The Last Will And Testament of Captain Danyo of Remlia,

I have traveled many worlds and I have spit in more eyes than most and fighting this dragon has put a lot into perspective for me. Eventually life gonna catch up with me and when it does my vast accumulation of wealth aught to go somewhere useful (assuming there’s any left). That’s why I’m having Steven write out these laying down papers for me before we go off to rescue Lurr. 

I’m not sure how you’re gonna get these things to these folks, since I myself don’t quite understand the nature of my traveling, but if you ever run into them by chance, here’s the distribution.

(Assuming of course I’m dead when you read this and you didn’t just sneak into the captains quarters to steal my wine)

There’s a Knight named Ragna in Remlia somewhere, I was told he was dead, but I think that may have been the treacherous lies of an old wizard. Give him my fishing pole and tell him to relax.

There’s a strip club in Tyr called the Cat’s Bones, give them half of any coin I’ve managed to scrape together by the time this gets opened, and tell them I was always a better dancer and these are my tips to prove it- they’ll get a kick outta that. The other half of the coin should go to Birch and Bat, they’re good folks.

As I’m having Steven write this I have in my possession several weapons of a magical nature. They have specific scabbards, and if I don’t manage to sheathe them myself I would have Rana do it for me, because I’ve seen the ice behind her eyes and I know she wouldn’t fuck it up. 

Blossom Buster and Spear Mynt go in the gut of the Elf King of Figaro, the bastard.

Tammy gets firmly planted in the skull of Kalak, former sorcerer king of Tyr.

Underbite goes with its sibling: Overbite, into the hands of Jasper Black, one of the greatest Fighters I’ve ever known.

Speaking of Jasper, I’m giving you my title (and hat) of Captain of the Tresendar. Don’t run it aground if you can manage.

Runt, I’d like for you to take care of Sandy, the Displacer Kitten I picked up in Athas- be careful with her, she’s getting kind of big. I saw her phase her whole mouth around a chicken the other day and I got  worried so I locked her below deck with a rum barrel and a few goats. She really likes drinking blood though so if it’s too much to handle you can probably foist her onto Milly. There’s also one last hit of blue sand behind the secret compartment in my self portrait above my bed, twist the eyepatch counterclockwise and have a good time with it bud.

Millie, I’m leaving you this pop up book I found in your home country, my doll collection, and my wardrobe, there’s some fun stuff in there and I know you’ll have a good time with it. Give my love to your mom and dad- 

A few other quick things- there’s a pickled goblin hand I found in a cave in Remlia some years ago, give it to the Pirate Queen of Mintarn and tell her I said I dig her style.

Look up Silas and Theodosia and give them my bronze medusa mirror, I dunno if it does anything weird but they’ve got a mirrored ceiling so I figure they’ll put it to good use.

That’s about it I think, I hope I didn’t miss anything or anyone- but if I did and you think something is rightfully yours,

Steal it back.

X

Session 3: Spooky Woods & Mountain Jerks.

Part 1.

The party departs the Lonely Goat early in the morning, opting to save their cash and not purchase mounts. They spend the better part of a day leaving The Fields of Amber. The path to the mountains is heavily forested and they reach the woods around nightfall. The woods are very spooky and theres like, a lot of owls.

Deciding to find a spot to camp for the evening, the party wanders off the trail only to be met by a voice in the dark.

"Stay back you fiends!"

So theres a knight sitting at a campfire wearing this really old, worn armor that's covered in crests that nobody recognizes. And the party is like, whoa, relax my dude we're not here to do you dirty just looking to camp it up in these woods. The knight relaxes a bit and relates to them his story. He says that he's the last left from an expedition to the West to get medicine for his town, which he says is about a days journey away and beset by terrible disease. Around now Ovaria leans into the rest of the party and is like-

"Can't we just fucking murder this fossil?"

Which is a thing you say when you're the only chaotic evil member of the party, but the rest of them are like...nah.

But they do go through his stuff while he spends some time monologuing and find some pots of medicine hidden in the back of his cart that I think I described as "really old" because I wasn't playing my clues too close to my chest for this one.

So The knight keeps talking and name dropping a bunch of stuff that some good rolls confirm the party has no fucking clue about. And it's about now that Ted, who's playing an Eldritch Knight named Vorador Twitchel says

"I bet he's an unstuck from time Kilgore Trout ghost knight"

And of course he was because thats exactly the kind of shit I'm always peddling in my games, and so I panic and move on to the next bit of the encounter because for some reason I didn't think they would get it that fast because most of the time there has to be a neon sign to get the party to clue in on something that isn't a weird fixation they have on a jar that I described too well.

So there's a noise in the woods and some arrows come flying and one hits the knight in the leg and then he's like

"AROOOO I'm a kill you bandits and save my toooooooown"

And the party is just sitting there while he grabs his sword and he's like

"To arms my comrades!"

But they're like, let's see how this plays out and do nothing and of course the ghosts do a ghost fight with each other and one of the bandits attacks the party and it's sword goes through them in what would have been a big reveal if I cared more about developing an air of mystery but mostly it was good comedy and the knight got murdered by the bandits and the whole scenario of the bandits looting his shit played out and then I started to think on my feet and decided that this whole scenario would play on a loop. 

So now it's Groundhog Day + Unstuck from time + the knight at the end of Last Crusade and the party watches the whole scenario play out a bunch of times through the night and starts doing MST3K style riffing of it like its a bad movie and there was much merriment yada yada.

The next day they take the medicine* into the town (which is rubble because the ghost was from like 300 years ago) and they put it on the alter in the church and a bunch of children's ghosts fly out of the church and on the breeze they here the crusty old knight say

"Thaaaaaaanks"

And that was a hex and it took about an hour. Oh and the party searched the rubble of the town and found a box with some weird cubes that caused various minor magical effects like flashes and steam and stuff (Thank's for all the random loot over the years Vornheim)

*It was hidden so the bandit's didn't find it and just took the Knight's armor and food.

Here's my rules for Ghosts real quick:

Ghosts are created when a creature dies with unfinished business in a particularly magically charged area.

Ghosts cannot speak of their misfortune for they do not know it.

Ghosts cannot leave the place where their blood was spilled.

Ghosts are free to leave this plane when their task is complete.

Part 2.

The party sets off once again and begins to traverse the Gaptooth Mountains and after about a half day's march they find themselves at The Bridge Keep.

like this but without the waterfall.

They make their way across the first half of the bridge and meet the nice man (think Billy Eichnor) who extorts you for a lot of money so you can cross and he informs them that it's 50g per person and when they don't have enough to cross he's like

"I don't care"

So they try a lot of hijinks to get try and get past, but it didn't work because this is the kind of place designed to foil all of your hijinks with bows and arrows and rocks and hot oil and get your cash so I got to say no a lot and I made the guy SUPER rude and sarcastic so the players REALLY hated him. After about 3 or 4 hijinks he informs the party that theres a rowboat back a the beginning of the bridge down a precarious set of stairs and wishes them luck rowing across The Lake of Tears.

They all vow to murder him someday and climb in the rowboat.

They make it about halfway across the lake and I let them know that there's (obviously) something swimming up from below at them. So it's at this point that my players start to play a little game called:

GUESS WHAT THE DM IS ABOUT TO THROW AT US

After cycling through all the pop culture references they can think of (Krakens, Eels, Etc) I yelled at them all and said it wasn't going to be ANYTHING THEY COULD POSSIBLY GUESS. (which was a total lie because it was evil mermaids) and I considered making it like 30 regular horses just to fuck with them but accidentally perfectly described Old Gregg without realizing what I was doing.

So then Old Gregg The Evil Mermaid told them that it's people also required tolls and that they could pay with

1. Newborn babies blood
2. Everyone's left eye
3. A bottle of wine

And after a meticulous combing of their character sheets for wine (all they had was brandy) and a realization that they all really like their eyes somebody threw one of the weird cubes they picked up in the village at the mermaids head and it got distracted and they did a rowboat chase and made it to the shore and climbed up the cliffside because more than half the party has Spider Climb I guess.

Another hex completed and I did not expect for this blog post to be this long.

Thanks for hanging in there.

BONUS CONTENT

Dungeon Room

"The First Guess"

"The room is an unassuming 30x30 feet with pattern printed tile walls, floor and ceiling. The first character to guess the gimmick of the room is absolutely correct and whatever they say happens, happens. If no one makes a guess by the time the party has made it through the room, a treasure chest containing Type A loot will appear in the center of the room. The party can poke and prod the room however they like without invoking the "curse" as long as no one says "I bet its X" or a similar phrase.

Guest Post Monday!

So Mutebanshee and I decided it would be fun to trade blogs and write a guest post for each other. I asked her to write a guest post about one-shots, I'm really happy that I did because she has lots of great insight and you should totally read her blog. Now I'm gonna kick back and hang on an imaginary beach because that's what you do when someone else does the heavy lifting. 

Skullboy reached out to me a couple days ago. "Mute," he said, "I'm posting a ton of stuff about one shots, and you are so smart, I really need you to tell me how to run a good single session game!"

I looked at him through the dark void of internet wires, shook my head, and replied, "No, Skullboy, you already have the session within you."

I might have left it at that, but I really like rambling on about my favorite hobby, so even though I already fixed the problem in a single, concise sentence, I decided to write several more paragraphs about the subject. Sam is already talking about a lot of system things that work well in one shots, and I'm going to leave that stuff to him. Instead I'm going to focus more on my favorite topic... improvising as a game master during a one shot adventure. 

So, stretch out your eyes and open your brains, and join me on this exploration of story telling during a single session adventure.

What is a one shot?

Okay, we all know that a one shot is a single session adventure. That's not really what I mean by the question. Perhaps the better question would be, "What is this one shot?" Because there are many reasons to run a one shot adventure. You might be trying to show off a new system at a convention where you have hours and hours to play. You might be doing a demo night at a local game store, and have only two hours to fill. You might be fascinated by a new system that doesn't fit into your current line up of games, but you will end up playing it, even if it costs you your soul (Numenera, I'm looking at you. Somehow, someday). You might just be hanging out with friends and decide to sit down for some new adventures.

I ask this question first, because the purpose of the game very much determines the tone, style, and type of game you want to play. If you are working with new people that have zero table top experience, and have only two hours to sit down and play, you want to run a much simpler game than you might want to at a convention where experience gamers are looking for new experiences. Answering this question should help getting the shape of your game in mind.

The elevator pitch

Now that you know what type of game you are running, it's time to start thinking about the setting, basic plot, and rpg system that you will run. This is the elevator pitch, and will act as your north star while making decisions in game. It's important to keep this simple, and I really like using random tables for this. A great example of a random adventure idea generator is used in Lasers and Feelings, and can come up with pitches like: "Alien Brainworms bond with an ancient space ruin to fix everything."

When you are pitching your game to potential players, I recommend including the system. So my pitch would become "A Lasers and Feelings game where alien brain worms bond with an ancient space ruin to fix everything." 

Game Prep

The amount of preparation you need to put into a one shot is going to vary widely, determined by both the purpose of the game, and the system that you are running. In Lasers and Feelings, I would do maybe five minutes of preparation, and come up with a list that looks a bit like this: 

• The Alien Brain worms are the remnant of a very powerful alien empire that once ruled the entire galaxy. 
• The ancient space ruin is the lost temple, the only place that the brain worms could reproduce. At the heart of the temple is a spawning pool where water mixes with an incredibly rare element: Element Delta.
• If the Alien Brain worms get to the center of the temple and manage to reproduce, they will once again attempt to conquer the galaxy.
• Possible Moral Question: Do the players destroy the temple and billions of years of culture, or do they find a better (but harder) way to stop the brain worms?

That's it. If I was running a grittier system like Dungeons and Dragons, I would prepare three to six encounters that I thought were likely to happen. I'd come up with something interesting to put at the center of the temple (maybe an encounter waste deep in brackish water fighting some sort of mother worm, while new born birth worms try to crawl into the character's ears), and I'd come up with a couple other encounters as well. While designing the encounters, I would always look back to the elevator pitch to make sure the encounters fit the theme and mood I was going for.

It's not your story

This is the most important rule for any adventure, but doubly so for a one shot. It's so important, that it probably should have gone up higher in the post. But if you have read this far, and only take away one thing from this guest post, it's that the adventure you are going to run is not your story.

Your job as a game master is to facilitate that opportunity for your players to tell the story that they want to tell. And that may not be the story you thought you were going to run. The last time I ran Lasers and Feelings I had my elevator pitch all set up. Lasers and Feelings is never a serious system, but I guessed there was going to be some opportunity for some serious, poignant moments. I had a couple moral dilemmas that I thought were interesting and would add some flavor to the game.

But then my players sat down to make characters, and they all decided that they were space adventurers looking for the most attractive aliens. They were out to coitus where no one had ever coitused before. At first I started having a mini panic. It was one of those, "Oh God, what is happening?" moments. But then I took a deep breath and remembered that I had a pitch.

The basic pitch of the game I ran didn't change. The threat was still the same, even the consequences if the threat wasn't stopped were still the same. But you bet that the captain of a Fleet Ship was a sexy penguin captain. During this game, my players decided to team up with the bad guys, decided three quarters of the way through that the bad guys were wrong after all, and then used a time traveling device that could have destroyed the universe to travel back in time... all to warn their captain not to sleep with an alien ooze that would leave him incapacitated for months and months. The last line of the game was something like, "you step out of the time vortex just as the ooze forms a massive penetrating shape. It raises the shape to plunge into the captain's back door, when you yell, "no, captain! That alien has an ooze transmitted disease!" You just saved your captain, the best coituser of you all."

It wasn't at all the story I thought I would be telling. Even though my pitch never changed, and the threat I had prepared never changed, the entire theme and mood did. And you know what? It was one of the most exciting games I've ever played.

Obviously if you are playing with people that don't want things to get graphic, you can tell the players at the table, "hey, we're going to keep everything pg in this game." If you want, you can tell people what sort of mood you are trying to achieve, or the concepts that you want to explore. But once you start in with the introduction to the game, it isn't your game any more. It belongs to the players, and you are there to help them make the most of it they possibly can.

This point is so incredibly important in a one shot, because it seems so counter intuitive. I know tons of Dungeon Masters that think a one shot needs to be more contained than a campaign. They want to know what every scene is going to be, and have a map of the adventure that they can rely on. And you know what? That's one style of gaming. But it isn't my style, it isn't Improvisational gaming. 

If you are going to try and map everything out, I offer this, every good GM needs to be open to player input and suggestions. Remember that players might come up with ways to solve a problem you didn't expect, and remember to be open to that idea. Every GM runs into situations where they need to improv at some point, no matter how prepared they are.

So, to sum things up, remember: Why are you running the game? What is your elevator pitch? How much prep do you need? And remember that in the end, it's not your story.

I could probably ramble on for another five pages, but enough is enough. Stop reading, and go play a single session game!

The Art of the One Shot

The one shot game is a beautiful thing. When properly executed it can effectively introduce people to the hobby without asking for a time commitment from them and simultaneously scratch the itch of weekly players who want to shake things up. I like that cocktail and I'm going to try and build a system with it in mind.

So here are some loosely structured ideas for what I think a system like this would need if I wanted to use it with all of my favorite old school style modules. If this game exists already, please let me know so I can move on my life and just play that.

Character Creation
This is probably the biggest deal for a system that needs to be able to run fast, and at a moments notice. I've run games where I just go ahead and make a bunch of characters that people can inject their own flavor into but sometimes I don't have the time/want people to come up with things on their own. Plenty of old school systems have quick/randomly generate-able characters but most of them also have super weak first level characters and depend on multiple sessions to get real weird and acquire all the good for plot wild magic items.

So what I'm thinking is that character creation should not only be quick and fairly easy for newbies to jump in on, but should also be a little meatier in the cool character stuff department. I want to generate characters that have a little more experience under their belt without the headache of generating higher level characters off the bat. In order to do this I'm thinking the "class" system will be focused more on the kind of adventuring the character was doing up until now. So instead of picking "fighter" the player could roll up stats and then pick a couple of things from a list like this:

-Cool Fighting Style
-Interesting Magic Item
-Specialized Skill
-Helpful Companion
-Magic

And then maybe you end up with characters like this.

Wealth & Treasure
A one shot game doesn't give us a lot of time to acquire great deals of wealth and then figure out what to spend it on. Instead it gives us an idea of what the characters were up before the adventure started. You know, the first few paragraphs of every Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser story that gives you an idea of whether or not their rich. I'm thinking it gives you a shorthand idea of what your characters have access to, if they have patrons or if they're sort of dirt poor in a gutter. I figure the more things like this that get built into the characters the less work you do as the DM.

Experience & Leveling
We've already established that there isn't really time for a systems that rely on traditional wealth/treasure acquisition curves so Leveling XP have to either be scrapped or changed dramatically. I think there could be a system for opening a character up more as they progress through the plot, without having to consult a chart to level up. Maybe each of those special powers has like a little special power inside of it that comes into play in the 3rd act. Also I'm going to start using acts to describe the flow of the adventures for this thing because it's fairly movie like already and I'm going to pretentiously lean into it.

Death & Dismemberment & Dying
I want to avoid super low survivability, but I do want characters to be affected by the environment and conflict, so I'm thinking that dismemberment, curses, hexes and things like vampirism will definitely have prominent play here. I also want something that keeps a players attention if they DO die early on. Like, maybe they start controlling an aspect of the environment/plot/NPC or whatever.

This is a sketch. I'll break each of these down into more fleshed out posts in the coming weeks.

Free Form Magic System

So a while back I wrote up a system for magic that didn't use a predetermined spellbook, but was instead specifically designed for improvisation and creative problem solving. I'm revisiting it now because I think it would be specifically useful for one-shot games and I'm thinking about trying to build a system around that idea.

A lot of the joy I get in play is seeing people figure out a creative solution to an open ended puzzle and I wanted to make a system that allowed for that kind of game play without having to read the description of a lot of spells.

I also want avoid one of my least favorite things- seeing someones face light up at the description of a spell and then watching it fall when they find out that the spell doesn't do what they thought it did.

The system itself emphasizes things like casting time, avoiding interruption while casting and spell components that definitely read as "fairy tale". Things like objects of sentimental value make for great spell components and tend to add some serious fuckin' whimsy to your table.

This is obviously a work in progress, but I think it could be really fun with the right type of people (fun people).

Spells - Instead of a list of specific spells. Spells are broken into families and after that, you get to make up your own awesome spells (with some give and take with the DM of course). I’m thinking you start with the ability to cast from 1 or 2 of the schools, and learn more along the way.

1. Evocation - Channeling magic to cause harm or damage.
2. Abjuration - Channeling magic as a shield
3. Enchantment - Imbuing an object with magic
4. Transmutation - Changing something into something else
5. Conjuration - Creating something from thin air
6. Illusion - Creating something that isn’t real
7. Divination - Magically sensing things, that may or may not have happened already.

Casting a Spell - To cast a spell a Magic User states the intention of their spell, the DM gives it a challenge rating based on that intent and the caster states how many rounds they will take to cast the spell, and which Spell Components they will use. Each component that you use to cast a spell adds to your dice pool (d6′s)

To successfully cast a spell the total of all the dice must match the challenge level of the spell (determined by the DM) The challenge level also corresponds to the damage, size, duration or overall quality of a spell, measured loosely and colloquially for the benefit of all involved.

Cantrip - A spell with no measurable benefit. These spells are used mainly for looking cool or showing off. No rolls are necessary.

Apprentice Spell - DC 6. d4+mods. Smaller than a breadbox. 1/5 senses. Less than an hour. Less than a hundred feet.

Journeyman Spell - DC 9. d6+mods. Smaller than a Golden Retriever. 2/5 Senses. A few hours. A few hundred feet.

Adept Spell - DC 12. 2d6+mods. Smaller than a refrigerator. 3/5 Senses. A day. A Mile.

Master Spell - DC 15. 3d6+mods. Smaller than an elephant. 4/5 Senses. A week. 6 Miles.

Failure: Spells are fickle and dangerous. Failing to cast a spell correctly, or failing to finish the spell casting lead to unfortunate consequences.

If a spell is completed but fails the check it is unsuccessful (duh). After you unsuccessfully cast a spell you roll to see if something bad happens. Roll a d6, on a 1 or 2 something bad happens (DMs choice).

If a spell is interrupted, a d6 is rolled and on a 1 or 2 and the spell deals damage to the caster equivalent to the spells strength.

Spell Components: Spells require at least one of the following to succeed. Using more than one of the components increases the chance the spell will succeed.

Verbal - Words or phrases used to create magical effect. 1d6 per round spent chanting. Any interruption in the chanting causes the spell to fail.

Somatic - Gestures or motions that create magical effect. 1d6 per round spent gesturing. Any interruption to gesturing causes the spell to fail.

Material - Reagents used to amplify the strength of a spell. Materials are rated by how many d6 they can add to spell casting. Materials can range from things like herbs or bones to objects of sentimental value. Material components must be used in conjunction with Verbal or Somatic components to achieve any results. 

There's A Dragon at the End of This Post

Lots of ideas this week so I'm going to try and sort them out.

-Mute wrote a good piece about who gets to hear what info around the table, which is something I've often weighed the options on.

-You can now get a really nice set of pixel hex tiles for Hex Kit. This is literally everything I've ever wanted.  doesn't that just make you want to throw it all away and upload your consciousness into an SNES?

I'm still trucking away at my 5e game and there should be a play report from my 3rd session soon (I know you're on the edge of your seat). I'm getting increasingly frustrated with 5e in regard to information design and unnecessary complexity. I'm thinking of taking another crack at system design, because it's 2018 and what would we need if not another fucking TTRPG system. Don't worry I have no plans to kickstart it or anything like that. If it ever happens I'll just release it for fun, since I'm making it for my own sick machinations.

With that in mind I'm going to start collecting some of the old posts from my tumblr that might be relevant to this and start posting them here. I've been meaning to move them over anyway.

Time to get back to work. Here's the latest from a super secret project.

The Giants

Few predate the giants, for they are older than than the sun, and know how to exist in any form free of warming fire or prisons of flesh. They are form and they are memory and they're knowledge of us is terrifying in its unerring accuracy.

-Some lunatic at the end of the bar 

The giants might be gods. But if they are then they don't exhibit the cloying and parental tendencies that many a narcissistic deity unloads on their worshippers like so much Thanksgiving family drama- it's like we get that you're older than all things, stop making it our problem. They have acquired many worshippers over the years, all whom they have ignored. In the eyes of a giant, the act of subjugation is unpleasant.

Why would you kneel when you could walk away? Why would you walk away when you could sit?

It's these kind of sayings that bring people to their knees in the first place, confounded by the size of the creatures and the seemingly profound natures of the aphorisms they are unable to help themselves and want to follow these monolithic beings to the ends of the earth.

Tianhua Xu

The truth of it is, giants are so old and have seen so many things, that all they can do is spout pithy universal truths. They can also usually tell you where things are, how long they have been there, or why they aren't there anymore.

Some believe that giants come from the mountains because they come and go from heaven as they please. Others believe that they simply have no home and wander the world in search of someone who isn't impressed by them.

Session 1: Hangovers & Hard Times

Quick you better stop reading if you don't like actual play recaps.

Prologue

No one is sure how it started. Everyone wishes it would end. The world is in shambles. The countryside is lousy with monsters, the cities are rife with corruption. The wizards pull all the strings. They control every port and every army, warping them to meet their strange and incalculable needs. The play at war like chess, each piece as valuable or disposable as the game dictates. It is tiresome and it is costly to all involved.

Never the less people attempt to live their lives in this madness, withstanding the corruption and oppression. The people have taken their protection and well being into their own hands. Companies of brave (or possibly stupid) able-bodied youth do their best to stave off the darkness. You are a part of one such company, located in a small town a few days ride from the city. The area is dangerous and it's your job to make it safe- or everyone dies, in which case they probably get brought back as some sort of terrible skeleton foot soldier by a wizard looking for cheap soldiers that don't need to eat.
So try not to fuck up.

Session 1: Hangovers & Hard Times

The story begins with a bunch of sad and hungover adventurers who had met the night before and partied far too hard at The Lonely Goat, a tavern owned by a young woman named Connie Hatchets.

Say hi Connie. Art by Guillaume Singelin

They all stare at Connie as she relates to them the bad news, the food order didn't come so there's nothing to eat for breakfast. She tells them that if they go to the farm nearby to check it out and make sure that the delivery wasn't waylaid by bandits or anything she'll let them off the hook about the astronomical bar tab they racked up the night before. So in order to keep from spending the day hungover and washing dishes-

Kenje Sandersong - Dwarf Rogue
Ovaria Blüdcunt - Dark Elf Warlock
Clubion Stieve - Tiefling Druid
and Fern - Human Alchemist

Set out on the road to see what's amiss at the farm. They decide to take the main road to save time and notice a fight happening between a Knight of the Realm and three scrappy looking characters, but decide to keep their heads down and move along, too hungover and hungry to think about anyone else's problems. They see no signs of a cart the whole way,

Oh no.

They arrive at the farm and find it strangely quiet. They make their way into the barnyard and find the cart, completely unladen. They open the barn door to find some strange creatures feasting on the remains of a dead pig. The creatures hear them and charge. When they finally get into the sunlight they are revealed to be five child sized, mutant turnips with terrible circular mouths and rows of sharp teeth.

They fling themselves onto the party, who defend themselves admirably, I'll save you most of the details of combat but we did learn that Ovaria's breasts were literal spiders*, not just tattooed to look like spiders like we had all assumed when she said "I've got spider tits" so we decided that in the Underdark, it's fashionable to use real, lets say schnauzer sized spiders as a form of breast augmentation and that just sort of chill on your chest. We figured out Victoria's Secret and it's very unsettling.

After the fight Kenje, Ovaria and Fern succumb to their hunger and eat some of the dead mutant turnips. They all agree that it's pretty fucked up but they taste delicious and their too hungover to care.

After taking a short rest and feasting on their vanquished foes, they set off towards the farmhouse to see if anyone living their is still, like, living. They find an old woman on the porch, partially transformed into a rutabaga. Clubion uses speak to plants to communicate with her and finds out that something strange fell from the sky about a week ago and now all the vegetables have come to life and are building something out in the north field and that anyone who at the vegetables in the last week has been mutated into one. This of course worries the party because they just had like a crazy smorgasbord with a bunch of dead mutant vegetables. They roll saves to see if their effected by it and both Ovaria and Fern realize that their hair and in Fern's case, his beard have become green and leafy.

The party decides to check out the north field and sees that the vegetables are all assembling some kind of crazy golem out of their own sacrificed bodies, and the party agrees that they need to burn it all down. They make their way back to the farm to get some barrels of accelerant and run into a couple of mutant onions riding goats flanking what can only be described as "Like Dolf Lundgren but it's a carrot"

This fight was a tough one, mostly because of how 5e handles weapon types and damage resistances. But thank god Kenje had an axe so they came out on top. They went back to the farmhouse, grabbed some barrels of oil out of the root cellar and managed to sneak back out to the golem, douse it in oil and set it on fire. It burned up real good and we called it quits for the night.

*Kavi, who plays Ovaria, has never played D&D before and may I say, is FUCKING NAILING IT.

Thirsty Thursday is What Some People Call Thursdays

I'm still getting a hang of regular blogging. I tried it 5 or 6 years ago when I felt like I had lurked around G+ long enough to get a feel for what was going on, but it didn't really work out and I wasn't running games at the time so I wasn't really inspired to do it a lot. I'll probably repost some of those pieces when I'm having an off week here, but I'll reconcile with how I feel about that when it's coming across the plate.

I think Thursdays are going to be my day to organize my thoughts in what will certainly be an incoherent manner. So let's start with that.

-Mute Banshee started a blog. I'm excited to see what she writes about, because she has a lot of good ideas. I always do my best work when I have friends that are working around me and I don't think I'm alone in that.

-I just finished drawings for a project that I'm pretty excited about. I'm not going to name drop anything because I don't know how they feel about me blabbing about their stuff before it's ready but I'll at least post a few images from it because I'm really excited about them.

This first one in particular might be my favorite thing I've ever drawn for a game. I've been experimenting with paintbrushes in photoshop and trying to extract myself from the style I had grown really comfortable in. It's not that I feel like I was making bad work I was just making work that didn't feel very true to what I wanted to be making, dig?

I found that if I treated photoshop less like photoshop and more like a piece of paper I got a much better result. This piece was made in a single layer and the only* brush I used was "creamy" from Kyle's Brush Pack. I highly recommend his brushes for anyone because they rule and theres something there for everyone.

I definitely based the creature off of a combination of Displacer Beasts and The Andalites from Animorphs. God I loved those books.

androgynous blue centaur with bug features
wonderland.

This image has been burned into my head for 20 years and I still think it's totally awesome. Unfortunately I couldn't find a decent version of the whole thing that would link correctly so just go and find yourself a copy of "The Hork Bajir Chronicles" and flip it over, I promise it's worth it.

I spent a lot of time thinking about digital painting while I was making these. I was being rubbed the wrong way because every time I made something all I could think is "Why didn't I just do this on paper?" The answer to that is of course that this is a lot faster, I'm better at it and it's infinitely cheaper since I have all the necessary supplies and they are never depleted. What it comes down to is that making art for games is at this point about half of my income and anything that makes me able to do that faster and better is fair game. It's not my fault that first world millennials have a boner for authenticity, it's because everything is made of plastic and we aren't being chased by anything hungry anymore.

So this is the Wolf Queen, I based her on Cher from the movie Moonstruck. I would also be a filthy liar if I didn't say my well has been poisoned (in a good way) by staring at Maze of the Blue Medusa everyday, I can't deny my influences and you can't make art in a vacuum (or with one if you ask me) Okay maybe that's a low blow the vacuum solo is kind of cool.

SNAP OUT OF IT!

Design Is Like A Bad Kid

So the character sheet I designed was put up on reddit and is currently sitting near the top of r/rpg. I'm really pleased with this specifically because I know that people will be honest on Reddit. This give me both the opportunity to see what could use some work with it and what asinine opinions a large subset of nerds has.

Design is weird because it's like art in that I spend a lot of time on it when I'm making it and it puts me in a similar trance but it's also unlike art because it serves a more specific functional purpose. Illustration should be evocative and help contribute to the tone of the project but within that theres a lot of creative freedom. Design can just be wrong, it can point you in the wrong direction and cause you to fall off a cliff and it doesn't really matter the font of the writing on the sign in that scenario- although I suppose you could argue that you shouldn't be following signs that are written in papyrus in the first place.

An important lesson I learned in art school is that critiques are better if people have been drinking. It opens people up. On the internet you don't need alcohol because everyone's an asshole already. Which is good, especially when you need feedback like "does this work at all" (I think the sheet mostly works, it could use some tweaks).

As long as you remember that people are looking at everything through their own shitty glasses. I try to think about what people say about a piece of design from the perspective of "how are they going to try and use this" and "what did they think I was trying to make it for." If their critique doesn't survive that blockade then it probably wasn't worthwhile to your design.

Oh yeah the title. Design is like a bad kid because you may love it but it also might kind of suck and it's up to you whether or not you fix that.

Like Sunscreen but Indoors and Different

Putting the finishing touches on my multi system GM screen. It's a mix of rules from LoTFP, B/X, 5e and lots of old Heavy Metal magazines. I considered making separate ones for different systems but I don't think that's really in keeping with how much work I'm willing to put in here.

The things I always find myself needing are really just Conditions and Death & Dismemberment tables. 

I guess I really just like the idea of having a literal 4th wall in play. I get to crawl over the edge of it all Gollum style when I'm roleplaying as a goblin and that brings me joy.

player side 

my side

Redesigning The 5th Edition Character Sheet

My recent forays into character creation in 5th edition have inspired me to do some information rearranging. I'm particularly inspired by the way that the LoTFP players handbook lays out the character sheet with what everything means. It's a helpful addition for new players and I don't know why it hasn't been more widely adapted.

It inspired me at first to do something similar with the 5e sheet. Which takes it a bit farther and just says what everything is. Which I know is something I frequently take for granted. It's amazing how many people don't know or care what hit dice are.

At first I was like, PERFECT. I'll just pass this around the table when people are making characters and everything will be good. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that it's still pretty confusing. I think this stems from the fact that the way that the PHB and the character sheet weren't really designed as a set, or at least it doesn't feel that way.

click to make it bigger

I decided to take it upon myself to do something that I know has been talked about a lot. A character sheet for 5e that teaches you how to make a character RIGHT ON THE SHEET.

This is a tall order- there's a lot of shit on this sheet and it's organized in such a way that it all fits all nice and neat on (mostly) 1 piece of copy paper (Why the fuck is there no spell save/spell attack portion on this sheet it's like the only thing missing).

So I decided to at least take a swing at sheet that has everything (mostly) that you need to make a level 1 character. It's definitely still going to take a more experienced person to run you through it but I think at least it all goes in the right order and has labels for where to find everything in the PHB.

Here's the link to download for yourself. Enjoy!
And if you can make it better, please do.

Building A Setting Without Trying Too Hard

The main reason I chose to run 5th Edition for my most recent game is laziness. The depth and crunch of a 5e character is enough that by the time you've made 4 of them, you have a world emerging through the blank spaces of a character sheet and all you had to do is say yes.

I don't care what the elves should be like, I'm going to have fun no matter what because I'm playing Dungeons & Dragons and not doing my taxes. Do you know who does care what the elves are like? The person that thumbed through the book and saw a cool drawing of an elf and said "I wanna be THEM". They have a very clear idea of what the elves should be like and I guarantee you that if you let them decide they will not only be better at playing that elf but they will do work for you. They will populate cities and create nemesis' and fill your world with all sorts of great crap that you won't have to think about because THEY will know it, and they will feel like they exist in it.

Those of us that run games and spend our free time talking about and making games are smoking way harder stuff than those that just come around and throw dice a couple times a month. Don't let the fact that you spend your time reimagining the finer points of dwarves take away the joy of someone who just wants to do a Scottish accent and talk about binge drinking and beards. They had a long week and this is their day off.

When you think about what makes an enjoyable evening of gaming what comes to mind? Is it the specifics of what happened in the campaign? Or was it the fact that everyone was paying attention and cracking jokes and getting in character, and that for a few hours no one was looking at their phone or talking about how shitty everything outside their front door is. The stories people remember are not the most original but the best told. The games people remember fondly are the ones with good jokes and good snacks and no arguments about attacks of opportunity. 

Considering all of this the world building I did before I started this game was one sentence: 

"The wizards have been at war for over 500 years, and everything about it sucks." 

5e Character Creation And Cellular Telephones.

Okay so I started a new 5e game.

Why did I do this? I usually run LoTFP, which is cool because I'm usually running a dungeon crawl. I find this is my preferred setting when I have a specific set piece in mind, like a megadungeon or something similarly big and set-piecey. But between listening to the Adventure Zone and re-reading I Roved Out (NSFW)  I was really in the mood for that new school, player character based adventure vibe. Sometimes it's nice to let the players be in charge of what the world turns out like.

So I gathered my gaming group together and had a character creation session. I like doing a session 0 type night. It lets me gauge a few things, like who actually shows up, regardless of facebook invitations, and it gives me a solid idea of where everyone is at experience wise. We spent about 3 hours making characters for 4 people, which sounds like a long time but it actually went pretty smoothly and we were all drinking and chilling so it wasn't a HARD 3 hours.

I only have 1 copy of the PHB so I instructed everyone to use the D&D Beyond character builder. Which was kind of a mixed bag in terms of usefulness. WoTC proves to again and again create things that are supposed to be for "new" folks but are complicated enough that I have to take your phone and click through a screen of sliders that say things like "use standard encumbrance rules" before you feel comfortable making choices. I don't know the last time you played with new people but that's exactly the kind of shit that sends folks running to the hills.

On the positive side the site does all the math for you, on the negative side it's composed of approximately 999 dropdown menus. Why so many dropdown menus? Why does it let you skip over making a background? Shouldn't it at least say "Do you want a background?" I feel like it should be hard to skip past that. I'm honestly not sure how she managed to skip past that.

So after double checking everything that people were making I had them copy all of that information on to a paper sheet because I'll be damned if everyone is going to be staring at their phones while I DM. I may be a millennial but that shit is rude.

All in all it worked out, and the party of

Kenje Sandersong, Dwarf Rogue (based on a real life local handyman that some of us knew RIP)
Clubion Stieve, Tiefling Druid (Who's demonic bloodline is evil tree)
Ovaria Blüdcunt, Drow Warlock (the name really says it all) and
Vorodor Twitchel, Human Fighter (who I'm pretty sure chose that name because you have to make a Twitch account to use DndBeyond)

Was born. Can we talk about how new people make the best fucking names? I want 100 pages of Ovaria Blüdcunt OC fanfictions stat. She's a Warlock of Lilith and my least experienced player. The minute she found out about R.A Salvatore's take on Drow women she had like a whole bit locked and loaded.

I hold fast by the rule of "never play D&D with someone you wouldn't go on a 3 hour car trip with" and It's steered me right so far.

As far as D&D Beyond goes I'll use it for looking up spells and monster stats (never bothered to by a $50 fucking monster manual and between the basic set monster and homebrew tools why would I now), but I think I need to find a more organized way to do the character creation.

Terrible First Post, Complete With Goals & Expectations

I've tried blogging before with varying degrees of success.

I think the key is that it needs to be out of the necessity of compiling information for myself and not based in the enjoyment of others, so I'm starting this one in hopes that I can make something useful for myself and if that becomes useful for you then all the better.

I tried using Tumblr the longest, and garnered some small success therein but the problem with Tumblr is that even when you have over 2000 followers, it feels like half of them are always porn bots and from the other half at least 40% are literal children- not a great split.

I'm not trying to complain. I feel very grateful that folks wanted to look at my art. The real problem was that I felt like I was making art FOR Tumblr, and in doing so I wasn't being true to what I wanted to be making, I got really wrapped up in analyzing what got me the most reblogs, and I don't like the idea that there was a large faceless group of people that were influencing me with taciturn praise.

Also, Tumblr doesn't pay you to worry about these things.

So here I am. Trying something new in the hope that I can find a little more enjoyment from the act of writing words and sharing images.

This blog will focus on fantasy tabletop gaming. I just started running a new 5th edition campaign so I imagine much of my writing will focus on the setting I'm making and the ways in which I plan to bend the rules of that game to fit my ever changing mood.

I also run a fair amount of LoTFP and other retroclone type games.

I'll probably consolidate some of writing I tried to do on Tumblr here as well, in case I decide to delete my old blog in a misguided drunken attempt of self immolation.

I make about half of my money drawing for games so expect a fair amount of artwork as well.

More to come. Keep your pants on.