The Characters of a Madman

My various roleplaying game related things!

[lesbianshepard]

funniest thing about dnd is that I made my character a failson specifically to make a rich guy suffer, but I keep rolling really high on important things, so everything has been working out for him really well, and his belief that rich people should never face any consequences just keeps getting reinforced again and again

[lesbianshepard]

I have, multiple times, told the other players “Hey, my character is an asshole. I am telling you things in a way that makes it clear I am obviously lying for my own benefit. I won’t be upset if you guys call him out. You can stab me. Please stab me. Please make him feel pain.” And they’re just like “Nah this is funny. We trust him with our lives. 🙂”

Telling the DM “Remember I’m a level 3 warlock. One hit could take me out. I won’t be mad if my character almost dies” and I’ll hear dice and then “Does a 4 hit?”

[lesbianshepard]

next session is in 15 minutes. wish me luck on my mission to make my horrible fictional son face any sort of consequences to his actions 🫡

[lesbianshepard]

had to roll 3 times for deception at different points and got a 20, 17, and 19. Not counting the +5 modifier. This man is destined to never suffer. Made this guy thinking I would have a humbling character arc when faced with the real world and instead it's just him going "Wow! I really am better and more special than everyone else!"

[chaoticevilspacewitch]

Your guy should run for President of the kingdom

[lesbianshepard]

His dad basically is 😭

The DM gave us a map of the world he made, and I chose my character's home city as being from a city from the northern continent, because I figured we'd be staying to the southern one (which had much more detail at the time) and told the DM that his dad was in charge of the city and part of an old-money political dynasty. I also had a backstory where he got his name stolen by the fae, so he can't pull a "Don't you know who I am?" and figured nobody in the south would recognize him. Basically a Kennedy-esque failson.

Turns out that the DM planned the climax of the story in the northern continent, and it had less detail on the big map because he was working on a super detailed map specifically for that area and it wouldn't all fit on the zoomed out big map. My character's hometown is the most important and politically influential city-state. He is essentially a prince. We ended up in his hometown today and everyone is recognizing him and doing whatever he asks.

It's awful.

[the-real-seebs]

no character concept survives contact with the dice

[maximumzombiecreator]

It's often remarked how D&D 5e's play culture has this sort of disinterest bordering on contempt for actually knowing the rules, often even extending to the DM themselves. I've seen a lot of different ideas for why this is, but one reason I rarely see discussed is that actually, a lot of 5e's rules are not meant to be used.

Encumbrance is a great example of this. 5e contains granular weights for all the items that you might have in your inventory, and rules for how much you can carry based on your strength score, and they've set these carry capacities high enough that you should never actually need to think about them. And that's deliberate, the designers have explicitly said that they've set carrying capacity high enough that it shouldn't come up in normal play. So for a starting DM, you see all these weights, you see all the rules for how much people can carry or drag, and you've played Fallout, you know how this works. And then if you try to actually enforce that, you find that it's insanely tedious, and it basically never actually matters, so you drop it.

Foraging is the example of this that bothers me most. There's a whole system for this! A table of foraging DCs, and math for how much food you can find, and how long you can go without food, etc. But the math is set up so that a person with no survival proficiency and a +0 to WIS, in a hostile environment, will still forage enough food to be fine, and the starvation rules are so generous that even a run of bad luck is unlikely to matter. So a DM who actually tries to use these rules will quickly find that they add nothing but bookkeeping. You're rolling a bunch of checks every day of travel for something that is purpose built not to matter. And that's before you add in all the ways to trivialize or circumvent this.

These rules don't exist to be used, that is not their purpose. These rules exist because the designers were scared of the backlash to 4e, and wanted to make sure that the game had all the rules that D&D "should" have. But they didn't actually want these mechanics. They didn't want the bookkeeping, they didn't care about that style of play, but they couldn't just say, "this game isn't about that" for fear of angering traditionalists. And unfortunately the way they handled this was by putting in rules that are bad, that actively fight anyone who wants to use that style of play and act as a trap to people who take the rules in good faith.

And this means that knowing what rules are not supposed to be used is an actual skill 5e DMs develop. Part of being a good 5e DM is being able to tell the real rules that will improve your game from the fake rules that are there to placate angry forum posters. And that's just an awful position to put DMs in (especially new DMs), but it's pretty unsurprising that it creates a certain contempt for knowing the rules as written.

You should have contempt for some of the rules as written. The designers did.

[vandalblood]

[wyrmoftheweb]

well yeah i have a pet hydra and it only has one head. i'm not going to cut its head off just to make it look cooler, you asshole. that's seriously unethical. and i'm not letting you cut its head off either. if you really want a hydra with multiple heads, you should go for a rescue- but if you want your pet to look cooler at the cost of its physical health, maybe you shouldn't get any kind of pet at all. no, the hydra's not for guarding my evil tower, it's my pet. have you ever heard of a pet? like a puppy or a kitty? you think i can't defend my evil tower by my self?

[inbabylontheywept]

In the D&D campaign I'm running with my wife's siblings, one of them learned about how trolls regenerate within minutes of any damage not caused by fire or acid, and then asked why people don't just like. Cage them and eat them, forever. Why there aren't troll meat dungeons in the king's castle as a safeguard against sieges or famines.

And you know, I thought it was a fair question, so I said that if you eat enough troll meat, you start getting troll-y. And then I went further and just treated it like troll flesh is a general contaminant - if you eat enough troll, you'll turn into a troll, but if you bury enough dead troll flesh in a forest, the trees will start growing in strange ways, and will scream and heal and bleed when you hit them with axes.

I liked this idea. So as we played further, I just played around with the idea of Troll Origins, and I came up with something sort of like the Odyssey, but instead stealing Helios's cattle, it was Hathor's, and the horrible, awful, unending immortality was her curse of the army that pillaged her lands. A god of healing does not condemn you to die, she condemns you to live.

And then I got this fun idea for maybe the king that led the army is still kind of alive in the troll taint. Like a sort of literal fisher king. The kingdom is sick because he is, literally, the kingdom. The trees that bleed, bleed his blood and their screams are his screams. He is both the faintly green bear running down the mountain and the faintly green deer and there is no way past this without suffering. He is the entire ecosystem, and he eats nothing but himself and he dreams nothing but death and yet still, on and on and on and on, he lives.

Anyway they're traveling next session so I'm throwing this shit at them. I already have some gross ideas for like. Describing everything like it's a body (flowers red as blood, white as bone, pink as meat, grass fine as hair) then finally throwing horrible living things at them. Trees that grow eyeballs that turn and stare at them, or flowers with teeth instead of petals and trolls that speak in long dead tongues about how they wish they'd never tried to rob a god.

Anyway I'm passing this on because this is my new troll lore and I want it to become canonized in the way that all D&D lore becomes canonized: By having eople read it and go "oh, neat" then start doing that too.

[inbabylontheywept]

@conkreetmonkey madam. this is excellent.

i am going to have to sentence you to a flogging for the chertrollbyl note but i am also half considering naming the ruins of the city that. or i could make a joke too esoteric for anyone else to get it and name it something related to mugwort. i read somewhere that's what chernobyl means in english.

[thatboreddrake]

So y’all know the classic edge trope of “my blade cannot be sheathed until it has tasted blood”? What if a magic sword that has that requirement, except it’s sort of inverted. A sword that, instead of being inhabited by an evil spirit which once awakened cannot be lulled back to sleep except by blood sacrifice, was inhabited by a benevolent spirit who would not allow the sword to be drawn unless bloodshed were the only possible solution. A sword whose power could never be misused because it would only allow itself to be used in situations where it was justified. What about a Paladin who spends their entire journey fighting with a sheathed sword, incapacitating but never killing or maiming. The party believes that the Paladin has taken an oath of no killing, until they face the big villain. And it is in that moment, and that moment alone, that the sword will allow itself to be drawn.

Idk, this image set my mindwheels a-turning.

But do y’all see the vision?

[shadowicepuma]

@wearepaladin

[wearepaladin]

I do. Honestly a sword like that would have been a good thing to give the man that the sculpture depicted above is from. Giovani Bande Nere was one of the sons of the legendary Caterina Sforza and was honestly a terrifyingly evil person, who was brutally killing and worse to people before he was 15. Ironically, if my memory of the man is correct, him getting kicked out of his home city and becoming a mercenary did a lot to moderate his reputation. I sometimes wonder whoever sculpted that statue of him was trying to invoke a ward upon his spirit, that he would be forever be bound to never harm the innocent and his sword never drawn without reason or valorous intent.

[chipper-smol]

fun behaviors to give dragons that aren't feline/canine based

cause as much as i love dragons purring and roaring i wish there was just more variety in how they would act

clacking their teeth together to show contentedness/happiness (budgies)

using tails as a defensive weapon in a whip like fashion (iguana)

twitching to express that they're not a threat to members of their species (hognose snake)

feeling calm when eyes are hooded/covered (birds of prey)

head bobbing as a threat display (anoles/bearded dragons)

flattening neck or sides to appear bigger (snakes/lizards)

mantling over food to protect it from hatchmates (birds of prey)

wiggling neck as a courting maneuver (budgies)

audibly grinding teeth as a warning (macaques)

maintained eye contact as a challenge (gorillas)

pounding wings against sides as a threat (gorillas)

slapping other dragons with their claws when their personal bubble is invaded (seals)

hoards used as a site to impress mates (birds of paradise)

snorting when undergoing heightened stress (horses)

making repeated loud noises with surroundings to establish territory (woodpeckers)

loud constant arguments with other dragons when roosting (bats)

building lairs that cause a domino effect of change in the land around them (beavers)

slapping their tails against the ground/water as a warning (beavers)

plucking or scraping off scales as a sign of stress (parrots)

raising spines/frills as a response to danger and carrying on with their usual business as they believe they're protected (lionfish)

and im not saying canine and feline behaviors are wrong or bad to give a dragon (people wouldn't write dragons with those behaviors if they weren't fun in the first place!) but i feel for creatures that are mythological giant winged lizards that you can do more and get experimental with it. often the more unfamiliar behavior the more dragons get that much more dragony

[succubusboyfriend]

hello i have thoughts/additions

alternative, non-mammalian noises to purring and roaring that you can use for draconic characters:

american alligator bellowing [1] [2] [3]. male alligators use this as a mating display and territory call so the usage for dragons is easy to guess. this would work especially well for aquatic or semi-aquatic dragons (watch the water around those gators and see how it vibrates - that's part of what the sound is for, as other gators are probably gonna feel the vibrations better than they'll hear the sound), but i think it would be fun to see in any kind of dragon! alligator behavior is so fascinating and it is woefully underutilized in fantasy reptilians!

dove cooing [1] [2] [3]. tbh i think this would make a fantastic replacement for purring if you wanted to eschew the use of purring entirely, especially if the dragons you're using are more bird-like or feathery. it's very similar in feel to purring and with a large enough dragon you'd still get those big rumbles and vibrations, but it's distinctly less mammalian!

on the topic of doves, special shout out to dove laughter [1] [2] [3], which i think would work particularly well for smaller dragon species, and mourning dove calls [1] [2] [3], which i do not have a specific use case in mind for but wanted to mention because they just sound. so cool. and i don't think i've ever seen a fantasy species use sounds like that.

cassowary calls [1] [2] [3]. i don't even think i need to explain this one. i'm wearing headphones and i can feel those rumbles in my chest. apparently the effect IRL is much more pronounced, and according to wikipedia their "boom" is the lowest-frequency bird call known. hopefully you see the vision here.

[natureaestheticdreams]

[captainkingsley]

baby dragons whose scales are much more shiny and iridescent in order to hide in their parents' hoards

[kyraneko]

absolutely excellent top-notch thought here, but now you've got me wondering what's trying to eat them

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

you misunderstand, this isn't 'I look like the ground so predators walk right past me' camouflage, this is 'I look like the savannah grass so I can pounce on unsuspecting prey' camouflage

they're hiding in the hoards to bite the hands of unsuspecting humans who sneak past mama

[aquawyrm]

Perhaps the shininess also makes them more endearing to adult dragons, increasing the likelihood of adoption if something happens to mama.

[systlin]

So some friends got me to watch exu Calamity and Brennan Lee Mulligan now owes me compensation for emotional damages, but also no one has ever nailed playing Asmodeus, Lord of the Hells, as hard as Brennan does in this campaign.

[fox-bright]

Oh, man. I put it on once a year to just cry.

Brennan does an astounding Asmodeus. That "I didn't do anything WRONG" put all the hairs up on the back of my neck.

[systlin]

"Cool he counterspells you at ninth level and smashes you into the floor and breaks your spine"

and

"No he's casting a timestop WITHIN a timestop"

both now live rent free in my head forever.

THAT'S a greater god, PATIA I'M TALKING TO YOU

[fox-bright]

It was...interesting, to see Brennan really giving in to all his worst impulses as a DM. Rip someone's face off through their scalp? Well, why not!

I also really, really liked that Vespin Chloras was a malconvoker--that this game was set in the long-ago time, so they used a class from 3.5. It was just so clever.

[systlin]

The sheer amount of hubris and arrogance crammed into these characters is breathtaking. It's a PERFECT example of the sort of unchecked wizard arrogance you'd expect from an era known as the Age of Arcana.

Chloras is a perfect example; this fucker thought he, as a lone malconvoker, could summon and bind Asmodeus to his will.

BREATHTAKINGLY arrogant and doomed. Astoundingly terrible idea, which anyone with any common sense at ALL could have told him.

Brilliant example of why you need your wizards to touch grass now and then.

[brighteyedbadwolf]

and THEN, the interactions with Xerxes!!!

Never have I seen or heard "Sympathy for the Devil" played out in such a way, and hubris? HUBRIS?

A Paladin so sure of his conviction, of his Powers Of Redemption that he doesn't need the Gods, and to prove it, he will Redeem the Ultimate Betrayer by himself.

And Brennan/Asmodeus playing him like that fucking fiddle of gold, with the perfect blend of injured pride, heart-broken false(?) vulnerability, and self-righteous rage ---- 💋🤌

[systlin]

NAILED the Lord of Lies absolutely it's awe inspiring. Asmodeus took one look at that paladin and was like "OH A PRESENT FOR ME!!!" I still don't think Zerxus realized how absolutely he'd been played at any point.

And the WAY MY ENTIRE BODY WENT TENSE WHEN HE WAS LIKE "Patia do you feel like you're weaker at the elbow or the shoulder"

When a DM asks you that there is NO good way out.

[galahadwilder]

A sudden, terrifying thought

When you see an animal with its eyes set to the front, like wolves, or humans, that’s usually a predator animal.

If you see an animal with its eyes set farther back, though—to the side—that animal is prey.

Now look at this dragon.

See those eyes?

They’re to the SIDE.

This raises an interesting—and terrifying—question.

What in the name of Lovecraft led evolution to consider DRAGONS…

As PREY?

[dorito-and-pinetree]

I know this isn’t part of my blogs theme but like this is interesting

[haiku-robot]

i know this isn’t part of my blogs theme but like this is interesting

^Haiku^bot^8. I detect haikus with 5-7-5 format. Sometimes I make mistakes. | @image-transcribing-bot @portmanteau-bot | Contact | HAIKU BOT NO | Good bot! | Beep-boop!

[kappagecko]

@howdidigetinvolved

[perfectlygenericblog]

The eyes-in-the-front thing (usually) only applies to mammals. Crocodiles, arguably the inspiration for dragons, have eyes that look to the sides despite being a predator.

[pyrrhiccomedy]

hey what up I’m about to be That Asshole

This isn’t a mammalian thing. When people talk about ‘eyes on the front’ or ‘eyes on the side,’ they’re really talking about binocular vision vs monocular vision. Binocular vision is more advantageous for predators because it’s what gives you depth perception; i.e, the distance you need to leap, lunge, or swipe to take out the fast-moving thing in front of you. Any animal that can position its eyes in a way that it has overlapping fields of vision has binocular vision. That includes a lot of predatory reptiles, including komodo dragons, monitor lizards, and chameleons.

(The eyes-in-front = predator / eyes-on-sides = prey thing holds true far more regularly for birds than it does for mammals. Consider owls, hawks, and falcons vs parrots, sparrows, and doves.)

But it’s not like binocular vision is inherently “better” than monocular vision. It’s a trade-off: you get better at leap-strike-kill, but your field of vision is commensurately restricted, meaning you see less stuff. Sometimes, the evolutionary benefit of binocular vision just doesn’t outweigh the benefit of seeing the other guy coming. Very few forms of aquatic life have binocular vision unless they have eye stalks, predator or not, because if you live underwater, the threat could be coming from literally any direction, so you want as wide a field of view as you can get. If you see a predator working monocular vision, it’s a pretty safe assumption that there is something else out there dangerous enough that their survival is aided more by knowing where it is than reliably getting food inside their mouths.

For example, if you are a crocodile, there is a decent chance that a hippo will cruise up your shit and bite you in half. I’d say that makes monocular vision worthwhile.

Which brings us back to OP’s point. Why would dragon evolution favor field of view over depth perception?

A lot of the stories I’ve read painted the biggest threats to dragons (until knights with little shiny sticks came along) as other dragons. Dragons fight each other, dragons have wars. And like fish, a dragon would need to worry about another dragon coming in from any angle. That’s a major point in favor of monocular vision. Moreover, you don’t need depth perception in order to hunt if you can breathe fucking fire. A flamethrower is not a precision weapon. If you can torch everything in front of you, who cares if your prey is 5 feet away or 20? Burn it all and sift among the rubble for meat once everything stops moving.

Really, why would dragons have eyes on the front of their heads? Seems like they’ve got the right idea to me.

[spookcataloger]

Worthwhile cryptozoological discourse

[riacte]

Okay, I will bite. What exactly is botc and how does one get into it?

Yipppee! Blood on the Clocktower is a social deduction game by the Pandemonium Institute (TPI) that's similar to Werewolf and Mafia (and I guess Among Us too). It operates on the basis of informed minority (evil team) vs uninformed majority (good team). The goal of evil is to kill + vote out most people on good and the goal of good is to vote out the leader of the evil team (the demon, the main baddie who kills people at night). Evil team know who each other are. Good team doesn't. This is simplified and general, there are many alternate win conditions because BOTC is a game that's ever growing in its complexity. New roles/characters are released periodically.

One huge draw of BOTC is that players can keep talking after death and they retain some agency (in the form of a single dead vote for the rest of the game). The second draw of BOTC is that everyone, good or evil, has a unique power, so you always have an incentive to play. Good and evil are both encouraged to lie for the benefit of their team. For some good characters, you have to lie or you lose. Another characteristic is that it's quite reliant on the storyteller (the host/moderator), sort of like a Dungeon Master. The storyteller's job is to balance the game so good and evil can have an exciting finale. Storyteller choices include coming up with fake information (to help evil) and deciding if someone should die (if the conditions are met). The finale is usually between 1 demon and 2 non-demon characters and the rest of the town has to decide who to kill.

I find BOTC to be inclusive because they have mechanics that allow people to join and leave mid-game and for people to be on the same team so they can share information (eg for a parent-child duo or people who don't like lying to each other).

Key terms: Townsfolk (good characters that help the good team, eg protective roles), Outsiders (good characters that hinder the good team, eg roles that cause extra deaths), Minions (evil characters that disrupt the good team, eg roles that poison information), Demons (evil characters that kill per night), Grimoire (game setup), Script (list of available characters for a game, not all of them are in the game so it gives you choices to lie and bluff)

Anyways BOTC is a large community (lots of online communities and real life meetups) and there are many, many roles to get used to. (See wiki.) People generally recommend playing/watching Trouble Brewing first, which is a "straightforward" and comparatively simple script. (As if any BOTC game can be simple lmao)

I think the easiest way to get into BOTC is to find a regular cast that you already know of / easy to get into. This is because you have to keep track of players AND their roles, and it's easier if you can already tell which player is which. For MCYT this probably means Hermitcraft or Yogs. There's also Good Time Society for Dropout fans.

However, I actually "got" into BOTC from No Rolls Barred, and it's pretty much because of the superb editing. I have the advantage of knowing the cast from HC, but I didn't know shit about the roles and couldn't keep track. NRB has a fantastic video style that shows the role of each player in public and private settings, so it's very easy to associate a player with their character. Online games have the advantage of showing us the grimoire (game setup), but NRB also edits the icons for in-person games. Even though I didn't know anyone from NRB, I found it easy to settle in. NRB cast is similar to HC cast because NRB is full of comedians/actors/theatre kids. Many of them have gimmicks they lean into so it's easy to distinguish them. (Eg. Ken is chaotic, Sully is the bumbling fool (think Ren), Laurie is always right but always loses)

NRB has a loooong public playlist that increases in complexity as the games continue, so you get to learn the game alongside the players. I also pay for NRB patreon for a new monthly BOTC and it's so good. NRB is very popular among the casual BOTC community (to the point some have called them overrated since NRB isn't the most technical channel) and they even partnered with TPI to facilitate the release of new characters.

After binging literally everything from NRB, I moved onto Noobs on the Gooftower run by Chris Grace (who was in some NRB). This felt like a natural progression since Noobs is similar to NRB's style but is more technical and they stream every week. (They're not noobs now after playing so much BOTC lmao).

The official TPI channel has some good cuts but I couldn't get into them as a beginner lol. TPI channel is the most technical/focused on gameplay mechanics out of those I mentioned here (there's more on the same level but I'm not that deep yet). TPI is for when you know many of the roles and want to see something chaotic and borderline game breaking that blows your mind. There are lots of insane plays from very smart players.

BOTC isn't for everyone and there's definitely a steep learning curve, but once you get used to it (and enjoy it), it's pretty much endless entertainment. There are tons of jargon and meta to dig into. The Hermitcraft ones confused me as a beginner so I think it's best to familiarise yourself with the game from a channel with good and clear editing (in this case I recommend NRB). I recommend watching online games in the beginner stage because the storytellers have the time to explain what they're doing and players have the opportunity to explain their plans. Good Time Society is also great for beginners but their editing is a bit confusing sometimes. Now I'm at the stage in which I recognise players but I don't know which channel they were "originally" from— it's just one big BOTC cinematic universe to me.

Also! BOTC is currently running its World Cup script tourney in which people come up with custom rules and people vote for the script they like more. It adds complexity on top of already complex mechanics but it's very fun for me.

Yayy okay this got long, I love rambling about BOTC. Sorry if it's a bit overwhelming but yeah hope this was useful!

[blumineck]

We need to talk about “stealth archery”

I’ll take any excuse I can get to remind people that the jarmakee is a real technique!

Please consider supporting these videos on Patreon

[srune]

only thing that comes to mind today.

[deadgenerations]

the fad of putting these little blurbs in TTRPGs was probably the most embarrassing bit of useless wanking the little industry scene has ever done, besides the time Warmahordes put a "this aint your daddys tabletop game!" in their rulebook.

does this serve any purpose other than to make the publisher feel like they're Doing Something, and to help consumers feel like their purchases are meaningful political engagement?

At the absolute minimum you could make a game which actually is a meaningful cultural expression of your ideals, or which is politically anti fascist in any way.

[sunspotpony]

So this is actually I can reassure you, the exact opposite of self indulgent wanking with no impact. It’s aggressively impactful in a very specific way—by making the nazis in the room very loud about the fact that they’re nazis.

I’m going to tell you about how a discord banner that was put up for pride month in the Lancer ttrpg official discord was so successful at getting bigots to out themselves, that it’s been the permanent official discord banner for 4 years now.

This is the updated version. It’s animated now.

But pride month 4 or 5 years ago, somebody made the server banner a Goblin mech dabbing in front of a trans flag.

And for your average person who joined the server, they just kinda went, lol cool.

For the trans people who joined the server, it made them feel extra safe.

And for the bigots who joined the server? They’d fucking bitch about it IMMEDIATELY. And promptly get banned.

And that month saw so many bannings of dipshits that they decided to keep that banner, because every single time a bigot joins the server, there is a high chance that they will out themselves IMMEDIATELY and be promptly banned.

While including text like this in a book is different than a community space, the reality is, fascists do not like being embarrassed or confronted about their beliefs; they have fragile egos.

So imagine you are going through the book with a group of friends, and you get to this block about “fascism bad,” and somebody is like, “I don’t know how I feel about this. It seems a bit stupid,” it immediately gets to raise a red flag for everybody that maybe this person isn’t, as cool to have at the table as they thought.

Similarly, you know how many bigots went and burned their beers/hats/shoes because some corporation supported trans people/gay people/Collin Kapernick?

This is performative, yes. But it’s not performative to puff up themselves as heroes. It’s performative, aimed right at the fragile skinned assholes who will boycott Oreos and Budweiser for “supporting the gays.”

It’s one of the FASTEST ways to reduce the number of virulent bigots in a community for ZERO COST.

Like, maybe the experience of the lancer discord is atypical, and fascists are learning to have thicker skins and lie about their beliefs better.

It’s still PROFOUNDLY CHEAP AND EASY to include this blurb.

So, it’s free, zero effort nazi repellent.

Frankly with that in mind, I’d regard anybody who ISNT doing this, as maybe a tiny bit cowardly.

It doesn’t fix the world— anyone who thinks the table top scene will magically save the day is a fool—but it does increase the odds that the hobby will be a safer place for more reasonable people, and not become a bastion of fascism like the wh40k fandom has.

[noctumsolis]

Like, maybe the experience of the lancer discord is atypical, and fascists are learning to have thicker skins and lie about their beliefs better.

It may be atypical but it's certainly not unique. Another example is the Heraldry discord I'm on, with an icon that is animated to switch its original colours and two other versions, displaying gay pride and transgender pride colours.

Bigots join, bigots mouth off, bigots get banned.

Sometimes we get a different flavour of bigot, ones who tolerate us queers but are racist as hell. They tend to out themselves, too, because it's a heraldry server. That fact alone makes them assume that we're all "European culture is best" and other racist bullshit. They get banned.

See also the Godot discord, with an icon that scrolls through pride colours in a beautiful way.

[trismeowgistus]

It even works for games famously infested with fascists like 40k. Games Workshop coming out with a (really rather tepid) statement of support of BLM had Nazis losing their minds in the comments fucking immediately

[walking-fandom]

I remember the meltdowns when the new Worls of Darkness books came out that this blurb is in. It's pretty easy to piss fascists off by just saying you don't want them there.

[crazy-pages]

The Pathfinder Facebook group did something like this on purpose as a honeypot and immediately banned all the bigots coming out of the woodwork, and immediately eliminated more than HALF of all incidents requiring moderators. Not just about bigotry, everything.

And that is TACTICALLY USEFUL.

Because game companies spend so much money moderating chat spaces (both forums and in-game chats) and they lose so much business when dominant third party online spaces associated with their game turn toxic. Hell moderation is the big money sink for social media. Managing that cost is one of the most difficult aspects of the business.

Now imagine telling a game or social media executive that you can eliminate half of their harassment in a single honeypot operation. Imagine telling them that you have a technique which surgically targets a majority of their most toxic members and immediately gets rid of them. Because that's what this is.

You slap up a big pride or power banner and an announcement that this company stands with [insert group here], or stands against fascism, and you take names on everybody who has angry or quibbling shit to say about that. And then you ban them all. And just like that the moderation load you're dealing with gets so much lighter. Keep it up with a similar announcement whenever a topical opportunity presents itself and you clean out any new trash which walks in too.

And it just so happens that the way to do this is to clear out the bigots and make a safe space for oppressed groups.

There are so many of these companies which are worried that by taking a stand like this they will hurt their user base. There are so many forums online with volunteer moderators who reflexively don't want to wait into politics because they think that will increase their workload. Give them good solid practical examples of this reducing their workload instead, and you will get some of them onboard.

Because this has a real measurable impact with the right follow through, and the impact is a general reduction in all harassment of everyone. And that is worth capital M Money and capital T Time to some people.

[gleerant]

if you ever find yourself thinking “wow I scraped the bottom of the barrel with my energy with that and came out okay!” that’s the devil talking. you did not come out okay. you borrowed energy from the future. you will repay it if you don’t rest and replenish the borrowed energy first.

[gleerant]

this one took off quickly - are you guys ok

[wizard-of-interesting-failure]

WIZARD PSA: Chronomancy might be weird and confusing, but one of the few solid rules of the discipline is keep your promises. Time is a library, and you don't want to meet the librarian.

[probablygoodrpgideas]

A campaign about returning magical items from whence they came.

Not in the “plunged into the fires of Mt. Doom” sense. 

Artifact repatriation.  The heroes work for an international commission aimed at reversing centuries of plunder.  Oh, sure, the adventurers of yesteryear may have had solid reasons for looting the Ancient Tomb of the Noonday King, but those justifications have passed, and the Noonday King’s regalia really should be returned home, not sitting in a foreign adventurer’s ancestral manor.

Possible adventures include:

Archaeologically respectful dungeon crawls, aimed at returning items to original context if possible

Consulting and cooperation with host museums in native cultures to provide security and academic collaboration

Liberating artifacts from foreign collections, if imperial governments or plutocrats or nobles initially refuse to return them

Realizing that an ancient conspiracy is modifying paperwork and falsifying academic reports to turn the repatriation committee into a MacGuffin delivery service for an ancient lich-king

Persuading the world to keep going on with the good parts of this program even if the one time an ancient lich-king nearly got most of his ancient rivals’ regalia delivered to his tomb home under false pretenses so he could start some real shit, because, hey, they stopped him, the system worked!

[mollyjames]

I based a set of D&D villains around the six main stats called Virtues. (think Full Metal Alchemist sins, except Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, etc..) My favorite of the bunch was Charm. Her conceit was she could persuade, lie, cheat, change appearance, and manipulate the players pretty much however she wanted, but the second someone attacked her she would go down. I introduced her relatively early into the campaign, and I was a bit nervous because I was pretty upfront about her introduction. I didn't say it explicitly, but it was pretty obvious Charm was a Virtue from the offset. I thought "well, I like this character a lot, maybe I'll cheat it a little if I have to." Surprisingly, I never did.

In retrospect, I think the context of the Charm encounters was a huge boon. The party really only confronted her twice: the first time at a dinner party and the second at a war council, where leaders from various factions met to discuss retaking the main city for the finale of the campaign. Neither were explicitly combat scenarios, and both times it would have looked pretty bad for the party if they just up and killed Charm for apparently no reason. The end result was I had villain with only eight hit points to her name run around and torment my level 16 party unpunished for several sessions. Let me tell you, as a DM, that felt amazing.

[captainwolfstar5]

To add onto this as a player perspective, Charm was immediately positioned in such a way that, in the social and emotional dynamics of the roleplay, she was untouchable.

Charms first introduction was as the foreign dignitary of a far off nation who we knew had secret ties to the Church. We were at a mansion dinner party held partially in our honor - we were in part invited directly by the King, who we were favored by and wanted favor from. Charms plus 1 at the party was our party leaders sister - they were good friends. This was all true the second time she appeared at the war council, which was not only an expressly political appearance but also one where she represented the nation from which we were trying to secure military aid from.

It didn't matter at any point that we could have rolled a few dice for an attack roll and destroyed her. To destroy Charm of the six virtues, we had to murder, in cold blood, someone who was well liked, well connected, and well loved by some of the npcs closest to the party.

The only way we defeated her was because when we threatened her, subtly, she tipped her hand. Charm openly threatened the party leader's sister, who from then on no longer believed in her. We came to the bargaining table with her and convinced her (with no deception!) she could leave the battle march and be done with us. And when she got on her boat to leave, as it left port, our Bard (independently of anyone) snuck onto the ship, snuck into her room, and killed her in her sleep. The only kill that character ever got in the entire three year campaign.

It was an extremely well executed factor of the game because it was essentially a social encounter Boss fight. We had to construct and push and change the context of the situation until we could kill her without everything else crumbling around us - personal relationships as well as political ones.

[mollyjames]

I should add, Bard character *chose* not to kill anyone. She would willingly torment enemies and assist the party in combat, but never did any killing herself. She only killed Charm after everything had been resolved and Charm had effectively exited the campaign. She would have gotten away scot-free if Bard hadn't decided to take action. It was a great moment, and as a DM I couldn't have asked for a better character death

[mollyjames]

Here's what the fight with Tenacity (Constitution) looked like:

That little red bar at the top is her health. I don't show specific numbers, but I like having the health bar available for players to see so they have a general sense of how wounded the enemy is. I believe for this fight I started Tenacity at 999 HP out of a possible 20,000.

I greatly enjoyed watching my players realize what they were in for after they hit for 50+ damage on their first attack and saw the health bar get one pixel smaller.

[mollyjames]

Ferocity (Strength) was the most conventional of the Virtues, but context was everything. The players hadn't fought a Virtue yet, and were debating whether to defend some potential allies or lay low, only for the Paladin to slip away and confront Ferocity by himself. I was personally prepared to save the fight for later, but when a Paladin does something heroic and foolish you gotta let them have it.

I did not skimp on Ferocity's stat block either. She had a greatsword fashioned out of a massive hunk of stone that dealt bludgeoning damage and was much too heavy for anyone else to even lift. She could grab players and throw them across the map, resulting in fall damage from the distance thrown. She could chuck her sword at someone and leap to where it landed from a standing position. Paladin stood no chance by himself. The result was a mad dash to the join the fray while Paladin tried to hold out for as long as possible, with new party members arriving round after round to help. It was a very close fight, and my favorite combat of the whole campaign.

Incredibly, Monk found a way to disarm Ferocity after she threw her greatsword at him. He couldn't lift it of course, but he could use his new magic item to teleport away with it and hide it in a nearby river. Ferocity spent the rest of the combat leaping around the map to find it, allowing Barbarian to finish her off. Really ingenious play.

(Pictured above, Ferocity and Paladin.)

[mollyjames]

Celerity (dexterity) was had a similar setup to Charm. She was fragile, with only 8 hp. The trick was hitting her, or, thanks to her ridiculously high Stealth, even knowing she was there in the first place. I wanted to give the party a puzzle to solve, as opposed to an enemy to fight.

I had Celerity stalk the party in secret as they made their way through a lengthy dungeon, until eventually the Barbarian made an abnormally high perception check; not enough to know she was there for sure, but enough to sense something was off. They later verified her location through a magical telescope.

Deducing (correctly) that Celerity was there to try and capture an important npc, they decided to lay a trap. The Druid disguised themselves as the npc and drew the attention of a nearby Ancient Deep Crow. As they were about to be snatched up, Celerity intervened, eviscerated the crow, and spirited away the disguised Druid. Before she could realize she'd been tricked, the Paladin, who had been disguised as a spider on the shoulder of the Druid, smote Celerity while her guard was down, killing her instantly.

I remember this encounter fondly, as my players spent a good two hours planning their trap, which then took only about 5 minutes to execute. It was quick and clean, exactly what it should have been.

[mollyjames]

I struggled a lot with what to do for Wisdom. I already had Brilliance (Intelligence) cast as my big bad mastermind final boss encounter, which ate up a lot of the design space. I could make her a religious figure and lean into the divine casting aspect of D&D, but there was already a quasi-religious sect of corrupt paladins hounding the players and I don't like to double dip.

Eventually I settled on Vigilance, a machine made up of wires and tubes with a network of mechanical eyes that spied on the players as they made their way through the capital city. Wisdom is the stat use for Perception after all. I was happy with Vigilance as a background presence. She contributed a lot to the eerie atmosphere and aloof puppeteering nature of the Virtues. The problem was turning a network of cameras into a compelling boss fight.

I wish I could say I had a clever idea here but, uh... I really got nothing this time. She just showed up and harassed the party as a giant tentacle monster. I do like how her token came out though.

In hindsight I think this still could have worked if I hadn't given her a voice and made her a silent powerful threat. Unfortunately, I did give her a voice, and a very silly one to boot.

Oh well, no campaign is perfect.