I say, rather

A fanart-heavy art blog of some sort! Hello, I'm Tubbs.

[mierolainen]

that's the dynamic

[mierolainen]

I still like this sketch

[tubbsen]

I'm going to be running the Murder on the Eberron Express D&D oneshot for the third time soon and getting the old man in the red vest murdered again, instead of getting him into a polyamorous relationship with his wife and valet

Pretty messed up tbh smh

[mierolainen]

go on

[tubbsen]

Didn't think about it at the time but it was pretty self-indulgent of me to make half of my NPCs in this D&D oneshot cool women over 40

[mierolainen]

okay so you know how the premise of the tabletop game was that he hired an actor to pretend to be his lover in order to make his wife jealous and want to work on their marriage again

buddy you had a willing co-conspirator right there. just ask your valet. he'd do fake dating with you SO gladly

[mierolainen]

sorry babe you said what about my valet

[mierolainen]

they're so funny to me

[ered]

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Wordcount: 110 000ish ISBN: 978-952-94-6685-6 Published in 2023. Preview available at www.smashwords.com/books/view/1... and www.pmlaine.com

[mierolainen]

misc Eberron Express sketches that didn't quite deserve their own post but I kinda like anyway

[mierolainen]

the mini saga of E. Bakker hiring an actor to pretend to be his lover and upsetting his immediate social circle

[mierolainen]

Hi! I was considering running Eberron Express for some friends, and I was curious how your DM homebrewed things and/or what was improved - would you be willing to share?

I asked my DM to pitch in with her thoughts, since it was her campaign, so I'll put her response (and mine) under a cut!

--

" I didn't do much technical fiddling really, I dropped the characters from level 6 to 3 the second time I ran the game to keep things simpler for the players and myself. There's a lot to keep track of even without having wizard NPCs running around with 6274 different spells :D Otherwise I just went through the setting and the characters with a fine-tooth comb, adding and removing things to make something I found interesting and easy to understand even without prior knowledge of the Eberron setting.

Some practical things you may want to prepare: Mark on the train map who sleeps in which cabin, that hasn't been done in the original material. It's also a good idea to prepare an exact timeline of who did what and when on the night of the murder, this can be something your players start asking about during the investigation. Also think about who inherits the victim's wealth, maybe his will could be found on the train if you'd like?

My personal favorite part of preparing the game was feeding the players misleading information about the NPCs connected to their characters and then giving them personal revelations during the game. Someone they trusted betrayed them or someone they thought of as an enemy was operating under whole different motivations than they thought, that sort of thing. Make the game your own and have fun!!

(Oh, and ban the Prestidigitation cantrip! You don't want your players magically cleaning up evidence!) "

--

My only addition to this would be to communicate with your players and find out what kind of a story they're most interested in experiencing! What worked for me (interpersonal drama, rampant queerness, giving player characters space to express their emotions) might not work for you. At the end of the day, the only people you need to impress and/or entertain at the table are you and your players! :>

[mierolainen]

I'm so mad about how well philip marlowe quotes fit his stupid mouth

[tubbsen]

I adopted @mierolainen's young Victim and Valet headcanons and tried to age these two down by thirty years.

Huh! Thirty years sure is a long time!

[mierolainen]

I'm trying to articulate how it is, and it's like this:

she knows, he has no idea, neither of them knows that she knows, complicated feelings all around

[mierolainen]

Egan Bakker say something nice for once in your life challenge

[tubbsen]

Related to this murder mystery D&D oneshot. I've been thinking about its characters after the game just an appropriate and moderate amount.

There has been a cold war going on in the victim's household that Mr. Victim has been wholly ignorant about.

(The valet Armas is @mierolainen's!)