Creator Teacher Student

I Teach 4th grade and DM D&D games.

[georgecostanzaatemysoup]

I really dig the relationship between familiars and their summoners, so I decided to write a small something about that between Caleb and Frumpkin. Enjoy :)

What are you doing? Caleb thinks to Frumpkin, shifting his consciousness over to his cat, tuning out the idle chatter from his friends.

Nothing, Frumpkin thinks back, one eye opening long enough to shoot the sky an annoyed look before closing it again. He’s on his back, the mid-morning sun warming his belly as he lays just outside of the tavern.

The sun feels nice.

It is. Frumpkin rolls over onto his side, rubbing his head into the stone road. Might lay here all day.

We might need you for a bit of scouting later.

Frumpkin makes the cat equivalent of a sigh, If I must. What would you do without me?

Caleb snaps out of Frumpkin’s head, shaking his head in amusement.

I find my inability to be stealthy your fault, Frumpkin thinks in annoyance, darting away from a guard’s boot.

Please do not die.

Not making any promises, Frumpkin snaps back, hissing at the guard. He slashes out, scratching the man’s leg. With a pained grunt, the guard draws back and attempts to kick Frumpkin again.

Fuck, is the last thing he thinks before he snaps out of existence.

Frumpkin noses the ajar door open, slowly walking across the room. He hops up onto the bed Caleb sits on, crawling across the mattress, and flops down into his lap, covering the book he’d been reading.

“Hello,” Caleb says cheerfully, smiling down at him, running a hand through his fur. “Bored?”

I’m bothering you, Frumpkin thinks back and Caleb chuckles softly. He nudges Caleb’s stomach with his head, turning over onto his back and closing his eyes. There are no mice here. Wake me when we leave this dreadful place.

Frumpkin’s head snaps up when he hears the gasp. He stares at the blanket covered lump on the ground, watching as it sits up, and he gets to his feet. He moves across the dirt, slowly crawling into Caleb’s lap, startling him. He looks down at his cat, tear streaks running down his dirty face, and Frumpkin meows softly at him.

Lay down, Frumpkin tells him, nudging his chest with his nose. I’m right here.

Caleb does as he’s told, hugging the cat closer to his chest, and Frumpkin purrs softly, allowing the white noise to put his human back to sleep.

[dorkagedoodles]

Shine bright, circus man.

Available as print.

[worldsnest]

Eberron and its continents from Dungeons & Dragons

[dndeed]

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Did some spoopy Eberron gaming this weekend, complete with miniature fog machine! Part one of a two game one shot. Per usual, our DM for these weekend one shots really brought her terrain game. Spectacular stuff.

[epicroll]

10 Catchy Hooks for your Campaign

1. Something is stirring up and driving the goblins from their lands and right into yours.

2. A rebellion is brewing, and the party will need to pick a side or get swept away.

3. First it was rats and other vermin, then it was cats, and dogs all being found dead with two puncture wounds on their necks.

4. The party stumbles quite literally onto a plot to trick the king into siring an illegitimate heir with a powerful witch. (Have you ever seen Excalibur?)

5. There are reports of a person wearing a thick black cloak and hood in the dead of summer walking the woods nearby.

6. The party is trapped in an ancient ruin, besieged by a small army of (put your monster/bad guy here), can they unlock the secrets of the ruins and escape before being overrun?

7. The party is hired to protect a vault in the local magistrates house, and they know for a fact that the robber will strike tonight. (Home Alone!)

8. There is another group of adventurers that keep showing up and in an attempt to steal the party’s glory keeps botching the jobs for everyone

9. The party finds a tattered map, and in the corner is a note hastily scrawled in blood, “Whatever you do, do not…” It ends there in a rip.

10. A local mage in a large city has been working on some new deviltry in his tower, last night there was a bright flash of light at the tower top and now no one can hear anything once they get within three blocks of it.

[yourdndstories]

Huh. Usually it’s the rogue that causes the TPK.  More D&D Stories here.

[outofcontextdnd]

Guys, can you PLEASE focus on the killing and not the porn?

-Disgruntled Storyteller (via outofcontextdnd)

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

Can you move in armour? An Experiment in Mythbusting

On the topic of robust plate armor and the kinds of activity one might do in it, Medievalist recently did an in depth article discussing mobility in plate armor and the sorts of training those who wore it did in order to ensure they could fight effectively.

Whenever someone cites bikini armor as being “for mobility” it’s important to remember that this idea is from 70s pulp, specifically RPGs that needed to give a reason why someone would wear less robust armor and comics that wanted to show off sexy ladies as often as possible.

It has literally no basis in reality and was never employed by any serious warriors anywhere… well at least none that survived a battle.

Thank you to those who brought this article and video to our attention!

- wincenworks

[heroineimages]

To be fair to the RPGs, part of their rationale for making heavier armor more restrictive was to help balance the game. If a character with a +3 dexterity bonus to their AC receives no penalties to their modifier for wearing heavy armor, just think how overpowered they’d be in combat. I mean, why wouldn’t everyone just wear full plate then?

[dailybestiary]

Fear Eater

(Illustration by Ben Wooten comes from the Paizo Blog and is © Paizo Publishing.)

Man, these guys.  Born (I believe) from Kalervo Oikarinen’s RPG Superstar 2015 monster entry, fear eaters definitely stand out from the rest of the Occult Bestiary pack, courtesy of some creepy art by Ben Wooten.

You know all those ’80s kids’ movies—especially the live action ones—that now you look back and go, “How did they ever think this was kid-appropriate?”  (I’m looking at you, Return to Oz.)  This one fits right in there.  In fact, I’m gonna score this next sentence with daggers for creepy emphasis.  Imagine that the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland(†) straight-up tied her up(††) with sticky strands(†††) disgorged from his own mouth(††††) and then caused mushrooms to burst from her body(†††††) and feed on her fear(†you get the point).

Yes, you read that correctly.  Forget fantasy role-playing—we’re in full-blown body horror territory here.  X-Files monsters aren’t this gross and scary.*

But the real horror is this. Fear eaters don’t just devour the mushrooms for themselves.  They sell them(†) as a delicacy (††) to fey rulers(†††).  There’s a market out there for your PCs’ pain and suffering(††††). One assumes fear eaters’ customers are mostly Unseelie fey (the Court of Ether in the Golarion setting).  But given the mercurial nature of the fey, one can easily imagine a faerie queen who has lauded adventurers in the past being unconcerned if they wind up as fertilizer once she no longer owes them any favors…

Drow already reject and loathe their surface kin. So any suggestion that they may also be related to the fey is typically met with scorn and drawn blades.  Still, the Defanwe drow tell a different origin story from most drow, one of a broken vow, an outcast queen, and the shearing of gossamer wings.  If the Defanwe taste for fear eater mushrooms is any indication, the tales may even be true.  Certainly, every Defanwe settlement has a sizeable minority of fear eater merchants and farmers.  And Defanwe drow do not callously murder their slaves as often as other drow, as there is far more profit in selling used-up livestock to the fey mushroom growers.

A fear eater found a giant’s discarded drawstring bag and was inspired to create her own trap.  Cutting open and restitching the voluminous leather with her own fungal spewing, she has created a snare that will close up after adventurers pass through it, blocking their escape.

The first disaster was the Dragon Dawn—a convulsive racial rage that overtook the dragon species, driving them to war with each other and with humanity.  With so many towns reduced to ash, roads in ruin, and ships lost at sea, the cities that remain have become isolated and fearful.  Then there came the Chitterbloom, which saw house-sized mushrooms sprout where trees should have grown, and insects the size of ponies run amok. And finally, the Elfwind—not a wind at all, but a phosphorescent magical mist, part drug and part infection, that wafted from caster to caster sapping wit and will.  Now in the city of Vale whole districts are given over to spiders and hungry plants, and residents fight to eradicate the Elfwind and bring order back to their fallen land.  They are opposed by goblins, vegepygmys, ettercaps, and worse, all of whom delight in the new disorder.  Fear eaters, in particular, have profited in the chaos.  Having left their subterranean homes for the shady eaves under the house mushrooms, the fey have a world of new victims and new customers to cultivate.

—Occult Bestiary 27

*Actually, given the themes of bondage/involuntary female transformation, maybe the better X comparison is any issue of X-Men written by Chris Claremont.  (Oh yeah. I went there.)

Seattle alt-weekly nerds may remember that I like using daggers.

[outofcontextdnd]

Warlock: 1 damage.

DM: You manage to hurt the shrub. Mostly its feelings.

[dragonsorcsandgeeks]

[yourplayersaidwhat]

“You think I broke the law? I AM THE LAW!”

- The party paladin, moments before being arrested (via yourplayersaidwhat)

[noblecrumpet-dorkvision]

D&D Environmental Factors

image credit: Carl Frank

Do your D&D combats seem stale? Do players just rail away endlessly with cantrips and weapon attacks? Well it might be a boring environment that’s the culprit. If players have nothing to interact with, they can’t make creative plays! So here’s a list of interesting hazards and interactive objects for your battlefields.

Environmental Factors for Encounters

Keep reading

[soup-draws]

I’m an underdork.

[gabb-bear]

I feel like an NPC character when...

I’m on register at work: ~waits patiently behind counter with absent smile until a customer walks close enough and/or shows necessary amount of interest ~has a set script of prompts in my head to follow during transactions ~cheerful yet non-descript customer service voice and can repeat same exact tone infinitely. ~breaking from prompts or skipping through parts may cause minor glitches, such as accidentally repeating the same prompt again or completely skipping necessary ones ~absentmindedly tends to my area using the same five or so actions in a continuous loop until new person arrives ~Abnormally knowledgeable in my craft ~wears same outfit every day ~Nothing unusual phases me ~walking away and coming back is like a brand new interaction. I have little to no memory of you

[copperbadge]

This explains more than I’m comfortable with about my time as a receptionist.

[outofcontextdnd]

Dirgesinger to the DM

“I’m not allowed to raise the dead but HE gets a puppy. How is that fair!?”

[pathchats]