So I’m currently working on writing a Lv20 5e one-shot campaign against a Tarrasque for my friends. Thing is, they’re not allowed to see the stat block for it, and thus, are going in entirely blind to what the monster can do.
If you haven’t seen the absolute fucking absurdity that is the Tarrasque, allow me to introduce you!
The Tarrasque is an impossible creature in literally every way! It’s immune to:
Nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, slashing
Being charmed, paralyzed, poisoned, and frightened
All fire, and poison
So essentially, every normal weapon from the game is ENTIRELY useless against it! Furthermore, the majority of damaging spells are also useless!
But that’s only the beginning. This fucker can do so much more, including:
5 attacks per round, each with +19 to hit, dealing anywhere from 4d6+10 to 4d12+10 damage per attack
Frighten unlimited creatures in a 120 foot radius (which is the limit for most ranged weapons and spells, so they’re useless unless the caster/user is within this range), and prevent them from attacking for a full minute
Must roll 17 or higher on a wisdom save to surpass this
Swallow someone and cause 16d6 damage per round while grappling and blinding them
To escape, they must somehow deal 60 damage in one turn from inside in order to possibly be regurgitated, and then they’re knocked prone, unable to move or attack until next round
So that’s it for terrifying attacks, BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!!! The Tarrasque can take 3 of these actions per round of attack:
Attack with the tail or horns (4d8+10 or 4d10+10 depending on which you choose)
Swallow someone
Move 20 feet
But perhaps the worst, and most insane part of the Tarrasque, is its utterly fucking insane abilities:
3 times per day, the Tarrasque can just… choose not to fail a saving throw
If someone attacks with a Magic Missile, ranged attack spell, or line spell, you roll 1d6
1-5=Unaffected
6=Unaffected, and the effects are reflected back at the caster instead
The Tarrasque has advantage on all spell saves
Essentially, there’s almost NOTHING in the game which can hit this motherfucker, damage it, or even fight it successfully. Entire parties of Lv20 characters have tried and failed many times to defeat the Tarrasque, but I’m personally aiming for my party to be able to win! I’ve got rules set up for them hopefully enabling this, but it really depends on how well they’ll play their characters against this bastard.
I made a special cake for my online D&D group when we met up in person for the first time today for a game. The characters are: Freya, Hyrax, Milles, Evanora, Dave, Athuzula.
I play Hyrax and my friend plays Milles, and Hyrax has a thing for Milles which we always jokingly poke at each other for (it’s on totally mutual terms). When we cut into the cake, I got the slice with Milles’s piece and told him, “Hey dude, I’m eating Milles!”
“Enjoy. It’s the only chance you’ll get to!” he replied.
I fucking DIED laughing at this. Great session, almost a tpk after like a year playing this campaign, but it was worth it. We made it, and… we realize every character in the party desperately needs a group therapy session, so I guess that’ll be our next game! Especially what with Milles being, AGAIN, banished to an unreachable realm on death saving throws, just barely escaping by the skin of his teeth.
A thought that arises from the idea of tiefling babies often ending up being abandoned: A rich tiefling adventurer retiring and starting up a tiefling orphanage that takes care of rejected tiefling babies and children.
A thought that arises from the idea of a tiefling orphanage: the rich tiefling adventurer regretting his initiative of filling a mansion with dozens of little devils that all can cast Thaumaturgy. At will.
Oh Boy. :’D
Personally I headcanon that tiefling magic starts to manifest around puberty, but if that wasn’t the case, they’d just have to suck it up and tiefling baby-proof the hell out of the place. B) Have no vases and stuff that might fall over and break during tremors. Have sturdy furniture. Lock doors and windows. Avoid having open flames around. Shove cotton or something into your ears.
Oh yeah, and some of the babies might in that case be able to cast friends,minor illusion,ray of frost, or mage hand. Could result in chaos…
My next one shot is definitely going to be “A party of tiefling babies escape from the orphanage (to go to the candy shop)”
sorry to hijack this post but i’ve been drinking coffee and had ideas for how to actually bring this to life so:
BABY TIEF HEIST ONESHOT
PLAYER RULES
You are all tiefling toddlers, each pick a different subrace
All your stats are 10, then apply your racial boosts.
you have 4 hp (5 if you have the con boost) if you reach zero, you are unconscious.
Your only abilities are your racial traits.
You have broken out of the orphanage with no money, and seek a treasure trove of candy from the store.
How you retrieve this candy, without being apprehended, is up to you.
DM RULES
Any environmental or effect that could potentially hurt a toddler will only deal 1 hp of damage.
The candy store functions as a dungeon:
the shopkeep is a final boss (objectively has 5 hp if they go the combat route, however, this would only cause him to fall unconcious— there will be no toddler murder.)
other patrons are to be befriended or avoided.
Any creature that is not considered Charmed by the toddlers, whether by magic or exceptional persuasion checks and baby tief cuteness, will report any thievery they see.
Environmental hazards can include
gumballs on the floor
getting distracted by a cute kitty or dog
the candy is on the top shelf!!! just out of reach!
To reach your goal:
you must steal a pound of candy for each player character. you may also steal excess to aid you in your heist just be careful how much you use.
Candy
Lollipops: if you consume a lollipop you can regain 2 hp. (5 lollipops = pound, you may grab 3 at once)
Gumballs: gumballs can be spilled on the floor, functioning like a bag of ball bearings. (20 gumballs = a pound, using gumballs wastes half a pound, you may grab 5 gumballs at once)
Chocolate: Invokes Sugar Rush. (2 chocolate = a pound, you may grab 1 at once, 1 chocolate = one sugar rush)
Sugar Rush gives you advantage on all strength and dexterity checks for five minutes (since initiative hopefully will not be a factor, if it is invoked in a combat situation, the duration is 1 minute), however after, you must make a DC: 15 con save to avoid falling asleep for a post-sugar nap.
You may design your candy store as you will for maximum chaos
roll a d10 + 1 for the number of potential patrons within.
those are just a few small things i thought of for how to run this oneshot for maximum cuteness, creativity and chaos!
We’ve hit the first stretch goal! Now the previously planned portrait miniatures representing different classes will all be paired.
We already have the first pendant - the very handsome aristocrat pictured above! I cannot wait to see what @suburbanbeatnik comes up with for the other four.
If you haven’t joined in on the Kickstarter for Dandies & Dandyzettesyet,it’s right here! The book will be available in a bunch of different formats and different price points, so it works for any budget.
The next stretch goal, which we’ll be reaching soon, will be a detail map of the city of Bath to facilitate games or stories set there. Can’t wait!
I explained something about Dandies & Dandyzettes yesterday on Twitter, and I thought I should explain it here as well.
The title card says “Roleplaying Game”, and it is a roleplaying game, but I want to stress that the emphasis is on “roleplaying” more than “game”. If you’re not into very complicated game mechanics or competing for a win, this will be a great game for you! I have some instructions for using dice to determine success, character traits, action, romance, and so on, but they’re totally optional.
It does open with a very gamey directive - you need to choose a theme so that everyone’s on the same page as to the story that’s going to collaboratively unroll. Austen, Heyer, Bronte, Wollstonecraft,* Clarke … the information that you’re going to need will depend on the type of story you’re telling and where you set it. So 95% (or more) of the book is an in-depth guide to English life, politics, and culture in the 1810s.
So it goes into:
The nuances of the class system, including not just how aristocratic titles work but the relative social standing of different professions and the rank systems within the military and clergy
The details of different neighborhoods/parishes of London at the time, whether fashionable, middle-class, or working-class
How pre-decimal currency worked (bizarrely, I’ll tell you that for free)
The rules of attending court, the etiquette of the ballroom, and the code of dueling - and in all three cases, more of the culture surrounding these than just “be announced and bow to the king,” “ladies may decline a request to dance but not ask a man,” and so on
How local authorities dealt with crime, and what exactly “quarter sessions” and “assizes” are
and a whole lot more!
And as a result, it works equally well as a guide to the period for anyone who wants to write a novel set in the Regency. It’s multi-purpose!
While the history is in some cases given in brief (there’s a large appendix with further reading at the end for anyone who wants to learn more about the press, Brighton, Catholic emancipation, the Black population of the time, etc.), it isn’t sensationalized or simplified for gaming purposes. GMs and players can decide to simplify or ignore some of the history, as can authors, but it is up to them to choose what to include and what not to! If you like the information about how holidays affected hiring and renting but want divorces to be easier to get, go ahead with that. If you want divorce to still be a complicated and difficult process but want to ignore the rules of paying calls on your entry into a neighborhood, that’s easily done (as long as everyone else in the game is aware, of course).
* Mary Wollstonecraft was not advocating for complete gender equality so this isn’t quite accurate, but her name seemed like the best choice for a theme where you tell all gender roles to suck it
Yes, I hand painted them. Yes, seriously. The crane too.
Sorry the post is long, I wanted to capture all the details.
[Image description: Eight photos of a handmade eight piece set of RPG dice with a small matching resin origami crane beside it. The set is patterned with a blue and white floral design, similar to a fine china glassware design, and is inked in gold. The set includes the standard seven dice, along with a d2 coin with a crane design set into the one of the faces, with a 1 set on the other face. End description.]
[ Image I.D : An Illustration of a colorful anthropomorphic lizard woman, Rose, standing proudly while holding a kite shield and the handle tip of a large battle hammer, the head of which’s maul is resting on the ground by her feet. Rose is a tall athletic anthro lizard person, with asymmetrical horns, a main of black and white feathers that starts from her forehead and trails down her back to the tip of her tail, and has several spines coming out of her head. Her scales have an axanthic pattern. She is wearing a leather jacket with small metal plaits on the chest and arms and a set of pauldrons with her discarded spines poking out of them. She has peacock feather extensions coming down from her head over her left shoulder. Her belts are decorated with canine teeth, furs covered in pigment, feathers and a religious talisman. Her shield portrays a peacock in worn paint that is chipping away. Her hammer has a rugged ruby gem in it’s head. She has red, blue and yellow pigments smeared on various parts of her outfit and body. She has several piercings. On her face she has a crude canine skull painted on.
[ Image ID : An illustration of a Lizardfolk warrior in armor, standing with one foot resting on a small pile of rocks, holding a macuahuitl over his shoulder and a shield strapped to his other arm, resting at his waist. His armor consists of a fabric bodysuit and a woven vest that is lined in small feathers and shows off his chest that has the names of stars in draconic carved into his skin. He has a maxtlatl around his waist and greaves that have been carved to look like serpents with feather adornments at the kneecaps. He has a large turquoise necklace and a helmet fashioned to look like a serpent’s head, with large feather adornments coming out of it that falls all the way down his back. There is a prickly pear cactus behind him that is blooming and in his shadow a small lizard looking up at him. Image ID ends. ]
First come first serve! PM me here if you are interested in buying one of these designs! All payments are through PayPal.
Terms and Conditions apply and are as follows:
Buyers will pay the Artist upfront, in whole, before the Artist sends them the full resolution jpeg/png file of their purchase of their Adopt.
These Adopts are for personal use only and are not permitted for resale, commercial use or monetization.
Buyers are permitted to utilize these Adopts for any non-commercial purposes as they see fit. The Buyer is permitted to commission other artists to create additional artwork, reference sheets, costume changes, illustration, character art, etc for the Adopt they purchase.
These Adopts will not be used for N//F//T/s, cr*pto//curency or sold on a bl*ck//chain.
The Artist retains Copyright to all Adopts and is permitted to utilize them in their portfolio and in samples of their work.
The Buyer is permitted to post their Adopt where they desire except for websites that utilize bl*ck//chain and are platforms for cr*pto//currency and N/F//Ts.
I also currently have regular commissions open. Information and rates can be found here. I also have a ko-fi and a Patreon if you can’t commission me right now but still want to support me and my work.
[ Image I.D : A posting showcasing three character designs up for adoption.
The first Adopt is a priestess in a long red robe, hat and black mask with intricate holes in it. They are swinging a thurible on a chain and there is incense smoke coming from it.
The second Adopt is a halfling riding on a flying beetle. The halfling is wearing a beetle carapace as armor and holding a beetle horn as a spear.
The third Adopt is an automaton designed to look like a mermaid playing a harp. It is on an ornate stand made of stone and enamel carved to look like ocean waves. The automaton is plated in porcelain with intricate designs painted on it. It has four arms, each one plucking at the harp.
I absolutely love creating D&D characters with missing gaps and/or mysteries in their backstories that I don’t know the answer to and leaving it to my DM to create. Love getting lore drop about my characters that I didn’t know about. If you haven’t done it before, I recommend it.
Reproductive rights are fundamental and non-negotiable human rights that we must fight to protect. All proceeds from this bundle will be donated to Planned Parenthood and NNAF (National Network of Abortion Funds) so that much-needed funds will be distributed on both national and local levels and across race, gender, and economic status.
Dungeons and Dragons, like most TTRPGs is a shared experience about telling a story. The Dungeon Master (DM) sets the scene with a beginning and often has an ending in mind. How the protagonists get from point A to point Z is up to them. Railroading the players with a linear story without choices, character growth, or input from the players is rather one-sided.
We’ve hit the first stretch goal! Now the previously planned portrait miniatures representing different classes will all be paired.
We already have the first pendant - the very handsome aristocrat pictured above! I cannot wait to see what @suburbanbeatnik comes up with for the other four.
If you haven’t joined in on the Kickstarter for Dandies & Dandyzettesyet,it’s right here! The book will be available in a bunch of different formats and different price points, so it works for any budget.
The next stretch goal, which we’ll be reaching soon, will be a detail map of the city of Bath to facilitate games or stories set there. Can’t wait!
I explained something about Dandies & Dandyzettes yesterday on Twitter, and I thought I should explain it here as well.
The title card says “Roleplaying Game”, and it is a roleplaying game, but I want to stress that the emphasis is on “roleplaying” more than “game”. If you’re not into very complicated game mechanics or competing for a win, this will be a great game for you! I have some instructions for using dice to determine success, character traits, action, romance, and so on, but they’re totally optional.
It does open with a very gamey directive - you need to choose a theme so that everyone’s on the same page as to the story that’s going to collaboratively unroll. Austen, Heyer, Bronte, Wollstonecraft,* Clarke … the information that you’re going to need will depend on the type of story you’re telling and where you set it. So 95% (or more) of the book is an in-depth guide to English life, politics, and culture in the 1810s.
So it goes into:
The nuances of the class system, including not just how aristocratic titles work but the relative social standing of different professions and the rank systems within the military and clergy
The details of different neighborhoods/parishes of London at the time, whether fashionable, middle-class, or working-class
How pre-decimal currency worked (bizarrely, I’ll tell you that for free)
The rules of attending court, the etiquette of the ballroom, and the code of dueling - and in all three cases, more of the culture surrounding these than just “be announced and bow to the king,” “ladies may decline a request to dance but not ask a man,” and so on
How local authorities dealt with crime, and what exactly “quarter sessions” and “assizes” are
and a whole lot more!
And as a result, it works equally well as a guide to the period for anyone who wants to write a novel set in the Regency. It’s multi-purpose!
While the history is in some cases given in brief (there’s a large appendix with further reading at the end for anyone who wants to learn more about the press, Brighton, Catholic emancipation, the Black population of the time, etc.), it isn’t sensationalized or simplified for gaming purposes. GMs and players can decide to simplify or ignore some of the history, as can authors, but it is up to them to choose what to include and what not to! If you like the information about how holidays affected hiring and renting but want divorces to be easier to get, go ahead with that. If you want divorce to still be a complicated and difficult process but want to ignore the rules of paying calls on your entry into a neighborhood, that’s easily done (as long as everyone else in the game is aware, of course).
* Mary Wollstonecraft was not advocating for complete gender equality so this isn’t quite accurate, but her name seemed like the best choice for a theme where you tell all gender roles to suck it
These miniature portraits will be appearing in the book alongside the discussion of different social classes - aristocracy, landed gentry, military, clergy, and trade.
The Kickstarter is actually fully funded, but now we’re looking at hitting the first stretch goal to have these each paired with another of a different gender!
Here’s almost all of my artwork I did for Dandies and Dandyzettes!
some portrait tests on two new pcs for two new games! reggie’s a pirate for a rapscallion game and marta’s a witch for a wise women game. terrible disasters the both of them
[image: fanciful lettering in purple, orange and green on a black background. Text: Together We’ll Be UNSTOPPABLE. (And That’s Terrible). A Supervillain RPG by Zoe Maxine.]
So I haven’t been able to draw for a while, so what have I been working on in my spare time? A Supervillain team themed tabletop (or digital) RPG! It’s not out yet, but it’s almost a full rulebook now.
So now that I can draw, here’s a logo.
PLEASE ask me questions!
Please let me know if you’d be interested in gametesting it or know a group who’d be interested in playing it and giving feedback, too!
I took a small break from this project to shake the dust off of Sinister Hovering OrbandTo Serve (the former has been published, and the latter is now in final draft and just needs illustrations and typographic editing), but now it’s time to get back to rotating birds.
Changes in this version:
The “Playing the Game” section as been supplemented with an extended discussion of how to interpret trait symbols as a player.
“Running the Game” now opens with a discussion of the GM’s role in Rotate Bird and how it differs from the GM role in more conventional tabletop RPGs.
“Assessing Fallout” now includes examples of how the various fallout symbols might be interpreted.
“Special Challenges” now opens with a discussion of the types of circumstances that special challenge mechanics are meant to address; this update also introduces perilous tests as a complement to epictests.
“Rewards and Advancement” now actually discusses advancement!
“Variant Rules” has been promoted to its own chapter (as opposed to being a subsection of “Running the Game”), and now includes optional rules for performing multi-character combos with paired DOING traits.
“Appendix 3: Supplementary Tables” has been added; all it contains for now is a lookup table of random DOING trait themes.
At this point, the game is essentially feature-complete, albeit not content-complete; I’d like to see if I can work something out for random scene prompts to complement the random scenario generator, there’s a lot of stuff that could stand for worked examples, and obviously it needs more random tables.
As always, comments and feedback are welcome!
Ok, i promised this post to myself, and i promised this post to my players. Playtest feedback for Rotate Bird in the setting of Sunless Skies.
Iknow there’s a system for SSkies, Skyfarer, i just don’t like it for… a number of reasons (mostly its treatment of captain and my lack of understanding of how to do non-lethal combat), and don’t have enough energy to do a PbtA hack, so, Rotate Bird.
Three of four players knew and played City of Mist, so we mostly treated Being traits as CoM tags and edges as story tags; two of the players also had they character concepts ready before session zero.
These are our character sheets after first session; traits in blue had been chosen rather than rolled, traits in green had been changed as a first minor advance, and the last row isn’t a character, it’s the party’s train.
top to bottom:
The Extravagant Widower, train’s mascot and signaller, played by Earl; had his character concept ready before session zero, got to choose three of his Being traits. His Doing traits are, in order, My treat,When is mid-day tea?andThe temperature is higher than optimal by 0.02 degree Celsius.
The Mandatory Harrower, train’s quartermaster, played by Malavon; rolled all his traits, changed part of his Doing trait as first session advancement. Doing traits, in order: Exactly to the deep end and back,Careful, still waters!andPreserves for the winter.
The Harrower is the only non-human player character, he’s a devil.
The Fragmenting Widow, train’s chief engineer and captain, played by Svyat; had her character concept ready before session zero so got to choose three of her Being traits, and changed part of her Doing trait as first session advancement. Doing traits: Black Widow,Technically a pilotandTeeth collection.
The Non-Suspicious Secretary, train’s first officer, played by Kir; changed one of his Being traits as first session advancement. Doing traits: Cake is not a lie, it is being recycled,Spring cleaning,Phobia refraction.
The Delivering One, the train; Being traits rolled by the players (each rolled one), Doing trait rolled by me and named by us all. Doing trait: FULL STEAM!
The train was added as a something like a team card from CoM — its traits can be used once per session, by any player, in the context that makes sense. We haven’t yet used them, so i’m yet to see how that goes, but i can already say that it willbite me in the ass as soon as the party decides to fight another train. Welp, knew that something like this will happen.
Doing traits in our game migrated to something like social status and/or learned abilities, rather than superpowers; Widower has enough money to buy his (and party’s) way out of almost anything, Harrower is good at practical planning, Widow beats people up, and Secretary… well, Secretary currently tries to understand who is he, exactly.
The two things that i plan to do, but haven’t yet done, is disaster track for tracking damage to the train (enough failures = train is broken in some way and this isa problem) and progress track for main quest.
After the first session it mostly feels like a muppet movie, with the Secretary being the lone human; it sure is fun.
I also used random scenario tool (but without party’s input); our story is about tentative balanse of powers in the Reach, a mcgaffin that can break that balance, and people who try to run and hide. We’ll see how that goes.
The reason tabletop RPGs use polyhedral dice – in spite of them being such an unlikely thing to have on hand in the pre-gaming-store era, and rare even in the roleplaying hobby’s tabletop wargame predecessors – is because there just happened to be an educational supply store where they could easily be sourced near where the designers of Dungeons & Dragonslived.
The reason that D&D dragons are colour-coded is because the game pre-dates the widespread availability of fantasy minifigs, so they represented dragons using plastic dinosaurs from the local five-and-dime, and those are just the colours that the plastic dinosaurs used to represent each type of dragon happened to be.
The reason that iconic D&D monsters like the bulette, the owlbear and the rust monster exist is because one day, a bunch of bootleg Ultraman kaiju figurines just happened to be mixed in with the plastic dinosaurs, and – being unfamiliar with Ultraman, and the bootlegs in question being almost unrecognisably shitty anyway – they statted up what they thought the figurines looked like.
Sometimes I wonder what the history of the tabletop roleplaying hobby would have looked like if any of those coincidences had lined up just a little bit differently.
Art and design challenge, everyone:
Find the cheapest, weirdest, ugliest little toy or bauble you can at a local dollar store or thrift shop. Design a new tabletop monster off of that.
I would LOVE to try and figure out what kaiju ended up being the inspiration for what classic monster
Knock yourself out – the linked page contains numerous photos of what’s believed to be the specific set of plastic “dinosaurs” that served as the original minifigs for monsters in question. Some of the figures that are included in the set are clearly identifiable as classic Ultraman bootlegs, while others are less recognisable; to the best of my knowledge, nobody’s 100% sure what the figure that inspired the owlbear is supposed to be. For reference, it’s this one:
