RPG

In the TTRPG industry, physical dice are plentiful for sighted individuals but scarce and often unaffordable for those who are blind or visually impaired. The DOTS RPG Project is an organization focused on improving accessibility in tabletop roleplaying games. Money raised from this charity bundle will help fund the production of their Signature Braille RPG Dice, manufactured in partnership with Die Hard Dice. This will make the first ever Braille RPG Dice available in a retail setting worldwide, helping make tabletop gaming more accessible for blind and visually impaired gamers.

This bundle includes 314 items for $10

https://itch.io/b/2623/ttrpgs-for-accessible-gaming-charity-bundle

Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc. and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

White Plume Mountain is an absolute classic Adventure for level 8 players; one that has been talked about for years and has been redone time and again. Heck, it was even ranked the 9th greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine in 2004. This is the perfect Adventure for those of you who are looking for a bit of combat and a whole lot of puzzle!

Three magical weapons have been stolen recently. Clues in the form of a poem lead those in power to believe the weapons have been brought to a volcano which was once the hideout of a powerful wizard named Keraptis. These are no mere magical weapons, but sentient artifacts. Can your players survive the perils of White Plume Mountain and retrieve them!?

Without further ado:

• Google Docs Notes for White Plume Mountain Part 1: DM Notes
• Link to: White Plume Mountain Playlist
• Link to: The AAA Collection

Included in The AAA Collection is:

• A Word document with all my notes including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDF for all encounters. This includes the enemy stat blocks organized neatly along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP
• Spellsheets for all relevant encounters
• Note from Krepatis and Hiring Letter Handouts
• Custom Battle Maps

Over 5 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc. please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc. and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes fully fleshed-out notes, music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk stems from The Lost Mine of Phandelver a classic and beloved starter set that many new DMs run. Even with this being the most recent release it still has an issue, the same as with many others...it doesn't describe the best way to transform the book's contents into an actual session. The Book-to-session conversion can be difficult between figuring out when things should happen, understanding motivations, and even organizing encounters.

Well, fortunately for you, 99% of that work is done! Only a few things are really left:

• Read the book, I know surprising, but it can be extremely confusing when you don't know where everything leads to.
• Consider the needs of your group. As you've heard or are about to hear a million times, every table is different. If you plan on combining this with a campaign, you'll have to make tweaks here and there.
• These notes aren't meant to be the end-all-be-all. Tweak to your heart's content, and don't consider any of what's written to be set in stone. For me having notes like this helps give me the confidence to go off the rails and follow along with what my players want. It helps me understand where things were meant to go and why. Having that understanding allows me to guide the players and create other new and interesting stories. These are all things that will come with experience, though, so don't freak out and enjoy the journey!

Without further ado:

Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk Act 1

• Part 1 - Intro and Cragmaw Hideout
• Part 2a - Phandalin
• Part 2b - Redbrand Hideout
• Part 3a - Reign of Iron
• Part 3b - Thundertree
• Part 3c - Cragmaw Castle
• Part 4 - Wave Echo Cave
• Part 5 - Side Quests

Included in my posts are:

• A Word document for each part of Act 1 for Phandelver and Below with detailed notes for running a perfect session including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDFs for every encounter. This includes all the enemies' stat blocks organized neatly along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP.
• Additional PDFs for allies and commoners
• A variety of maps for each part of the campaign
• Spell lists for all relevant fights
• Handouts for various spell scrolls throughout the campaign
• A playlist for each section!

Over 5 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

Campaign Info: As of today, I've officially completed Act One of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk! I've also compiled all of my prep for it in a single easy-to-access post which is available to all my Heroes and Legends. You can find it HERE!

I've discussed this on Discord as well as answered a few questions and thought I would clarify some information here; campaigns are super time intensive, so I have to choose wisely which ones I prep. The first half PaB:TSO is an updated version of The Lost Mine of Phandelver which I had already fully prepped; so, I thought I would go through all my prep and update it to match and help all those who are starting to run the campaign! I may one day prep the second half; however, I'm trying to focus on the more popular Campaigns such as Curse of Strahd, before I work on others.

With what I've released, you'll have a great kickstart through most of the campaign and there are plenty of helpful members both on Reddit and on my Discord that can guide you along the rest of the way! I hope that with what I've prepped so far you can have a truly Amazing campaign!!!

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc. please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,

Advent

All of Chaosium's Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is currently available in PDF from Humble Bundle for £14.21.

That's everything. Which is insane value for money. You'd be mad not to. Get it here!

[Original post on the excellent (but undernourished) /c/runequest_glorantha!]

Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc. and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes fully fleshed-out notes, music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

We're back at it again with another Fully Prepped Mini-Campaign; Dragon of Icespire Peak, A level 1-6 Adventure that's a bit frosty! This is part of the Essentials Kit; released between Dragon of Stormwreck Isle and The Lost Mine of Phandelver all created by WoTC.

Dragon of Icespire Peak is a bit different from the other two I've prepped; not only is it more of a sandbox, but it also has the ability to be run with just one player which is a huge plus for those of you who can't get larger groups together! I'll be incorporating the recommendations from both Bob the World Builder and Sly Flourish along with my own tweaks to make this one of the best experiences you can have running this Mini-Campaign!

If you've used my previous notes you'll know that I take adventures such as these and do all the difficult and time-consuming book-to-session conversions so you don't have to! I do my best to include ambiance for every scene, custom battle maps, handouts when needed, spell sheets, encounter sheets, and more!

This may all sound familiar, but seeing as this is a Starter/Essentials Kit, I think it's important to reiterate:

• Read the Adventure: I know surprising, but it can be extremely confusing when you don't know where everything leads to.
• Consider the needs of your group: As you've heard or are about to hear a million times, every table is different. If you plan on combining this with a campaign, you'll have to make tweaks here and there.
• These notes aren't meant to be the end-all-be-all: Tweak to your heart's content, and don't consider any of what's written to be set in stone. For me having notes like this helps give me the confidence to go off the rails and follow along with what my players want. It helps me understand where things are meant to go and why. Having that understanding allows me to guide the players and create other new and interesting stories. These are all things that will come with experience, though, so don't freak out and enjoy the journey!

Without further ado:

• Google Docs Notes for Part 1 Phandalin: DM Notes
• Link to: Phandalin Playlist
• Link to: The AAA Collection

Included in The AAA Collection is:

• A Word document with all my notes including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Custom Map of Phandalin

Over 5 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc. please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

https://www.modiphius.net/en-us/pages/discworld-adventures-signup

cross-post: https://lemmy.world/post/12428174

I know that eventually the answer is "whatever I want" but I would like to hear what others think.

There's an MCT oil rig on Baltic Sea. Anarchists from Kronstadt noticed peculiar data transfer some time ago going there and managed to hijack the place. Then they transmitted message that they are an eco terrorist group (I did not specify which one to my players) and demand MCT to stop polluting. After that, folded the satellite dish to buy some time for the decker and rigger to look around the host.

Now, from a point of, for example, TerraFist. An oil rig nearby is in disarray, none of their contacts in other groups say they're doing it. And MCT HTR is definitely on its way.
Does it make sense for them to come to the rig and make contact/make sure it gets disabled/make trouble for HTR?

I think their appearance has potential to turn this job into a nice chaotic clusterfuck and opportunity to show my players some variety of the world (they would definitely come on a yacht going superspeed with help of a spirit).
But does it make any sense at all for anyone besides me?

I've been searching around for a way to organize my TTRPG collection of pdfs (numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands) and haven't really found a silver bullet for it yet. Everything I've looked at has some sort of weird thing that's off about it that doesn't seem to make it ideal. Is there something out there that others are using that works well? Here's what I've looked at so far:

• Folder system: This is what I'm already using and it's serviceable (PC), but it really doesn't give me any tagging function and so it's hard to organize based on genre or come up with really any categories outside of just alphabetically naming folders based on the RPG name, then putting whatever subcategories I need as folders below that. It just feels so clunky going about it like this. Being able to organize/search via tags just seems like the way to go.

• Calibre: This gets recommended everytime, but honestly I'm not interested in duplicating my library of +10,000 pdfs and following their organization system. The desktop app looks ugly (which is apparently fixed with Calibre-web but still requires the desktop app).

• Jellyfin: Really not geared towards books in general, it's functional but not great for it. This may end up being what I fall back to if I can't get anything else working.

• Kavita: Looks nice and works nice EXCEPT it has some weird ass naming convention with regards to numbers in the folder/file names. Only top-level stuff can contain numbers, everything below has to have roman numerals? Such a weird thing that just breaks it for me.

• Komga: It looks nice and works nice, but is more geared towards comics, and thus doesn't work so hot with RPGs with multiple categories (Core rulebooks, Scenarios, Settings, etc), since I tend to break those out into different folders. It ends up treating sub-folders as a different series altogether, so it sort of demands that you just keep everything in the same folder.

• Ubooquity: Tried it, it ran like ass on my machine and didn't seem to do as good a job. Making updates in the folders themselves took awhile to propagate and it just overall didn't seem to work well for how I wanted to use it. I just didn't particularly care for it.

• Zotero: It's actually more meant for academic journals and such, but it could be used for organizing TTRPG pdfs, though not sure how well it scales up once you start throwing thousands of pdfs at it. Downside though is that it's not as flashy as some of the others, it doesn't display book covers and you have to create additional objects for each item. You also can't just add tags to the PDFs themselves, you have to create an additional 'Book' object and attach the pdf to that item, then add whatever tags/notes/metadata you want to add. I haven't figured out how to automate the process and the one item I tried where it automatically found it, it created a 'Journal Article' and renamed it based on the authors of the book (which it did correctly find), which is not ideal for going through thousands of items. I just want it to keep the file names in most cases as I've already gotten most file names where I want them.

Thoughts on creating a Spellcaster that uses hit points for spell casting instead of spell slots.

I was just wondering about home-brewing a walock NPC who's patron saps hitpoints in exchange for spell casting. Essentially, as long as the character has hitpoints they can cast as many spells as they like but with each one it takes a toll.

Balance is obviously an issue here in preventing them from just being healed by the party and used as a spell battery in exchange for healing but Im thinking perhaps balancing that out by making con saves to prevent them from passing out from blood loss or something from wounds appearing on their body as till for the spells. Aswell as that, spells would have different hit point costs that scale with levels like a first level costing 5, 2nd 10 and so on.

Backstory and lore could be pretty interesting as to how they received their patronage, why they took such a harmful deal, they could be good or evil depending on their motives for doing so and other fun stuff!

Let me know what you think or if you have any ideas!

• original source: https://www.tumblr.com/firebirdeternal/616605850794065920/you-know-whats-more-fun-than-worldbuilding-that

The post, in case you don't want to click on an offsite link:

You know what’s more fun than worldbuilding that makes some fantasy races EEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL!!!!?

Worldbuilding that gives the different races cultural differences that help explain why there’s a lot of conflict between them:

Goblin culture doesn’t have a concept of “Property”. A stick on the ground and a tool in a locked shed are equally up for grabs if a thing needs doing. They casually take and leave things all over their communities, eat from communal pots, and genuinely Do Not Understand why the Core Races are so Angry and prone to Violence all the time.

Consequently Goblins who live near Core communities develop a reputation as “Thieves” despite not even having a word for that. (The closest word they have is more like “Greedy” and it means a person that hides things so nobody else can use them, and it’s a surefire fight-starter to call a Goblin that)

Common Orc Spiritual beliefs hold that a Soul can only grow stronger by overcoming Challenges in life, and see intruding on another person’s Challenge unasked for as not just Rude, but Deeply Harmful. You’re Stealing their chance to Grow. Asking for help is deeply personal and doing so can be both a way to grow closer with them or a too-personal intrusion, depending on your existing relationship with them. An exception is Children, as far as most Orcs are concerned, all Children are fundamentally the responsibility of the Whole Community, regardless of whose child they are, or even if said child is an Orc at all.

This means that Orcs who live near Core neighbors often seem Rude and Standoffish if not outright hostile, because they neither ask for nor offer aid even in times of trouble, and respond to unasked for aid themselves with Anger. There are even rumors that they Steal Children, because if an Orc finds a child lost in the woods they’re pretty much immediately going to start feeding it, and if they can’t find where to bring it back to, or it doesn’t seem to be well cared for, they’re just gonna keep it.*

I just love the idea. It's a lot more believable and nuanced than the "this race is inheritely evil/good/dumb/advanced for no particular reason" some RPGs pull off, and makes certain allegedly "evil" races actually playable if you're not relying on a system that already has them as playable characters.

Do you have any similar homebrew concepts for your versions of Goblins, Kobolds, Orcs, Dwarves etc.?

So, honestly not sure if something like this exists.

Going on vacation and looking for an entry-level RPG like game that I can play together with my wife while camping.

It could be pen and paper based or an actual board game. But it needs to be a guided story which requires little preparation. Also open for other suggestions for 2p other than the typical classic/card games.

Thanks everyone!

Blades' "skip to the action"+retrospective+stress mechanics worked really well for my table.

I'm looking for other systems and homebrews that would allow us to "plan" the heists later, during the actual action.

cross-post: https://sh.itjust.works/post/973541

My characters are organizing an extraction of local (country) MCT head of security. He is Japanese, raised by the corp from birth, but not completely beguiled as his son is an orc and he had to pull some levers to get him into school etc.
He's aware of extraction and agreed to it.

But the twist is that he decided to get extracted because he's taking the fall for a secret lab getting blown up in the middle of MCT office campus. So in a way he was made responsible for actions of some shadowrunners and now he's hiring (technically it's his mother organizing this but that's a detail) another ones. I think that can evoke some ambivalent emotions.
They are going to meet in secret soon to get some of his blood, pass the details of the plan, etc.
What are your thoughts on how to roleplay his attitude towards the characters and the whole thing?

P.S. He doesn't know that but, of course, it was our jolly bunch of psychos that have blown the lab up.

Couldn't find one but was wondering if there is a Glorantha community here on Lemmy. Any tips?

What game do you think captures best the overall feel and style inherent to steampunk?

I know that “feel and style” can be a bit subjective, and I am open to most interpretations, but I mostly mean the generic/cliché feel of airships, giant steam engines powering giant clockwork automatons and bizarre inventions. They don’t need to be strictly tied to a “realistic” setting, and so some more gaslight fantasy games could fall in this category.

Some Steampunk games I know would be:

• Space 1889 (more toned down steampunk, alternate history, but ticks most of the boxes. Also the one I have the most experience with)
• Airship Pirates (Read it, but never played it)
• Castle Falkenstein (Read it, does have magic and Steampunk, unusual card mechanics, never played it)
• Tephra (fantasy and steampunk, I don’t know much about it)
• Victoriana (steam fantasy, like above: don’t know much)
• Thyria (quite old and only in German, again steam fantasy, played it once and it was fun)
• Victoriana (steam fantasy)

Those are the ones I run/played/found that would fit the bill. Honorable mentions could be Deadlands or Cthulhu by gaslight, which may count if you are willing to stretch the term steampunk a bit (in case of Cthulhu you would need to stretch it big bit, but nevertheless)

Alright. Now that I have rambled on for way too long: What do you think is the best one, included in my list or not, steampunk game? Not just by setting, but also by rules and how flawless they match with their specific flavor of steampunk.

Preferably games that aren’t too hard on the DM work-wise, but that’s just a bonus.

I’ve been a DM for many years, and in all that time I’ve had maybe three players read the PHB. I don’t mind explaining the rules, but it would be nice to not have to remind the wizard how spell slots work (again). Is this a common thing for most groups?

Free RPG Day is Tomorrow, Sat 6/24

Do any of these titles look particularly interesting? Do you know of any other titles that aren't listed here? I'm always looking for fun one-offs to play.

your healing spells are more effective. Whenever you use a spell of 1st level or higher to restore hit points to a creature, the creature regains additional hit points equal to 2 + the spell's level.

What happens when I cast a level 1 spell using a level 2 spell slot?

Literal reading would suggest that the spell slot is irrelevant only the inherent level of the spell but I have seen statements to the contrary.

It's not a huge difference. But I'd still like to know.

Hello there. I've started my MG 2e RPG read. I've fallen in love with the setting, but I really didn't like the GM's "The Mission" part of the game.

It reads like a rushed sequence of railroads: Mice run through a pre-determined and pre-calculated sequence of encounters with a very specific number of checks, then find a place to rest where they're allowed only a short respite before hitting the road again.

I've first thought that it was going to be an easy thing to just rip that part off, before I realised that the entire game seems balanced on the fact mice have arbitrarily few checks. Screw this, and I'll also screw with the "checks" economy and overflow opportunities to call Bonds/Instincts/Goals as well.

So: Can I and it actually won't break the game? Should I just find another game?

I keep all of what happened in one journal, and everything else on the computer. All the maps, the schedules, and the character sheets using a gurps character sheet program (forgot what its called), because I run it through discord using a text format. I hardly plan anything besides what's in my head.

Ive been trying to use different ways to plan besides just pure vibes. like using joplin, or some wiki format or even trying to do use a mindmap? But alas most of what I do is simulating what I believe would happen and keeping character sheets of possible enemies on hand.

So, I'm curious, what do you do?

So what are you Pathfinder players/dms been up to? Running any adventure paths? Whats your character's build/concept? 1st edition or 2nd edition? Just wanted to make a post for a general discussion.