We were playing blades in the dark, they were sneaking into the back of a warehouse to steal some blood while the rest of the party made a distraction out front, the dog was right there and he didn't think he'd be able to sneak past it. He could have stabbed it but chose not to I guess. Maybe he thought that would be more cruel?
I love my players
Comic creator link: https://bsky.app/profile/sarahcandersen.bsky.social
In my last session, a player gave a sleeping dog heroin to cause it to overdose. Horrific stuff really
My players aren't murder hobos, but the tavern is in a bad part of town and suddenly has a bunch of magic items
My players want a sending stone each, what do?
Early on in my current campaign my players were sent on a quest by a wizard friend of theirs, he gave them a sending stone so he could keep in contact with them. After that quest ended my players got a nice big downtime, 1 month. One of my players, who owns a tavern, asked to dedicate that downtime to finding some more sending stones, one for each player and the pairs to be held by the barkeep NPC she employs. I rolled on the tables in XGtE and got a price that they could afford.
Are there any unforeseen downsides in letting them spend all their money on sending stones? I know this effectively gives them party wide telekinesis but since they're using this NPC as a telephone switchboard (literally how they pitched the idea) I can reserve the right to say he's busy and can't forward their messages.
I decided to give them the stones and then ran a session, they got separated for a few minutes and spent most of it talking through that npc to each other instead of trying to solve the problem that separated them. They've implemented a rule that he needs to write down what they say and relay the message exactly. 10/10 it was quite funny. Try doing this with your players.
That was how it worked in the playtest. The sidebar saying "pick a race you really are and pretend to be half the other race" is gone from the 2024 PHB. Rules as written, you can only be fully one race, this of course doesn't actually matter as the whole thing is imaginary bullshit but in organised play it'll sometimes come up.
One time I was just trying to do my money laundering restocking in GTA:O (iirc it was money laundering, it was whatever business you got when the game went free on epic games) and a guy on the flying motorbike killed me for no reason and it wasted a ton of time, eventually I killed him back and he spawned in the desert in front of me so I spawn killed him until he apologized.
I'm not saying what I did was right, I did it in the heat of the moment. But man, that game is really good at making you mad at people.
Also be careful of the shield spike, the dwarf in the diagram would have just stabbed himself
Demiplane is dndbeyond for RPGs other than dnd*, currently pathfinder 2e, alien RPG, avatar legends, the 2 critical role RPGs, and some others.
*They're also adding 5th edition soon, but it's currently just the dnd 5e SRD and kobold presses Tales of the Valiant, not the full dnd 5e
Even worse, Roll20 development is not only slow, player made solutions to issues are locked behind a paywall.
Making your customers pay you a monthly subscription to fix your product for you and then charging other customers a monthly subscription to access the fixes you didn't make is a grift so insane it's bordering genius.
Roll20 Announces Purchase of Demiplane | Comicbook.com
As a hardcore roll20 hater, I'm not too happy about this. Hopefully this at least makes R20 better and demiplane won't just be killed off in 6 months.
In addition to what others have said about Loss, the text of the tweet is referring to the Long Term Nuclear Waste Warning message from the early 90s
This place is a message…and part of a system of messages…pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here…nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location…it increases towards a center…the center of danger is here…of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited
One of the packages says freedom nuggots, the other says freeedom nuggets. Neither is correct.
On the off chance that happens I'd probably give them one of the beast traits, probably one of the ones that's less useful like keen smell or web sense
This is a really good idea, I might make their laws very simplistic. I might even steal the ones from Animal Farm.
In my mind the mongrelfolk definitely won't be inherently evil. Paranoid or scared of outsiders, definitely. But they should have near-human intelligence, but slightly diminished.
Professor Moreau to me is the evil one but purely because he doesn't hold much regard for the lives of the people he has experimented on, especially in a world with polymorph magic and Druidic wildshape. Though Moreau will be helpful to the players and give them no good reason to kill him, since they're his chance to regain control of his lab.
I've been going back and forth on if Moreau will want the mongrelfolk dead, since they'd hold more scientific value to him kept alive.
I've not seen either of those but a quick search shows me that's 51 episodes of one series, 64 of another and a movie. That might be a little bit too much for the amount of prep time I have
Help me come up with some doctrine for a small society in my game.
I recently watched the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode in which they did a parody of "The Island of Dr Moreau" and thought a mad scientist trying to turn people into animals could make for a fun minor character in my campaign. My players are en route to a dungeon and should be there in a few sessions, I'm thinking of making the dungeon the lab of a mad scientist who has gotten locked out of the lower levels due to a containment breach.
The details I have so far is that he is a gnome, currently named Prof. Moreau, who has created mongrelfolk while trying to turn a human into an animal.
The mongrelfolk are safely contained in the lower levels and have started to create their own society, I think the boss of the dungeon should be a Gibbering Mouther called One, as in Attempt One.
I think the Mongrelfolk should worship one as their leader and hate Moreau for keeping them locked in the lab.
What I'm stuck on now is what life is like for the mongrelfolk, what they believe and how they have organised society.
That's almost 100 whole sessions. It's honestly too long of you ask me.
The only actual play I've ever actually found myself enjoying is oxventure, they're not the best example of a proper actual play though since they usually don't follow the rules too closely and are more of a fantasy improv group vaguely using 5e rules, sometimes blades in the dark or SWADE Deadlands.
Although I've only started listening fairly recently and haven't gotten up to the Deadlands stuff yet.
I'm using flee mortals for my current campaign wherever possible, I have a werewolf quest planned, which isn't in FM. Though I might pivot to a basilisk hunt.
help me figure out a way help my players get out of the mess they're in without ruining their fun.
last post linked here: https://lemmy.world/post/15519782
First of all, thanks for all of the advice on the last post. You all definitely got the gears turning for me. I just had the session and wanted to make an update post on how it went.
I started the session off with the players moved into a cell and restrained. the core members of the cult remained behind to deal with the issue while the majority of the cult left to get set up somewhere else. meanwhile Sorcerer arrived at Clerics tavern and told the barkeep, who grabbed some weapons and some roughnecks and headed to the cults hideout with Sorcerer. The cult pumped the party for information, using a zone of truth spell (whole party beat the save DC so the cult got no useful information out of this, except one player let slip the name of Sorcerer). The cult then decided to sacrifice these party members which took some time because its a whole ritual. Just as they finished the Sorcerer showed up, interrupting the sacrificial ceremony. A fight broke out, Druid and Rogue managed to slip their bonds and Cleric was freed by the barkeep who also dropped a bag of weapons so everyone was armed. Temporarily outgunned, the core cult members made an escape, leaving behind a few clues explaining their master plan. the party is now firmly in control of the situation with the villains having to bide their time and regroup while the party looks for a macguffin that should spoil their plans. (now to decide what that macguffin is...)
this isn't going to become a campaign diary or anything, I just wanted to say thanks again to everyone for letting me leech your ideas.
Their plan is twofold, firstly they are in service to a lich tried to take over the multiverse and got Strahd'd into a domain of dread and wants out. They sacrifice souls to him. Secondly, they're necromancers and are trying to create an army of undead for him to lead when he gets back to the material plane. The players aren't aware of this yet but I'm trying to put that information in front of them
help me figure out a way help my players get out of the mess they're in without ruining their fun.
The following all happens in a town and the nearby surrounding area.
So my party, hereby referred to as their classes are currently third level and have infiltrated a cults hideout, they went there looking for Rogues friend and snuck in with disguises and managed to bluff their way into where the friend was being held. She was in a holding cell. After some deliberation they devised a plan to cast silent image and sneak her out, they couldn't manage to pick the lock and Cleric smashed the door in, this was heard by nearby cultists and they decided to just make a break for it. The cult massively outnumbered them and the party got surrounded. Sorcerer, who is an Aasimar and can fly at 3rd level, flew past everyone and escaped while the rest of the party surrendered. We ended the session there and Sorcerer told me after the session that they plan to go to Cleric's tavern to get the barkeep and any tough looking patrons to form a quick mob.
The conundrum here is that I can't think of a good reason for these cultists to not just kill the party aside from that's not fun. The cult is aware that one of them escaped is probably going to bring the law down on them, so they'll also want to leave. If I was them (and in a way I am) I'd probably kill the witnesses and bail.
Any advice?
This has been happening for years. Shadow of war (2017) had orcs in loot boxes, every assassin's creed since, and including, black flag (2013) has had microtransactions in some form, odyssey (the last one I've personally played) had a rotating cash shop in every city. I know it's another Ubisoft game but farcry 5 had cosmetic microtransactions in a game that is permanently in first person. You could only see your outfit on the change outfit screen. This comment isn't meant to come across as antagonistic but I do find it strange to be warning about a slippery slope when we've all been riding the toboggan for years.
They have their branding which will push people to use their platform. More people using their platform = more content coming from threads. Once they have enough posts from threads that people from other instances are used to seeing mostly threads content they'll defederate. People will miss the volume of posts and then move to threads.
Just don't do that lol, let them do wacky hijinks, or play a system without the wacky hijinks
looking for tips for running exploration
Hey everyone, I'm looking for any tips or advice with running exploration, as a recent example my players recently came across an abandoned ship and decided to climb aboard and look for any treasures that were left behind. They went room to room and I made an effort to describe each room in detail but the whole process felt very drawn out and repetitive. Especially if there's no special encounter in that room.