The reason many still associate D&D and anything else remotely related to it with fat, basement dwelling, socially inept virgin incels is because those people actually made up a significant percentage of the original following of the hobby. Because it's founders were only a half step away from most of those descriptions in many cases. And anybody that insists otherwise is either willfully ignorant or, more likely, angry at being called out by association because they're the same.
So either get over it or go join the people that still insist that the confederate flag is anything but the war banner of a rebellion raised as an attempt at preserving slavery as a legal institution. You have the same mindset and validity as they do on this matter.
Every system has to decide where to draw the line on the prioritization of realism versus simplicity and speed of play. On one extreme you have the "one page RPG" system where you have exactly two stats and everything uses one or the other, rolled on a single D6. About two thirds of the way to the other extreme you get "Pathfinder has a rule for that," with some systems going into truly absurd levels of detailed minutia in ways that vary from being mote or less mechanically consistent to the old school D&D method of the designers pulling a random table out of their ass for every new thing they don't have a rule for yet and filling it out with whatever nonsense comes to mind in that moment.
Yandere needs the clarification of burning your character sheet from the other game, then shackling you to the table for theirs.
Also thugdere's stance is grounds to have them committed to an asylum for the criminally insane for life. Or just euthanized as a ranid animal, depending on the jurisdiction.
I'm either a cleric from the Abbey of St Whatever passing through Heroshire in my way to hunt monsters in Vampsylvania, or a spellcasting hermit of dubious sanity living in the Witchy Wood.
Probably, although Martin was definitely not the first fantasy author to put a villainous faction/entity in the inhospitable frozen north, nor was he the first to have a villain with a zombie army.
Although I think the Mountains of Muscles are more likely just a border feature slapped in between the Necrolord and the ambiguous barbarians of the northern steppes, which are again a common trope but probably directly drawn from the barbarian tribes of Icewind Dale (Wulfgar's people in Forgotten Realms).
The Desert Island is where all the shipwrecked sailors get washed up. This is the result of all ocean currents in the Tepid and Warm seas eventually converging there. If you miss the exit you go right past into the Giant Whirlpool of Hydrodynamic Implausibly.
Awesome as usual, and bonus points for the bad guy's sucker punch attack actually hitting a main weak point in plate mail.
I also like that Angela throws a hand axe. I've seen a lot of people with melee focused martial characters hauling around multiple javelins as a backup ranged weapon because they do slightly more damage. When they announce in the middle of a fight that they're throwing one or even several in a single turn I always think, "Just where were you carrying those multiple long hafted spears while fighting with both hands this whole time?" Mechanically a high strength character can handle the weight but those things aren't exactly throwing knives you can conveniently slip a half dozen of into your belt or strap to your thighs or arms. A nice tomahawk or two, on the other hand, you can have tucked until your belt.
Kind of. As a concept but not the definition people that use it attribute to it. The act of people getting that definition wrong is itself a memetic behavior.
That would be the actual definition, yes. But many if not most people who use the word "meme" to mean "funny picture and caption" don't actually know what the word meme refers to. So they go by some definition originating from Reddit, Facebook, 4chan, etc.
"They're weird looking dragons, I tell you. They fly really fast but somehow do it without flapping their wings, they have short, fat tails, and when they go really fast they blow jets of fire out their arses!"
Yeah, and my personal opinion of the Drow is that you can still have matriarchal spider themed villains and not be "problematic" if you just st officially decannonize all of the weird-ass kinky fetish stuff that Ed Greenwood wrote into their original description. And the same can be said of most "problematic" things in Forgotten Realms, which is the source of a lot of the stuff that many consider to be "generic D&D."
Seriously, go through the deep lore of FR and you will find a bunch of stuff that reads like it was written by a horny thirteen year old that wants to be edgy and kinky but clearly doesn't know how fetishes or anything occult actually work beyond involving leather, whips, and bloody sacrifice rituals at orgy parties like a midwestern church granny will tell you happen every time anybody plays Dungeons and Dragons. I wonder where they got that impression from...
Short answer, no. There is a lot of nitpicky fine print and "nuance" involved but while you cannot copyright rolling a twenty sided die you can copyright a bunch of distinct and organized thoughts and specific groups thereof, such as the collection of rules that make up a class or subclass. If that class, subclass, spell, made up monster with a specific name and abilities, etc is published in some work that is sold for profit then legal action can occur.
Anything under creative commons effectively becomes public domain. If it appears in a WotC book, digital content, etc and is not specifically under CC, like say spells and subclasses from any supplement not included in that (such as Xanathar or Tasha), it is copyrighted and WotC can and will sue you if you republish it.
Maybe if those games had more appealing rule systems, other publishers would make products using them.
If it's under a CC license you can literally publish it yourself with a few things tacked on. That's what creative commons does. It's basically public domain at that point.
Among other things, yes. Some things I have seen do strike me as logical tweaks and fixes much like 3.5 was to 3e, but some are clearly attempts at "fixing" PR problems by people who don't understand why they're having those problems in the first place. And at least in some cases I expect are personally responsible for said PR problems. It's kind and like a Three Stooges skit about corporate mismanagement, but they honestly think they're doing a good job.
My only thought upon seeing this is what an overstimulated eight year old would rattle off the top of their head if you told them to make some wicked awesome homebrew that doesn't worry about any of that "balance" nonsense. Or actual rules at all really. It's just a bunch of words that someone overheard D&D players say mixed with attempts of sounding like a fast talking comedian.
What really disturbs me about this is that somewhere out there is a living, breathing human who thought of it. I will probably never actually meet that person but the nonzero possibility of doing so shall henceforth haunt my thoughts and dreams forever.
First a note on inclusivity. I don’t care about your race, ethnicity, national origin, religion or lack thereof, gender, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. I game to get away from the real world. My games have no place for hate or any discussion of politics. If you feel the need to bring either of these things into fantasy escapism you are not welcome in my game. Otherwise anyone is welcome as long as you act like a decent human being.
Also a brief note: this post is not brief. Note the warning about my being an ambitious idiot in the title. If you're interested in joining my possibly idiotic ambition to form a hopefully really fun game, read on. You've been warned.
I'm looking to run one or possibly more one shot adventures set in my homebrew skypunk setting as test runs and, for lack of a better term, auditions for a long term campaign set in the same world. I tried putting together a group last year but folks just didn't really mesh well and it didn't work out. Since I've learned the most important key to a successful long running campaign (aside from everybody actually showing up) is a comfortable group that actually gets along and enjoys playing together. There are a lot of styles of D&D games and not everybody likes the same things, so this time around I'm going for a test run or two so everyone can get a feel for the game and decide if they want to commit to something more long term. The 7-11pm Friday (US Eastern) time is when I intend to run any eventual full campaign so any one shots leading up to that will be at the same time.
An important note: My ultimate goal for a full campaign is to record sessions to edit and publish as a podcast. Fame and fortune are statistically very unlikely, but I have two reasons for this (aside from maybe just being an ambitious idiot). First, I am a fan of actual plays as an entertainment genre and want to try contributing to it. Second, I'm hoping that the possibility of an audience will motivate everyone including myself to bring our A games, pay attention, get into character, and generally take the game at least somewhat seriously. On the off chance that, by some miracle, this endeavor actually produces a profit I will share proceeds with anyone else involved but that's not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future (if ever) so don't plan on quitting your day jobs. That being said you should have a decent quality microphone and be able to play without any distracting background noise.
Okay, what kind of game will it be?
I'm looking to do a story driven game with a roughly even mix of game time spent between roleplaying/social situations and crunchy bits (meaning exploration, combat, or anything requiring a battle map). The goal is about 50/50 overall but some sessions may swing more toward one or the other. Discord will be used for voice, Roll20 VTT for anything requiring a battle map and theater of the mind descriptions for socially focused roleplaying.
The style of play I prefer is linear storytelling, which does not mean railroading. It means I will be preparing material ahead of time and expect players to engage with that material, but I'm designing it to be flexible and allow for creative solutions. Additionally at numerous points I'll have multiple forking courses of action the party can choose. If there's a particular aspect of the world or style of adventure players want to explore they are encouraged to let me know and I'll see about working it into future preparations. That being said I have no desire or intention to run a sandbox game where players just run around doing whatever random thing they just thought of and expect me to pull a session's worth of game content out of my butt on demand. I acknowledge that improv sandbox is a valid way to enjoy D&D but that's not going to be happening in this game. If engaging with something that the DM (me) has prepared ahead of time is too much to ask from you, this is not the game for you.
Mechanically I run my game almost entirely RAW (Rules As Written). There are a few bits of homebrew and houserules I use that will be made available up front (mostly just a few things related to the skypunk elements of the setting and as simple as I can make them). I'm open to creative uses of abilities but if I can't apply existing rules to something with reasonable accomodation you probably won't be allowed to do it. This is 5e RAW without any of the One D&D playtest changes to core mechanics though a few things might be included. For example I do like the idea of guidance as a reaction and no crits for monsters/NPCs (in general I try to avoid instakill mechanics because that just isn't fun).
You may notice I used the word "skypunk" to describe my world. If you think that means airships, floating islands, stratospheric swashbuckling action, and people flying around on giant birds shooting bows and slinging spells like fantastical living fighter planes then you are right on. Not all of the story will explicitly revolve around being airborne in one way or another and there will be a fair bit of traditional feet on the ground adventuring, but getting from point A to point B will generally involve flying and there are air pirates, territorial militaries, flying monsters, and weird weather phenomena all over this world so it will be fair to expect such things to come up with some regularity. I'm basically going for a sort of Treasure Island/Pirates of the Caribbean in the clouds vibe, meeting all sorts of NPCs in different environments between and along the course of adventures. Bustling port cities, shady smuggler refuges, remote ruins, and everything in and beneath the sky in between. I have some general plans for an overarching story and hope to work in elements tailored to involve PCs backstories and goals into that as it develops. But that's for the full campaign and not the immediate one shot I'm advertising here.
For the one shot I have immediately planned, it's a pretty much an extremely brief introduction to the world and a simple mini-dungeon crawl as the party are freelance mercenaries hired to look for a relic in some mysterious ruins on a remote sky island. The main purpose is to serve as an icebreaker and introduction between players and myself and see if we vibe well. A bit of in character roleplaying and banter is encouraged but it will mostly be a crunchier session. Anybody who joins in the hopefully eventual full campaign will have the option of tweaking or even completely changing their characters so nothing is set in stone.
Player Expectations
No evil characters, murderhobos, or chaos goblins. You don't have to play a shining paragon of virtue but we are going for heroic adventurers with at least some basic "good guys" vibes. Furthermore along the lines of the above mentions of sticking to content I've prepared, activities such as bullying shopkeepers and barmaids, picking fights with town guards, habitual kleptomania, etc will not be tolerated. If you think that being proficient in Sleight of Hand equates to a moral mandate to pick the pockets of random people on the street and steal every shiny object you see, this is not the game for you, do not apply. Same goes for being a violent idiot as does for being a larcenous idiot. Such actions might very well be valid at certain points but if you're just doing them all the time (aside from being the kind of things heroic characters shouldn't be doing in the first place) you will roll low and get caught soon enough, very bad things will happen to your character, and you will be told you're no longer welcome in the game for being a "LoL sO rAnDoM" jackass. Seriously, just use some common sense.
I see D&D as a team activity and so should you. Your character can be a bit edgy and/or have a bit of a shady past and they don't have to be bubbly people pleasers but they should have some kind of motivation of their own for joining in the party and the adventure. It is not the job of other players or the DM to convince your brooding loner to join in the game you as a player said you want to be a part of. So don't play a character who's primary defining trait is being an antisocial brooding loner.
No PvP of any kind. This includes but is not limited to attacking other PCs, stealing from PCs, or otherwise acting against other PCs. The other PCs are your allies, act like it. You don't have to get along perfectly and a little bit of friction can make for interesting roleplay, but everyone is expected to not get into fights.
Any attempts to justify any of this behavior with "it's what my character would do" will result in immediate dismissal from the game because you chose to make the character that would do those things. Seriously, just don't be a jerk and use some common sense.
PG-13. Assuming we get to the point of a full campaign there will be a proper Session Zero to cover (among other things) boundaries, taboos, etc but for the one shot for simplicity's sake just assume that if you can't see it in a PG-13 movie it isn't allowed.
Character Creation
Characters will be third level, races, classes, etc from official sources only. UA (including One D&D playtest material) content may be considered on a case by case basis but are not guaranteed. Nothing from third party publishers, no self published online homebrew, and nothing you came up with yourself. Just no.
All characters get one free bonus feat. I have a slightly buffed version of Mounted Combat that makes you and your mount a bit more survivable and if you want to play a skyrider in the big campaign you should probably take that, but doing so is by no means required. You don't have to do that to be effective and the first one shot doesn't even have any aerial adventure in it so for this don't even bother.
No guns. There are no firearms in this setting. There will be no firearms in this setting. This is not negotiable. Any attempts to manipulate something like an airship's compressed lift gas tank or anything else into anything resembling a gun will immediately blow up in your character's face, they will die, and you will be permanently ejected from the game for not paying attention when I said no fucking guns. I hope this wouldn't be an issue but I have strong opinions and some people disagree with those opinions. If you're one of those people you should not apply to this game.
As mentioned in the title (yeah, I know, way up there), the intended play time is Friday 7-11pm US Eastern Time. If you've actually read all of my possibly pretentious sounding ranting an rambling, are still interested, and can play at that time, drop me a message here (click my name/link in the post header and there's an button at the top, I just had to check how that works here) and I can send you a link to the Discord I have for the game which includes some general setting information and the house rules I plan to use. For the one shot character creation will be handled one on one via DM in place of a full Session Zero.
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