The Paladin's Scrolls

100% human-made RPG content.

[the-paladins-scrolls]

Hey there, fans of Perfect Draw! (Also fans of PbtA games or RPGs in general who might be interested in an RPG that has an attached card game meant to emulate the Yu-Gi-Oh anime) Guess who's made a new playbook for the game!

If you guessed "the guy who made and shared a template for people making their own playbooks," great job. You got it in one.

Introducing: The Idol, a playbook for Perfect Draw! If you wanna check it out now, you can find it on my Patreon, where even just a $2/month membership gets you access to all content I make! For those who still need a little convincing...

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It's good to be famous... until it's not. 

This product contains:

The Idol, a playbook for Perfect Draw! that lets you play a superstar, with all the benefits and downsides that come with the job

Access to abilities like:

Parasocial Relationship - Use your fans' obsession with you to your advantage, but suffer the consequences of their jealousy afterwards!

Superchat - see if your fans have sent you donations in the middle of a card game, and potentially benefit if they have!

Use My Card! - Gain a powerful new card, sent to you by a fan!

Is That...? - Go incognito, or reveal yourself to the public to draw attention to yourself!

You're Not Alone! - Use your experience with isolation and loneliness to connect with others who are suffering.

Devoted Fanbase - Weaponize your fans to achieve your ends. Just don't take advantage of them too much!

Forced Smile - Keep it together when interacting with a fan, even when things are going to hell.

The sample deck All Eyes on Me!, a deck focusing on cards with the {Tenacious} keyword!

A new keyword: {Tenacious}! Your cards get stronger the more cards your opponent controls!

This is a playbook for the game Perfect Draw!, by Nora Jean Haynes and Iris Cassandra Saintclaire at Double Summon Games.

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If that sounds interesting to you, check out my Patreon! Or, if you prefer to avoid subscription-based approaches, I also put all of my stuff up on Itch a week after I release it to Patreon. As of right now, that means you can go grab my first entry into my NPC Encounters series: Perfect Draw! NPC Encounters: Cyber Century and Lingering Hatred.

You won't get as good a deal as my Patrons, though...

[the-paladins-scrolls]

My Perfect Draw! playbook, The Idol, will go up on Itch in four days, but if you want it and my other content (including a custom magical girl deck I'll be putting up next Friday), you can still check out my Patreon!

[the-paladins-scrolls]

Hey there, fans of Perfect Draw! (Also fans of PbtA games or RPGs in general who might be interested in an RPG that has an attached card game meant to emulate the Yu-Gi-Oh anime) Guess who's made a new playbook for the game!

If you guessed "the guy who made and shared a template for people making their own playbooks," great job. You got it in one.

Introducing: The Idol, a playbook for Perfect Draw! If you wanna check it out now, you can find it on my Patreon, where even just a $2/month membership gets you access to all content I make! For those who still need a little convincing...

-----

It's good to be famous... until it's not. 

This product contains:

The Idol, a playbook for Perfect Draw! that lets you play a superstar, with all the benefits and downsides that come with the job

Access to abilities like:

Parasocial Relationship - Use your fans' obsession with you to your advantage, but suffer the consequences of their jealousy afterwards!

Superchat - see if your fans have sent you donations in the middle of a card game, and potentially benefit if they have!

Use My Card! - Gain a powerful new card, sent to you by a fan!

Is That...? - Go incognito, or reveal yourself to the public to draw attention to yourself!

You're Not Alone! - Use your experience with isolation and loneliness to connect with others who are suffering.

Devoted Fanbase - Weaponize your fans to achieve your ends. Just don't take advantage of them too much!

Forced Smile - Keep it together when interacting with a fan, even when things are going to hell.

The sample deck All Eyes on Me!, a deck focusing on cards with the {Tenacious} keyword!

A new keyword: {Tenacious}! Your cards get stronger the more cards your opponent controls!

This is a playbook for the game Perfect Draw!, by Nora Jean Haynes and Iris Cassandra Saintclaire at Double Summon Games.

-----

If that sounds interesting to you, check out my Patreon! Or, if you prefer to avoid subscription-based approaches, I also put all of my stuff up on Itch a week after I release it to Patreon. As of right now, that means you can go grab my first entry into my NPC Encounters series: Perfect Draw! NPC Encounters: Cyber Century and Lingering Hatred.

You won't get as good a deal as my Patrons, though...

[cookie-sheet-toboggan]

baby girl I don't know what that acronym means. it would be so sexy of you to write out that piece of media's name in its entirety. Just the one time for momma please.

[the-paladins-scrolls]

Normalize spelling out the full phrase and then using the acronym afterwards, dammit.

[the-paladins-scrolls]

Working on a playbook for Perfect Draw and, with it, an Affinity template for making more in the future! Pretty happy with the template so far.

And having a lot of fun making content! I've got a couple more playbook ideas that I think explore some fun design space, and I've got plenty of ideas for more in the NPC Encounters line.

If you wanna follow my design process more directly, you can get access to my WIP documents at my Patreon, as well as access to every piece of content I ever post there! Also, if you support at Silver tier or higher, you can add any product I release to your Itch.io account for free when they release to the public.

[the-paladins-scrolls]

In my efforts to put together a (nominally) nice-looking layout for my own custom playbooks, I decided I may as well share what I made with the class so everyone can make (nominally) nice-looking layouts for their own playbooks!

Disclaimer: I made this template for Affinity Publisher v1. That means it should work in Affinity v2 as well, but I can't guarantee it for any other software. You will need some basic proficiency with the software to get the most out of the template, but it should be pretty much plug-and-play.

Find it here!

Some sample images:

[the-paladins-scrolls]

I make RPG content! If you're interested in RPGs and children's card games, you should totally check out Perfect Draw because that's what this product is for!

In it, you'll find 2 NPCs, with ready-made decks, perfect for either being a recurring character or a simple throwaway card battle.

You can also get it by supporting me on Patreon, where for just a little more than the asking price on Itch you get it, one more product this month, and more!

[the-paladins-scrolls]

Also btw, if you pledge at Silver or higher, you can claim all products I release on Itch for free!

[the-paladins-scrolls]

I make RPG content! If you're interested in RPGs and children's card games, you should totally check out Perfect Draw because that's what this product is for!

In it, you'll find 2 NPCs, with ready-made decks, perfect for either being a recurring character or a simple throwaway card battle.

You can also get it by supporting me on Patreon, where for just a little more than the asking price on Itch you get it, one more product this month, and more!

[thydungeongal]

Running D&D in 2024 is like, the player community collectively convinced each other that dungeon crawls, resource management and attrition are bad, so now everyone runs games where characters can expect to get into one or two fights a day and characters are never stretched for resources, and most Reddit threads about D&D are GMs asking for help challenging their groups because of said ignoring of the resource management aspect and getting told that a good GM could make it work so obviously they must be a bad GM.

[vixensdungeon]

I should start making DM advice videos.

The title: "How to keep your party challenged and engaged"

The thumbnail: "Do this one weird trick!"

The content: "Grind them into paste in your meatgrinder."

[thydungeongal]

"This forgotten method could save your D&D campaign" and the thumbnail has a guy thinking ponderously and the words "Dungeons & Dragons" are on the screen with the word "Dungeons" circled

[vixensdungeon]

With an arrow pointing to it.

[vixensdungeon]

"This forgotten method could save your D&D campaign"

[thydungeongal]

#LITERALLY#the best d&d 5e game i ever ran lasted years and it was a megadungeon#we used encumberance and i made sure vision and light were important#and it was amazing!!! the PCs felt challenged even after breaking into the double-digit levels#people are afraid of numbers and they'll say shit like ''oh but i don't want to play with spreadsheets'' and it's like...#you don't need a spreadsheet for 5e you literally just change numbers on your character sheet. which is why the character sheet has room for#all those numbers. because that's how the game was designed to be played.#if you're not playing d&d with at least SOME dungeons then why are you playing d&d. just play a different game right?

I am kissing these tags mwah mwah mwah

[thydungeongal]

#I don’t like encumberance bc i find it a little frustrating to do it in EXACT numbers however still within reason#i think tbh as long as your players are engaged and having fun that’s what’s important#some rules still are relevant but tbh what’s we play for is for the story so as long as the story is engaging and interesting#(which my last dm did FANTASTICALLY)#then it’s fine to use or not use whatever rules you like. that’s the whole point of the game - you can use or change or add what rules#you want to for your table!!#dnd is just the system and i disagree that you need to have dungeons. dnd is just the system and you can do what you want with it#that’s the beauty of trrpgs and why dnd is so popular imo. dms can change what they want#add in new mechanics that suit their worlds and characters and whatnot

These tags just demonstrate the issue that this post is about: people think D&D is a completely unopinionated game that you can just take whole systems out of without altering the gameplay. But D&D is a game that is opinionated about many things, resource management being one of them, and once you remove the resource management out of it you end up with a worse game with no tension and DMs suddenly having to fix a bunch of new problems that arise out of that, like having to suddenly figure out ways to challenge their party when tracking resources (this includes stuff like spell slots and daily uses of abilities) is no longer an issue except on a per-encounter level.

And honestly "DMs can change anything" is not unique to D&D. If I wanted to run a game that doesn't care about dungeon-crawling and resource management I would much rather run a different game. And I wish people in the D&D playerbase realized this as well, because not only is it bad for their game and its play culture, it also stifles creativity within the hobby.

All of which is to say: if you don't like resource management there are hundreds of games out there that don't care about resource management.

[steamfucksithlord]

This sounds a whole lot like "You're having fun wrong!"

You can totally change any rule you don't like. In D&D, or any other game. You can change the rules in Sorry! if you want. You don't have to play Chutes and Ladders instead.

I've noticed over the years that WotC and Hasbro have changed the game from encouraging players and DMs to change rules they don't like, to severely discouraging them. (I assume this is to sell more minis, and now D&D One subscriptions.) We used to call people like that rules lawyers, and most of us stopped inviting them to our tables.

By all means play another game. I haven't given Hasbro any of my money since 3.5, and I don't intend to start. But don't complain about the way others are playing. The only way to do it wrong is by NOT having fun!

[thydungeongal]

I'm sorry but this is such a pissing on the poor reading comprehension take.

This post is about observations of a play culture where people clearly are not having fun, as attested to by hundreds of GMs trying to run the game in a way it's not optimized towards and suddenly having to do a bunch of work to patch over those newly discovered issues! That's what the first post in this chain is about: people have self-inflicted a playstyle onto themselves which simply does not harmonize with D&D, but because the current play culture of D&D doesn't consider the GM's fun a factor they need to deal with toxic memes like "a good GM can fix it" when they shouldn't, in fact, have to fix things if the game were fit to purpose!

So yes, this post is about people who clearly are, by your definition, having fun wrong while playing D&D, because they have made the job of running the game way too stressful for themselves! And the purpose of this post is to say "You don't have to run the game like that. You can just take the game at its own word and let the game take the reins. That way you, the GM, will also have to do less game design on the fly."

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Not entirely the point but I love how the "we used to call people like that rules lawyers" shows how the community has retroactively changed the meaning of "rules lawyer" from "a player who exploits clearly unintended rules loopholes and insists on using the most literal interpretation of an ambiguously worded rule whenever it benefits them" to "a player who knows the rules and wants to use them".

It's like. They convinced themselves that the very existence of rules in a tabletop RPG is bad (or at least that it "limits Roleplaying™" or whatever), so now they think that of course the thing that makes rules-lawyering bad must be the "rules" part, not the "lawyering" part.

[the-paladins-scrolls]

As a player and GM who loves the rules of the games I play (it's literally why I play them instead of, you know, just writing stories all the time), it sucks so damn much how little people care about them.

I just wanna actually play the game. I promise, THE RULES don't get in the way of your precious "roleplaying" (I could go on such a rant about how people misunderstand and misuse the word roleplaying, but I shan't right now), they just... guide it to interesting places.

You will tell perfectly interesting stories (possibly even more interesting than what you had in mind to begin with) if you let the rules guide play. They'll take you to unexpected places. It'll be fun. It'll be a great time.

[the-paladins-scrolls]

Giant Vampire Robots by Sustain a Spell

Fight giant robots. Stop Dracula. Save the world.

So I uh... made a one page RPG for the One-Page RPG Game Jam. It's about using giant robots to fight vampires who are also in giant robots, and you build a dice tower to get your dice pool.

I've been told this would "do numbers" here on tumblr, so here I am. I hope my humble offering is appreciated. It's Pay What You Want, so you can grab it for free. You can even get a lower-res copy of the game by just saving the screenshot on the page, if you don't wanna bother logging into itch.

[the-paladins-scrolls]

Workshop Wednesday Gaiden: Axe of the Black Labyrinth

This Workshop Wednesday is going to be a little bit different than normal. Namely, it’s clearly both completely out of the blue (Hi! I’m back!), doesn’t have a number assigned, and also not tied to a Monster Monday. There’s a reason for that: keeping up with the old weekly content stream is, at the current point in my life, unsustainable. I’d much rather devote that level of dedication and free…

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[the-paladins-scrolls]

Fiction Friday #22: A Whole Corrupted Armory

Lastly for the week, I write up NPCs for each of the Corrupted Relics I detailed previously, talking about how each of them might be used in your own games! #Pf2e #TTRPG #Homebrew #TTRPGFamily

Welcome back to Fiction Friday, the third part of my regularly scheduled Pathfinder 2e content. In these posts I’ll be focusing on the narrative side of this week’s topic, with either an adventure seed and some sample characters making use of the Workshop Wednesday content, some short fiction, or both! This week I looked at the Corrupted Relic, an inherently customizable statblock with built-in…

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[the-paladins-scrolls]

Workshop Wednesday #22: Corrupted Relics

This Wednesday, after looking at the inherently customizable Corrupted Relic statblock, I tried my hand at making three of my own, at varying levels, for you to use in your own games! #Pf2e #TTRPG #Homebrew #TTRPGFamily

Hello and welcome to Workshop Wednesday, the second part of my regularly scheduled content! In these posts, I’ll share homebrew Pathfinder 2e content (often an item, but possibly a feat, spell, another monster, or some other piece of mechanical content) based on the monster we looked at in that week’s Monster Monday post. In addition to the content itself, I’ll also talk about my design process:…

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[the-paladins-scrolls]

Monster Monday #21: Corrupted Relic

Today I kick off the new year and get back to regular content by looking at corrupted relics, a highly customizable monster and a great way to deliver cool loot to your players! #Pathfinder2e #Pf2e #Pathfinder #TTRPG #RPG #TTRPGFamily

ANNOUNCEMENTIt’s been a while since I last posted! I’m finally past a bunch of big changes and upheavals though, and can get back to a little bit of regular posting, so look forward to that. What’s more, I’m also adding “Professional GMing” to my plate—swing by my Start Playing page to see what I’m offering! Going forward I’ll include the link in the Ko-fi segment, but for today I wanted to put…

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[the-paladins-scrolls]

Workshop Wednesday #20: Fury Cloak

This week I revise one of the first Pathfinder 2e items I made: the fury cloak! A cloak made with the feathers of an erinys and able to bestow some of the fiends' capabilities on another creature—and its alignmenment! #Pf2e #TTRPG #Homebrew #TTRPGFamily

Hello and welcome to Workshop Wednesday, the second part of my regularly scheduled content! In these posts, I’ll share homebrew Pathfinder 2e content (often an item, but possibly a feat, spell, another monster, or some other piece of mechanical content) based on the monster we looked at in that week’s Monster Monday post. In addition to the content itself, I’ll also talk about my design process:…

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[the-paladins-scrolls]

Monster Monday #20: Erinys

Today I revisit fiends by looking at the erinys, a surprisingly versatile monster just as capable of filling you with flaming arrows as it is of subtly manipulating you behind the scenes. #Pathfinder2e #Pf2e #Pathfinder #TTRPG #RPG #TTRPGFamily

Welcome back for another Monster Monday, part of my regularly scheduled Pathfinder 2e content. This week we’re going back to fiends, which we haven’t looked at in a little while. Specifically, we’ll be analyzing the erinys, a deadly flying combatant that can also serve a surprisingly subtle role compared to the normal image of a vengeful fallen angel with flaming weapons. If you like what you…

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[the-paladins-scrolls]

Workshop Wednesday #19: Darklands Mukradi

Today I make the rumored Darklands Mukradi, a terrifying (but more balanced) ambush predator variant of the mukradi. #Pf2e #TTRPG #Homebrew #TTRPGFamily

ANNOUNCEMENTBefore the usual preamble, I just want to take a moment to make everyone aware that I’m taking commissions now! The link is in the Ko-fi plug at the bottom of the preamble, so if you like what you see and want me to make something custom for you, swing by and take a look! Hello and welcome to Workshop Wednesday, the second part of my regularly scheduled content! In these posts, I’ll…

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[the-paladins-scrolls]

Monster Monday #19: Mukradi

Today I look at the mukradi, a multi-elemental giant centipede that is—and this is not an accusation I make often or lightly—absurdly overpowered. Still cool though! #Pathfinder2e #Pf2e #Pathfinder #TTRPG #RPG #TTRPGFamily

Welcome back for another Monster Monday, part of my regularly scheduled Pathfinder 2e content. Normally, I find that the monsters I cover are quite well-designed, with plenty of strengths but more than enough weaknesses to balance them out, though sometimes I do offer what I see as gentle warnings about certain situations in which a certain monster might be less fun for players to deal…

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