with a constant influx of slaves. That's got some good spice to it.
One thing I'd want to avoid is I guess call it unconscious colonialism. Going for fun points of light here, not "we're invading darkest Africa and stealing shit". @Endless_Serpents NZ setting has a similar vibe to what I'd want to achieve
So I've had a lot of personal stuff go down this weekend, and I haven't had a chance to respond to any of this. All of your posts have been wonderful to read, though, and I like the energy in this thread.
On topic note, I always wanted to imagine D&D demons as the front-runners of the Neverending Story's Nothing. So Gmork, but happy and frightening and all-consuming. Like fire on the edge of a burning piece of paper.
I am also excited to see your Bermuda Triangle setting, Penguin
I also treat demons as the cause of everything from disease, to rusting, to frailty (not aging itself, age and death are normal, just the frailty that results from aging - which elves don't really have).
Like if a remote village locks their valuable iron tools up in the chapel, they won't rust, because the demons responsible have less power in there (and if the demon princes are ever destroyed, they always come back, or another forms to take their place). These forces are universal, and don't require any demons to physically be present, any plane without strong magical repulsion against the lower planes experiences them - however - demons physically work their way in all over the place, along with other fiendish and fey forces
This leads to average people blaming almost everything on something supernatural, except they're right about half the time, as Imps, Pixies, and Quasits are all up to their own brand of mischief and/or evil everywhere you can find people. That new tool you bought broke first day using it? An imp might be responsible, fulfilling a deal for a rival toolmaker. A healthy baby dies in her sleep? A quasit probably did it. You keep losing garmants? Your son has an imaginary friend? Yep, that's a pixie
If players ever throw up the correct divinations and snoop about a town they're likely to ping fiends and fey. People's desire for petty victory attracts imps, cruel thoughts and words attract quasits, and the mischievous thoughts and whims of children attract pixies. More powerful emotions, bad luck, or careless spellcasters lead to worse things
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
edited May 2020
Possible origin for this young continent/demiplane: it was created to be a testing zone for celestial weapons development. Because it was expected to be a test chamber, its creators never deliberately seeded it with life, although due to a bureaucratic oversight in its creation all the conditions were correct for life to be seeded from elsewhere. Every so often (on their time scale - perhaps this appears irregularly or widely interspersed from the PCs' point of view) celestial engineers will show up and perform a test of some weapon or magic. This could have whatever effects you want it to have. Sometimes it's just a big boom, sometimes it might be... weirder. This would have the expected geological effects, but could also thin the barrier between this world and others. Who knows what might slip through?
And how do these beings react when they discover their test plane has developed an... infestation?
Saw a post on Reddit about how Star Trek episodes could be used for one-shot ideas, since each is often a self-contained story. Someone responded with,
You find yourself on your knees, tied up on a slightly damp floor. You look up to see the lych staring back down at you with eagerness in it's hollow and sunken eyes. The long, knobby, fingers of it's right hand are absent-mindedly stroking the very phyactery you were seeking as it hangs from a silver chain around it's neck. You sense a bit of a smile as it gestures over to an ornate wall where a number of sconces hold burning torches. A miasma of unknown origin obscures your vision slightly, sometimes seeming like it's IN your eyes, and sometimes seeming like it coats the room in smoke.
The lich parts it's thin lips and in it's death-rattle of a voice it speaks the same question again:
You focus your mind on the party trapped in the chambers above, through sheer willpower and compassion for your fellow heroes, you can barely force your thoughts through the lich's mind control attempt and note that there are four torches in total on the wall. How do you respond?
and I'm really wanting to work that into the one-shot I forgot I'm running next Wednesday (my coworker reminded me about it a few hours ago lol). Do y'all think that might make for a cool opening to a session? Make the rest about escaping from the lich's lair or something, maybe in the Underdark?
Possible origin for this young continent/demiplane: it was created to be a testing zone for celestial weapons development. Because it was expected to be a test chamber, its creators never deliberately seeded it with life, although due to a bureaucratic oversight in its creation all the conditions were correct for life to be seeded from elsewhere. Every so often (on their time scale - perhaps this appears irregularly or widely interspersed from the PCs' point of view) celestial engineers will show up and perform a test of some weapon or magic. This could have whatever effects you want it to have. Sometimes it's just a big boom, sometimes it might be... weirder. This would have the expected geological effects, but could also thin the barrier between this world and others. Who knows what might slip through?
And how do these beings react when they discover their test plane has developed an... infestation?
While this is super cool, i've got to admit i'm less than interested in figuring out my settings origin. Partly because i feel it's easy to get bogged down in such, partly because i want it to be mystery - there are hundreds of ruins and thousands of stories rotting in the deep time that might tell. Who can say what's correct?
Def do want to give it history, but it'd be the history of things like the Elven Neo-Romans, perhaps something more recent involving NotSpanishConquistitatords (they'd make good villains), and of other such stuff. But actually explaining where it came from and why beyond local history seems... unnecessary? I dunno, i'm just not feeling trying to do so.
I've been using stargate as a basis for adventure writing for fuckin years at this point. Just so happens you can make a 3 day period take a month or more to play out.
Further thinking: I should flesh out my Satyr as Mountain Goats idea, and use them as part of the setting. I'm sure you've all seen the shit that Mountain goats can get up to on climbing cliffs, now imagine what that does to city building. Satyr citys would be hell to navigate if you're not a native.
This in turn suggests tapping into Inca cultural stuff, Mayan, etc with the lack of wheels, which immediately suggests some fun stuff. a secondary focus could be a race-wide fascination with stargazing, astronomy and astrology (Mountains are a good place to see the stars from). plus, there's a lot of potential interesting stuff to tap interms of the mythological love of wine, partying, music, and their rather ribald nature, all of which could give them a really strong and distinct flavor. Though the ribald nature would need to be handled with a deft tack - i suspect i'd lean into depicting them as a bit more free love/sexually liberated with a propensity for bawdy humor, as that's something that can be adjusted by dms with ease if it's going to make players uncomforrttable.
You can even draw some dwarf analogies, but with better justification for the love of booze. Interestingly, a quick google says that the Inca used some drinks in ceremonial rites related to the gods, so that's a further interesting angle.
Between Satyr (Taking on some of the native south american traits), and orcs (Native north americans traits) Conquistadors seem like a really strong villainous faction/force to include. You can also do some interesting stuff with implying they're a whole resettlement fleet that got pulled to this continent and crashed onto a different part of it - so they've been spreading and trailblazing, and have now come into contact, and sadly, conflict with the cosmopolitan parts. It also makes some sense - if the Free Cities (call them that for now) are made up of a whole blends of people and cultures who've come piecemeal, and probably have a strong spirit of "You're alone, so you need help" (poorly phrased but i think you get the idea), a group big enough to have maintained a cohesive cultural identity - especially if it was already an aggressive, colonial force is going to run into conflict.
So I've had a lot of personal stuff go down this weekend, and I haven't had a chance to respond to any of this. All of your posts have been wonderful to read, though, and I like the energy in this thread.
On topic note, I always wanted to imagine D&D demons as the front-runners of the Neverending Story's Nothing. So Gmork, but happy and frightening and all-consuming. Like fire on the edge of a burning piece of paper.
I am also excited to see your Bermuda Triangle setting, Penguin
I also treat demons as the cause of everything from disease, to rusting, to frailty (not aging itself, age and death are normal, just the frailty that results from aging - which elves don't really have).
Like if a remote village locks their valuable iron tools up in the chapel, they won't rust, because the demons responsible have less power in there (and if the demon princes are ever destroyed, they always come back, or another forms to take their place). These forces are universal, and don't require any demons to physically be present, any plane without strong magical repulsion against the lower planes experiences them - however - demons physically work their way in all over the place, along with other fiendish and fey forces
This leads to average people blaming almost everything on something supernatural, except they're right about half the time, as Imps, Pixies, and Quasits are all up to their own brand of mischief and/or evil everywhere you can find people. That new tool you bought broke first day using it? An imp might be responsible, fulfilling a deal for a rival toolmaker. A healthy baby dies in her sleep? A quasit probably did it. You keep losing garmants? Your son has an imaginary friend? Yep, that's a pixie
If players ever throw up the correct divinations and snoop about a town they're likely to ping fiends and fey. People's desire for petty victory attracts imps, cruel thoughts and words attract quasits, and the mischievous thoughts and whims of children attract pixies. More powerful emotions, bad luck, or careless spellcasters lead to worse things
So are you a fan of Brandon Sanderson? That's very close to talking about the spren in the Way of Kings.
All of this does remind me of an industrialized necromancer society I've played around with mentally. I like the idea of necromancy in this world only working on the willing, but it's a horrific existence as your soul is in a painful state of limbo while rudimentary magic pilots your corpse and you look on, feeling only the trauma inflicted to it.
Yet..... You get paid for allowing your body to be used for labors after you've died. So there's a big work force who pulled themselves out of poverty in life for a couple decades of torture after death. Depending on the nature of your death, you might make it out without being animated at all! So there's a big middle class in this small necro-nation who live life to a ridiculous degree. A small percentage are more prudent and buy their way out of their contracts through deed or amassing a larger fortune. But I like the idea of all the farms, mines and factories being tended by skellymans.
Or, instead of an industrial dystopia, you could have the Necromantic Socialist Republic, where the dead see to the material needs of all, for the mere price of donating your body to the People after you're done with it. Neighboring feudal kingdoms hate this arrangement, as it eliminates all need for aristocrats, leading to propaganda campaigns about necromancy being inherently evil and how necromancers pervert the natural order and must be destroyed.
This description is so close to how my homebrew necromantic society is detailed, I cannot fathom how you so perfectly nailed it. My society has more emphasis on the familial community and it uses a form of necromantic magic that reveres and respects the formerly departed, but is otherwise spot on.
Have you been reading my notes and/or mind?
No, I cribbed the NSR from a gaming blog I check in on now and then, Throne of Salt. They also got a mention in some other blog whose name I can't recall that was mostly about RPGs and economics. Dungeon Economist, maybe? It was a hoot, what with its thoughtful analysis of how the material component requirement for the Identify spell all but necessitated the enslavement of a race of fish-men to farm pearls, and how all wizards must eventually become sheep farmers.
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Planning a single encounter session boss for my seven players, all level 3s. Initial idea is the "paragon-boss" format of stapling two creatures together and amplifying its powers - I'm thinking a Gibbering Mouther that's actually two Gibbering Mouthers, reskinned as the floating corpse of a wizard possessed by the artifact he was trying to control, with two flying low CR creatures with ranged attacks (?) as his "hands" - that the boss can respawn one hand per round as a Lair action. If the first lifebar of the Mouther is gone, it gains a second turn in the initiative track. Suggestions on his Lair / Legendary actions?
Loading Roll20 is assets for my upcoming SKT game this weekend.
Sigh. These completionists are going to want to visit every gawddamn Shrine, arn't they? Do you have any idea how annoying it is to scour the internet for usable battlemaps to replace the given maps? I ain't scaling these 50' square maps to a usuable size!
In one case (Great Worm Cavern) it was fun though. Instead of using the location as presented in the module (since they already fought TWO Rehemoraz's in the Oracle dungeon), when the party arrives they'll come upon a scene of bloodshed scattered all over the icy cave as an Adult White Dragon has recently moved in and decided to take a nap. It will not be pleased that its food coma has been interrupted by pesky adventurers! :evil:
Edit: Oh! I just realized I never thought about how their Dragon Cultist Uber drivers are going to react to them killing a dragon. Hmm...
Welp, we finished up Tomb of Annihilation. The DM went for the "everything comes together so it's possible for you to beat Acererak" angle, but it wasn't exactly easy, we were one round from a wipe by the end. Everybody wanted to keep their characters, so we'll be moving into uncharted level 12+ territory!
The DM was kind of having a rough time for this due to work during the plague, so I suggested the DMs and prospective DMs in the group do a couple one-shots/vignettes to give him a break. Turns out I'm up first!
Loading Roll20 is assets for my upcoming SKT game this weekend.
Sigh. These completionists are going to want to visit every gawddamn Shrine, arn't they? Do you have any idea how annoying it is to scour the internet for usable battlemaps to replace the given maps? I ain't scaling these 50' square maps to a usuable size!
In one case (Great Worm Cavern) it was fun though. Instead of using the location as presented in the module (since they already fought TWO Rehemoraz's in the Oracle dungeon), when the party arrives they'll come upon a scene of bloodshed scattered all over the icy cave as an Adult White Dragon has recently moved in and decided to take a nap. It will not be pleased that its food coma has been interrupted by pesky adventurers! :evil:
Edit: Oh! I just realized I never thought about how their Dragon Cultist Uber drivers are going to react to them killing a dragon. Hmm...
Pff, white dragons.
The runts of dragonkind!
Just tell it to surrender, it shaking its tail looks pretty much like a white flag anyway..
Welp, we finished up Tomb of Annihilation. The DM went for the "everything comes together so it's possible for you to beat Acererak" angle, but it wasn't exactly easy, we were one round from a wipe by the end. Everybody wanted to keep their characters, so we'll be moving into uncharted level 12+ territory!
The DM was kind of having a rough time for this due to work during the plague, so I suggested the DMs and prospective DMs in the group do a couple one-shots/vignettes to give him a break. Turns out I'm up first!
As presented in the module (spell loadout) he would been a much easier fight for my party. I elected to change out his spell loading and make him far more dangerous. I mean, this MFer is on the cover of the DMG. It does a disservice to the long legacy of Acererak if the party is able to finish him off easily, IMO. In my game, we had a TPK but the party came within 30HP of that "Fuck these mortals, I'm going home." limit.
Loading Roll20 is assets for my upcoming SKT game this weekend.
Sigh. These completionists are going to want to visit every gawddamn Shrine, arn't they? Do you have any idea how annoying it is to scour the internet for usable battlemaps to replace the given maps? I ain't scaling these 50' square maps to a usuable size!
In one case (Great Worm Cavern) it was fun though. Instead of using the location as presented in the module (since they already fought TWO Rehemoraz's in the Oracle dungeon), when the party arrives they'll come upon a scene of bloodshed scattered all over the icy cave as an Adult White Dragon has recently moved in and decided to take a nap. It will not be pleased that its food coma has been interrupted by pesky adventurers! :evil:
Edit: Oh! I just realized I never thought about how their Dragon Cultist Uber drivers are going to react to them killing a dragon. Hmm...
Pff, white dragons.
The runts of dragonkind!
Just tell it to surrender, it shaking its tail looks pretty much like a white flag anyway..
Well, I'm not putting a Red in an ice cave now, am I?
Loading Roll20 is assets for my upcoming SKT game this weekend.
Sigh. These completionists are going to want to visit every gawddamn Shrine, arn't they? Do you have any idea how annoying it is to scour the internet for usable battlemaps to replace the given maps? I ain't scaling these 50' square maps to a usuable size!
In one case (Great Worm Cavern) it was fun though. Instead of using the location as presented in the module (since they already fought TWO Rehemoraz's in the Oracle dungeon), when the party arrives they'll come upon a scene of bloodshed scattered all over the icy cave as an Adult White Dragon has recently moved in and decided to take a nap. It will not be pleased that its food coma has been interrupted by pesky adventurers! :evil:
Edit: Oh! I just realized I never thought about how their Dragon Cultist Uber drivers are going to react to them killing a dragon. Hmm...
Pff, white dragons.
The runts of dragonkind!
Just tell it to surrender, it shaking its tail looks pretty much like a white flag anyway..
Well, I'm not putting a Red in an ice cave now, am I?
Or, are you?
Could have a red dragon laying on a pile of white dragon scraps and throw your party a bit of a curve ball.
Edit: The more I think about this, the more fun it sounds. Describing the lair getting colder, frost and patches of ice forming on the walls, as the party delves deeper into the unnatural cold.
Unmistakable claw and scale marks on the walls. A heavy smell of dragon in the bitterly chilled air.
The cave shaking with a distant tremor and the sound like a dragons scream echoing through the cave.
Maybe give them some ice resistance gear on the way down, a cloak of cold resistance (or something similar) taken off a convenient corpse.
Then when they walk into the lair, you describe the bloody remains of a violently slaughtered white dragon, and a red dragon perched on the recently vacated dragon hoard licking fresh blood off of her claws and looking extremely satisfied with herself.
She regards the party with naked contempt... "The white showed... insufficient deference. I trust you will show more respect...
Welp, we finished up Tomb of Annihilation. The DM went for the "everything comes together so it's possible for you to beat Acererak" angle, but it wasn't exactly easy, we were one round from a wipe by the end. Everybody wanted to keep their characters, so we'll be moving into uncharted level 12+ territory!
The DM was kind of having a rough time for this due to work during the plague, so I suggested the DMs and prospective DMs in the group do a couple one-shots/vignettes to give him a break. Turns out I'm up first!
As presented in the module (spell loadout) he would been a much easier fight for my party. I elected to change out his spell loading and make him far more dangerous. I mean, this MFer is on the cover of the DMG. It does a disservice to the long legacy of Acererak if the party is able to finish him off easily, IMO. In my game, we had a TPK but the party came within 30HP of that "Fuck these mortals, I'm going home." limit.
Loading Roll20 is assets for my upcoming SKT game this weekend.
Sigh. These completionists are going to want to visit every gawddamn Shrine, arn't they? Do you have any idea how annoying it is to scour the internet for usable battlemaps to replace the given maps? I ain't scaling these 50' square maps to a usuable size!
In one case (Great Worm Cavern) it was fun though. Instead of using the location as presented in the module (since they already fought TWO Rehemoraz's in the Oracle dungeon), when the party arrives they'll come upon a scene of bloodshed scattered all over the icy cave as an Adult White Dragon has recently moved in and decided to take a nap. It will not be pleased that its food coma has been interrupted by pesky adventurers! :evil:
Edit: Oh! I just realized I never thought about how their Dragon Cultist Uber drivers are going to react to them killing a dragon. Hmm...
Pff, white dragons.
The runts of dragonkind!
Just tell it to surrender, it shaking its tail looks pretty much like a white flag anyway..
Well, I'm not putting a Red in an ice cave now, am I?
you could make it a red dragon that painted itself white!
Perhaps it's hiding from some epic wizard/lich that has become infatuated with it and won't stop stalking it.
Maybe the adventurers meet a skeletal figure with what's clearly someone else's freshly skinned face/a groucho marx disguise who offers them fabulous treasures for any information regarding the location of the most sensually curved red dragon that's supposed to be in the area!
Some of the players in my group are still recounting an occasion from decades ago, where they got all loaded up with cold resist and marched up to the white dragon, and ate a face full of fire (because the red dragon was napping under an illusion).
My party did go after a local red dragon who was actually a green dragon, she just uses a Hat of Disguise to appear as a red dragon so all the fools show up in fire resistance items and with potions and she gasses them. She's a spellcaster and can produce fireballs to sell her illusion to most people if necessary
Dragons in New Zellatia aren’t colour coded, and I’m gonna make a dragon generator. I’m thinking they all err on the wry riddle telling side, who happily make bags of time to chat with the adventurers invading their lair.
2.
Here’s a thing that isn’t getting my setting finished: sumo wrestling. It’s way smaller than the dodgeball game.
Edit:
Also I’m entering an even busier period of work over the next five weeks but after that would anyone like to play a tiny 1st to 4th level adventure in New Zellatia? It’d be for test purposes so you wouldn’t need to bring your A game and as it’d be Play by Post there’d be no rush. If you’ve never played D&D 5E before it’s ideal as you’d have hours to work individual rolls out.
Awesome! I won’t clog up the thread with it after this post as it’s not happening for awhile, but here are the available races (fluff getting written up soon).
It’d be nice if your characters had a district they come from, but you can work it out as we play once it comes up.
—
For those interested 3 to 5 players would be nice, and the mini-adventure will start with ‘Helping Auntie Fatta’: Get a trinket back for a beetlefolk old lady that’s lost it in a beach cave. That’ll get followed up with an offer to become relic hunters, and two (or whatever you do instead) choices on where to head outside the city. It’ll probably stop after it comes to a natural conclusion (get a relic, run away, decide to be a barbershop quartet instead of adventurers), but there might be something to do in the city once your back, we’ll see how it goes.
Definitely going to use that, "there are four lights" prompt I saw on Reddit for the one-shot next Wednesday, but I'ma change the lich to an ulitharid and have the party escape through the Underdark. I'll also use some other ideas I saw on Reddit today
They'll be psychically fucked with constantly, by it and by other mind flayers. Say there's five party members, right? I'll start talking about all seven party members and if asked "don't you mean five?" I'll go, "yeah, that's what I said" and then later after a combat I'll have them discover right next to their feet two bodies of adventurers, with notes to or from the players on them. Like they'd been with the group the whole time, but the mind flayers made them forget.
Or if they fight some other monsters and they get hit with a certain amount of psychic damage, I'll remove a letter from the character's name. Remove enough and they won't have a name and will cease to exist. But not really, they'll come back after a couple of turns like nothing happened (except a shorter name)
If they meet the big bad ulitharid, I'll have it die after just a few rounds and give everyone some rad loot and let them escape to the surface and find a nearby city (or maybe they'll emerge up into one) and when they tell people they'll be hailed as heroes and all that jazz. But then I'll start describing things that are odd but act like it's not a big deal, like just casually slip in a mention of the serving girl's rectangular pupils or how the barkeep suddenly reeks of rotting flesh. Once someone starts to suspect, I'll have them roll perception saves until they realize they're all still fighting the ulitharid.
Definitely going to use that, "there are four lights" prompt I saw on Reddit for the one-shot next Wednesday, but I'ma change the lich to an ulitharid and have the party escape through the Underdark. I'll also use some other ideas I saw on Reddit today
They'll be psychically fucked with constantly, by it and by other mind flayers. Say there's five party members, right? I'll start talking about all seven party members and if asked "don't you mean five?" I'll go, "yeah, that's what I said" and then later after a combat I'll have them discover right next to their feet two bodies of adventurers, with notes to or from the players on them. Like they'd been with the group the whole time, but the mind flayers made them forget.
Or if they fight some other monsters and they get hit with a certain amount of psychic damage, I'll remove a letter from the character's name. Remove enough and they won't have a name and will cease to exist. But not really, they'll come back after a couple of turns like nothing happened (except a shorter name)
If they meet the big bad ulitharid, I'll have it die after just a few rounds and give everyone some rad loot and let them escape to the surface and find a nearby city (or maybe they'll emerge up into one) and when they tell people they'll be hailed as heroes and all that jazz. But then I'll start describing things that are odd but act like it's not a big deal, like just casually slip in a mention of the serving girl's rectangular pupils or how the barkeep suddenly reeks of rotting flesh. Once someone starts to suspect, I'll have them roll perception saves until they realize they're all still fighting the ulitharid.
Does any of that sound cool to y'all?
I'd ask the players if they don't mind a mind-warpy adventure as you're doing two things that are violating player sovereignty:
1) you're changing stuff about their characters.
2) that bit at the end is a cop out when it happens in tv series, players will question whether what follows is real.
That last thing is the old version of the spell Wyrd.
"Drawing on the deepest fears of a group of creatures, you create illusory creatures in their minds, visible only to them. Each creature in a 30-foot-radius sphere centered on a point of your choice within range must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, a creature becomes frightened for the duration. The illusion calls on the creature's deepest fears, manifesting its worst nightmares as an implacable threat. At the end of each of the frightened creature's turns, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or take 4d10 psychic damage. On a successful save, the spell ends for that creature."
Them just winning and going home isn't enough. You need the party to disband after the victory and then each adventurer's life go amazingly, until it doesn't and then things all start to go tragically wrong due to their deepest, darkest fears.
Not Owlbears, Illithids, Fiends or Dragons. Loneliness, loss, a sense that nothing they do matters and everything is just as terrible as before but now they're old and there's a political juggernaut they've set in motion that they don't think they've got the pull to defeat.
Then when they all band together for one last hopeless throw of the dice, that's when you reveal that it was all the Wyrd that the Liche cast at the end of the last campaign.
Don't waste it on the finale of a one shot like that, make that the one shot.
They're all experienced but past their prime characters - even use the old aging things from 2nd ed where they have Int and Wis boost, but debuffs to Str and Con for those that are in their 70s rather than 50s. The 4d10 psychic damage they don't take all at once, but in little bits as joints ache and "the body just ain't what it used to be". First few D10 damages that come out is going to make them play a lot more conservatively, as OAP adventurers - letting you save a massive 2D10 or 3D10 (the remaining damage of the Wyrd) as seemingly a warning that if they keep doing this, they're likely to suffer a heart attack. Of course when the adrenaline flows, you can void/forget this but let them know that they know they'll probably pay for that later. Time is passing inception style for these adventurers, you can let the psychic damage make sense as all this is happening over the course of a couple of combat rounds.
Sell it as an Expendables mission, where the first chapters are getting the gang back together and dealing with their shit or trying to convince the younger folks that they just can't ignore this gathering threat that they almost defeated way back when. Then slowly realising that no one else is up to the job so they are the ones who will have to do it, before the final reveal that each had been trapped in their own illusionary hell but even then needed the others to break out.
Then finale is them at full power 40 years previously against the big bad, having snapped out of the illusion - but now knowing how to avoid their darkest futures.
Definitely going to use that, "there are four lights" prompt I saw on Reddit for the one-shot next Wednesday, but I'ma change the lich to an ulitharid and have the party escape through the Underdark. I'll also use some other ideas I saw on Reddit today
They'll be psychically fucked with constantly, by it and by other mind flayers. Say there's five party members, right? I'll start talking about all seven party members and if asked "don't you mean five?" I'll go, "yeah, that's what I said" and then later after a combat I'll have them discover right next to their feet two bodies of adventurers, with notes to or from the players on them. Like they'd been with the group the whole time, but the mind flayers made them forget.
Or if they fight some other monsters and they get hit with a certain amount of psychic damage, I'll remove a letter from the character's name. Remove enough and they won't have a name and will cease to exist. But not really, they'll come back after a couple of turns like nothing happened (except a shorter name)
If they meet the big bad ulitharid, I'll have it die after just a few rounds and give everyone some rad loot and let them escape to the surface and find a nearby city (or maybe they'll emerge up into one) and when they tell people they'll be hailed as heroes and all that jazz. But then I'll start describing things that are odd but act like it's not a big deal, like just casually slip in a mention of the serving girl's rectangular pupils or how the barkeep suddenly reeks of rotting flesh. Once someone starts to suspect, I'll have them roll perception saves until they realize they're all still fighting the ulitharid.
Does any of that sound cool to y'all?
I'd ask the players if they don't mind a mind-warpy adventure as you're doing two things that are violating player sovereignty:
1) you're changing stuff about their characters.
2) that bit at the end is a cop out when it happens in tv series, players will question whether what follows is real.
On the one hand, yeah, I get that about player sovereignty, but on the other that will ruin the surprise. Our one-shots are always just simple dungeon crawls with a party vs DM vibe to it where the DM tries to kill us and we try to win or at least survive long enough to run away (usually without any treasure or anything to show for it). When we roll up characters for one-shots, we do so knowing they're probably going to die and to not get attached. I'm still going to go for that vibe with this somewhat, but I also want to do something none of us have tried before. I wouldn't ever do anything like this in an actual campaign with established characters and stories.
And the bit about the last part being a cop out might be true, but them questioning if what follows is actually real or if they're still trapped in some psychic hell is kinda what I'm going for. I figure they'll probably enjoy it. If not, well no real harm done since they'll be using throwaway characters and we'll know not to run that sort of thing in the future.
edit: oh, that's not to say I'm dismissing what you're saying out of hand! I'm glad for your thoughts and I'm definitely going to consider it all as I prep for the game! Thank you for the feedback, you and Tastyfish both! editedit: and you too, The Zombie Penguin!
Definitely going to use that, "there are four lights" prompt I saw on Reddit for the one-shot next Wednesday, but I'ma change the lich to an ulitharid and have the party escape through the Underdark. I'll also use some other ideas I saw on Reddit today
They'll be psychically fucked with constantly, by it and by other mind flayers. Say there's five party members, right? I'll start talking about all seven party members and if asked "don't you mean five?" I'll go, "yeah, that's what I said" and then later after a combat I'll have them discover right next to their feet two bodies of adventurers, with notes to or from the players on them. Like they'd been with the group the whole time, but the mind flayers made them forget.
Or if they fight some other monsters and they get hit with a certain amount of psychic damage, I'll remove a letter from the character's name. Remove enough and they won't have a name and will cease to exist. But not really, they'll come back after a couple of turns like nothing happened (except a shorter name)
If they meet the big bad ulitharid, I'll have it die after just a few rounds and give everyone some rad loot and let them escape to the surface and find a nearby city (or maybe they'll emerge up into one) and when they tell people they'll be hailed as heroes and all that jazz. But then I'll start describing things that are odd but act like it's not a big deal, like just casually slip in a mention of the serving girl's rectangular pupils or how the barkeep suddenly reeks of rotting flesh. Once someone starts to suspect, I'll have them roll perception saves until they realize they're all still fighting the ulitharid.
Does any of that sound cool to y'all?
I'd ask the players if they don't mind a mind-warpy adventure as you're doing two things that are violating player sovereignty:
1) you're changing stuff about their characters.
2) that bit at the end is a cop out when it happens in tv series, players will question whether what follows is real.
Def check if players are cool with the mindfuckery - It'd make me deeply uncomfortable, just for an example. Beyond that, i think the pitch is solid, though i agree with @evilthecat concerns. (Also, what happens if your players do successfully nova it out of existence?)
It being a one shot definitely changes things. I'd make sure you have some sort of veto system @Darmak just incase it hits a bad note for anyone, but it sounds pretty damn solid as a one off.
I hadn't even considered that this sort of thing might make others uncomfortable or worse until you mentioned it, which is why I'm undecided on if I'll go through with it. But if I do I'll definitely have something like a veto system, plus I'll be checking with the players periodically myself to see how they're doing and can dial it back or stop if need be.
I hadn't even considered that this sort of thing might make others uncomfortable or worse until you mentioned it, which is why I'm undecided on if I'll go through with it. But if I do I'll definitely have something like a veto system, plus I'll be checking with the players periodically myself to see how they're doing and can dial it back or stop if need be.
I feel like it's an (understandably) easy trigger to miss, as people who do struggle with memory issues etc dont usually tend to talk about it publicly. (Hi, it's me!). I'd say the biggest concern is if any of your players have either a history of dissociation, or a history of being gaslit or similar abuse. That's where it'd turn into a real trigger issue. Like in my case, i'm dissociative - keeping my memories sorted and in order is tough enough, and stuff that's heavy on the mindfuckery will make me nope out real quick because it's way too close to day to day life.
I'm hear to kick arse and escape from things, not be reminded of it, damn it!
That said... if your players are cool with it, i def say go with it. Just because it CAN cause issue does not mean it WILL cause issue, and as long as you've got a plan in place to avoid the pitfalls, and a group who's onboard, it sounds super swell conceptually. Not my cup of tea, but still super swell!
I hadn't even considered that this sort of thing might make others uncomfortable or worse until you mentioned it, which is why I'm undecided on if I'll go through with it. But if I do I'll definitely have something like a veto system, plus I'll be checking with the players periodically myself to see how they're doing and can dial it back or stop if need be.
I feel like it's an (understandably) easy trigger to miss, as people who do struggle with memory issues etc dont usually tend to talk about it publicly. (Hi, it's me!). I'd say the biggest concern is if any of your players have either a history of dissociation, or a history of being gaslit or similar abuse. That's where it'd turn into a real trigger issue. Like in my case, i'm dissociative - keeping my memories sorted and in order is tough enough, and stuff that's heavy on the mindfuckery will make me nope out real quick because it's way too close to day to day life.
I'm hear to kick arse and escape from things, not be reminded of it, damn it!
That said... if your players are cool with it, i def say go with it. Just because it CAN cause issue does not mean it WILL cause issue, and as long as you've got a plan in place to avoid the pitfalls, and a group who's onboard, it sounds super swell conceptually. Not my cup of tea, but still super swell!
Thanks for explaining this, it's not easy to put something like this into words.
If @Darmak goes ahead with it, consider it a decent way to show folks how fucked up this stuff can be. My partner is dealing with memory loss issues and it is hard for those around her to understand why she is so upset about forgetting a word or misremembering when something happened. DnD can be a teaching tool!
I hadn't even considered that this sort of thing might make others uncomfortable or worse until you mentioned it, which is why I'm undecided on if I'll go through with it. But if I do I'll definitely have something like a veto system, plus I'll be checking with the players periodically myself to see how they're doing and can dial it back or stop if need be.
I feel like it's an (understandably) easy trigger to miss, as people who do struggle with memory issues etc dont usually tend to talk about it publicly. (Hi, it's me!). I'd say the biggest concern is if any of your players have either a history of dissociation, or a history of being gaslit or similar abuse. That's where it'd turn into a real trigger issue. Like in my case, i'm dissociative - keeping my memories sorted and in order is tough enough, and stuff that's heavy on the mindfuckery will make me nope out real quick because it's way too close to day to day life.
I'm hear to kick arse and escape from things, not be reminded of it, damn it!
That said... if your players are cool with it, i def say go with it. Just because it CAN cause issue does not mean it WILL cause issue, and as long as you've got a plan in place to avoid the pitfalls, and a group who's onboard, it sounds super swell conceptually. Not my cup of tea, but still super swell!
Thanks for explaining this, it's not easy to put something like this into words.
If @Darmak goes ahead with it, consider it a decent way to show folks how fucked up this stuff can be. My partner is dealing with memory loss issues and it is hard for those around her to understand why she is so upset about forgetting a word or misremembering when something happened. DnD can be a teaching tool!
Hey, you're welcome! Open offer to anyone: I'm happy to talk about my mix of day to day issues (I am currently Autistic, Chronic Depression, Chronic Anxiety, and Dissociation Disorder, and in the process of possibly being diagnosed with ADHD to boot. Yes, i need a better engineered brain). So if you want this penguins opinion on Mental health and possible trigger issues... happy to provide. This is not an offer to use me as a therapist though (go get a professional, and possibly escape america while you're at it)! But if you want a set of eyes on "hey, is this possibly fuckey", i can at least give my perspective. (you should of course get more, i am only one penguin and it's undead hordes).
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There are still some base Monk abilities gained that have a DEX slant to them (Deflect Missiles, Evasion and Unarmoured Movement), so you probably need to do something with them, even if it's just a rename/reskin to
- Impenetrable Skin (use STR inst of DEX, if damage hits 0, catch missiles with the muscles in your chest and flex them to shoot them back)
Fire on the edge of burning paper is a great image for the Demons i'm going for. Beautiful and creepy all in one.
Also, seriously, thanks for the compliments and the awesomes - I, like many a creative type, get anxiety super bad about my work. And it's easy to worry i'm just spamming the thread or the ilk, so seriously: Thank you. The compliments mean a lot
Unnatural parry: Simply PUNCH the projectiles back at people. "your arrows blot out the sun? Indeed they do... FOR YOU!" *All Might Punch*
Okay, so that's a bit more Exalted than it is DnD, but the principle is CLEARLY sound.
I always wanted to see a Zen Archer/Daredevil archtype for Monks. Requires you to blindfold yourself or otherwise be unable to see for your abilities to work (encouraging PCs to maim themselves is a terrible idea, they dont need any encouragement to do that!), but gives you blindsight out to 30ft or so. Gameplay emphasis would be on being a mobile, short ranged archer
Though it does remind that i never liked how Sorcery and Ki points got handed out - I always felt like players should have gotten a bigger initial pool, and then a slower growth. Choice is good and all.
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It is! It sounds like a material demiplane, formed only recently (in geological time). Its interface with the prime material plane of your setting causes the Bermuda Triangle effect. So far, unequipped travelers have set themselves on a one-way journey into it like fruit flies into a trap. There's a way out, but so far their bumbling efforts have largely not succeeded in finding it. Perhaps there was some lure, overt or less overt, to draw travelers there? Or perhaps not. Its relatively recent formation explains the lack of native species, but what relics of its formation await discovery? In a place where every plant species is invasive, what do the emergent ecosystems and biomes look like? One could imagine seeds stored on a vessel from one nation, landing in one sector of this world, creating a wildly different ecosystem than their nearest-landed neighbors. Suppose all plant life in one distant shoreline descended from a single burr of a single burdock species on the back of a single dog who swam ashore after being shipwrecked. The lack of available prey was unfortunate for the dog, but less unfortunate for its passenger...
Oh and that good lich leading a multicultural coastal community with a musical tradition? In another life, perhaps she was known as Marie Laveau.
Emphasising were though because they've all been overcome by a Cordyceps style fungus (if You're easily squicked, don't look this up it's horrifying)
This was probably a milienia ago, before orcs and others made landfall and started to make homes once more, but the continent has an untold number of ruins. Some still haunted by the fungus possessed corpses of those who came before
If there's any pockets of survivors left one imagines they've gone even hideously xenophobic and slavery-mad.
Oh man, perhaps the lure is a relic of this culture, something they used to provide themselves with a constant influx of slaves. That's got some good spice to it.
One thing I'd want to avoid is I guess call it unconscious colonialism. Going for fun points of light here, not "we're invading darkest Africa and stealing shit". @Endless_Serpents NZ setting has a similar vibe to what I'd want to achieve
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I also treat demons as the cause of everything from disease, to rusting, to frailty (not aging itself, age and death are normal, just the frailty that results from aging - which elves don't really have).
Like if a remote village locks their valuable iron tools up in the chapel, they won't rust, because the demons responsible have less power in there (and if the demon princes are ever destroyed, they always come back, or another forms to take their place). These forces are universal, and don't require any demons to physically be present, any plane without strong magical repulsion against the lower planes experiences them - however - demons physically work their way in all over the place, along with other fiendish and fey forces
This leads to average people blaming almost everything on something supernatural, except they're right about half the time, as Imps, Pixies, and Quasits are all up to their own brand of mischief and/or evil everywhere you can find people. That new tool you bought broke first day using it? An imp might be responsible, fulfilling a deal for a rival toolmaker. A healthy baby dies in her sleep? A quasit probably did it. You keep losing garmants? Your son has an imaginary friend? Yep, that's a pixie
If players ever throw up the correct divinations and snoop about a town they're likely to ping fiends and fey. People's desire for petty victory attracts imps, cruel thoughts and words attract quasits, and the mischievous thoughts and whims of children attract pixies. More powerful emotions, bad luck, or careless spellcasters lead to worse things
And how do these beings react when they discover their test plane has developed an... infestation?
and I'm really wanting to work that into the one-shot I forgot I'm running next Wednesday (my coworker reminded me about it a few hours ago lol). Do y'all think that might make for a cool opening to a session? Make the rest about escaping from the lich's lair or something, maybe in the Underdark?
While this is super cool, i've got to admit i'm less than interested in figuring out my settings origin. Partly because i feel it's easy to get bogged down in such, partly because i want it to be mystery - there are hundreds of ruins and thousands of stories rotting in the deep time that might tell. Who can say what's correct?
Def do want to give it history, but it'd be the history of things like the Elven Neo-Romans, perhaps something more recent involving NotSpanishConquistitatords (they'd make good villains), and of other such stuff. But actually explaining where it came from and why beyond local history seems... unnecessary? I dunno, i'm just not feeling trying to do so.
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The DM even gets to have their own character within the game (as Q)!
This in turn suggests tapping into Inca cultural stuff, Mayan, etc with the lack of wheels, which immediately suggests some fun stuff. a secondary focus could be a race-wide fascination with stargazing, astronomy and astrology (Mountains are a good place to see the stars from). plus, there's a lot of potential interesting stuff to tap interms of the mythological love of wine, partying, music, and their rather ribald nature, all of which could give them a really strong and distinct flavor. Though the ribald nature would need to be handled with a deft tack - i suspect i'd lean into depicting them as a bit more free love/sexually liberated with a propensity for bawdy humor, as that's something that can be adjusted by dms with ease if it's going to make players uncomforrttable.
You can even draw some dwarf analogies, but with better justification for the love of booze. Interestingly, a quick google says that the Inca used some drinks in ceremonial rites related to the gods, so that's a further interesting angle.
Between Satyr (Taking on some of the native south american traits), and orcs (Native north americans traits) Conquistadors seem like a really strong villainous faction/force to include. You can also do some interesting stuff with implying they're a whole resettlement fleet that got pulled to this continent and crashed onto a different part of it - so they've been spreading and trailblazing, and have now come into contact, and sadly, conflict with the cosmopolitan parts. It also makes some sense - if the Free Cities (call them that for now) are made up of a whole blends of people and cultures who've come piecemeal, and probably have a strong spirit of "You're alone, so you need help" (poorly phrased but i think you get the idea), a group big enough to have maintained a cohesive cultural identity - especially if it was already an aggressive, colonial force is going to run into conflict.
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So are you a fan of Brandon Sanderson? That's very close to talking about the spren in the Way of Kings.
No, I cribbed the NSR from a gaming blog I check in on now and then, Throne of Salt. They also got a mention in some other blog whose name I can't recall that was mostly about RPGs and economics. Dungeon Economist, maybe? It was a hoot, what with its thoughtful analysis of how the material component requirement for the Identify spell all but necessitated the enslavement of a race of fish-men to farm pearls, and how all wizards must eventually become sheep farmers.
What're some cool bosses you've encountered?
Sigh. These completionists are going to want to visit every gawddamn Shrine, arn't they? Do you have any idea how annoying it is to scour the internet for usable battlemaps to replace the given maps? I ain't scaling these 50' square maps to a usuable size!
In one case (Great Worm Cavern) it was fun though. Instead of using the location as presented in the module (since they already fought TWO Rehemoraz's in the Oracle dungeon), when the party arrives they'll come upon a scene of bloodshed scattered all over the icy cave as an Adult White Dragon has recently moved in and decided to take a nap. It will not be pleased that its food coma has been interrupted by pesky adventurers! :evil:
Edit: Oh! I just realized I never thought about how their Dragon Cultist Uber drivers are going to react to them killing a dragon. Hmm...
The DM was kind of having a rough time for this due to work during the plague, so I suggested the DMs and prospective DMs in the group do a couple one-shots/vignettes to give him a break. Turns out I'm up first!
Pff, white dragons.
The runts of dragonkind!
Just tell it to surrender, it shaking its tail looks pretty much like a white flag anyway..
As presented in the module (spell loadout) he would been a much easier fight for my party. I elected to change out his spell loading and make him far more dangerous. I mean, this MFer is on the cover of the DMG. It does a disservice to the long legacy of Acererak if the party is able to finish him off easily, IMO. In my game, we had a TPK but the party came within 30HP of that "Fuck these mortals, I'm going home." limit.
Well, I'm not putting a Red in an ice cave now, am I?
Or, are you?
Could have a red dragon laying on a pile of white dragon scraps and throw your party a bit of a curve ball.
Edit: The more I think about this, the more fun it sounds. Describing the lair getting colder, frost and patches of ice forming on the walls, as the party delves deeper into the unnatural cold.
Unmistakable claw and scale marks on the walls. A heavy smell of dragon in the bitterly chilled air.
The cave shaking with a distant tremor and the sound like a dragons scream echoing through the cave.
Maybe give them some ice resistance gear on the way down, a cloak of cold resistance (or something similar) taken off a convenient corpse.
Then when they walk into the lair, you describe the bloody remains of a violently slaughtered white dragon, and a red dragon perched on the recently vacated dragon hoard licking fresh blood off of her claws and looking extremely satisfied with herself.
She regards the party with naked contempt... "The white showed... insufficient deference. I trust you will show more respect...
you could make it a red dragon that painted itself white!
Perhaps it's hiding from some epic wizard/lich that has become infatuated with it and won't stop stalking it.
Maybe the adventurers meet a skeletal figure with what's clearly someone else's freshly skinned face/a groucho marx disguise who offers them fabulous treasures for any information regarding the location of the most sensually curved red dragon that's supposed to be in the area!
comedy interludes are what I live for as a DM :P
Dragons in New Zellatia aren’t colour coded, and I’m gonna make a dragon generator. I’m thinking they all err on the wry riddle telling side, who happily make bags of time to chat with the adventurers invading their lair.
2.
Here’s a thing that isn’t getting my setting finished: sumo wrestling. It’s way smaller than the dodgeball game.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WOxlHdLt1IMGHTbAIKpux_N00XqZf-hsakklOgwrTRc/edit
Edit:
Also I’m entering an even busier period of work over the next five weeks but after that would anyone like to play a tiny 1st to 4th level adventure in New Zellatia? It’d be for test purposes so you wouldn’t need to bring your A game and as it’d be Play by Post there’d be no rush. If you’ve never played D&D 5E before it’s ideal as you’d have hours to work individual rolls out.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q6vDdLyRf2wiDq_sBh_uFdvw_QZUmeg2SNVaa_IEBVk/edit
Here’s the gods, which don’t work exactly like the regular guys; they’re more groups of gods.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/171_bW9AddJ4KJ8IWjo3nU58mB_JFFA66jpbb5lKuObA/edit
And here’s the setting.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GhaSfFEeJumDnsbQ0MoWjRw2BGq1bsLHTUfUKPE8IeM/edit
It’d be nice if your characters had a district they come from, but you can work it out as we play once it comes up.
—
For those interested 3 to 5 players would be nice, and the mini-adventure will start with ‘Helping Auntie Fatta’: Get a trinket back for a beetlefolk old lady that’s lost it in a beach cave. That’ll get followed up with an offer to become relic hunters, and two (or whatever you do instead) choices on where to head outside the city. It’ll probably stop after it comes to a natural conclusion (get a relic, run away, decide to be a barbershop quartet instead of adventurers), but there might be something to do in the city once your back, we’ll see how it goes.
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Or if they fight some other monsters and they get hit with a certain amount of psychic damage, I'll remove a letter from the character's name. Remove enough and they won't have a name and will cease to exist. But not really, they'll come back after a couple of turns like nothing happened (except a shorter name)
If they meet the big bad ulitharid, I'll have it die after just a few rounds and give everyone some rad loot and let them escape to the surface and find a nearby city (or maybe they'll emerge up into one) and when they tell people they'll be hailed as heroes and all that jazz. But then I'll start describing things that are odd but act like it's not a big deal, like just casually slip in a mention of the serving girl's rectangular pupils or how the barkeep suddenly reeks of rotting flesh. Once someone starts to suspect, I'll have them roll perception saves until they realize they're all still fighting the ulitharid.
Does any of that sound cool to y'all?
I'd ask the players if they don't mind a mind-warpy adventure as you're doing two things that are violating player sovereignty:
1) you're changing stuff about their characters.
2) that bit at the end is a cop out when it happens in tv series, players will question whether what follows is real.
"Drawing on the deepest fears of a group of creatures, you create illusory creatures in their minds, visible only to them. Each creature in a 30-foot-radius sphere centered on a point of your choice within range must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, a creature becomes frightened for the duration. The illusion calls on the creature's deepest fears, manifesting its worst nightmares as an implacable threat. At the end of each of the frightened creature's turns, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or take 4d10 psychic damage. On a successful save, the spell ends for that creature."
Them just winning and going home isn't enough. You need the party to disband after the victory and then each adventurer's life go amazingly, until it doesn't and then things all start to go tragically wrong due to their deepest, darkest fears.
Not Owlbears, Illithids, Fiends or Dragons. Loneliness, loss, a sense that nothing they do matters and everything is just as terrible as before but now they're old and there's a political juggernaut they've set in motion that they don't think they've got the pull to defeat.
Then when they all band together for one last hopeless throw of the dice, that's when you reveal that it was all the Wyrd that the Liche cast at the end of the last campaign.
Don't waste it on the finale of a one shot like that, make that the one shot.
They're all experienced but past their prime characters - even use the old aging things from 2nd ed where they have Int and Wis boost, but debuffs to Str and Con for those that are in their 70s rather than 50s. The 4d10 psychic damage they don't take all at once, but in little bits as joints ache and "the body just ain't what it used to be". First few D10 damages that come out is going to make them play a lot more conservatively, as OAP adventurers - letting you save a massive 2D10 or 3D10 (the remaining damage of the Wyrd) as seemingly a warning that if they keep doing this, they're likely to suffer a heart attack. Of course when the adrenaline flows, you can void/forget this but let them know that they know they'll probably pay for that later. Time is passing inception style for these adventurers, you can let the psychic damage make sense as all this is happening over the course of a couple of combat rounds.
Sell it as an Expendables mission, where the first chapters are getting the gang back together and dealing with their shit or trying to convince the younger folks that they just can't ignore this gathering threat that they almost defeated way back when. Then slowly realising that no one else is up to the job so they are the ones who will have to do it, before the final reveal that each had been trapped in their own illusionary hell but even then needed the others to break out.
Then finale is them at full power 40 years previously against the big bad, having snapped out of the illusion - but now knowing how to avoid their darkest futures.
It's an amazing spell, don't sell it short.
On the one hand, yeah, I get that about player sovereignty, but on the other that will ruin the surprise. Our one-shots are always just simple dungeon crawls with a party vs DM vibe to it where the DM tries to kill us and we try to win or at least survive long enough to run away (usually without any treasure or anything to show for it). When we roll up characters for one-shots, we do so knowing they're probably going to die and to not get attached. I'm still going to go for that vibe with this somewhat, but I also want to do something none of us have tried before. I wouldn't ever do anything like this in an actual campaign with established characters and stories.
And the bit about the last part being a cop out might be true, but them questioning if what follows is actually real or if they're still trapped in some psychic hell is kinda what I'm going for. I figure they'll probably enjoy it. If not, well no real harm done since they'll be using throwaway characters and we'll know not to run that sort of thing in the future.
edit: oh, that's not to say I'm dismissing what you're saying out of hand! I'm glad for your thoughts and I'm definitely going to consider it all as I prep for the game! Thank you for the feedback, you and Tastyfish both! editedit: and you too, The Zombie Penguin!
Def check if players are cool with the mindfuckery - It'd make me deeply uncomfortable, just for an example. Beyond that, i think the pitch is solid, though i agree with @evilthecat concerns. (Also, what happens if your players do successfully nova it out of existence?)
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Please report back on the carnage
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I feel like it's an (understandably) easy trigger to miss, as people who do struggle with memory issues etc dont usually tend to talk about it publicly. (Hi, it's me!). I'd say the biggest concern is if any of your players have either a history of dissociation, or a history of being gaslit or similar abuse. That's where it'd turn into a real trigger issue. Like in my case, i'm dissociative - keeping my memories sorted and in order is tough enough, and stuff that's heavy on the mindfuckery will make me nope out real quick because it's way too close to day to day life.
I'm hear to kick arse and escape from things, not be reminded of it, damn it!
That said... if your players are cool with it, i def say go with it. Just because it CAN cause issue does not mean it WILL cause issue, and as long as you've got a plan in place to avoid the pitfalls, and a group who's onboard, it sounds super swell conceptually. Not my cup of tea, but still super swell!
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If @Darmak goes ahead with it, consider it a decent way to show folks how fucked up this stuff can be. My partner is dealing with memory loss issues and it is hard for those around her to understand why she is so upset about forgetting a word or misremembering when something happened. DnD can be a teaching tool!
Hey, you're welcome! Open offer to anyone: I'm happy to talk about my mix of day to day issues (I am currently Autistic, Chronic Depression, Chronic Anxiety, and Dissociation Disorder, and in the process of possibly being diagnosed with ADHD to boot. Yes, i need a better engineered brain). So if you want this penguins opinion on Mental health and possible trigger issues... happy to provide. This is not an offer to use me as a therapist though (go get a professional, and possibly escape america while you're at it)! But if you want a set of eyes on "hey, is this possibly fuckey", i can at least give my perspective. (you should of course get more, i am only one penguin and it's undead hordes).
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