Dark omens fill the countryside: in recent weeks the sun seems unable to part an everpresent gloom that’s settled over the land , ravens and other scavengers swarm in unnatural numbers, and livestock has begun to collapse in the field riddled with unseen sickness and rot. Landowners and church officials alike seek an origin of this creeping darkness.
Those traveling through the region are warned away from the Lampara estate, apparently folk in that region have been going missing ever since the old master took ill, and rumors of plague persist. If the party does investigate, they’ll find a perfectly maintained fields and elaborate lawns presided over by a coordinated staff of the withered dead.
A harrowed youth has sought out the party for their reputation as heroes. Years ago she witnessed the death of her family at the hands of a mob of dead men, who followed up their tireless massacre by burning her home to the ground. Staying quiet for many years, she puts the blame squarely on the wicked old man her Aunt was forced to marry, who disappeared shortly after the engagement and hasn’t been seen since.
A party with a reputation for good results and less than perfect morals may receive a gilded invitation to Lampara, delivered by a withered footman in exquisite livery. The Mistress of the Estate has need of their services
Setup: The Widow Dahlia Lampara is not your typical necromancer. She cares nothing for raising an army of undead to assert her dominance over surrounding kingdoms, nor is she motivated by a fear of death that drives her to cleave mortal souls in search of eternal life. Raised as a member of the petty landowning nobility, she is more than happy to carry on that genteel existence, using her powers to ensure a life of comfort and routine, without the presence of any servants or social dues that may infringe on her solitude. Her desire for isolation is such that she is currently seeking a way to carry her estate off to the shadowfell, in the hopes that the lifeless realm will provide less distractions from ignorant farmers or would be dogooders.
Women in France are fighting to wear the hijab while women in Iran are fighting to not wear the hijab
This is not a fight about Islam this is not a fight about religion this is a fight about women not having the right to do whatever they want with their bodies and being killed and persecuted for it
I just discovered your blog and I love it a lot! You have such a rich understanding of dnd and a lot of creativity! I was wondering if you could do a monsters reimagined on illithids/mindflayers? They are so iconic and I love them, I think a good idea for them is to keep the weird hivemind and brain eating and psionics, but ditch the tadpole concept. I would also just like to know how they came to be as they are right now, like. How did we get here?? Thanks!!
Monsters Reimagined: Mindflayers
The illithid have been a popular ask for reimaginings but It's taken me a while to get around to them in part because unlike a lot of the other features on monsters reimagined, their lore/execution within the game doesn't rest on a specific problematic trope or inconsistent storytelling. Mindflayers as they stand IMO are one of d&d's great villains, and if anything suffer from being too successful to the point of overexposure.
It took the asker remarking on how much they liked mindflayers for me to give them the onceover they really deserved. Yes, they worked great as antagonists ( being irredeemable slavers who violate the minds and bodies of those they subjugate, working inevitably towards the most awful ends), but their villany was born out of the same shallow bioessentialism as “always evil” orcs,IE inherent to their character. I’m a firm believer in the idea that if something is capable of making decisions, it’s capable of deciding not to be a bastard, so If I was going to overhaul the illithid, I’d need to get to the roots of why the squid headed bastards were the way they were.
TLDR: What we know today as the mindflayers are in fact the remnants of a long dead world, with many of their most monstrous qualities being bioengineered attempts to stave off the inevitable and hold onto their power. The “Elder brains” which rule the illithid are tyrants, the ultimate class parasites, who indoctrinate and mentally dominate the other mindflayers into acting as tools of domination over the peoples they consider chattel. Is possible for an individual illithid to break free of this system, but doing so is difficult, as it requires them to not only break out of any magical compulsion, but to abandon the paradigms that have defined their existence.
Spoiler alert: we’re going to be talking about white supremacy in this one
I think someone described it pretty succinctly that alien invasion stories are something that industrial nations invented when they started imagining what would happen if a more advanced people came along and started doing to them what they’d be doing to everyone else in the world. Mindflayers (and a few other aberrations) fill that niche in oldschool d&d, with the low levels made up of the feudal heroes largely picking on “uninteligent” tribal brutes, only to hit level 7 or so where all of a sudden they’re fighting creatures who’s intelligence exceeds their own.
The weird thing is how in the alien invasion stories, the aliens always want to enslave humanity.. Despite imagining the technology required to cross the vastness of space, the authors were unable to conceive of a world outside of the hierarchies of exploitation, even in the case of benign colonization like “day the earth stood still” and “childhood’s end”.
I’ve talked before about how d&d has a lot of baked-in tropes that assumes colonialism and racial supremicy as a default, but today we’re going to look at things form the other angle. Namely: can we use the mindflayers to talk about systems of oppression and how they manipulate us into being complacent tools with colonialism and genocide.
First though, a detour on illithid biology/feeding, and how I’ve tried to make it make sense:
In addition to a mostly vestigal digestive system, mindflayers possess adaptations that allow them to turn psychic energy into health and wellbeing, with their feeding being something like running a magnet over a computer screen except that the screen is a brain. This can be done delicately so as to case no long term damage, but sometimes it’s faster to just shuck the brain out and be done with it.
On their homeworld, the illithid cultivated a form of “thinking fungus” that draws in stray thought energy from the astral sea, the stray equivalent of radio static. This fungus grows around many mindflayer settlements and is one of the dead giveaways that they’ve moved into the region.
The goal of every illithid is to prove themselves so at the end of their life (or sooner) they can join with the elderbrain, a grotesque amalgamation of all the most bastardly awful mindflayer’s brains that lives in a big tank in the center of their settlements ( or pilots their spelljammer ships) and mentally influences everything in a 5 mile radius. The elder brain creates a reinforcing social pressure: if you’re not doing everything you can to serve it, you’ll be culled, and if you don’t do your absolute best ( or if the elderbrain is just feeling cruel) your whole life will be for nothing. These brains are not a natural part of the illithid lifecycle, and are instead more equivalent to liches: influential mindflayers that learned that they could force others of their kind to tribute psionic energy through thier bonds, extending their life long beyond where their bodies can keep up. By ensuring that only those most useful join the gesthalt, the original ego ensures that no other personality is capable of overtaking their own.
Every so often in their life, mindflayers reproduce by regurgitating a load of parasitic tadpoles into the elderbrain pool where the weak ones get to be its snacks, and the strong ones get implanted into the skulls of promising candidates who’s brains are eaten as they’re transformed into new midnflayers. All of this is super squick, but what’s almost nonsensical is the fact that left to their own devices the tadpoles grow up into colossal, borderline feral worm monsters, meaning that in their natural state no one would be around to put the tadpoles in anyone’s heads. I rationalize this as the result of extensive biomancy augmentations that occured in the illithid’s development, a “cure” for the sterility imposed by their dying world and a handy means of population control/indoctrination for the elder brain, who’s able to etch the basics of its own personality onto each tadpole as it prepares to take a host.
And here we’ll bring the two ideas together, about how illithid can help represent white supremacy: Like all imperialist or autocratic systems, the society of the mindflayers is self reinforcing, creating a population of desperate individuals and using their desperation to turn them into a tool to benefit those at the system’s top. Every illithid is not only born with the elderbrain’s world view as the foundation of its mind, the society in which it is raised is set up so that the only metric of growth or success is being useful to the elder brain, with any deviancy from expectation ( incluging over ambition) are dealt with harshly to the point of execution.
An indivual illithid could break free, but that would require a depth of personal examination is frowned upon in mindflayer circles, as well as the acceptance that there is a way to live outside the elderbrain’s guidance without going hungry and devouring their own sapience like the pale and wretched creatures that outsiders call “illithid vampires”
Much like racism,misogyny, imperialism, capitalism and fascism, the society of mindflayers creates a desperate population that are convinced that the only way to be is to be in a particular way that ends up benefiting those at the very top. Breaking free takes a tremendous amount of bravery, and a willingness to alienate yourself from all you thought familiar and true in the process.
Setup: Taking the form of a phantasmal boatman with a shrouded face, this spirit acts as a psychopomp : a Shepard who guides recently departed souls to the underworld. While not as famous as his scythe or feather and scale wielding counterparts, the Gondolier is dutiful and eager in his task, seeing the passage into death as a grand adventure to take part in. Quick with a joke or gossip from afar, he hopes to share his optimistic view with his usually mournful passengers, who may be hesitant to leave the mortal shore and end up staying on as a ghost.
Likewise, the Gondolier is far more willing to bend the rules of who travels on his little boat or why, and tales persist of mortals appealing to him for the chance of rescuing their loved ones or reuniting one last time. As it turns out, the death-spirit has a soft heart, and is easily swayed by earnest appeals or poetic irony.
Adventure Hooks:
The party is attending the will reading of an eccentric great aunt, one who acquired many wonders in her travels but fell into a deep depression when her ill health kept her at home. One of the magistrate’s men comes in bellowing, they just saw the old woman by the lakeside getting in to some ruffian’s pole boat and cackling all the while. This must be some strange scheme at fraud, and no one will be able to access her estate till they get to the bottom of this. Turns out if the party wants their inheritance, they’ll need to prove to the local lawkeepers that their great aunt really is dead, and they may need to fetch their great aunt back from her underworld vacation to do it.
A band of river pirates have left their usual haunts along the trade shore and marauded inland to take control of a small county town. Their leader suffered a grievous wound in their last raid, and has begun to see the Gondolier and his lamp waiting on the bank of any large body of water. Desperate to prolong his earthly existence, he’s fled from the water and is intent on sampling life’s every pleasure in spite of his encroaching mortality. The party encounters the village a few weeks into occupation after getting lost in a sea of mist that’s slowly begun to blanket the countryside. Seeking to get the lay of the land, they climb a hill only to be hailed by a grey cowled figure poling his little craft across the top of a fogbank. The Gondolier explains the situation in town, and warns that things will persist this way until the Bandit chief’ is subdued, and brought to a running stream where the psychopomp can collect him. Unfortunately the bandit chief’s hunger has started to extend into “blood of the living” territory as his unnatural condition worsens, and the players might want to seek out some holy water before their inevitable conflict.
When one of the party falls without chance of resurrection, they “awake” on the shore of a nearby body of water, watching the Gondolier pole towards them. Greeting them amiably, the psychopomp offers to listen to their tale of woe while he takes them to their well earned rest. Moved by the hero’s circumstance though, the Gondolier mimes being caught in choppy waters ( despite the utter placidity of the otherworldly current) and knocks his passenger out of the boat. When they awake in their body, they do so changed, perhaps with a new warlock pact, perhaps as a revenant, or even a lingering soul. The price of this kindness may come back to haunt them, as other psychopomps and worse things will be drawn to a soul gone errant.
How about a small adventure beneath a kingdom's capital city to introduce low level (4-6) level characters the extra planar forces that truly govern it?
Bounty: Jack of Gallows
I will admit, this mortal kind of justice is new to me, but I’m beginning to see the appeal
Setup: There’s a terrifying new killer stalking the rookery , one who hunts rowdies and outlaws and slays with a terrifying, invisible magic. The victims are found crumpled in isolated stretches of the slums, bluefaced and bruised about the neck as if they’d been left to dangle from a rope for long hours, despite the impossible timescale of the attack. Folk call this killer “Jack of Gallows” and whisper of a fine featured man who stalks the night looking for sinners to punished. Both the authorities and the gang bosses have worries about this vigilante, and when a seemingly innocent shopkeep is found dangling from nothing just several feet outside their door in the early morning, it’s evident that more than just the wicked have something to fear in Jack of Gallows.
Clues:
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to Jack’s victims, so perhaps it’s the murders themselves that are important? A trip into the archives and a delve into local history tells of a time before the city was anything more than a village, when the land upon which the rookery was built was little more than a barren hill hosting an ancient tree. Each year criminals were hung upon that tree in a pagan ritual known as “the Tithing”, left to dangle and die, their last breath stolen by the chill of the morning’s mist. The Method and time of year are right, but what reason could Jack have for enacting these ancient and murderous rites?
During their investigation, the party is approached by a guiltstricken youth, who claims that they may be at fault for their brutish parent’s murder. After years of suffering through the abuses as the child of a criminally cruel man, the youth prayed openly that someone would come and take their father away. Lo and behold, their father was found dead the next morning. The youth mentions that they were alone during this admisson, save for the crows that like to play in the abandoned lot where they’d escape from their father’s rage from time to time.
None of the locals would ever mention the roots as anything odd, creeping up through their cellars and foundations as they have for generations, a simple fact of life of living in this particular aspect of the city. On closer examination however, it’s obvious that the pale, strangling roots nearest to the murderscenes have exhibited signs of recent growth. Following networks of these protrubences can lead the party to secret, vegetation choked tunnels that run under the whole district, containing the secret of Jack’s murders within.
Background: Jack of Gallows is in fact a member of the Unseelie, one of the malicious subterranean fey that reflect the darker aspects and fears of mortals, and dwell beneath hills and burial mounds when not out causing mischief. In particular, Jack is a fey that tends to the ancient hanging tree that now resides BENEITH the hill upon which it once stood, its place usurped by encroaching civilization and forced to dwell in a frigid cavern, lit only by the light of wisps.
In the century and a half since the tree was forcibly located ( buried by the church to ensure the cessation of the cruel rituals performed there) Jack has had a lot of time to think and observe the forgetful flock he once ministered to. The people of the village may have forgotten the steps of the ritual, but that is not to say that they did not stop offering up their wicked and unwanted, the fey merely had to be clever and read into their intent, and begin enacting the process of hanging on his own.
Further adventures:
Facing down Jack of Gallows will require the party to act quickly, the height of the ritual is drawing to a close, and after that the fey plans to close the ways to and from his subterranean lair for another year. The party must choose to face jack out in the mist-filled evening air where he is able to strongest ( able to string them up with a thought) or brave their way through the root-choked sewers, tunnels, and crawl spaces that trace their way back to his arboreal abode.
Jack is infact part of a larger unseelie court that rules over the city, each with their own particular tastes, practices, and strongholds. An attack on one is an attack on all, and making an enemy of Jack may earn the party a visit from the industrious Mr. Smog or the windblown Spire-Dame.
Guarded and haunted by those spirits sacrificed to it, the Gallowstree opens a way to and from the sinister realm of the unseelie court in the feywild. Should it be destroyed, these spirits will flood back out into the surrounding tunnels, eventually finding their way to the surface to bedevil the living.
Hi! The theme in my upcoming campaign is the consequences of imperialism, and I'm going to show that theme through a war between two empires and the devastation it causes. However, I'm unsure how to characterize the empires besides good vs evil, which I want to avoid. I also want to avoid making the tone too dark and depressing; the party should feel like there's something they can do about it that matters. I also want to have a dragon fight that doesn't feel contrived. Any advice or ideas?
Adventure: The Protectorate, and its Price
Loyalty to the Haladrans offers three things, sure as the sun will come up tomorrow: Peace, prosperity, and a gun to the back of your head. You’d be surprised how much of the world is willing to take that deal.
Setup: The coastal nation of Eandoca is perhaps one of the most beautiful you might ever visit, as every inch of its rolling, bucolic landscape seems as artiful and manicured as a pleasure garden, its people happy, it’s settlements clean and free of suffering. This is not the result of some edenic quirk of nature, but the careful and deliberate oversight by the Protectorate of Ven-Haladra, an occupying military force that sees this land and the people within it as an orchardkeeper might see a tree: something to be nourished, pruned, and cultivated so long as it continues to bear fruit.
No one seems to mind the Haladrans, their iron grip is light, and they rule through native proxies, fools raised in fortresses turned pleasure gardens where their education has instilled them with a deep love of their nation’s culture and beauty, and a total reliance on their Protectorate advisors to make decisions.
Life goes on however, and the tension between The colonizer’s patronizing, not-tyranny and Eandoca’s growing prosperity as the Protectorate’s foremost trade port is growing. The flow of wealth means the development of new industries and new learning that the Protectorate can’t sanitize, and the human spirit always bucks against captivity, even if it can’t see the chains.
Adventure Hooks:
By preventing their subjugated lands from raising their own militias, the Protectorate simultaneously enforces their monopoly on military power and ensures that same military governance is stretched very thin. Criminals need to be caught, monsters need to be driven off, and by preventing the Eandocans from forming their own garrisons the Protectorate forms a reliance on mercenary adventurers to do the same. Whether drawn from locals put under direct protectorate control or hired from elsewhere and shipped to a problem region, there is good work to be had for a sellsword looking to make their fortune, provided they’re willing to deal with constant scrutiny and hand off any moral judgements to a colonial administrator.
Something is desperately wrong in one of the palace gardens. Petitioners wait in a great line outside the door for appointments that are weeks overdue, and the gates remain shut with no sign of movement inside. Though it may be culturally taboo to say so, someone ( or a group of someones) should find a way inside ( scale the wall maybe, or find one of those fabled secret entrances among the foundations? ), and see what’s going on exactly. Inside the party will find a bizarre sickness has swept through the palace, leaving many dead and most in an exhausted torpor. The one witness who could tell them exactly what was going on would be Ambasitor Yiji, one of the higher dryad diplomats the Protectorate employs to carry their will seamlessly between their holdings. Problem is, the sickness seems to have affected Yiji in some odd way, causing her to become an almost feral thing of roots and vines that’s territorially protecting the garden where her bonded tree grows.
Blood spills, gunsmoke fills the air, and the drums of war begin their distant, ominous beat. As the tale goes, a week ago a group of sailors from a rival empire were getting rowdy in port , their carousing escalating to violence and assault against several Eandocan townsfolk. The Protectorate garrison was called in to quell the disturbance, but ended up as part of some kind of colonial imperialistic feedback loop. The garrison thrashed the sailors, who limped back home to their ship and told all their fellows about how “unfriendly” the locals had been. Full of patriotism and machismo, the foreigners found the Garrisonhouse and set it on fire, as the doctrinal Ven-Haladran answer to insurrection is “ take them out back and shoot them while speaking calming platitudes “ this turned out to be a bad idea. Days pass, things escalate, and a couple of the foreign ships end up firing on the port in revenge for a third that’s sinking into the bay with all hands aboard. This is a diplomatic massacre, one that neither side will apologies for anytime soon, which will have dire consequences in the days to come.
Background: To read the accepted histories , a generation or so ago the Land of Eandoca was a chaotic patchwork of warlords and bandit kings. Having suffered through a century of strife after the collapse of their corrupt and oligarchical ruling dynasty, the people cried out for salvation and The Protectorate of Ven-Haladra answered. These foreign allies (opportunistic expansionists) waged a campaign of pacification against the scattered dynastic holdouts and other belligerents, then established a new, just, ruling power ( puppet state) under their enlightened and abstracted guidance ( total administrative and military control).
As colonial overlords go, the Protectorate is not the cruelest, but it is the most patronizing: enforcing an idealized, pastoral way of life on the subjugated Eandocan populace while cultivating their country like one would a newly tilled garden. They even minimalize their place in history while warping it to their purpose: the warring states era they interceded in was well over two centuries ago, but in order to make their occupation seem to be a “temporary” measure, their presence always necessary to prevent a backslide into chaos, they keep it just outside of the living memory, keeping history texts vauge and ensuring their colonial subjects live in half remembered dream of their own history.
Such illusions of ignorance and false reality have let the Ven-Haladra hold onto almost a dozen such colonial holdings across their home continent, purposefully isolated, culturally stagnant, and carefully monitored, all while the Protectorate grows ever more advanced and prosperous by their purloined wealth.
Ven-Haladra calls itself “ The Provisional Empire” implying there is some future state at which it will no longer be necessary to perform such barbarous conquests. It sees its absorption and cultural gaslighting of its neighbors as a kindness, sparing them from the heavy duties of having to interface with the cruelties of the world at large, preserving their cultures in amber until the empire is capable of “uplifting” them to the proper state.
To the Asker: Hi there, I hope that gives you something to go off of! It’s always difficult to detail full campaigns in a single prompt. That said, I think the pitch of “showing the fallout of empire while also showing them clash” is great, though I’ll add the caviat that the party should belong atleast inpart to the Colonized, as being a third party who stands to gain/lose based on the outcome of that conflict will lead to some interesting thematic tensions.
I started with Ven-Haladra because I think it’s a great “ devil you know” when it comes to colonial occupation. Its evil, but in the same way that Disney is evil, ubiquitous and condescending, happy to make you happy so long as you keep being productive. Ideally, they’d be put up against a destructive, transformative empire ( Peace vs Chaos) that wants to throw its weight around and doesn’t care about the consequences. Do the party use this disaster to free their home from their current oppressor ? Do they become heroes of the status quo, then use that influence as leverage for more independence?
I think you’d want to run this campaign with a few time skips, act 1 happening totally under Ven-Haladra’s thumb, establishing the norms and ending with that fight in the harbor, act 2 is the war itself, the two empires clashing with Eandocan as the battleground, and act 3 is determining is facing off against whoever the victor of that war might be.
Hope that helps, and if you end up running with any of this, please let me know how it goes!
Lokin to let lose? Com Down to the Bastion, where youc’n BRAWL n BASH for CASH
Adventure Hooks:
While searching through the personal effects of a (recently slain) bandit captain, the party finds a crudely written letter with an attached map, pointing the way to a dilapidated fortress some days journey away. The note promises such rewards as “ Glory”, “Blud”, and “Trezur” , but is unclear if it’s a threat, an invitation, or some kind of treasure map. Similar missives may be found in the possession of local streetfighters and other disreputable types, all with stark variations but leading to the same general place.
Promised a handsome reward for slaying a dangerous magical creature, the party locates the beast’s lair only to find that it’s been poached by another group. Though there are signs of a struggle, it appears they took the beast alive and have left an obvious trail for the party to follow. Tracking them overland, they find signs of many more beasts abducted and brought to the same ruinous location.
A growing infestation of ghouls at an old ruin has drawn the worry of local officials, who’ve hired the party to clense the nest. Things were going normally as any undead extermination can, atleast until a trap door opened in the ceiling and a couple more mutilated bodies fall right into the party’s path. Apparently someone’s alive in the upper levels of the dungeon… and they’re feeding the ghouls.
While hunting a dangerous outlaw by the name of Redgrin Gretta, the party can’t help but shake the feeling she’s toying with them. Always staying just out of their reach while baiting them to follow. Eventually it seems the party has cornered her in a disused fortress , only to hear the sound of portcullis snapping shut behind them and the anticipatory cheer of a crowd of Gretta’s fellow brigands. Apparently the party is going to fight for their lives, and they’re going to have an audience.
Setup: The Brawling Bastion is the dream product of one Grreuno Gristlebit, a thuggish bugbear who’s love of violence and adulation led him to starting his own arena. Originating as a little more than a bandit fightclub, Gerreuno had the idea to bring in outside competitors, capture dungeon beasts for cage matches, and even start to invite townsfolk with money and a taste for violence to come bet on the outcome of fights.
As someone who’s fasinated with the idea of dreams and quasi-real things, I’d like to share a concept I’ve been chewing on for a while both as a reference and in the hopes that it’ll provide a useful backdrop upon which you can build your own adventures.
Picture your party stepping through a portal onto a derelict courtyard, overshadowed by the edifice of a great building. The atmosphere is cool and oddly weightless, like the air they’d been breathing just a moment ago was like the depths of water pressing down on them, and they’d only now surfaced for the first time in their lives. Through the mist that surrounds them they can make out the twinkling of innumerable distant stars, as well as the spires of more grand buildings cresting the fog like a bank of islands in the far distance. The floor beneath them is skewed at an odd angle, but in a moment of inattention they reorient themselves, the paving stones flat beneath their feet and their surroundings taking on a strange angle.
It is in that moment they realize that nothing here is aligns, and the structures are slowly drifting in the banks of mist.
They have entered a strange and unwelcoming place
Lets hope they can make it back.
So now that you have the vibes, let me lay the groundwork for a new type of dungeon for you to use in your campaign: The astral Sanctum, the middle stage between a mage conjuring a magnificent mansion and jetting off to create their own demiplane.
In my telling, The astral plane is the palate upon which the gods created the innumerable worlds, so it stands to reason that a powerful wizard (read: hubris engine) would attempt the same on a smaller scale. If the astral plane is the realm of dreams and imagination, what’s to stop them from creating a space fully of their own design, building without the restraints of laborers or materials or even physics to constrain their vision?
Nothing really, aside from actually getting to the astral plane, and then manifesting enough will to shape the raw potential of creation into a form they desire.
This process creates a really interesting environment both narratively and from a gameplay perspective, especially when that wizard kicks the bucket and their creation floats listlessly through the astral sea slowly decomposing over millennia and waiting for a band of adventurers to come plunder it.
Here’s some ideas about what could happen in this sort of space:
There are two main ways a party can enter the astral plane, physically through a portal, or by projecting their consciousness by way of dreams/some magical means. The latter provides a degree of safety, as if they die while projecting they snap back to their bodies and awaken (unless something extra terrible happens to them), where as if they die bodily, they’re dead for real.
This also has super interesting ramifications when taking things to/from the astral plane. A party that’s dreamwalking will be sustained by their bodies back on the material world, were as a group that’s entered the dreamscape bodily will likely need to pack up on supplies, as it’s highly likely the only sustenance they encounter will be phantasms conjured by the space’s arcane architect. Delicacies to be sure, but no more nourishing to the body than a picture of food or a memory of water.
Play around with loot: have them fill their bags to bursting with wealth while projecting into an astral vault, only to have it fade into mist when they return. Give them a powerful item to play with while they dream, safe in the knowledge that it’ll stay out of theri hands when they wake. You could also have this work in reverse, a child’s wooden sword has the power to slay demons when taken into the realm of imagination, while a madman’s crude scribble becomes the key to a foreboding door.
If you want to get really creative, have them enter the astral realm physically to do a bit of inception, planting an idea in someone’s dream or heisting the memory of a great artifact from a long dead sleeper.
Creatures from the astral sea can come to populate these spaces, whether they be psychic predators like the quori , astral pirates, or figments of the architect’s imagination, all of which can stumble back through portals to the material plane that the original builder used to access their realm.
Escher-esque architecture tricks, including inverted gravity, warping corridors, and reshuffling floor plans. These places strain the credulity of your average dungeon, but are perfectly at home in an impossible dreamspace.
Astral bleed, where powerful magic has rent the fabric of the waking world and let the impossibilities of dreams infuse it. This bleed is likely to cause chaos if not undone, but could be involved by those who feel themselves too constrained by reality.
I hope these give you lots of fun ideas to work with in the future, as well as make my own writings a bit more sensical.
One of my most famous complaints about 5e D&D is that the section on creating and running dungeons (one of the most enduring and iconic parts of the game) is only six pages long, most of which is made up of art and random tables. This frustration is born out of the fact that I’ve been struggling to figure out some kind of guideline for exploration based dungeons since I started playing over twenty years ago. I’ve been routinely let down by how our hobby seems to default to “ just wing it” as a guiding design strategy, especially when it comes to new players who haven’t yet developed the conscious competence to build dungeons that won’t derail their game in some fashion.
While I’ve tried attacking the problem from many angles over the years, one of my latest and most successful breakthroughs was realizing that most dungeons can be broken down into distinct “units” of gameplay, and that if I could develop an understanding of just how these units worked, I could develop a working methodology for designing dungeons regardless of how large or complex they might be.
After examining the conventions of videogames, escape rooms, theme parks, and even playgrounds, I ended up using the term “ playspace” to refer to these modular blocks of dungeon creation. It’s far easier to design a dungeon as a number of interlocked playspaces than room by room, and it’s likewise easier for our players to remember a few evocative backdrops and their associated options, rather than trying to memorize the layout of a structure.
Each playspace is meant as a significant chunk of dungeon material, playing host to atleast one significant encounter (puzzles, combats, skill challenges etc) with an associated number of minor encounters of different types for variety. Players might face monster lairing at the top of an old mineshaft, then fuss around the surrounding structures looking for a way to get the old elevator mechanism working. They might be collecting clues to solve a puzzle, only for the ghosts of the past to present elements of the dungeon’s backstory, along with a few hints.
These encounters can take place over multiple interconnected rooms which are grouped together as a sort of thematic “bite” of the larger structure. A “kitchens” playspace might include the kitchen itself, several storerooms, a wine cellar, and servants quarters where as a “battlements” playspace could be made up of the crumbling exterior of a fortress, a watchtower, armoury, guardpost, and a chamber beneath that the structure has crumbled into.
Below the cut I’m going to get into the three general types of features that make up a playspace and how best to chain them together to make a great dungeon, but to do that I’m going to need a lot of extra room and some god awful diagrams I made myself.
She cares nothing for words or oaths. The sound of one foot after another as you press on against adversity. That is your prayer to the one above.
Setup: Most folk have little trek with Yithini, as her domain over the sky and other lofty places is both physically and philosophically distant from their unassuming lives. Sure, one might offer a little prayer for better weather, but there are other, more accessible gods of rain and wind to make tribute to first.
This is just how Yithini wants it, as her patronage extends not only to those places that rise above others, but to people who seek to rise above their current circumstance to reach heights that others could not. Athletes, scouts, daredevils, and those who live in harsh climates all receive her favor, which often takes the form of a surge of supernatural vigor or inspiration just when it’s needed most.
These boons deliver a worshiper into Yithini’s second aspect: that as the steward of sublime enlightenment. Just as an arduous climb can lead one to observe beautiful horizons, or years of inquest might lead to a moment of transcendent discovery, Yithini’s philosophy of perseverance known as “the Ascent” promises a just reward at the end of rigorous trials.
Just like the sky she holds dominion over, Yithini is depicted in a multitude of forms, usually that of a mighty creature of the air such as a dragon, roc, or kirin. Othertimes she appears as a woman of indistinct features made of the stuff of the sky itself.
Adventure Hooks:
There are three great sacraments one can make to the lady of endless blue: complete a great physical undertaking that goes beyond the limits of what you thought possible, meditating in a tower open to the sky, and defeating a great beast of the air in fair combat. Imagine the party’s surprise when after climbing a mountain, discovering a fallen fortress, and defeating the beast nesting within that they suddenly earn the goddess’s attention. No sooner have they made camp for the evening and begun nursing their wounds does a windstorm pick up, buffeting the party before picking up the one of their number most aligned to Yithini’s ideology/most in need of her help and flinging them out into the empty sky. Buffeted by winds, the purloined partymember will hear a voice whispering a challenge to them, a greater feat of bravery and daring beyond which ascension awaits. Her message imparted, The goddess will deposit the hero serval dozen feet above a nearby mountain lake, the fall damage stopping just short of killing them but possibly giving them a wicked ache to remember her by.
A theological overlap exists between Yithini and Kord, lord of storms, being that both deities have domains associated with the sky and with achievement. Given that the priesthoods of both gods tend to favor action over ideological prattle, the general consensus is the two are sometimes rivals and sometimes lovers who none the less respect the challenge the other provides. Such a challenge plays out before the party when a fighting tournament they’ve been invited to hosts both an Aarakocra windcaller and a brawler who happens to be an unwitting saint of the storm. As the two get closer to a confrontation, the weather around town worsens, threatening to break out into an actual hurricane should the two clash. Both deities are pouring more power into their champion in a petty game of oneupsmanship that might do untold devistation should the two champions actually clash.
It’s common practice for exceptionally tall buildings to have a small statue of a dragon or other flying creature in an exterior alcove positioned near their pinnacle for luck, as this minor concession to the Zenith for the mortal intrusion upon her sky. When a cat burglar looking to infiltrate’s a wizard’s tower accidently sends such a statue toppling to the streets below during his ascent, it ends up letting lose a chain reaction that not even the goddess could have foreseen. For one, the cat burglar managed to survive the air elemental summoned to punish his transgressions, which is now rampaging around the city’s lower district looking for the elusive desecrator. Two, the elemental’s sudden appearance in the wizard’s recently tossed study ended up scattering a large number of arcane research notes into the streets below, most of which is harmless scribbling but some rare scraps have actual arcane formulae on them just waiting to be set off. Third, all this chaos is going to draw the party right to one of the wizard’s rivals, who hired the thief to steal important relics and make it look like an overly ambitious smash and grab.
I’m with a group of newer players (Lvls 2-4) and I’d love to provide an optimistic experience since we’ve all had a tough time this past year. I’ve always liked the worlds of Ebberon and MTG’s Kaladesh as potential settings for a solarpunk-y adventure. Treasure hunts and alliance building may be themes that would be big but not heavy. Thanks so much for your consideration!
Settlement: The Bridges of Belisford
History is like the river that surrounds our beautiuful town, it flows ever onward, sustaining and eroding, changing the landscape slowly and imperceptibly. We who know its currents can trace its origin, and know where the flotsam of bygone eras can be found.
Setup: One of the oldest settlements in the region, Belisford started as a fortification of the old empire, intended to prevent barbarians from crossing the great river and marauding into imperial lands. More than once the fort stood as the final defence against border invasion, and the tombs of champions, both glorious and infamous, dot the surrounding hillsides.
Over time Belisford grew into a thriving trade port, accruing influence and prestige as rival cultures became allies and later comingled, mistrust and raiding giving way to cohabitation and commerce. The monuments of old battles became sites of pilgrimage, then of tourism, a fact that the town has leveraged into further prosperity, centralizing itself as one of the great centers of learning in the outer provinces.
Adventure Hooks:
Fascinated by the world below the rippling surface of the water, a young witch by the name of Lilly Limnoreia has perfected a charm to let her ( and Tuna, her feline familiar) to venture underwater for extended periods of time, an invaluable trick for the party to learn should they wish to explore the depths of the river themselves. Lilly herself has ended up a bit of a snag, as her explorations of the depths have revealed a hidden portal to the fey-realm of the frog prince, a secret that the amphibious despot is willing to kill to protect.
Though the town itself is peaceful and well guarded, riverpirates are a constant threat, striking from hidden places and then fleeing to nearby marshland with their illgotten gain. Anyone who put an end to the current series of raids would earn the affection of merchants and commonfolk alike, to say nothing of the adventure in finding the robber’s hidden cache of wealth.
A monstrous fish has been appearing in the lake the past few years and devouring everything else in the water. A group of angry fishergnomes are martialing a counterattack, and they’re more than willing to pressgang the party into their plans.
Further adventures:
Increased scrutiny at the city’s gates and ports prevents the party from passing through easily, requiring them to spend extra days within the city’s limits when adventure waits for them beyond. This extra security is blamed on the recent uptick in activity from smugglers and pirates, but is infact a powerplay by an ambitious councilman by the name of Clovis, hoping to tighten his grip on the town’s trade and use that to assert his authority over the settlement. A petty villain to be sure, but a tenacious one, as Clovis will use any major threat to the city’s profits or wellbeing as a means of furthering his political agenda, a scheme which the players may end up featuring in one way or another.
The past is important to every citizen of Belisford, none more than the Order of St. Eona, a cabal of scholars and historians who dedicate themselves to the collection and codification of knowledge. Having decades ago moved to a larger base of operations, the order maintains a chapterhouse in the port, having converted their old monastery into a secular museum of local history, which the party may visit if they need to research into the region’s lore. For access to their more obscure volumes, the order may ask the party to go on some expeditions for them, delving into local tombs and recovering historical artifacts.
Here’s the thing I never understood about backwoods criminals: now that they’ve got the gold, what are they going to spend it on?
Adventure Hook: Bad luck and unexpected detours sees a caravan transporting a vast store of treasure waylaid by bandits. Intended to pay for the release of an important noble captured in recent skirmish along the border, the noble’s family is now desperate to reclaim the loot and send it on to its intended desination lest the ransomers increase their price or do away with their hostage out of inconvenience.
Setup: Made up out of frontier outlaws and those members of highland clans exiled for dishonorable warfare, the bandits that came to occupy shamblekeep never dreamed of the riches they’d luck their way into, instead aspiring to nothing larger than rustling livestock from local herdsman and maybe ambushing the occasional tinker on their way to market. Recently though they’ve fallen to infighting over their pilfered gold, and the ramshackle fortress they occupy has been split between brawling factions.
Background & Enviroment: The wreckage of empires litter the chilly beaches of Varussha, tossed up by the tide in the decade or so since the northern sea played host to the battles between three marauding armadas. Considered little more than a backwater tribute state by the great powers of the current age, Varussha has seen a steady wave of immigration as castaways, pirates, and refugees seek somewhere safe from the constant struggle of the maritime empires.
These emigres settle along the shores and waterways, using the flotsam of their former vessels to construct makeshift settlements and harbors, eeking out what existence they can as fisherfolk and traders as they slowly make their way inland. The upriver highlands of Varussha are mostly the grazing ground of woolly cattle, presided over by fortified villages and old clan chieftains, who all owe fealty to a king elected by the different clans. The current king, Edralf, has welcomed the newcomers and has taken personal interest in the resettlement process. Though his nation may be small, and his people may chafe at being forced to share it with a horde of outlanders, Edralf sees the potential in infusing the stagnant culture of his realm with new ideas, as well as opening his harbors to the profits their piracy provides.
Mood: Darkwater horror, stone circles and thunderstorms. A tenuous arrangement between a former viking culture and a currently unsettled pirate populace.
Adventure Hooks:
Our party starts their adventure in one of Varussha’s newly established freeports. Once little more than a trading village on a well traveled river, the town has exploded with newcomers and their rough and tumble ways. The party can escape the bustle of town by joining up on an “expeditionary” vessel, or help outsiders and villagefolk navigate the challenges of adapting to this new world together. Success in these matters may find them called upon by kin Edralf himself, who’s interested in having agents who can help him bring his particular vision of Varussha’s future to pass.
With a hold full of hard won ( ill gotten) goods, the party park their boat in a Varusshan harbor just as the last of the autumn storms turns to freezing chill. Wintering in a pirate cove may not be ideal, but it will give them plenty of time to count their spoils, get to know the crew, and stretch their-land legs after a few months at sea. Hopefully the icy waters and biting winds will cool the wrath of those the party as wronged before the thaw sees them on their next adventure.
One of the most ragged and ill-reputed settlements along the shore has turned full pirate, propping up a pirate known as “The Drowned Admiral” as their leader and freely engaging in raids among other settlements and attacks on any vessel they can find. Everyone wants the Admiral and her tossed back in the drink, most especially the crown, who know that such renegades can only cause division at home, and draw the attention of the great powers who put up with only so much of Varussha’s pirate harboring Antics.
Not all of Edralf’s people believe in his choices, or welcome his “new friends” to their ancestral land. Though the king is able to sway most of the holdouts with promises of piratical income, many of the staunchest and most traditionalist voices whisper of ousting Edralf and the newcomers, and electing a new king more dedicated to “The Old Ways”. Radical agents of these holdouts shout propaganda in the market square, paint graffiti with seditious call to arms in the street, and attack advocates for integration when they believe no one’s looking.
Since the beginning, mortal artifice has only had one aim: to stand against the storms and calamities of our world and say “no more”. Sure we get distracted trying to build a better mousetrap, your clockwork armies, your time controlling clocks and the like, but all if it is rooted in the desire to shield those we love from reality’s next ruinous blow.
… and in some cases, to hit back
-Cosimo, chief artificer in service to the Duke of Alanath
Looking for a subtly steampunk maritime adventure? One that begins with a little mystery and a rather daring con, moves on to dungeon delving, subterfuge, pirate raids and ends with a Pacific Rim style clash between a seamonster and a giant robot piloted by the party? You might not have been looking when you started reading but I bet you are now.
Campaign Start: The Duchy of Alanath is a beacon of progress towards the coming age, airships carrying cargo between most major settlements, advanced naval batteries defending the shore from pirates and worse, secret projects up in hidden mountain foundries that will forever tip the balance of power. , but the root of all this industry threatens to come to a grinding halt when the goods exchange in the Harbour of Breeker’s Bay threatens to turn into a riot.
Dispatched by benefactors with concerns about the market, or merely in town and caught up in all the chaos, the party will either have to get to the bottom of what’s caused this gridlock, or figure out a way to turn the crisis to their benefit, without getting taken advantage of by more shady characters looking to do the same. Regardless of where the party end up, they’ll eventually come into the service of a shadowy schemer with unintentionally heroic goals, who will set the party towards all manner of inadvertent good deeds before having them get to the bottom of the conspiracy at the heart of the duchy’s problems.
Early Game:
Preparations to sail out on the evening tide have been completely derailed when the party realizes the crew of the ship they were attempting to board have been slaughtered, and they’ve stumbled upon the killers in the midst of deposing of the bodies. These killers are no mere pirates, but a cult of cuthroats from the deep who’re looking to intimidate local smugglers and pirates into obedience.
Follow a trail of on-land drownings to discover a merfolk priestess cutting her way through the duchy’s exotic animal dealers. Her niece has been kidnapped for a noble’s menagerie, but does rescuing a child really condone such savage methods?
The party’s patron sees a means of getting close to their target, a fretful and oft distracted duke, by hunting a great beast that’s marauding around the borders of his territory. This hunt goes a bit awry when the beast crashes into an ancient ruin hidden beneath the surface of a lake, which the party will need to explore if they want to deliver a killing blow to their target.
Mid Game
A ship of famed treasure hunters has beached itself miles up the coast, the crew scattering to the winds. After delving the wreck and tracking down some of the sailors aboard, the party discover that they defiled an altar to an ancient sea goddess, and now a monster from the depths is due to hit the nearby port any day now.
Break up a fight between two of the Duke’s most trusted advisors, an arcanist and an artificer, and then escort the artificer on an expedition to some far off ruin under mysterious pretenses. This is the party’s best chance to discover what the Duke’s secret project really is.
Foil an assassination attempt against their patron, Racing against time to save his life and track down the source of the attack. Even if the party manage to pull him back from death, they’ll need to seek out a great act of healing or alchemy to permanently undo the damage.
Throughout their adventure, the party will be hounded by the Duke’s all seeing spymaster, a woman with strange powers and an undying loyalty to her liege. Do the party take her out to fulfill their objectives, or can they convince her that their actions are innocent, and earn a powerful ally in the process?
Late Game
Infiltrate a massive, hidden foundry high in the mountains where a titan sized construct is being assembled piece by piece. A kingdom destroying weapon in the wrong hands, the party will face a difficult choice in joining with the duke’s forces to see the construct completed, halting its progress through sabotage, or finding a means of triggering a meltdown in the robot’s arcane engines.
Hitting the self-destruct button on the giant robot might be a bad idea, as the arcane energies that gave the thing both power and defence, once destabilized, will tare a hole through the fabric of reality and give the party many more problems to deal with than just a petty duke and his tin soldier.
Surprise Surprise! That cult that was chopping up sailors back at the start? Turns out they’ve managed to lure a kaiju into working with them, a terrifying beast that’s capable of summoning tsunami-level tidal waves, meaning it’s capable of levelling coastal ports but attacking any settlement connected to the duchy’s central waterways. If the party has been paying attention to the signs of this cult’s escalating threat, they may be able to convince the power players of the campaign to work together to defeat this beast… if not, the party might’ve just sabotaged their primary means of fighting back against it.
“While the dragon may long be dead, there’s more than one predator in these waters. You best be quick if you wish to claim your prize.“
Setup: Generations ago the crystal clear waters of the Ildathan coast ran red with blood, as a terrible archdrake terrorized the trade routes and savaged any merchant ship it caught eyes on. Known to locals as Hullraker, this beast would use its powerful claws to crack open the body of ships to gorge itself on sailors and treasure alike.
While its a myth that dragons eat gold, they do sometimes devour valuable objects to spit up into their hordes later. This habbit would eventually lead to the drake’s defeat, as a group of clever pirates tired of the drake’s meddling caste a series of golden cannonballs, then hollowed them out and filled them with black powder, and an alchemical compound that would ignite after being exposed to the drake’s insides for some length of time. Loading up a dummy ship with their deadly decoys and piles of coin as bait, they watched in glee as the drake’s belly exploded mid air, showering the sea with golden shrapnel and sending Hullraker plunging into the reef below.
The Challenge: Since the time of its death, treasure hunters have paddled out to the glimmering reef in the hopes of reclaiming a portion of the dragons last, fatal meal. Having stripped most of the upper reef clear of coins. Now after years of plundering only the strongest of divers can make it down to the dark, shark infested shelf of the reef where the dragon’s bones and the bulk of its treasure remains. Tradition is that each diver only takes a single coin, and while one gold piece isn’t much to an adventure, a “drowned queen” (one of the particular printing of coins the pirates used for the bulk of their bait) is a mighty prize among sailors and other folk of the sea, said to confer the luck and cunning of the pirates that took Hullraker down.
Being Trans in D&D and other Fantasy TTRPGs - Magical and Non-Magical Transitions
So I've been thinking a lot about how to incorporate being trans into D&D and other fantasy TTRPGs because hey, why shouldn't I?
Trans people deserve to exist in fantasy settings and players should be able to be trans in-game. Now here's the thing though: for most trans people being trans involves transitioning to some degree. But how can one represent that in-game? Note that this is in the context of binary trans people and meant to be setting- and system-agnostic, however I will make a D&D-specific suggestion at one point.
The first and easiest to include method is just good old way of using clothing (+ hair styling & make-up potentially), binding/stuffing, and voice training only. It is very doable and doesn't really require anything mechanical or stuff that has wide-reaching implications for the world.
The second option that basically supplements the first option is to have transition-inducing potions and salves, basically HRT. In a typical TTRPG medieval fantasy setting with stuff like healing potions, why shouldn't potions or the like exist that drastically affect a person's hormones? It is also easier to justify for the format than modern gender-affirming surgeries might be.
The third option is downright magic, but it admittedly comes in two flavors: the mystical and the controlled. The former is divine intervention, a wish to a djinn, or part of a bargain with a fiend or hag. Basically getting a very powerful entity to instantly transition you. This is risky, unlikely, and not great in my opinion... Controlled magic, as in stuff which is potentially attainable for players, might be the solution.
The question there is very much related to the magic system in use and the prevalence of magic in the setting. A simple to cast spell that can permanently alter the appearance of a person has massive implications for a setting. Let's look at D&D specifically for this.
Disguise Self is a popular illusion spell that can allow you to look and sound different for up to an hour, but doesn't change your actual physical appearance. This makes it a flawed way to change your appearance and as a 1st-level spell it is easy to cast but still, a Lvl 17 and up wizard only has 22 spell slots per day, so it would require a mighty spell caster to keep up this sort of illusion for a whole day (excluding warlocks who can gain the ability to do this at will quite early, so that is something). The spell Alter Self does include a physical alteration with the same 1 hour limitation though, but it's a 2nd-level spell and thus slightly less attainable.
The only official spells I know which can permanently and substantially change your appearance are Wish and Reincarnate. The former is (in)famous for being able to do virtually anything (but with heavy risks involved), the latter is an RNG-based resurrection spell with an expensive material component. In terms of cost, Reincarnate might be a good guideline for a spell that can induce the sort of permanent physical change that transitioning would entail.
Let's imagine for example this homebrew spell of mine, which is basically a mixture of Reincarnate and Alter Self:
Reshape Person
5th-level transformation
Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (exquisite-quality ointments and make-up worth at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Instantaneous
You permanently transform the appearance of a humanoid to look like a different member of the same race as the target. You decide what you look like, including your height, weight, facial features, sound of your voice, hair length, coloration, and distinguishing characteristics, if any, which can also include characteristics which might point to a mixed ancestry.
Classes: Cleric, Wizard
This spell would be difficult to gain access to for e.g. criminals who need to permanently alter their appearance, but for people with means it might be a quick way to transition, or even to replace things like plastic surgery. Unless the setting you are playing in is overflowing with magic, then you need to put limits in place as to how easy it is to permanently alter your appearence through magical means, since it would have massive implications on how the world functions, but limiting the spell's accessibility lessens the impact it has on the world, even if it makes magically transitioning harder.
Anyway, this is just my perspective and far from extensive, but hey, discussion!
