My Dnd sideblog

@fuckilostmydice

Dnd stuff

240 posts

8 Character Creation Tips (for DnD or just writing in general)

1. Have a goal

While it may sound like I’m stating the obvious here, your character needs to have something they want to accomplish. Maybe they want to be the best at something, see a place, fall in love, conquer the world, or something else. Whatever it is, they need to have something that they desire beyond all other things. Ideally, give them more than one goal. Make them have to sacrifice one to achieve the other, to add extra drama

2. Have a reputation

Maybe they’re the best artist in their class or they’re great at juggling. Perhaps they slipped on the stairs in front of their whole village. Either way, give something for the locals to remember about them. That way it can give you a starting point for the interactions with other characters

3. Have a friend

Whether a friend, a coworker, a sibling, an army buddy, or someone they saved, have someone close to your character whom they’re close to and wish well. Yeah, angsty “I have no friends” characters can be fun, but in small doses; eventually the reader gets fed up with them. At the very least the character needs someone to talk to or bounce ideas off of

4. Have a home

It may be a neighborhood they grew up in, their parents’ house, or a room they’ve been renting in a tavern. Hell, it could even be a person if you so choose. Everyone needs to feel secure at one time or another

5. Have a signature item

Now, recognize that this may not work for EVERY character, but it’s up to you to decide what will fit and what won’t. In many cases, it can work. A signature item is something that is recognizably YOUR CHARACTER’S, be it a weapon, a scarf, a toy, or a piece of jewelry. It’s something that makes them feel like themself

6. Have a problem

This should be something other than the problem addressed in the main plot line. Maybe a member of their family is sick, they are broke, or they’re failing their classes. This helps make your character seem more realistic because NO ONE has one problem at a time

7. Have a secret

This can affect the plot or not; either way, it helps make your character more well rounded. Maybe your character can’t read, left their crewmates to die when a kracken attacked their ship, or made their long lost sister run away. If you choose to have it affect the plot in any way, this secret should embarrass your character, make it so that other characters don’t trust your character, or somehow endanger them and the people they’re close to if found out

8. Have a reason to be brave and to fight

Maybe it’s because your character wants to be like their hero, maybe it’s so they can repay a debt (like if someone saved their life previously), maybe it’s for their child, but your character needs to have a reason to occasionally face their fears

Have fun!!!

homesteadchronicles

I understand that this is meant to be simple, but GOSH DANG, is it so helpful! This came at the perfect time for me, as I am in the process of creating characters both in the realm of fictional writing and tabletop roleplaying. I’ve been seriously struggling with one of my characters for a long time now and always felt something was missing. Only now do I realize - I had all of these, except for a secret! Well, I gave him a secret to keep, but not one that would make him fearful, embarrassed, or ashamed! And what point is there in a secret without a price attached to it’s exposure? There was no cost, no blow to his own worth or self-esteem or ego, to keeping that secret from his friends and allies. Now I know I need to sit down with my DM and work out where to interweave a potential secret into the plot.

Thank you for this, OP! May it genuinely help all of my followers as it has helped me.

This is really good!

transfagrified-in-the-void

Here is a free pdf of the players handbook

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

For all your dnd purposes

Player Memo Kit

A printable set of vintage-inspired pieces for your character journal ❤️

Find them here.

inkwell-attitude

all the tips I found for drawing a fantasy map are like :) “here’s a strategy to draw the land masses! here’s how to plot islands!” :) and that’s wonderful and I love them all but ??? how? do y'all decide where to put cities/mountains/forests/towns I have my map and my land but I’m throwing darts to decide where the Main Citadel where the Action Takes Place is

okay so i know i said most of this in the replies but it might be easier to actually reblog and say stuff instead lmao

Cities - go near water! freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there. Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.

for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end. rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat

mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains! mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey). a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half. These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks

Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact. think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies

forests - depends on how warm the area might be. coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too

If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower). if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)

You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)

and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains

tl;dr i like to think of major climate events that might have also shaped the land on top of some basic rules

possiblypedanticrpgideas

The Artifexian has an entire series on building your world from literally the stars down and then the ground up.

All my worldbuilding videos

Though, for fantasy, you can make the world operate on entirely different principles:

With that done, the actual topic of city placement can be covered by videos like this:

Or

Once you have your places, if you want help naming them in realistic ways, this video can help:

This one is on architecture, which is definitely a subset of cities:

But for a more relevant practical guide on making settlements realistic:

Here’s a quick guide for making demographics:

inkwell-attitude

holy shit?

if you definitely 100% own all of the dnd 5E content after spending hundreds of dollars on it whether physically or digitally (or both!) u should use this site here as a quick n easy reference point for the content you definitely already legally own because you’re a law abiding citizen who has paid hundreds of dollars for a shittonne of books.

may I also add that if you accidentally misplaced your D&D books that you absolutely, definitely bought, you can find pdfs of them all here

and not just 5e, and not just D&D

and not just books, a few days ago I found an issue of a magazine that was published when I was two years old

but you know, very few people actually need this site probably because we all paid a hundreds of dollars for a shittonne of books.

I re-designed the map order worksheets during my time at WOTC as manager of cartography. Mainly it was just to make the worksheets completely digital and accessible for anyone who was to design maps for our game worlds. These are the final versions which were being used up till 2003 at WOTC. The list of map symbols goes back to the dawn of role playing game maps and TSR. Dave Sutherland and Dennis Kauth were the two people who really started all of the organized nature of making map orders easier to produce for the TSR RPG R&D design department.

Dennis Kauth was originally from an engineering background, so he even made sure that all of the symbols had a corresponding number in case of the situation where someone was not able to draw things out in a competent manner, they could just simply write a number on the map reference and circle it, thus making “it” the object or feature from the master key. The mapping standards is one of the first things Dave & Dennis showed me when I started work in the mapping department at TSR in the early 90s.

In those days the whole thing was a large packet of stuff in a folder, including several different sized blank map pages, the symbols list and a blank fold-up poster map sheet printed with a hex grid for the old ‘gazetteer” style maps and a few examples of how to draw a proper map reference. For the most part everyone in R&D used these map standards to create their map references, however there were always a few that would come in on cocktail napkins and such but it was really worth it to have a standard for the map orders. Fun little bit of history, Good times and Good gaming!

fullofbugs84uy894ujui9

reminder that this blog, while not politically focused, supports BLM. bootlickers and racists aren’t welcome here, and never will be.

🦋🌸 FEY FAYRE CHARACTER SHEETS 🌸🦋

You can bring the pink magic 💖 of @r-n-w‘s Fey Fayre adventure to any of your D&D games with the full set of Fey Fayre character sheets!

🧚You don’t have to buy the full adventure to get them, and they’re PDF form-fillable.

👉 Get them here! - r-n-w.net

Sampler Giveaway March 1st 2020 through March 31st, 2020

Hi dears, it’s time for another giveaway! I adore giveaways and I think this is a fun way for anyone to enter so here we go with the prizes and rules.

Prize: One (1) Mega wax sampler - all 13 fragrances, One (1) Mega Soap sampler - all 13 fragrances, and one (1) dragon eye notebook (winner chooses color)

Rules:

There will only be one (1) prize, and one (1) winner.

Giveaway will run from March 1st through March 31st, 2020 11:59 pm Central time zone

Winner will be chosen randomly, via a random number generator.

Winner has 24 hours to respond to a message to claim the prize or else it will go to another winner.

You don’t have to follow, but it is nice

Open worldwide, I will cover the shipping costs

If you’re under 18 and enter, need a parent’s permission please

do not tag as giveaway or that will mess up the notes and everyone will be very mad :(

REBLOGS count. Reblog as much as you like (don’t spam your followers)

Prize will ship out somewhere around April 15th.

If you’d rather not test your luck, or you can’t wait to get your hands on some samplers, check out my etsy shop here where almost everything is 40-50% off

Die Hard Dice Moonstone Dreamwalker is deceptively hard to photograph, but man is it worth it 💜

#ik i aready own ywo character sets for nil #but these perfectly match them #eeeee

I got these two sets of unfinished dice from Die Hard Dice because i want to try some different inking colors. Only one problem... I don’t know how to finish them. I have watched a couple YouTube videos but I’m hoping I don’t really need all that equipment because I’m not making my own dice, I just want to smooth the edges off and ink them. So, anyone have any tips for me?

Get one of those manicure buffing blocks that have a different size grit on each side. Start with the roughest and work up to the smoothest. I like to lay the block flat on a surface and rub the die face on it (rather than the other way around), and don’t put any pressure on it. You don’t want to file it *down*, just buff it, so let the grit do the work. I like to do one entire die at one grit all over, rinse and dry it, then turn the block to the next highest grit and start over from there (instead of doing a single face at a time). Just rinse and dry between each grit.

I can’t quite tell for sure from these pics, but these dice look like they might be transparent when they’re done? If that’s the case, you might want to get some plastic polish to really shine them up good in the end. A brand like Flitz will do you just fine. Or you can get a jewelers’ polishing cloth. Use it after you’ve done all sides of the manicure block, and rinse afterward. (If you use Flitz, you might need to use a toothpick to scrape it out of the numbers when you’re rinsing.)

When you’re ready to ink, just pick a paint you like, dab it on the die face (make sure to get the paint into the number crevice), then turn the painted face face-down on a flat paper towel and wipe in one swipe. The paint on the surface of the face will wipe off, while the paint inside the number crevices will stay in place. With the exception of the d4, the more faces a die has, the shallower the number crevices tend to be; d20s are especially annoying, and you might need to make a second pass after the first dries.

Once you’re done painting, you can clean up the die faces with a Q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol if needed. DO NOT use acetone or nail polish remover, it can eat away at the die or permanently soften the surface. After you’ve cleaned it all up, if there’s any remaining haziness, hit it with the Flitz or polishing cloth again.

It’s a tedious process but the kind of thing you can do while you’re watching a movie or something.

Thanks @bixbiboom !! I have a couple of the manicure blocks I think you’re talking about. The dice are slightly transparent so I will check out your recommendations on polishing.

One question - one of the sets is described as “frosted” and currently reminds me of seaglass. Will sanding and polishing remove that luster? Is that luster supposed to be removed?

I’ve never finished a set of seaglass dice myself, but I do have a couple manufactured sets. The seaglass look in the dice you’ve got is a result of deliberately not polishing the dice fully (as opposed to Chessex’s frosted line, which is essentially a coating applied at the end of production), and going through the steps I described will result in turning them into non-frosted dice. I’m just speculating here, but if they were my project, instead of going through all the grits on the manicure block, I’d just start at a high grit to buff out any roughness without smoothing the faces. Test it out on the lowest face of your least favorite (lol) die and see if it gets the effect you like. (Personally I experiment on the d% since I rarely use ‘em.)

gm-nekoromancer

I found a new way to generate landmasses for your dnd games and trpgs or whatever else, fantasy series, etc.

Now you may be familiar with the bean or d20 method, and its a nice method, but I find it sometimes can be odd with its landmassed and the beans can scatter too randomly.

So I present you the tangerine method:

Peel a tangerine then use the pieces how they peel off and arrange them into landmasses of your choosing as above and voila here's your new campaign world.

Bonus you get to eat tasty tangerine foing it too.

Nice method op

Oh man this is real nice because the pieces fit together so if you don’t scramble it too much you can keep the lines for continental splits.

professorsparklepants

#tangerine pangea

Pangerine? Tangea? Tangerea?

sparklyaxolotlstudent

Pangerine

If your Characters ever met you as their god, they would obviously ask

"why...why is our world named Pangerine"

"lol I did a life hack to make campaign building easier"

"what?"

🌙💜🌟

Monstrous Incantation:

Violet Incantation

dungeonsanddecafcoffee

Yeah I play

D&D

D-Coming to terms with a part of yourself and exploring weird parts of your personality while your friend pretends to be a goblin

&

D-Dice hording

more trans dice 👌👌👌

fuckilostmygender

Good luck to everyone who has to deal with being misgendered today,, to everyone who has to pretend to be straight,, and to everyone who has to deal with a family or people that aren't great

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