Fuuuck I bought a new computer but I forgot this blogs password
I'm gonna have to put this blog down.
Here's a really old drawing of Exethanter and Neferon.
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d e v o n

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RMH
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roma★
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me

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titsay
occasionally subtle
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Keni
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hello vonnie
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

shark vs the universe
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@denizensoftheambertemple
Fuuuck I bought a new computer but I forgot this blogs password
I'm gonna have to put this blog down.
Here's a really old drawing of Exethanter and Neferon.
Dnd question:
When Strahd comes back to life by the powers that be does his minions come back as they were or do they get reincarnated and then strahd finds them and makes them into minions?
Pre curse of strahd, Strahd has not had a minion that appears twice so I assume those bitches died (or they just hate him now 50/50)
Curse of Strahd muddles this a bit because Rahadin appears later Heir of Strahd but I never finished that book so I don't know if it's a sequal or a adaptation or something.
Making Madame Eva be the only character who received a dark gift without any consequences because it's really funny.
Writing a Curse of Strahd rewrite. Can't decide whether to start with the village of barovia because it's first and it's easy or with the amber temple because I am soooooo fixated on Exethanter and Neferon.
Decide for me bitches
village of barovia
amber temple
My brother is planning on DMing a Curse of Strahd campaign for me and some friends and I have so many questions about the vistani sighhhh
the fuck you mean her name is EZMERELDA you've got to be messing with me actually
It gets so much worse than mild stereotypes. They put so much effort into being accurate to the old lore but only racist bits. The only things they changed about the Vistani was the stuff that made them more complex, like Madame Eva making a deal with Strahd to give the Vistani protection in Barovia so they wouldn't get murdered was changed to Madame Eva being Strahd's bastard sister who is 100% on his side, and the one surviving Vistana from the group Van Richten massacred who confronts Van Richten and gets him to realize that he is a racist asshole was replaced with Ezmeralda who respects Van Richten because he didn't kill her parents even though he murdered the rest of her family.
This is not a good module.
Dragonlance, being the original DL series of modules, is not a D&D campaign.
It’s closer to a visual novel with dice rolling.
So if you view it like that and get in the appropriate headspace, I think you can have a good time with it. And you also won’t assume that’s what a campaign is supposed to be like.
will be posting a curse of strahd 80s supplament soon... at some point... maybe... Preview...
WOTC has to bring back one TSR game back which one are they bringing back?
Gamma World
Boot Hill
Top Secret
Amazing Engine
Dragonstrike (not really a rpg but the vhs video is funny)
Gangbusters
Buck Rogers Adventure Game
Bullwinkle and Rocky the role-playing party game
Star Frontiers
jander sunstarr
the FIRST and the BEST elf vampire hnnggghh
christie golden actually commented on this on blueskyaaAAGSHDHD
You Wound Me
Lately, I've been running Curse of Strahd, but not with D&D.
That would be too easy.
I'm running it with Mothership.
No, not space vampires, although that would be awesome. This is narratively gothic horror fantasy with the d% rules chassis. I've made a ton of tweaks that are necessary for the genre, like re-flavoring the classes to actual social classes of early modern Europe. Skills, items, etc.
There is one big change I've made recently that wasn't necessary at all: retooling the damage system.
HP-less Damage
So, for those unaware how damage works in Mothership, here's a rundown:
You have HP and also a certain number of Wounds you can take (usually around 20 HP and 2 Wounds)
When you take damage you subtract from your HP, if it hits zero then take a Wound and reset your HP (account for spillover)
When you take a Wound roll on the Wounds Table and gain a special condition based on the damage type (sometimes this results in instant death if you roll real bad)
I absolutely adore the Wound Table in Mothership but I super don't care about the math that gets to it.
So I cut the math. Here's my current procedure:
When you take damage compare that number with the Wound chart (stuff like armor reducing damage still applies)
Take the associated Wound and deal with it's effects
Other Influences
In a word: Warhammer.
I always loved the critical damage tables in Dark Heresy. One time my character's head exploded and everyone else slipped in the blood fountain my body turned into. Good stuff.
The Warhammer Fantasy RP crit tables were a big source of inspiration on mine.
Scaling
Where Mothership was a d10 table, I needed something at least double that size given how much damage monster do. Even with my monster damage dialed back from Mothership standards, right now my table goes to 20 but I should probably expand it to 30.
It also seems important for the chart to escalate like Mothership's can. That is to say, get certain Wounds makes it more likely to get more Wounds later. Where Mothership has Bleeding, I went with something more general that interacted directly with the chart. Also, something to dictate length of injury.
Wound Keywords:
Add - the next time you take damage add X
Temporary - lasts until end of encounter
Ongoing - lasts until resting or treatment
Permanent - lasts forever (unless something dramatic happens)
Okay, Get to the Dang Table Already!
Still working on other damage types, like Fire and Gore, as well as tweaking the existing chart, but this has been a promising start.
During our last fight the party priest was attacked by one of those animated Scarecrows a few times while exploring a swamp. The first cut just made his allies Stressed (Profuse Bleeding) the second made it hard for him to run (Severed Tendon) and the third put him in a really bad spot (Artery Nicked).
This was all extremely dramatic and changed the party's calculation every round. Plus there was very little math. So I consider it a big success.
In Closing
So that's another thing I'm working on.
After all, why bother finishing a project when I can just start another one?
Hope you enjoy the chart!
Someone on the CoS reddit said that Strahd is a virgin in their game (basically just said he was saving himself for Tatyana as a facet of his obsession with her.) And the number of people LOSING their SHIT in the comments is killing me.
Multiple people are saying that making Strahd a virgin will RUIN the ENTIRE module. They are SO ANGRY.
It's so funny. Some DMs are SO protective of Strahd as their Big Cool Alpha Male OC that anything undermining it (even in someone else's game that has nothing to do with them) sends them into a frenzy.
No way he did not spend time in the arms of his brothers in arms during the war.
He always pulled out and finished in his hand, so it wouldn't count
Strahd is doing the kinda stuff Romans and Mormons did.
every time I try to find out more about Barovia, I inevitably end up having a small mental breakdown, as a treat. names change, the timeline plays double dutch with itself, whole ass characters vanish and age up or down or simply pop into existence, nothing is the correct size or distance or age or period.
all I want is to find out more neat stuff that made it through the edition changes, man. hire one (1) historian. just get one person on staff whose whole job is to channel their neurodivergence into a setting bible, so that they can beat the other writers over the head with it whenever they make half the NPCs age up, half of them age down, or pUT A GIANT 200' WINGSPAN BIRD ON MOUNT GHAKIS AND REFUSE TO CHANGE A SINGLE WORD OF FOLKLORE OR CULTURE FOR ANY OF THE TOWNS WITHIN ITS HUNTING RADIUS
Not putting Pyoor Twohundredsummers in COS was a sin.
YOU THERE. CURSE OF STRAHD DM.
are you looking for just the thing to kick your campaign up a notch? do you crave to take your adventure beyond the bounds of Barovia but don't know where to start? did you read 5e's Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and say "wow! this all looks so cool! shame there's fuckall information about anything in here"?
well have i got the solution for you! yes sir the Ravenloft Gazetteers are here!
published in the early naughts for 3e/3.5e, the Gazetteers were campaign supplements presented in the form of an in-character travel journal and domain guide written by an unnamed and acerbic narrator, at the request of an enigmatic patron. there are five Gazetteers in total, each one covering four or five domains of dread and including notable towns, general ecology, culture, government, supernatural hazards, and a good few plot hooks and named NPCs for each one. the series was, unfortunately, unfinished due to events taking place on TSR's end and the shift to fourth edition, so not every domain is represented and the narrator's story remains unresolved.
these are not modules or campaign guides. they do contain statblocks and mechanical information for the DM's use, but more than that these are lore guides. they present the most exhaustive and in-depth look at the Ravenloft setting i've ever seen, from the perspective of an individual on the ground and with just enough information to make inferences without being able to name the genre tropes they're describing. they are to 5e's VRGR what an antique Mustang is to a cybertruck. even if your campaign never leaves Barovia, i would highly recommend reading them as the 3e version of Strahd's domain is twice the size of 5e's version, and more than that it breathes. it lives. it feels like a real place with real people in it who are worth saving from the wolves at their door.
and they can be found here, in handy pdf format on google drive! Gazetteers one through five, the 3e Ravenloft Player's Handbook, the original 2e run of Van Richten's Guides, which are similar lore documents for various types of monsters and undead, and a handful of the 2e Children of the Night adventure series, which are a collection of oneshot modules easy to adapt and add into your campaign!
now go forth my fellow horror nerds, go forth and reap the rewards of vivid storytelling and worldbuilding made with passion for the craft!
Writing a 4-6 part Barovia module series what should I call part 1?
Strahd's Guest
Zarovich's Guest
Ravenloft's Guest
Expedition to the Cursed House of Strahd
These titles suck
Someone on the CoS reddit said that Strahd is a virgin in their game (basically just said he was saving himself for Tatyana as a facet of his obsession with her.) And the number of people LOSING their SHIT in the comments is killing me.
Multiple people are saying that making Strahd a virgin will RUIN the ENTIRE module. They are SO ANGRY.
It's so funny. Some DMs are SO protective of Strahd as their Big Cool Alpha Male OC that anything undermining it (even in someone else's game that has nothing to do with them) sends them into a frenzy.
No way he did not spend time in the arms of his brothers in arms during the war.
CoS DMs are like "oh, did I tell you about what Strahd got up to in my game?" "nice, in mine he did it this way." And it sounds like there's just one Strahd who walks from one campaign to another, getting killed over and over.
One of the earliest D&D settings I got into was Ravenloft. This was back in 2nd ED, when D&D cared a lot about flavor, and the gothic horror setting had flavor to spare. It had some impressive whiffs as well, but the Van Ricten's monsterhunting guides were generally great stuff.
However as a game... it didn't quite work out. D&D characters are more magical strike teams than heroic but frail investigators, and most editions weren't designed to allow the play that the Guides suggested without a lot of DM fiat.
One of the tools Ravenloft tried to use to integrate the horror setting into RP was Fear and Horror checks. Something that several other game systems have implemented as well! And all of them (that I've seen) have sucked. Completely terrible. Madness some games manage (sorta), but that's possibly the least important.
And so I've decided to take a crack at a better system of Fear and Horror. Game systems that try to steer gameplay in the correct direction, without totally overriding roleplay or becoming crippling messes. They're easiest to work into most D20 systems but should be good for a lot of simulationist games. (Except 5th ED because 5th ED D&D is the worst and nothing works with advantage / disadvantage.)
Basics and Challenges
These systems are designed purely for Ravenloft, and as such are tailored to impact play in ways that create the 'gothic horror monster hunter' atmosphere. While the ideas here can be pulled in for other games, it's important to remember the goals of the mechanics and not just make assumptions based on the names.
A Ravenloft game arc focuses on confronting and defeating a monster. One that's a terrifying threat against a party that doesn't know its weaknesses, and a lesser threat to a party who's properly prepared. As such the suggested gameplay style is to have the party encounter the monster and usually flee, or at least force them into a purely defensive setup. They then investigate the monster, through legends, rumors, and occasionally horrid locations. After they learn the monster's weakness (or fall for a red herring) they plan an attack that succeeds, or if they fail, retreat and try again later.
One problem is that most combat games are designed to prevent the players from retreating. Because if retreat is easy, kiting becomes easy, and designers don't like that. So there needs to be a system to patch that.
Another problem is that it's hard to force people to roleplay being off put by horror. Simulationist players are used to ignoring penalties and pushing through. And even experienced roleplayers can use a cue to see when RP is going into 'group sabotage' instead of 'reasonable reaction.' And players and GMs might disagree on where that point is. There should be a system to help smooth those edges a little.
Which leads to our two replacement systems.
Fear
When the situation is FUBAR, when your best attack just failed, when the enemy popped out of nowhere and crit the paladin for 3/4ths of their health, that's when Fear comes in. Not supernatural fear, this is the knowledge your character has that the situation can't be fixed and it's time to escape and regroup.
Fear is a known number, that gives a penalty equal to its value to any attempts to press the fight, and a bonus equal to its value to any action taken to get the fuck away from this mess. Whether a panicked retreat or a controlled evac, this lets your wizard scrabble over the fence while your rogue picks up the cleric and the fighter drops obstacles between you and the wolfman that turned out not to be weak to silver.
Abilities or skills that grant fear immunity allow players to ignore the penalty, but they don't get the bonus either. They can choose to revoke their immunity at any time, but can't then turn it back on until the conflict has been resolved. This means Paladins are great at spending a few rounds as decoy before running, without totally ruining the whole purpose of the system.
DMs should trigger Fear when a plan fails, especially if a weapon the PCs are relying on turns out to be a dud. Other good points are hearing/seeing sudden reinforcements, or after an ambush deals significant damage to a PC / important NPC. Many PCs are allergic to running because most D&D editions (along with a lot of other combat systems), make running really hard. So Fear doesn't just give PCs an incentive to run, it gives them the tools to make them feel like they'll succeed.
Of course if the PCs do something really cool and pull something awesome out of their ass to reverse the situation, feel free to drop the fear. This is a tool to help, not a railroad track.
Fear can also be used for important NPCs who need to die dramatically elsewhere. It's strongly suggested to use this sparingly. But using matching rules for PCs and NPCs will make it seem less like you're fudging the results.
Horror
Whether horrid landscapes of alien dimension, or a pile of rotting corpses writhing with vermin, most horror games present the main characters with mental challenges outside of just battle. This is horror. The things we don't want to stare at, lest they stare back.
Horror is a known number that gives a character a penalty to any action to interact with the horrific scene/area/item until they perform some act to counteract the penalty. This can be as simple as taking a really deep breath before pulling a key out of a gore stained hole, or as complex as an expensive day long ritual to ward your party from the terror of the other realms. Some actions can reduce the penalty instead of completely removing it, while others might fail (leading to a bit of trauma.)
Specifically this mechanic is designed to let things be horrific without PCs looting it like it's just a red themed dungeon room, while at the same time not drowning the party in penalties. (Though unavoidable penalties are a great way to say 'get the fuck out of here fast.') Treating their innate revulsion as a challenge to be overcome prevents more hardcore players from being annoyed by futility, while letting RPers milk the moment for what it's worth but not going overboard.
(Some people are reasonably asking 'why not use a different system for this?' The answer is because most of these either have the same issues, or have heroes that are a lot more 'frail' than 'heroic.' Systems that allow combat competence and that allow for this style of play are rare to nonexistent.)
I'm working on a ravenloft supplement for old school essentials. I love how you reworked the fear and horror checks, mind if I rip you off?(with credit of course)