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dmtreasury · 25 days
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This is Monster Rangers, a two-zine set of delicious aesthetic goodness. It’s designed for Fate (and, as such, is practically system neutral — you wouldn’t have much trouble using this as a campaign frame with an other system if you are, for some reason, Fate-averse).
As you can tell from the covers and the art, there is a very particular retro vibe here. The game takes place in an alternate version of the US during the Progressive Era (specifically 1913), and there is a lot of pre-WWI can-do vibe here, overlayed with some touches that also feel like they are inspired by the ‘20s and ‘30s. The normal world is prosperous, but there a places where the world of monsters overlaps conventional reality — Obscuria. There, monsters can accidentally pass over into our reality and, confused, cause all sorts of havoc. Enter the Monster Rangers, an organization dedicated to protecting and helping monsters, primarily through the use of magical merit badges (I fucking love this so much). This reminds me a lot of Vaesen, but without the tragic undercurrents. This set-up is further complicated by Monsterologists, steampunk capitalists who want to capture, experiment on and general exploit errant monsters in the name of profit. They’re the villains, and they earn the title.
That’s the broad strokes, but I bet your gears are already going with ideas. There is a ton of source material — factions galore (there’s a beet magnate who wants to destroy the rangers?!), cultists, ranger traditions, details on ranger headquarters and bases. All of it is wrapped in a golly-gee package that keeps the vibe light. It is emphatically not a horror game — the monsters are our friends! Rather, crappy people are the bad guys, and I can always get down with bopping folks like that in the nose.
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dmtreasury · 26 days
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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i’m playing a sailor in my new campaign and i love sailor superstitions, so i made a bunch of dnd sailor superstitions/traditions! (some might be weird/bizarre, but a lot of ours are too so i felt it fitting)
having a water genasi on board is good luck, even better if they’re higher ranked (captain, first mate). however, if they’re a prisoner, it’s extremely bad luck for the crew that has them imprisoned. 
holy people of sea gods closely follow water genasi in good luck/bad luck.
sailors tend to get tattoos of a land god’s symbol in hopes that if they drown, a land god will get them back safely. however, sea gods find this extremely rude and disrespectful, so sailors have to find ways of hiding the tattoos at all times, whether with magic, clothes, or makeup. 
every port city has a shrine or temple to a sea god. the very last thing sailors do before heading out on the ocean and the very first thing they do when they get back on land is pray at one of these places. bigger port cities have special roads for sailors to take.
the only time it’s okay to sing sea shanties on land is if you have a vial of seawater on you. if you don’t have any, sea gods think you’re singing for the land gods instead of themselves. and if they think that, things will turn nasty when you get back to sea.
sailors don’t talk about their families/friends/loved ones while at sea. the sea could get jealous, and try and keep the sailors all to itself–by whatever means necessary.
there are various tattoos one can get for certain accomplishments (ie. defeating a monster, sailing for a certain amount of time/for a certain distance, which port you hail from, etc)
every ship brings a small animal that’s special to a sea god on board (ie a crab). that animal has all priority–in food, in defense, in healing. it’s said that if that animal dies, the rest of the crew will soon follow.
bonus sea shanties:
dwarf and orc shanties have a very steady rhythm and often involve drums–meant to keep rowing easy and sailors focused.
tiefling and elf shanties are melodious and often eerie to hear from another ship–especially in foggy/stormy weather. they’re meant to simulate the sound of the wind, waves, and those who died at sea.
dragonborn and genasi shanties often involved overlapping lyrics and melodies, causing them to sound like the storms out at sea. they’re meant to pay tribute to and appease the gods.
halfling and gnome shanties are cheery and peppy, meant to keep things interesting after monotonous days at sea and to make sure morale is up.
human shanties are as wide and varied as the race itself. they often tell stories–of the crew, of other ships’ adventures, or of history.
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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just had a flashback to me in 3rd grade absolutely blissed out just staring at this pic
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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Final day in the dnd series! I based the DM one off of Brennan because I shamelessly tagged him in every dnd bird pic I posted on ig (sorry Brennan)
Thank you all for tagging along with me for this series! I finished it a while ago and am still kinda sad it’s over 😭 I plan on making more dnd bird stuff but I’m still in school and I put a lot of time into this series so I am a wee bit burnt out. I loved making it though! I am also so so so proud of myself for finishing it to begin with! Thank you all for the love on my birds 🥺💖
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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Given how wizards are themed around higher education, with their universities and ivory towers, I wanna see more fiction that goes into their published papers.
Like, there should be massive drama in the Wizarding world about how Fantasy Wikipedia says "There's no consensus about the origins of skydoves" when in fact, there very much is, everyone knows they were created in the first or second dragon wars, and that's uncontroversial. One single wizard at the University of Towers who thinks they're an offshoot of mermaids DOES NOT MEAN IT'S AN OPEN ISSUE.
Papers that are rebuttals to other magical discoveries. Like, look, that spell just won't work, and you can't call it a "theoretical exercise" just to cover up the fact that you've not been able to cast it. You can't combine Ichthyomancy with completely unrelated elemental summonings, that's just not how magic works, in all due respect.
Thesis defense would be significantly scarier when all your reviewers can cast Everburning Fireball on your ass.
Learning Theoretical Evocation from a hungover lizardman TA at 8am, because the professor for this course has been off on the Elemental Plane of Circles for half the semester trying to finish her paper on how Centaurs predate horses rather than the other way around.
Speaking of which, the life of a wizard graduate student... You keep getting called to go on "quests" which are just overgrown research expeditions to help out some professor's project. You spent nearly a month in that damp castle capturing all the spinfrogs you could find, all to help your professor's project on the possibilities of concentrated soul essences. To this day, you still get dizzy whenever you see battlements, let alone a donjon.
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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i've been doing some solo rpg journaling games recently and i want to keep a reblog list of all of my favorites!
first, is Village Witch by Eliot Silvarian (they/fae). Village Witch is a solo journaling game about a witch finding a home. My favorite things about it is the fact that there are so many things you can do with it. You can take your time going through all four seasons (the game takes place over the course of a year). I've been personally using it as a warm up for original fic writing, but the game gives you so much space for storytelling and character creation!! I love my main witch Serenity and her gay best friend Berry <33. feel free to ask me about my game!! and also ask questions about the game!!
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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i'm sorry did you say street magic
i'm sorry did you say street magic is a game about creating a strange magical city with your friends, it runs completely gmless, and it can either be a fun game to play with friends, or a tool to create a town to play in
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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Ways your fortified points-of-light fantasy city with no discernible agricultural base supports itself that aren't "they eat the monsters":
There's no farmland spreading below the city's mountain fastness because all of the crops are above. Most of the mountain's surface area below the permanent snowline is taken up by a series of colossal hydroponic terraces fed by seasonal meltwater from the snow pack above. (Don't ask who built the terraces.)
The city's famed heaven-piercing towers are aviaries for millions upon untold millions of fruit and seed eating birds, which forage the surrounding countryside by day and roost there at night; their meat and eggs form the community's staple diet. In order to fend off ecological depletion, crack teams of combat-trained wilderness maintenance experts venture forth daily, escorting great cartloads of birdshit on targeted fertilising missions (though in truth they hardly need their swords, as the smell keeps the monsters at bay).
Those weird caverns that seem to be present under every random shed and outhouse are all connected. That's why the giant mutant rats in the basement of the local inn are such a big deal – they're not just annoying the guests, they're also obstructing the community's principal trade route!
For Reasons, the city's population is only about ten percent of its carrying capacity. The city's interior green spaces are presently sufficient for food production, and its citizens take turns dressing up as soldiers and manning the walls once a week to create the illusion of a robust military presence. Unfortunately, the ruse can't last forever, as they lack the manpower to maintain their crumbling infrastructure, nor will they be able to defend themselves when – not if, but when – the neighbouring city-states figure it out.
There's actually plenty of conventional farmland; it's just that the entire campaign takes place south of the city, and the farms are all to the north. Why don't the farms expand southward to claim the clearly arable land? Well, there's a funny story about that...
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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d&d 5e languages and gender
i know this is already a very nerdy blog but please indulge me a moment,,
for my homegame i've been fleshing out how different languages in the game deal with gender / pronouns based on their cultures (some of them are canon languages but some are for our setting) and it made the little nerd in me very happy so i wanted to make some headcanons for the rest of the dnd languages and share it for anyone who'd like to steal / take inspo
feel absolutely free to use these in homegames but if you use for anything streamed or for your own ttrpg/homebrew/fics then crediting/linking back is appreciated :o)
disclaimer: this blog is run by a genderqueer trans man and any queerphobic interaction will immediately be blocked
common
common started off with the standard he, she, & they pronouns but simply Loves a good loanword and so its not uncommon to hear people using pronouns from other languages in otherwise entirely common dialogue. there is some Fighting about whether this is appropriative based on the individuals culture or whether its unfair to people who only speak common to keep up with them all
dwarvish
not too much variety in what most people would consider pronouns, it tends to be more one singular neutral pronoun for someone you don't know / don't know well, and then variations that are more like honorifics than anything else. their pronoun might translate more readily to "skilled with a hammer" than anything regarding a gender
elvish
lots of pronoun options that explore different presentations of gender but they are also age/experience locked. a feminine male elf would use different pronouns as a child, teen, young adult, young adult with job, middle age, middle aged with children, etc. using pronouns from a different life experience bracket from you is incredibly frowned upon and people just dont do it
giant
there is one pronoun for giants & kin and one pronoun for not giants and the one for not giants is not derogatory at all, its just used to differentiate who is part of the family or not (individuals adopted by giants tend to use the giant pronoun)
gnomish
LOTS of variation in pronouns. gnomes love inventing new pronouns. there are general grammatical rules that they follow to Signify that its a pronoun but hearing three new pronouns a day is like. not uncommon. lots of gnomish teens go through a phase of making up at least four new pronouns they want to go by. uncommon to only go by one set. typically introduced along with your name
(more under the cut)
goblin
no gendered pronouns, all pronouns are instead structured around relations between individuals. so one person would use brother pronoun with one person, son pronoun with another, best friend pronoun to another. the family pronouns are not locked to actual family, just what the relationship is like. if you don't know someone well, its "cousin", "niece/nephew", "auntie/uncle", or "grandparent" depending on their age
halfling
pronouns are split between public and private use. in general in the community or with outsiders, there's a single pronoun that translates loosely to "friend". actual individual pronouns are only known to and used with close friends and family. there's a small handful of them and only some of them have gendered connotations
orc
there are only four categories of pronouns: masculine, feminine, both/mixed, and neither. but there's a decent amount of variations because there are varying levels of formality for each of them. there are ways to conjugate them so they're more formal and respectful, but also lots of diminutives to make them more affectionate and closely-bonded
abyssal
no use of pronouns. lots of very specific derogatory terms that are used in place of them. i shant elaborate.
celestial
lots of variations in pronouns. they are not very closely tied to gender, but are tied to very specific aesthetics. instead of having individual pronoun words, in celestial you just use root words. so one person might use the root word for things that are soft and gentle and natural for their pronoun, while another person might use the root word for things associated with dark and murky and mysterious things for theirs. tend to be tied to domains
draconic
no use of pronouns, only names and titles. if you happen to share a name with another individual who speaks draconic, you would need a unique title to go after it. the full name and full title is said at every reference of someone
deep speech
deep speech has pronouns probably but hearing them for any individual you dont share a close identity group with makes you violently nauseous and then the word immediately leaves your mind so it's just really hard to learn them
infernal
there are words for "you", "me", "us", "we", "this one", "that one", "those ones" etc but no classic pronouns as far as individual usage goes. if someone really needs to be specific they would use whatever pronoun that individual uses in their native language. tieflings have introduced a Lot of neopronouns into infernal but theyre all borrowed from other languages and then reworked into infernal grammar and tend to be localized to communities
primordial
individuals are referred to their elemental type (or "none") rather than pronouns tied to gender. so it would be more like "the windy one" or "the rocky one" than anything like he or she
sylvan
no standard gendered pronouns, it's entirely nounself. so basically infinite amount of pronouns that are easily understood by anyone familiar with that noun. so you would have things like pebble pronoun, teapot pronoun, sword pronoun, with some general affiliations with presentation but less so with gender
undercommon
pronouns are based on level of respect and not gender, but there are also pronouns specifically used for children. like craftsmen would typically all use the same pronoun unless one was incredibly successful and respected, or had a very bad reputation, etc. there are pronouns used only for royalty and pronouns used only for deities
speak with animals
when translated into common, tends to just be translated as the animal's bio sex, but it can go a little screwy when speaking about creatures who have biological sexes so outside the humanoid concept of sex and gender that even magic dont fuckin know how to translate it. kind of just makes a weird bubbly noise in its place
if you read this far thank you thank you and if you end up using these in your campaign lore or fics i would love to know :o)
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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i would like to know more epistolary rpgs! have you got any?
either 2 player or more, i suspect most will be 2 player but more seems intriguing
Theme: Epistolary Games (Round 2!)
Hello friend! The three games I start off with here all allow for more players, although you are correct that most epistolary games are better for a duet.
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When I lived here, by a grumpy little critter.
You once lived here. Maybe it was a place of refuge, maybe one of torment, maybe it was just one of the many places you passed through, but something about this house hooked you, so that you lingered even after death. You are a ghost that haunts this place, sending a fragment of your memory across the gulf that separates the dead from the living.
"When I lived here..." is a play-by-mail storytelling game for 4-6 players about several generations of ghosts in a single house. Each player contributes a brief recollection of their life in the house, one-by-one building a fragmentary history of the house and the lives lived there.
The players will roll on a prompt list to help them come up with their ghost and the story related to them, then write a journal entry onto a sheet of paper that will be consecutively mailed from house to house. Because the final player is responsible for mailing copies of the game to all of the other players, I recommend planning out the movement of the letters before play, so that the person who gets it last is in the best position to make sure everyone gets a copy of the game.
Europa Base, by a grumpy little critter.
Europa Base is a play-by-postcard survival horror RPG for 2 players or 2 households.
One party plays the crew of Europa Base, a newly established scientific station on Jupiter's moon, Europa. The crew, or what's left of it, have just survived a catastrophic disaster, but their troubles aren't over yet.
The other party plays Earth Command, scrambling to offer support and encouragement to Europa Base's intrepid scientists across the vast, unbridgeable distance, or perhaps just conveying last the last words of Europa Base's crew to the loved ones they left behind.
This game actually uses the time delay of the postal service as an oracle to determine how bad the situation is on Europa Base. If players’ mail is routinely and quickly delivered, there are even rules adjustments you can make to re-introduce a level of chance. If you like the idea of suspense that you can play with over a number of days or weeks, you should check out Europa Base.
Message in a Bottle, by Kingpin33.
A mysterious bottle has washed ashore, and seems to be inviting you to a beautiful island paradise! Inside there seems to be a note from a friend you have yet to meet, and an application for island living. You seem like a shoo-in, this Nook character doesn’t seem too picky..
Message in a Bottle is a letter-writing game where players can create a village full of animal friends and their island home. The features of your villagers and the island will be entirely determined by the mailing information of the person who sent you your message, so be sure to send the game around to all your friends and see what kind of neighbuorhood you can create!
This is an adorable little game inspired by Animal Crossing in which you use the zip codes of your friends to determine what kind of animal you are. After everyone has created their friends, the author even recommends an Animal Crossing RPG that’s available for free to play your characters in!
But Wait! There’s More!
Additionally, you can take a look at the works of AdventureByMail, a designer who design games specifically for two players separated by distance.  They have mysteries, vampires, interstellar stories and more!
You can also find more epistolary games in the Step Up For the Postal Service game jam, designed specifically to be sent in the post. (Did I mention how much I love game jams?)
Games I’ve recommended in the past
Forever Dex, by World Champ Game Co.
This whole post.
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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hi! i could have sworn i saved a ttrpg masterpost from u or reblogged by you but i have no idea where it went so im just sending an ask instead bc u seem very knowledgeable ! me and 2 of my friends are interested in a gm-less writing based ttrpg or writing game, do you know of any that you would recommend?
i have a whole ttrpgs tag, so if you're looking for a masterpost it'll be there! i also highly recommend @theresattrpgforthat if you're looking for something specific!
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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know the right tool to use for the right spell! here's a guide to a few common general categories of magical foci
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dmtreasury · 1 month
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How to play Wither & Grow
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Wither & Grow is our new solo journaling game and I wanted to talk a little bit about how it works!
In the game, you play as a sentient plant creature. You have 6 different Ideals that not only affect how you think about the world, but also impact your physical changes.
In each round of play, you'll roll 4 dice and assign them to 4 different dice slots. The four dice slots are:
The Ideal which will grow this round
How much that Ideal grows by
The Ideal which will wither this round
How much that Ideal withers by
You cannot pick the same Ideal to wither and grow in the same round.
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At the start of the game, each of your Ideals has a value of 2. If an Ideal goes above 10, your growth becomes uncontrollable and you lose yourself. If you an Ideal goes to 0 or below, it has died and is no longer important to you.
After you resolve the 4 dice slots, you'll select a prompt for the round you're on and write your journal entry. Your journal entry should include answers to the prompt as well as general descriptions on physical and emotional changes you've gone through based on which Ideals have withered and grown.
Here is an example:
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Here the Harmony Ideal (which corresponds to the number 2) would increase by 5 and the Horror Ideal (which corresponds to the number 6) would decrease by 3. Since this is the first round and all Ideals start at 2, Harmony would then become 7 and Horror would become -1. Horror would wither and die as it fell below 0. Then, you would write your journal entry based on these changes and pick one of the prompts from this page and write more about your life as a sentient plant.
If you are interested in checking out Wither & Grow, it can be found on itch at the link below. If you decide to play this game, I'd be delighted to hear about it!
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dmtreasury · 2 months
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Homebrew Mechanic: Meaningful Research
Being careful about when you deliver information to your party is one of the most difficult challenges a dungeonmaster may face, a balancing act that we constantly have to tweak as it affects the pacing of our campaigns.
That said, unlike a novel or movie or videogame where the writers can carefully mete out exposition at just the right time, we dungeonmasters have to deal with the fact that at any time (though usually not without prompting) our players are going to want answers about what's ACTUALLY going on, and they're going to take steps to find out.
To that end I'm going to offer up a few solutions to a problem I've seen pop up time and time again, where the heroes have gone to all the trouble to get themselves into a great repository of knowledge and end up rolling what seems like endless knowledge checks to find out what they probably already know. This has been largely inspired by my own experience but may have been influenced by watching what felt like several episodes worth of the critical role gang hitting the books and getting nothing in return.
I've got a whole write up on loredumps, and the best way to dripfeed information to the party, but this post is specifically for the point where a party has gained access to a supposed repository of lore and are then left twiddling their thumbs while the dm decides how much of the metaplot they're going to parcel out.
When the party gets to the library you need to ask yourself: Is the information there to be found?
No, I don't want them to know yet: Welcome them into the library and then save everyone some time by saying that after a few days of searching it’s become obvious the answers they seek aren’t here. Most vitally, you then either need to give them a new lead on where the information might be found, or present the development of another plot thread (new or old) so they can jump on something else without losing momentum.
No, I want them to have to work for it:  your players have suddenly given you a free “insert plothook here” opportunity. Send them in whichever direction you like, so long as they have to overcome great challenge to get there. This is technically just kicking the can down the road, but you can use that time to have important plot/character beats happen.
Yes, but I don’t want to give away the whole picture just yet:  The great thing about libraries is that they’re full of books, which are written by people,  who are famously bad at keeping their facts straight. Today we live in a world of objective or at least peer reviewed information but the facts in any texts your party are going to stumble across are going to be distorted by bias. This gives you the chance to give them the awnsers they want mixed in with a bunch of red herrings and misdirections. ( See the section below for ideas)
Yes, they just need to dig for it:  This is the option to pick if you're willing to give your party information upfront while at the same time making it SEEM like they're overcoming the odds . Consider having an encounter, or using my minigame system to represent their efforts at looking for needles in the lithographic haystack. Failure at this system results in one of the previous two options ( mixed information, or the need to go elsewhere), where as success gets them the info dump they so clearly crave.
The Art of obscuring knowledge AKA Plato’s allegory of the cave, but in reverse
One of the handiest tools in learning to deliver the right information at the right time is a sort of “slow release exposition” where you wrap a fragment lore the party vitally needs to know in a coating of irrelevant information,  which forces them to conjecture on possibilities and draw their own conclusions.  Once they have two or more pieces on the same subject they can begin to compare and contrast, forming an understanding that is merely the shadow of the truth but strong enough to operate off of. 
As someone who majored in history let me share some of my favourite ways I’ve had to dig for information, in the hopes that you’ll be able to use it to function your players.
A highly personal record in the relevant information is interpreted through a personal lens to the point where they can only see the information in question 
Important information cameos in the background of an unrelated historical account
The information can only be inferred from dry as hell accounts or census information. Cross reference with accounts of major historical events to get a better picture, but everything we need to know has been flattened into datapoints useful to the bureaucracy and needs to be re-extrapolated.
The original work was lost, and we only have this work alluding to it. Bonus points if the existent work is notably parodying the original, or is an attempt to discredit it.
Part of a larger chain of correspondence, referring to something the writers both experienced first hand and so had no reason to describe in detail. 
The storage medium (scroll, tablet, arcane data crystal) is damaged in some way, leading to only bits of information being known. 
Original witnesses Didn’t have the words to describe the thing or events in question and so used references from their own environment and culture. Alternatively, they had specific words but those have been bastardized by rough translations. 
Tremendously based towards a historical figure/ideology/religion to the point that all facts in the piece are questionable.  Bonus points if its part of a treatise on an observably untrue fact IE the flatness of earth
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dmtreasury · 2 months
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Your Favorite Tabletop Gaming Tumblrs
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Of all the tumblrs that are (almost) entirely devoted to tabletop gaming (any system is fine) that you follow, which tumblrs are your favorites?
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dmtreasury · 2 months
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D&D Headcanons: Warforged Edition
[This is mostly for the Eberron games I run, but can be extrapolated to fit in other settings]
Warforged, having only existed for roughly 30-31 years, are split up into 5 or so generations, roughly every 5 years
Due to the creation forges utilized by House Cannith having a bit of "spontaneity", each batch of Warforged comes out a little different than intended aesthetically. Because the couple-dozen warforged made at-a-time look similar, have similarly shaped Ghulras (the sigil on their forehead), and are often raised/trained together, they often form bonds of 'batch siblings'
As the Last War went on and more units were comissioned by different sides, warforged became comissioned with more and more aesthetic features. This has resulted in older generations looking a lot less varied than later generations. Old batches look more utilitarian and similar even across different fronts, whereas batches made in the later years of the war look very different
Karrnathi Warforged often are assigned cosmetic augmentations to look skeletal (to match the use of karrnathi undead) or wolf-like (to match the heraldry of Karrnathi nobles)
Due to the cost of augmentations and magical items that would allow more facial movement, many warforged have developed a robust system of body language and non-verbal-communication to help get emotions and sarcasm across. Different warforged of differing nations have ended up developing seperate dialects and "accents"
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