Hello! Today I’d like to talk about Scrivener, a wonderful application that I use for both writing and D&D planning. The picture above is an in-progress work of the history of my world, based loosely on the bible’s format.
I’ve refrained slightly from mentioning before simply because it must be bought, but it is a truly remarkable tool that you can use. It allows for excellent organization and searching, as well as automatically compiles your document when you want to print it.
If you are planning a storyline with your player’s characters you can create brief profiles using the character templates for reference. A similar profile exists for locations, giving you question prompts so you have to answer what it looks like, why it’s important, and the people who live there.
Need pictures or reference links on the web? You can add those too, in a research section. It costs $40, but it’s been some of the best money I’ve ever spent.
It comes with a free month trial, like many things, so check it out!
Hello. So one of my biggest complaints of the D&D 5e Player’s Handbook is that searching for spells is a bit of a pain. Even if you manage to obtain a pdf file of it, many of the spells’ titles are written l i k e th i s, making it quite difficult to search with the classic ctr-F.
Because of this, I created a pdf of all of the spells that are in the book, complete with a table of contents linked to them, so you can search the table of contents for your spell, and then zip to the spell you need. Very useful, if I’m allowed to say.
Behold. It is on dropbox, though you can view it (without the magical zipping) without a dropbox account.
Hey all! I recently made a new class, called the Summoner, a class that uses their magic to summon and control demons, as well as briefly take their forms. Following this I'll have many custom/new demons that can be used with this class. Hope you enjoy! It was fun to make :)
Greetings. In this post, I wish to explore some of the D&D websites and tools that I use often and have found to be extremely useful in building and running a campaign.
I’ll begin with maps. Maps are crucial to any campaign, as it lets you get a visualization of where your players are traveling and what kind of terrain they are traversing. Furthermore, it lets you get a feel for how long it would take for them to travel from one area to another.
While I thoroughly enjoy hand-drawing maps, sometimes I need to create a map quicker, with more detail than I am skilled enough in creating, or that I can easily print multiple copies of. For this I use Inkarnate.com. It is a beautifully made website that is very easy to use and download, and creates gorgeous maps.
(The Eight States of Ihelan)
Above is one of the many maps I’ve created for the world, the Eight States of Ihelan. As you can see, it is excellent for creating both a visualization of where cities and countries exist, as well a the different biomes that are in each area.
Next, I’ll chat about dungeon maps. Maps for traveling the world are all well and good, but sometimes we don’t have endless funds to buy d&d tiles to use for our campaigns. For this, I use pyromancers.com, which has another wonderful map/dungeon-building interface that allows you to create custom dungeons and download them. You can either print them off, or I’m in the process of creating a table that will upload maps onto a screen that we can use.
Above is one of several floors for a rather large dungeon that I made. I usually then take these and edit them on Microsoft Paint, creating a DM’s version that I use to know where everything is located.
This allows me to quickly remember all of the different aspects of the dungeon I have created, as well as where the monsters are located.
Now I’m going to talk about sound. I use Spotify, mostly, as it has access to an enormous range of music that works incredibly well for a campaign. But when it comes to background sounds that exist beyond music, I use a website called ambient mixer.
Ambient mixer allows you to create a group of sounds that happen in a loop, making backgrounds to different encounters that you might set, whether it be in a cave, or during a dark ritual, like the one below.
The end result is a background loop that you can use (or download for $, but I don’t have enough just laying around for that). My players have expressed multiple times how much more it adds to an encounter or to an image that I might be describing, and it is very easy to use.
Next, I wish to introduce you to Coggle.it. This program allows you to map out stuff in flowchart form. I use it to plan the story arcs of my campaigns. I would put an example of the story-arc, but I only recently started using it, and therefore the story-arc that I created has not yet finished (and my players are on tumblr). So here is an example image of a different type:
I also use a website called City of Brass, but it is a pay-to-use website on a subscription based payment. It is very useful, allowing you to create a webpage-like format for your world and characters for reference. But it is not especially necessary, and takes a little while to learn how to use. But I thought I would mention it nonetheless.
Buenos! In this post, I’m going to link two pages of reference tables that I use almost every time I run a campaign.
These are the tables. Many of them are taken from the Dungeon Master’s Guide or Player’s Handbook (page numbers are listed for many), but some are edited with some of my own flavor and homebrew, such as the concussion on the lingering injuries table.
As for rules, I refer to the System Shock table whenever a creature has been dealt half of their maximum hit points in damage in one turn and they fail their subsequent Constitution saving throw. I refer to the Lingering Injuries chart if someone has taken a severe amount of damage (perhaps knocking them unconscious), but not enough to go into System Shock. Or, if some event leads someone to lose a limb or similar, I use the chart to denote what precisely they can and cannot do.
Nila, the Blue House, lives in either the swamps or by the lake, making them the “Water House”. They, being the second poorest nation, have struggled very hard over recent years to be in good standing with all of the other nations in an attempt to start to regain monetary status. Due to their access to water, they export fish and clay, as well as poison from the swamp frogs and snakes.
Their people are viewed as mildly backward, with strange customs, and often smell of fish, making them not exactly the most popular company. They do build the best boats, however, and are often hired for building river craft in Irencu and Paccai.
Exports: Fish, poison, river craft, rice, sugarcane
I made another Druid Circle! It is the Circle of Nethermancy, druids who use the magic they possess to manipulate the energies of the life that surround them.
You can find it here!
The picture is a little fuzzy, but readable, if you want a preview:
I built this world specifically for dungeons and dragons players who wanted a very different world than your average d&d campaign. It follows many of your common themes of d&d, but has a couple differences.
(Continental map with major nations and citystates)
The world is vast, but there is only really a small area known, the Eight Houses, or States, held under one name, Ihelin.
Ihelin is split into eight Houses, each after one of the Etu, complete with the colors and the animals that is on the flags. Each are led by a council of Eight, composed solely of Muttirai (thus making noble families with more Muttirai more powerful), one of the eight being elected the first among equals, the Talaivar.
Since they are led solely by Muttirai, four of the houses have female councils and four have male councils. Between the Talaivar, there is another council that oversees the nations, the Atciyalar of the Day or Night. The Atciyalar is elected twice a year, at the equinoxes, and is the leader of either the day or night. Despite the “equality” that is emphasized, the Atciyalar is always elected in Vellai, since it is the center House and closest to all of the others. All of the councils of Talaivar are located in its capital, giving it considerable influence.
There are three main dialects of common that are spoken, Northern, Southern, and Velaiyan. They are similar enough that the three different languages can communicate to each other, roughly, but are not so close as that you could read or write in the other language without learning it.
There are also three older dialects that are harder to understand, and can also be learned with practice.
The languages are: North Common, South Common, Velaiyan Common, Archaic Northern Common, Archaic Southern Common, and Archaic Common (celestial).
Days and Nights
The world is circular, a shape and size similar to Venus, rotating at a speed that allows for 256 days to a year. A day is a thirty-two-hour period, sixteen hours being a solar flare and sixteen a lunar flare. This makes a year on Ihelan just slightly shorter than a year on Earth.
The main difference between worlds, however, is that Ihelan rotates slowly, allowing for 128 days of straight sun and 128 days of pure darkness, save for the stars and the light of the moon. Split, it means that there are 64 days of sunrise, sun, sunset, and night.
The two equinoxes, located during sunrise and sunset, mark perfectly 16 hours of light and 16 hours of darkness, as well as equal strength in solar and lunar flares.
Noon and Midnight are days, festivals celebrating the peak of the Night or Day, and the strength of those attuned to it.
Solar/Lunar Flares
Solar and lunar flares are measured using resonance stones, clear crystal formations (think quartz) that are found almost everywhere, though large stones can be found in great numbers in the mountains. These stones slowly rotate between giving off pure light and darkness (the darkness actually pervading from the stone, sucking in the light around it similar to how light pushes away darkness) during the flares. The stronger the flare, the brighter/darker the resonance.
Since small powders of these stones exist, it’s possible for the ground of an area to either glow with light or darkness, especially during sunrise or sunset, where the lunar and solar flares have more equal strength.
It’s said that these crystals, when in the presence of one of the Eight, will act as though a solar or lunar flare is at its peak (depending on the power of the Etu) during the time it’s in its presence. Powerful Muttirai are said to also influence the stones, though since they gain and lose strength with the cycles, they are more limited (they are unable to cause a stone to reverse polarity, instead only making it slightly darker/brighter)
The gods and goddesses are below:
I have more detail on this world to follow, but I thought I’d spotlight individual countries, states, and gods/goddesses for individual posts so these aren’t ridiculously long.
