Aug 8, 2025
By request, some dinosaur plot hooks! If you like what I do or want to see more tables, Drop a tip here at my Kofi, or follow my Patreon for more!
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By request, some dinosaur plot hooks! If you like what I do or want to see more tables, Drop a tip here at my Kofi, or follow my Patreon for more!
The Shadow Baker
Glorious...
A Bizarre Rant About Sliding Scales
I was trying to figure out how I would fill out a “Session 0 survey” I saw on a subreddit for DMs, that you use to gauge the kind of campaign to run. There’s a question about how gray or black and white you want the campaign to be and I was caught between wanting to put a 1 and wanting to put a 10.
I LOVE gray characters and gray vs gray (vs orange vs blue) morality, really I do! And I love having the room to play a gray character who could fall into evil just as easily as good, especially if they can’t tell the clear delineation between the sides.
But man, after reading the way a lot of people run their games, I worry that gray and gray actually translates to near-black vs charcoal, and that’s not something I want to deal with at all. I want to be able to play a hero who does good things and there aren’t always lingering questions shoehorned in.
It’s like... sometimes you’re gonna get hired to clear rats out of the basement of the Inn, and then the rats are cleared, and the people of the Inn are free from the rats and their diseases, and the hero did as they said they would. Thats the end of that story. It doesn’t need to be that the rats were actually polymorphed victims of the evil innkeeper trying to unionize to stop him from his dastardly plots, and also you won’t see ANY evidence of this until after you’ve done your task.
Like, fuck that! I guess this example is bad because actually that whole scenario would be great, if set up properly, but my point is, say you did help the rats, right?
You kill the Innkeeper and restore the rats to their original form. But wait! It turns out the innkeeper was just an overzealous vigilante, and while SOME of the rats were innocents, others were a part of a notorious street gang! And now the gang is threatening the town, and going on a huge crime spree, especially now that no one will stop them!!!! They have the police on the take! They can pillage as they please! So then the party has to stop the gang.
And again, please bear with me because the more I type this, the more I realize this is a fucking awesome quest, just hear me out.
So you start taking down the gang, and the corrupt officers are caught and set to be executed. Yay! You did good! But it turns out the government of the town is actually super evil and the police had become jaded following the malicious orders of the evil lich hag deathlock bad queen, and now they will be executed in a way that defies the party’s specific gods’ wishes! So now the party has to kill the queen! But wait! It turns out she was the only one powerful enough to stop Uglag the Dragonfucker and his dragon bride from raiding the city! And now Uglag the Dragonfucker and his dragon bride are raiding the city! So now it’s up to the party to stop them!!!!!!!!
AND THEY DO BUT IT TURNS OUT UGLAG AND HIS WIFE ONLY WANTED TO FIGHT THE VILLAGERS WHO WOULD NEVER ACCEPT THE UGLAG FAMILY INTO THE CITY BECAUSE THEIR DAUGHTER IS THE ONE PROPHESIZED IN LEGEND TO STOP THE WORLD ENDER TERROR, BUT IN ORDER TO FULFILL THE PROHESY, THE DRAGON-ORC HAS TO GO TO THE PALACE’S PRIVATE SCHOOL
AND THE WORLD ENDER TERROR IS ACTUALLY JUSTIFIED BECAUSE THE WORLD ONCE FLICKED A SPECK OF DIRT INTO HIS EYE AND IT SCRATCHED HIS ELDRITCH CORNEA AND NOW ALL THE WORLD HE SEES IS EVIL BECAUSE HE LITERALLY CANNOT SEE THE LIGHT
SO YOU NEED TO ASSEMBLE A SERIES OF ARCANE OPHTHALMOLOGISTS TO AID THIS ORCISH DRAGON SORCERER TODDLER IN HER DESTINY.................................................
Again I just realized I wrote the greatest campaign ever, feel free to borrow, but I think the difference between this and the point I was initially trying to make is... a lot of the time the gray is tacked on on the end like some kind of twist to make the heroes feel bad about being heroes. It’s always this weird kind of nihilistic epilogue. The players solved a problem and yet in their foolishness, caused more. But the new problems aren’t treated as actionable. It’s just a bummer final note to sour a fresh victory.
I love to play gray, but if I decide to play good, I want to be able to do good. And if that means following through on a lot of messes, so be it! But in my mind, a good alignment means the character wants to improve the world, and improving the world needs to be a valid possibility for a good alignment to also be. And if I have to pave the roads and give an elder god lasik to do it, I want to be able to do it.
The mood of the room: what atmosphere surrounds your players?
Are the odds against them or in their favor? The idea is to check for their luck and, according to the result, add a bit more obstacles, increase the tests difficulty, put a larger number of enemies; or grant more supplies, make them find allies, remove certain obstacles and tests, give them the opportunity to discover some extra information.
It's a nice way to add unpredictability to the game ;)
Carnival names! There’s also something extra on my Kofi for those who want to check it out (or just leave me a nice tip)
What could have possibly just dropped on Kofi? A bunch of cursed items perhaps? And only 3 bucks for the whole collection (plus everything else in my gallery) ? Where’s the catch? Unlike these cursed goodies, there isn’t one! There’s armor, weapons, tools and more! So enjoy DM’s and dungeoneers
Hello all my DNDers!
Since I’ve been posting more art here I was thinking about making a separate blog for my dnd stuff so it could be easily searchable. I was also considering setting some more Kofi goals...
Are there any DND tables y’all would want to see? Drop me an ask or put it in the tags!
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Hey guys, a new goal is up for dungeon tables! I’ll be making a set of tables, each for a different environment, and first up is the desert. Many more to hopefully come!