So I've had a month off writing. For a bit, the change has been welcome- it's been several hours more a week I can spend cooking, or watching TV, or making models, or one of my other many, many hobbies. But I'm missing my writing, so I'll be back, don't worry. It's just a matter of juggling my time, and trying to steal back desk space from my work-from-home desk.
I've been working on some campaign setting ideas and concepts, and I'll be trying to put down some concepts here, but as a reminder (and so I can find them to refer to later), I've got these ones so far. They might end up as different ideas, or I might combine some of them together. The Shattered World This concept is that the world is a literally broken planet with floating earthbergs, following a techno-magical apocalypse some time in the past. Changes: - Could include Dark Sun-ish elements like mass battle and vehicle chase/combat, also lots of riding critters? - healing (use HD? Exhaustion?) - crafting and inventing - magic? (Incl. defiling?) - motivation - armour types, combinations and piecemeal armour - weapons should be disposable or breakable? - Animus creature type (AI, no body at all) ('Spark'?) - ranged combat Fighter type - robot type constructs that gain vulnerability to attacks when they're damaged (below half hp?) Alternate Colonialism This concept involves Victorian-style gentlemen-adventurers travelling to other realities through portals. Their technology runs on some kind of Unobtanium (rare mineral found in other realities) that has caused their own existence to be post-scarcity, while the unrefined mineral decays realities and leads to planar dissonance creeping in, and eroding their existence altogether. - Ribbons/medals/favours from people - Rescue missions or escort missions to help people adventure /escape / evacuate fraying realms Chosen Ones Superheroes/ Chosen Ones/ Power Rangers/ Demigods where PCs are much better than ‘ordinary’ people Epic Adventures Some kind of Epic setting/expansion? Forgotten Bridgerton Realms Space/ non-space Opera social drama - what happens if you take the 'fighting monsters' out of D&D and use it for telling social conflict stories? Anyway, these are some of the ideas I've been rolling around recently. I've also got some paid writing gigs on working on, so I'll update as I get time! Hi loyal readers! it's vanDorne here!
I've been writing for Game Masters Stash since February 2018, and written in excess of 400,000 words here over nearly a thousand posts. I've watched it grow from a few thousand likes to over 14,000 page likes today. It's been an amazing ride, and given me a great platform for practising and honing my craft as a writer. It's forced me to think about how I write, to improve my spellchecking and editing, and to analyze and improve how I write RPG content. But today marks my last post as one of the admins, and I wanted to say thank you to all of you who have ever read, liked, reacted, commented on, or shared my posts (special thanks if you've liked it too)! I wish Ragnarokgar, Arjade, Pyrkagia, Zombie Anubis, Rhynessa and all the new admins the best of luck. I hope the page continues to grow as I head off for greener pastures, continuing to work on my blog and some actual paid writing work, which will be a fascinating realm to enter! May your dice roll natural 20s exactly when you need them, may your dungeons be threatening and rewarding, and may your loot ever be rewarding! So, thanks again, and signing off for the final time- vanDorne (or 'Luke' as I'm known in real life). Well, I've struggled through and I've made to ONE HUNDRED subclass archetypes written over the last few years!
Some have been invented whole-cloth, or based on characters, concepts, and ideas from popular culture such as the Dragon Age universe, Arcane, and the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Others are adapted from earlier editions, converting them to some form of playability for 5e. Most have updated after playtesting or feedback. So without any further ado, thank you all for being faithful readers. Treat yourself and your players to some more options! The download link for vanDorne's Class Compendium volume II is HERE. (Due to download size, this is the 'print-friendly' version. If you'd like the versions with colour pictures and a little more readability, you can find links to the individual posts here) Alternately, if you're looking for threats, check out my archive with over 100 new creatures, NPCs, and ideas to populate your dungeons and worlds. Feel free to send on any feedback you've got, or requests for new ideas! -vanDorne "Finally, you and Dark Lord Septimus square up to cross blades. He draws his sword slowly, carefully, and levels it at you. His swordcraft is legendary, and he has never been defeated in combat. His vile blade drips tongues of black fire as it gutters in the torchlight, and almost without effort, he.... rolls a 21 to hit you for 15 points of damage. Your turn." As a narrative engine, roleplaying can be a fantastic tool. Your characters can develop, learn new skills, and engage in combat, but sometimes, some things can just seem a little dull for warriors. spellcasters get all sorts of fun names for their spells- Aganazzar's Scorcher, Disintegrate, Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion, and so on- but warriors just get to roll to hit and damage, without much depth to their system. Without inventing an entire new way to handle combat (like 3.5's Tome of Battle), just giving name to some of the things you're doing can make them seem a little more interesting. In this, I was inspired and led by an old Dragon magazine article (#289, November 2001) by Patrick T. Younts and Matthew Sernett, which featured a random martial arts move generator over an impressive double-spread which blew my mind when I first read it. I've tried to create something that captures the same kind of essence, bringing that to a more European fechtbuch style. It's a little kludgy, and the names may need some finessing, but if you describe using "Ognen's sudden twist" as a counter to your opponent's "Leaping Owlbear strike" when you disengage, the scene takes on a much more flavourful and dynamic set of descriptions. Here's the picture version, which I've colour-coded to make it easier to follow. Several results need you to make up bits yourself, or roll further results, so I'd recommend generating a few for your warrior characters up-front to avoid being stuck in Random Number Generator Hell while you're tyring to make stuff up at the table. However, it's complicated enough to be a little finicky, and the kind of thing that would be really handy if someone just threw together a computer version to make it simpler for you to use. So my wife taught me some HTML over the weekend, and here you go: Combat Technique Name Generator.
Feel free to 'reroll' if the generated name just doesn't work for you, but this may just help things along! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 10 August 2021. At the end of the day, what we're all here for is sharing some fun with our friends. It's what I look forward to every Friday night- geting together, sharing a meal, catching up on the week- and then getting back to our adventures through fantasy worlds.
Through my writing for Game Masters Stash, I was reached out to by Obsidian Portal, who I posted about previously. They've generously offered a full year's membership at Ascendant level as a giveaway for one lucky reader. So what I'm going to do is ask people to to tell me a story of your adventuring party or your game world in the comments here, or over on Game Masters Stash, by midnight Friday next week 9 July 2021 (Australian Eastern Standard Time, or GMT +10). I'll note everyone down and randomly draw a winner, who'll be announced next Saturday, and then put you in touch with Obsidian Portal to collect your winnings. So, think about the best tales you can tell (edit for appropriateness of audience, if you'd be so kind- something a company won't mind using for publicity), and you could be the very lucky winner of your own Obsidian Portal account! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 3 July 2021. DISCLAIMER: This is absolutely not a paid post, and no consideration has been given for this. I'm just passing on feedback about a service I've paid to use.
I tend to run narrative-heavy games with lots of locations, NPCs, and information, and sometimes (for both myself and my players), all of that becomes a little hard to track. Having read recommendations on Facebook, Reddit, and tried a few different services, I decided to try a website called Obsidian Portal. This has let me establish a wiki for my campaign, uploading pictures, maps, and even statistics, and keeping some information as 'GM-only' so my players can't read it. It takes a bit of work and upkeep to do, but it's been a miracle for me in terms of being able to cross-link characters and items, write up adventure logs of each session and track how much XP and treasure is awarded, and start populating in my own stuff for later, like a Pinterest board. After putting in the details of my first 6 sessions, I invitied my players to contribute as well, which lets them upload details of their own backstories if they like, and even create their own NPCs as well. You are able to access this for free, but the storage space is a bit limited. I upgraded to one of the paid options, which let me upload a whole bunch more stuff. If you're just doing this casually, it may not be the best option for you, but if you're GMing multiple games, plotting a lot of stuff out, or invested professionally, this is a really good service, and worth considering. Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 27 March 2021. In the ancient and near-forgotten year 1991, TSR released a brand-new fantasy setting which was quite unlike any previously-published campaign setting. Although it has had minor updates for 3rd and 4th edition D&D, it never really became a full setting on its own after 2nd edition, and our world is so much poorer for it.
Now, I'm not one of those hoary old fellows who goes on about how brutal and unforgiving the setting is, and "silly little snowflakes" who could never possibly understand the themes of the setting- that's all garbage. Instead, I'm going to tell you why Dark Sun is the perfect setting to play in, right now! It featured (at the time) revolutionary concepts for D&D, like the following:
With all this and more, how could you not want to play in this vibrant, violent, amazing setting? Thanks for coming to my 2ED Talk! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 6 August 2020. Look, the last six months have felt like a rough few years. We've all been through a lot. Here in Australia, we've had raging bushfires, shattering hail, and of course then there's the global pandemic, as well as all our usual stuff, and whatever's currently going on in the States, and and and... look, I get it. It's been hard. It's hard to keep up your guard without time to rest.
None of us are getting a chance to just breathe, spend some hit dice and get our spell slots back. This year's campaign is one of long attrition and folks, we're halfway there. To survive, we're going to need to save some energy, buff our front line fighters, and do some ranged damage to the enemies. But to do any of that, we need to look after ourselves, and that's not selfish, that's survival. Take some time offline, catch up with friends (in a safe manner), play some silly game with dice and miniatures if you have the chance. Recharge your batteries, so you've got what it takes to get back in the fight soon, and for as long as it takes. Spot your friends, so they can get a rest as well. Take turns, so it's not just one person pulling aggro all the time. Check on your healers (I can't stress this one enough- they're running out of energy the same as everyone) and make sure they get a break, too. Look after your people, look after all of the people. Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 6 June 2020. Keeping track of your entire world can be a big ask- remembering who that farmer with the funny accent back in Starter Town was, why it's important that someone handed a player character a silver ribbon at the Grand Ball, and what's happening over in that creepy deserted town across the river, can be a LOT to handle.
Having just resumed one of my games after an isolation-based break of about 2-3 months, I've had to comb through all my notes and remember what was going on. And I've wanted to make all of that available to my players, so they can remember it, to. So I started a Fandom Wiki to keep track of it. It's free and able to be edited by your players as well, so you don't even have to do all the work yourself (but do remember that it's available to other people who stumble across it and can edit/read it). You can add pictures, crosslink articles and make it like a real wikipedia article to keep track of who those guys were, why the red bandannas were important, why those bandits broke away from the Kingdom, who won the War of Forfeiture 1700 years ago, and why the captain of the Lucky Lady hates (checks notes) the Wizard, ultimately leading (as always) to Kevin Bacon. So have a look, see if it's for you. It might make keeping track of your own notes much easier and referenceable, and help you keep track of which names you've used. If you move on to another game in the same universe, you can just build more content onto the same Wiki, making adding in references to previous games and characters much easier. The site is at: https://www.fandom.com/ , and registering for your own account is pretty simple. Give it a look, it might not be for you but you'll never know without giving it a try. Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 30 May 2020. For our final (at least for now) #WestMarchesWednesday post, I'd like to talk about something I was reading about today: Session Omega. Similarly to Session Zero, this is something you should 'plan in' and factor into your game, to give your players a sense of 'closure' and success.
Keep track of what's gone on in each game, for your NPCs and towns (I can recommend our Session Record Sheet for that!), and have an 'end goal'- the defeat of Magister Acardolo, the turning back of the invading army, or the exploration of the entire map, for example. When that point is reached, you can make it a big knock-down drop-out fight or not, as you choose- and then it's time to turn over your ending slides. Let people know what happened to that cute couple back in the first town, and how things went with the crooked mayor gone. Tell them where that dragon that got away went and what it got up to, and how the invading army turns back with their tail between their legs, and then (this bit is important)- let your players tell you what their characters get up to. Give them a chance to tell the story for once, and help them along when they need it. If they go too big and declare themselves King of all Thedas, that might need reining in a little, but let them tell you where they go, and what they do. You can use all of this to set up their old characters as NPCs for your next campaign! This can take a little while, and if you can, you may want all your players in attendance (even if you're playing online) - this is your big finale, after all! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 29 April 2020. I'm skipping this week's #WestMarchesWednesday post to share what Wizards of the Coast is doing- an initiative they're calling "Stay at Home, Play at Home".
Wizards are offering a pile of free content for adventurers of all ages, including Adventurers' League modules, colouring pages, and more. They're free to download, great quality stuff to play with, and could be something to help you teach some non-gamer friends, housemates, or family, whether online or sheltering in place. So have a look, grab some content, and get gaming! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 15 April 2020. Battling creatures larger than humanoids means formulating an entirely different set of weapon techniques. A weapon guard which works to deflect blows from a regular size opponent just won't work when your opponent is twenty feet tall and swinging something the size of a tree branch, let alone against a beast that doesn't even have humanoid physiology.
Learning to fight against such creatures means having to use different techniques, but also having to vary the way things are done- what would be a mortal strike against a humanoid foe may only be a small inconvenience against a giant. This doesn't necessarily have to be reflected in the rules- after all, you don't need to completely cut a giant's head off, just cut enough into its throat to slay it. It is definitely something to think about, though! You want to reflect this in in-game description, for example: a knight's shield wouldn't be able to block a giant's club, but when interposed in the right place, it might be able to deflect a blow slightly enough to avoid it. This has been doing the rounds of the internet for about a week, and I've been asked to talk about it. I considered making my own version, but I think linking back to the original one is actually more powerful. It was created by Sean K Reynolds and Shanna Germain for Monste Cook Gaming. The download links for it are down at the bottom.
So, let's discuss! I've seen a lot of comments where other people have shared this, saying "just have a discussion with you players beforehand", or "yeah, you do this during Session Zero", which I completely agree with. You should be discussing this with all your players, GM included, whether as part of your friendship circle or before you all start gaming together and sharing vulnerability. This is a tool to help that, it's not an absolute requirement if you're already open about this kind of stuff. If you're an average group of friends, there's probably stuff that someone has told to someone but not everyone, or hasn't even talked about, but might still want to avoid, for whatever reasons. So respect that, and at least give people an option. It's really valuable to be able to say "I really don't want to engage in [whatever]" without having to justify it, on the spot, in front of people who you may or may not know well. This can help to build friendships, rather than exposing people to things that can legitimately traumatise them. And for whatever God's sakes, don't be the kind of asshole who pushes people's buttons on this kind of stuff. This sheet could be adjusted to reflect differences in different countries or cultures- down here in Australia, we don't tend to have so much in the way of hurricanes and tornadoes, but we get plenty of great big massive bushfires. In Europe, avalanches are more common, and in South America and India get mudslides. Here, we don't tend to get as much police violence (at least in the part of Australia where I'm from), but I can definitely see that as being an issue having seen American news reports. You should definitely consider where your players are from when you send this out, and be willing to accept that even if you don't think something is a problem, it might be a huge problem for someone else with a different lived experience than you. And if you're willing to wave it off because you don't value that opinion, you're telling your friend that you're not valuing their openness, their vulnerability, and their safety. Don't be a dick about this. Download Links: • MCG shop link https://www.montecookgames.com/store/product/consent-in-gaming/ • DriveThruRPG link https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/288535/Consent-in-Gaming Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 21 September 2019. I find writing a bit difficult, but it's definitely something I have a drive to do.
As a Game Master, it's a trait we usually share. So, how do you get yourself out of a rut, and just get writing? It's something I've really struggled with recently, and what I can recommend is to make it a routine- just write a little bit, every day. When I was doing daily posts, it was a little easier- I could push myself because I needed something in the pipeline every day. Now I'm back to four posts a week... I tend to be busy for a few hours on Sunday afternoons, and then forget about it for the rest of the week, which has made me sloppy sometimes. The late, absolutely great, Sir Terry Pratchett was known for not making himself write more than 400 words a day. If he wanted to, he'd do more, but 400 was his "that's a good daily amount" limit. While some authors are famed for more, I like this- it's not an overwhelming amount, just enough to get something written. And for people with busy schedules, or who do writing in their mundane work, or want to be writing other stuff as well, a little bit a day is important to get out. So, start a blog. Write for a Facebook page, or start your own. Write a journal and keep it under your be, whatever. Just get something written, and do a little bit every day. Get working! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 28 August 2019. No-one enjoys an ending without getting to confront the bad guys they've been chasing the whole time, it's just disappointing to have something else swoop in and end the campaign. So, how can you make sure that make your ending is satisfying?
First of all, if you've done your job, and your players are invested in the outcome, that's great! You've done your job right, and it gives you somewhere to go after this. If you get to this point, and they don't care, then maybe it's easiest to just finish up and be done. Getting them to the right place and the right time takes a lot of effort on your behalf, and you need to remember how much you've accomplished already. Second, use some minion-type enemies to let your players use some of their cool abilities cutting through swathes of their foes. This lets them have their "big damn heroes" moments, where they feel unstoppable and badass. You can scatter through some sub-bosses to really challenge them, but this is an opportunity to weather them down on spells, abilities, and hit points. Then, let them get their big chance. Reach the end bad guys, even if you have to give people some protection to get them there. Let them get in some villainous monologuing and heroic defiance at each other, and then let them duke it out! It doesn't have to be a fight, but letting your bad guys do something other than cowering in their palace while they're slaughtered means that your players will feel like they've accomplished their goal. Lastly, win or lose, you need the storyline to have an impact. Be able to give your players an outcome of what happens to them, to the towns and people they care about, to the other villains that got away. If the bad guy wins, advance the storyline so you're ready for your next campaign as freedom-fighters in an oppressive hellscape, or however you go with it. If your players defeat the bad guys, give them the chance to struggle back to whatever passes for normalcy. Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 2 June 2019. D&D is mostly a game about killing exotic monsters and taking their stuff. But occasionally, you run into a situation where that isn't the goal, or you've got a player who's not into that. So how do you deal with it?
A lot of this can come down to separation of in-character knowledge from "us-as-player" knowledge. We as players might objectively think that burying people with gold coins and jewelry is pretty much a waste, but a character who grows up in that culture is much more likely to be respectable of that, and have taboos against stealing from the dead (even if they're just plain dead, no chance of becoming a Wight and coming after you). They're going to remember the offering they left to their grandfather, the sword buried with their mother, and the flowers they put on their brother's grave as an infant. A player who's making in-character choices is likely to be much less likely to take that treasure, whethere it's incidental set-dressing or the loot you've set up for the end of the dungeon. In terms of how you can deal with this, there are a few options. You might have all the treasure in a dungeon be cursed so it turns to dust when it leaves, but if that's something that actually happens in your world, it makes the adventuring profession a pretty terrible career choice. You might have some Clerical option like a spell or even using Turn Undead to "settle" the deceased person, allowing you to take their stuff, but it still feels a little artificial. One option would be to allow a ritual to speak to the dead, and give you a chance to persuade them out of their stuff, or bargain for different things. As with life in general, consent is key- if your dead king knows that his legacy is forgotten, he might prefer someone to take up his gear and get out there remembering him, instead of having it just locked up with him. One of the other options is to put it behind a "paywall"- have a tomb complex with lots of treasure scattered around, with the knowledge that any dead who have their stuff disturbed will come fight you for it. This way there's a risk-reward system which means prospective thieves (of all classes) have to carefuly consider their choices, or they'll end up with a literal army of dead guys coming to get back their stolen stuff, the same way they would in life. If you're only after the boss room lot, having to ignore all that glittery jewelry along the way could be a definite challenge. Traps can fall into this category, with the old problem of "exactly who has kept that spring oiled, and the traps in good condition, for the last hundreds of years?". There are some definite things to think about when you're considering raiding tombs as a career choice, and ways that you as a GM can assist that along. Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 18 May 2019. In dramatic storytelling, it’s generally better to show something rather than just tell about it. For first-person roleplaying games, most exposition happens as a matter of the GM reading the boxed text, a few players being on their phones, and one person paying attention.
But there’s a better way! In a foreshadowing adventure, your Player Characters sit down to hear the exposition from the bard, or noble, or merchant hiring them... and then you throw a feathered hat on, and hand them new character sheets for the characters who took part in the story. They get to play through a historical flashback, with some fun inaccuracies, and they’ll certainly remember the events much better than several paragraphs with fantasy trope names liberally scattered through. These characters might have abilities like “Charming Grin +12”, “Simple Wisdom +6” or “Your Honeyed Words Have No Effect Upon Me +16”. Maybe even “Courage of a Halfling +20”. It keeps your players from getting too involved in the nitty-gritty, and means they’re viewing the one-shot adventure through a narrative gaze where they know this is inaccurate but can enjoy that trope as well. Play through the lens of the characters hearing and reacting to this story, and let them notice and call out obvious tropes (“OF COURSE the King’s advisor is evil, look, he has a goatee!”), but get them to invest in the story- they know that some of their characters will have died (heroically, of course!) and that Good Will Triumph, because That’s What Heroes Do. But it means they’ll care more about that +3 Defending longsword, knowing that this was Prince Herbert’s Duelling Sword, stolen from him by the wicked vizier and recovered at great peril, than just a random treasure roll. Let them succeed (or fail!) at some rolls according to dramatic rules, rather than D&D ones, and abstract the rules a little- “The duel went on for hours of furious fighting, and as the others watched in horror from the courtyard, they could spy Prince Herbert battling his father’s advisor in the battlements above!” “Wait, a round ago we were all in the feast hall, now John's up on the battlements and we're in the courtyard?” “Indeed, but this is how the story went.” Remember that if something goes wildly out of what you expected, the narrator of the story can correct things and recall that that’s not how things went at all- he definitely died heroically at the gates of the castle, not fighting the bear! (Unless your players go all out and decide to meet the narrative so well that they bring his body with them to the gates of the castle, because everyone remembered that he wanted to die heroically on a battlefield!) Try out something wacky and fun- you might like it, your players might love it, and it lets you change things up for a bit. Plus, they’ll recall those stairs with the treacherous step, the snakes in the moat, and those arrow-slits that the traitors fired crossbows out of for when they’re at the same castle, and can buy into using those things, whether to avoid them or turn them on enemies. Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 10 May 2019. As with many things, it's often better to better a jack of many trades than a master of one. You might know the ruleset for D&D 3.5, or Pathfinder, or Traveller 2nd edition, perfectly and word-backwards, but being able to extrapolate between systems, steal mechanics and ideas, and adapt things that seem cool, is a great ability to have.
So, get your hands on anything you can try out. Hit up DriveThruRPG and see what's on special and can be picked up for free, or for very cheap! See what old games you've got lying around that you can read through, and see if there's anything, even just one thing, that you can use. This week, I picked up a cheap copy of the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game. It's got a mechanic I plan on stealing, whereby the options you choose for making your character reduce the number of Story Points you can use for spending within the game for having 'just the right thing' in your pocket, or knowing a friend in the right place, or completely derailing the plot by dumping all your points at once. Using 'points' to allow characters to make something up and have that actually be true in-game, lets people buy in and commit to why their character has an old buddy who's a minotaur, or why there's actually a battleship in orbit not disclosing whose side it's on, and let players pull amazing con-artist style tricks ("Oh no, I swapped that with the fake safe while we were driving through the tunnel"). Apocalypse World has a system I really enjoy, where you choose how you fail or succeed- generally, succeeding at something lets you choose some consequences that don't happen, like the following choice: Major success (choose three), Success (choose two), Fail (choose one) - It doesn't make a big mess - It doesn't cost you a lot, in gear or cash - It doesn't take ages to do - It doesn't hurt anyone Using a system like this, players are aware of the potential consequences to start with, and know how much is riding on the roll. They also get to customize what they succeed at, even if it goes wrong- they'll still get a "bad" outcome, but they can potentially minimize the harm to your wallet, your friends, your spare time, or your surroundings, but not all of them. Shadowrun 2nd edition had a system where you prioritized your options when making a character, so an elf was "more powerful" than a Human, and a Troll was more powerful than an Elf, which reduced how many points you had to spend on your ability scores, your skills, and your overall wealth. This could be translated to a D&D type game whereby an "exotic" race like a Tiefling might be rarer than a Human, in the same way that a Paladin might be rarer than a Fighter. Having some kind of balance might help your players feel more comfortable in playing "sensibly balanced" characters, rather than one where Dragonborn, Aasimar, Genasi, Half-Orcs, and Humans are all equally choosable with Warlocks, Paladins, Fighters, and Wizards. So go through your library and have a look at all those books you've never played. See what catches your fancy and what makes you think "ooh, that's fun, how can I use that?" Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 29 March 2019. Hi, folks!
Today's post is something new- live! That's right, outside of a couple of friends who've checked how the structure works, this is the first time I've linked people to this blog, and I'm hoping it all goes well. I've collated all the posts I've been writing for Game Masters Stash, a Facebook RPG content page which I've been writing mostly-daily posts for since early February 2018. I've finally been able to port them all over, slooooooooooowly, because Facebook's approach to archiving posts is generally "LOL nope". I genuinely hope that people find this content useful, and can talk to me about why they think it isn't, if they disagree. So, welcome to Building Paper Mountains. Have a look at the Downloads page, which has some 3.5 edition D&D classes I've written, have a look through the post categories that interest you (I'm not sure why "Post-Apocalypse" is there twice, but I can't seem to get rid of the duplicate), and if you've got ideas, suggest them to me. Welcome! -Luke It can be fun to honour players’ birthdays by giving them something new to play with. An an option that’s cheap for you as a GM is to give their *character* something new to play with.
In my home game, I tend to favour magic items of an appropriate level, personalized for the character. A low-level rogue might find a Cloak of Elvenkind, a paladin might happen across a sword that can dispel evil magic on a critical hit, or a wizard might happen across a spellbook containing a few new and interesting spells they don’t have. This could be delivered as part of their Love Letter for the week (see my earlier post) or during the game. While this can result in some power creep during a long-running game, I have found they become an eagerly-awaited and much-anticipated item. This can also be an opportunity for you to advance that player’s backstory or subplot. (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 9 March 2019) |
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