Zani-DnD @zanidragon-dnd - Tumblr Blog

Homebrew Mechanic: Earlybird Initiative

Because folks seemed to like my last write up for a combat systems, I figure I'd share one of my most enduring game mods.

I've tried SO MANY different initiative systems over the years, enough that I have pretty strong opinions on what makes a good one. My primary goal was to cut down on time that players spend waiting for their turns, as slow combat is one of the primary things that bleeds fun out of the sessions: Players who are bored waiting for their turn check out, which makes them slower and less decisive when the spotlight swings back around to them, this makes it longer for imitative to circle around and creates a feedback loop where player's attention becomes further and further taxed. I needed a system that did the opposite, kept everyone on their toes, engaged, and cooperative, as well as something that was exceptionally light weight.

Step 1: DM says "roll initiative", all players roll as normal, add their modifiers, but keep the number to themselves.

Step 2: The DM Calls out " twenty and above", and then every player who got 20 or above in imitative can take their turn in whatever order they wish, splitting up actions however they wish around each other in order to coordinate.

Step 3: Enemies who got 20 or above on their initiative go. Lair actions trigger.

Sep 4: DM says "Ten and Above", Repeat steps 2 and 3 with players followed by monsters, then again saying " Everyone else" for everyone who hasn't gone.

Step 5: If combat is still going DM says "Initiative resets" and everyone rolls their initiative shuffling combat positions , repeat until "how do you want to do this?" moment.

That's pretty much it. There's a bunch of little things you can do to speed things up (like only rolling initiative for important enemies while the rank and file have static initiative based on whether they're fast, medium, or slow) but largely this simplifies the logistics of having to keep up with combat to a few lighting fast beats. Everyone's engaged because they know their turn is only one or two steps away rather than forgetting where they sit in an ever shifting round-robin.

Literally every group I've introduced this to over the past three years has loved it to the point where they find combat run by other DMs painfully slow by comparison. I don't know what's a greater endorsement than that.

Art

dailyadventureprompts

DM Tip: The Trouble With Treasure/ An Alternate Wealth System

If you’re a player or dungeonmaster who’s at all interested in game design you might’ve noticed D&D’s treasure and economy systems suck. You also might have noticed even if you’re not interested in game design, because the longer you play d&d the more it becomes glaringly obvious that the game doesn’t actually HAVE a treasure and economy system despite pretending otherwise. This is a major problem given that seeking riches is one of the default adventuring motivations, and largely stems from the fact that back in ye-olden days gold was directly related to experience points, so wealth accrued exponentially in line with the increasing cost of levelling up. This is why magic items cost to damn much despite being not only a staple of the genre but absolutely necessary to the long-term viability of certain classes (as I discuss here in my post about gear as class features).

After being cut lose however, nothing was really DONE with gold in d&d from a gameplay perspective: Treasure generation largely fell to dm discretion or random tables, and the useful things a party could buy steadily shrunk to the point where characters could be stuck with their starting equipment for an entire campaign. “Too much gold and nothing to spend it on” became one of the major criticisms of d&d 5e, but only touched on the problem that without something worthwhile to spend treasure on the party has less and less reason to venture into the dangerous unknown, take dodgy contracts, or perform any of a half dozen other plot beats that make up traditional adventuring.

The system likewise breaks down once you pass a certain threshold of wealth, or once you try to model larger economic activities: divvying up a lockbox full of dungeon plunder to reequip your heroes before launching out on the next mission works great for the first couple of levels, but completely falls apart when you’re dealing common enough story tropes such as running a business, transporting cargo as merchants, or caring for the estates around a castle.

What I propose is splitting d&d’s economy into two halves: Wealth, which represents the piles of GP and other coins the party carries with them, and Resources, more abstract points which chart how plugged in the party is to local systems of production, trade, and patronage.

If you’d like an explanation of how these systems work, and how they can improve your game like they improved mine, I’ll explain both of these mechanics in detail below the cut, as well as subsystems that let your party open businesses, operate estates, build castles, and make a living as merchants.

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the-griffons-saddlebag

⚔️ 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺! Marlinspike Flail Weapon (flail), uncommon ___

The head of this flail is a heavy iron ball, and is held onto a bosun’s marlinspike with a series of clever, sturdy knots. You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. If you’re proficient with water vehicles, you have advantage on any ability check you make to untie a knot using the marlinspike, and whenever you hit an object or structure with it, you can roll the weapon’s damage die twice, instead of once; you choose which result to use for the weapon’s damage. ___

✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon’s Saddlebag on Patreon for less than $10 a month!

rederiswrites

There used to be a lot of activities that took place around a populated area like a village or town, which you would encounter before you reached the town itself. Most of those crafts have either been eliminated in the developed world or now take place out of view on private land, and so modern authors don't think of them when creating fantasy worlds or writing historical fiction. I think that sprinkling those in could both enrich the worlds you're writing in and, potentially, add useful plot devices.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

There are so many things that preindustrial people did and would find familiar that we just don't know about now. So much of life was lived out in the open for anyone to see. Make your world busy and loud and colorful!

alexanderwales

You mentioned coppicing:

The coppice and pollard systems are one of my favorite pre-modern things, it's just so visually unique and sensible, but most people haven't heard about it.

When you coppice, you cut the tree close to the ground, so only the trunk is left, then the tree puts out fairly straight shoots that are great for firewood. They would typically have these trees harvested on rotation so new trees would be ready every year.

This is a coppiced tree:

When you pollard, you cut the tree to the trunk, but higher, and let the branches grow for longer. They'll be be nice and straight (depending on species) with fewer knots, and suitable to various crafts without much need to work the wood. Sadly seems to be etymologically unrelated to "pole", though the branches from these trees were used to make poles. Part of why you do this instead of coppicing is that the shoots are out of reach of animals.

This is a pollarded tree:

It's very likely that you'd see something like this as a sign of civilization as you came toward a town or village, depending on the species of tree that they have available, though note that this is something you do when you have a timeline of many years, rather than something you set up for the year after.

molombo

Where's the African mythology?

The Kickstarter is live now!

boycarofchilladelphia

I know I have close to zero Tumblr fame, which I normally appreciate, but I would love it if this made it into the world and got fully backed. You can even pledge to get the digital content and send a real copy to a school in Africa or to a HBCU or community library of your choosing!

ominous-signs

Misusing my blog again so more people can see this then

dailyadventureprompts

Dungeon: The Bloodmoon Belfry

“You just can’t keep a good doomsday cult down. I would know, I’ve tried”

Adventure Hooks:

Strangers have been spotted on the roads at night, monks and other holyfolk of no familiar order, who make silent procession down deserted trails bearing red-tinted lanterns and deep tolling bells. Folk report waking up inexplicably as these figures walked along the edge of their farmstead or through the village square, and their eerie columns are the subject of much rumor.

The Moon has been oddly large in the sky the past few nights, and some say it has a pinkish coloration just after dusk finally falls. An odd phenomenon to be sure, one the local astronomer is quite taken with. She’s commandeered a booth at the local coffee house with her various tomes and notes, and is willing to by rounds for passers by if they can share information about any strange phenomenon they’ve sighted, as well as the exact time and location of the event.

Sensing danger may be close, the witchhunter Aramar enlists the party for help on his next raid. If his information is to be trusted, the monks amassing in the countryside are the remnants of a dangerous, heretical sect that needs stopping. If they’ll join him on this mission, he may take the party on as his apprentices, or put in a good word for them with the Bishop.

Famed for making some of the realm’s best cannons, the town’s foundry recently burned down, possibly taking the foundrymaster with it as her body could not be found. Now her morose apprentices sell what little stock and scrap they could salvage from the blaze, hoping to raise a little money and possibly rebuild their livelihoods.

Setup: The Monks of the Drochliean Heresy adhere to the teachings set down by a mad church scholar who claimed that the moon was the true tomb-palace of the gods, and that through special ritual, the souls of the worthy could ascend to those ivory halls and gaze upon the divine reliquary. Though the Cardinal Drochlan is long dead, in times of unique lunar conjunction his acolytes gather from their boltholes and hermitages to summon his spirit and receive his wisdom. These rituals have the unintended side effect of unleashing wild and unpredictable energies into the local atmosphere, as well as drawing the attention of malevolent beings from both the underworld and nocturnal abyss.

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dailyadventureprompts

Dungeon: The Wall in the Wyldrwood

Over hill and stream the kings’ wall goes/

Its heavy bricks stacked, rows upon rows/

Taller than the trees, from sky to floor/

Only ghosts know where to find the door/

Setup: Its a well known fact that the deeper you go into any fantasy world forest, the more likely you are to stumble into the feywild, or encounter cursed temples to forgotten gods of roots and revelry, or some semi-mythic beast sent by the gods to punish you for some unacknowledged hubris. Better to do away with all that kingdom-destabilizing whimsy thought King Rabadyr, wall it off for all time and get back to the business of running a sensible kingdom free of from the interference of primal forces.

In hindsight the task was easier said than done, much like trying to use sand to hold back a river intent on spilling over its banks. Rabadyr poured lives and treasure into his great work, scouting out miles and miles of uneven wilderness and emptying his kingdom’s quarries to supply the stone. Two generations and three monarchs later, the wall was complete, mortared with spellcraft and wards to preserve the structure and prevent anyone from crossing over the boundary.

Now the Wyldrwood is reaching out again, the forest having regrown to encompass all of Rabadyr’s work, making his barrier a part of its own mystery.

Adventure Hooks:

Numerous entities control access in and out of the Wylderwood, taking control of secret smuggler’s tunnels, natural caverns, and places where the enchantments have failed and caused the walls to crumble. In particular, a gang of bandits, malicious fey, and other forest lowlifes have taken up residence in one of the many fortifications that dot the edge of Rabadyr’s wall. Led by a sadistic bugbear named Snagglehook, these outlaws kidnap innocents to sell to fey lords in exchange for enchanted fairy goods and other treasures of the feywild they pass on to discerning mortal patrons.

A fearsome creature with red eyes and leathery hide stalks the wall, taking advantage of its enchanted architecture to ambush travlers who use it to navigate, Fretful of the sun, it emerges only in the dark through veiled doorways to hunt the forest before returning to its lair. When a merchant’s daughter is kidnapped by the beast while traveling through the wylderwood, the fearful and desperate mother promises to reward the party handsomely if only they can return their darling girl to her. Their best chance of finding the girl? Let one of their own number be snatched, and follow the creature back to its lair.

Though Rabadyr intended for his wall to be impregnable, he still built a gatehouse for it: a fortress in its own right with multiple defenses on either side of the barrier, and living accommodations for a whole crew of guards and workers to live there year round. Since the wall has been abandoned, the gatehouse has become the home of wild denizens, ruled over intermittently by fey and forestlord alike. Currently unoccupied, it provide a prime target for a group of adventurers who’d like to explore a bit of the wall’s wonder without diving into the dangerous inner forest completely.

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dailyadventureprompts

Villain: Florian ValDaata, the Ignoble Heir

Now you’ve gone and ruined my fun, guess I’ll have to go and ruin something of yours now, won’t I?

Setup: Vampire, crimelord, part-time highwayman. The Scoundrel Florian ValDaata was born to scion a noble line that was extinguished some two hundred years ago, and is perhaps the best unliving example that noble liniage does not impart noble character. The ValDaata were once a prestigious clan with expansive holdings, but backed the wrong horse during a succession crisis and were thrown into disfavor. Chafing at the ignominy of being reduced to backwater barons, the ValDaata consulted with increasingly sinister circles in an attempt to restore their standing. By Florian’s time, the family were little more than a gang of brigands and hangers-on, operating out of a crumbling estate, reduced to robbery and grave robbing to get by.

It was in one of these graves that Florian found something, a wretched soul cursed with vampirism and buried alive before their undead nature manifested, Thoroughly maddened by their time in the crushing darkness of their sarcophagus. Any honest resurrectionist would have put the poor creature out of their misery, but Florian had been taught from a young age that because of his linage, the world belonged to him, and thus so did this bloodsucking cadvaer, and its curse.

Adventure Hooks:

Vampirism suited Florian, who used his immortal nature and supernatural influence to carve out a space for his brigade of ValDaata “loyalists”, transforming a gaggle of outcats and lowlives into a criminal enterprise that serves as his guardians and agents in the daylight hours. Ruling the lands formerly held by his family from the shadows, the party is likely to run into Florian’s thugs any time they dip a toe into the region’s criminal underbelly. Alternatively, they could get into a tussle with the bag-men responsible for securing sustenance for their boss, usually those who borrow too much from Florian’s loansharking operations while taking out unspecified collateral.

Anyone who would attempt to hunt Florian the way they would a normal vampire will run into a number of unexpected obstacles: namely that he fights more like a crimeboss than a lord of the night. His minions arn’t undead to be kept out by holyground and running water: they’re well paid cutthroats capable of attacking the party anywhere and anywhen. He doesn’t lair in a crumbling castle, instead prefering to stay at high class establishments while laying traps in the ruins for those seeking his coffin.

Alternitively, a party with a more criminal bent may end up inadvertanly working for Florian, getting a job or two through a unscrupulous contact and eventaully working up the scale. Provided the party don’t mind his dining habits or murderous rages, the heir of Valdaata can make for a generous, handsoff patron, happily giving the party access to his criminal resources for a cut of their plunder.

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medievalistsnet

Medieval Thieves: How They Worked – and How to Outsmart Them

Discover the clever tricks used by medieval thieves—from sticky cakes for guard dogs to candle-carrying turtles—and the inventive methods used to catch them, as revealed in The Book of Charlatans.

Click here to read

heroineimages

@wewererogue

probablygoodrpgideas

One of the silliest rules of dnd 5e has to be that to get any benefits from having a horse for long travels, you need to get a new horse every 10 miles

inbabylontheywept

In the D&D campaign I'm running with my wife's siblings, one of them learned about how trolls regenerate within minutes of any damage not caused by fire or acid, and then asked why people don't just like. Cage them and eat them, forever. Why there aren't troll meat dungeons in the king's castle as a safeguard against sieges or famines.

And you know, I thought it was a fair question, so I said that if you eat enough troll meat, you start getting troll-y. And then I went further and just treated it like troll flesh is a general contaminant - if you eat enough troll, you'll turn into a troll, but if you bury enough dead troll flesh in a forest, the trees will start growing in strange ways, and will scream and heal and bleed when you hit them with axes.

I liked this idea. So as we played further, I just played around with the idea of Troll Origins, and I came up with something sort of like the Odyssey, but instead stealing Helios's cattle, it was Hathor's, and the horrible, awful, unending immortality was her curse of the army that pillaged her lands. A god of healing does not condemn you to die, she condemns you to live.

And then I got this fun idea for maybe the king that led the army is still kind of alive in the troll taint. Like a sort of literal fisher king. The kingdom is sick because he is, literally, the kingdom. The trees that bleed, bleed his blood and their screams are his screams. He is both the faintly green bear running down the mountain and the faintly green deer and there is no way past this without suffering. He is the entire ecosystem, and he eats nothing but himself and he dreams nothing but death and yet still, on and on and on and on, he lives.

Anyway they're traveling next session so I'm throwing this shit at them. I already have some gross ideas for like. Describing everything like it's a body (flowers red as blood, white as bone, pink as meat, grass fine as hair) then finally throwing horrible living things at them. Trees that grow eyeballs that turn and stare at them, or flowers with teeth instead of petals and trolls that speak in long dead tongues about how they wish they'd never tried to rob a god.

Anyway I'm passing this on because this is my new troll lore and I want it to become canonized in the way that all D&D lore becomes canonized: By having eople read it and go "oh, neat" then start doing that too.

writingbox

Here’s an invaluable writing resource for you.

i-penna

Was looking for this information just yesterday. Thanks so much.

phantom-of-the-keurig

Y’all I could have used this so many times before oh my good god

dailyadventureprompts

Villain: nγwɿiɒӘ lɿɒƎ , the Reflection in Rebellion

Suffering is like shattered glass, one moment of disaster resulting in irreparable damage and innumerable opportunities for pain.

Setup: Few care for the current duchess’s reign, as her hard handed grasp on authority has snubbed many a noble underling and commonfolk alike. A few among her detractors have even begun to whisper that her long dead brother has been seen wandering about the wilderness or appearing in visions and speaking of the justice that must be undone.

Background: It was said that the old duke was crueler than any devil, for in a desire to see his lands ruled by a strong and unwavering heir he raised his children with the understanding that one day they would have to slay the other to claim their birthright. When the time came and his heirs refused to be part of this sick game, the duke dispatched agents to kidnap their loved ones, and held their lives as collateral. As the tales tell it, Earl Gairwyn knelt before his sister Wynima, knowing she was the better leader and warrior, better able to rescue his family and stand against their tyrannical father. Wynima heeded her brothers last request, presenting his head in a grand ceremony that served as distraction while her forces assaulted their father’s secret prison. Wynima became duchess, and in the decade since her reign began, her guilt over her brother’s murder has seen her increasingly conservative and

The Earl Gairwyn that people have been seeing is not an omen or a ghost, but a Nerra, a shapeshifter from the plane of mirrors who was the real Gairwyn’s childhood playmate and lifelong confadant. Being raised to murder your sister doesn’t afford many oppertunities to make friends, so young Gairwyn spent much of his highly restricted freetime playing before a mirror for company. The Nerra (named Ersatz) lurked in Gairwyn’s reflection for most of his life, watching out for him and learning what it meant to be human through the kindly nobleman’s eyes.

Adventure Hooks:

It has taken over a decade for Ersatz to mourn, all the while building a scheme as monument to his loss. Perfecting his ability to maintain Gairwyn’s form, he’s begun to reach out to the earl’s old supporters, using his miraculous “reappearance” to lend credence to his cause and inspire them to begin working against the duchess. Drawing on Gairwyn’s noble charisma, Ersatz has also made for itself a “what if” kingdom on the other side of the mirror, ruling as duke iver a court of quicksilver courtiers and other figmentary folk who’ve joined in with the game. These entities serve it as spies and messengers, peering out form any reflective surface and making Gairwyn’s ghost seem nearly omniscient.

For her part, Duchess Wynima gives little credence to the rumors of her brother’s “return from exile”, as she remembers his beheading every time she walks into her father’s throneroom or wakes up dreaming of his blood on her hands. As things progress however, the duchess will become increasingly giltwracked and paranoid, tightening her grip on her lands in an attempt to quash this rebellion and silence her brother’s memory.

The party gets especially swept up in all this when a tavern they’re staying at hosts a bard fond of singing ballads about the siblings’ tragic inheritance. These particular compositions happen to swing in a very Pro-Gairwyn direction, and though such talk was permitted by the duchess in the past, her concerns of rebellion have forced her to take a far more hardline edge. It’s up to the party whether they get involved or not after watching the guard come to drag the minstrel away for questioning…. atleast until one of the other patrons makes the decision for them by breaking her pintglass over one of the guard’s helms.

Ersatz, being only an alien imitation of Gairwyn, has no real love for his family and only a burning hatred of his sister, and is driven to this plan more for the sake of doing what it thinks is right by its old friend more than any actual desire to rule the duchy. Such a coup would likely end in disaster, as the Nerra would seek to merge both his material and mirror-world courts together, letting all manner of aberrant beings out to rub elbows with the mortal folk.

redbuddi

The "Isekai about extremely mundane things" subgenre has successfully made me obsessed with a trope I would normally have zero interest in. The only problem is that a lot of them have the character gradually become the world's savior, sometimes not even through the mundane interest! I'm tired of that. I don't wanna see a guy save the world. I wanna see a guy make new kinds of beer with otherworldly barley. I wanna see a guy use crushed up magic crystals for blown glass. I wanna see a guy figure out how to build a self-sustaining community in a once thought unlivable wasteland. I wanna see a guy combat fantasy global warming. I wanna see a guy try to fairly manage a small village in a vast kingdom full of exploitative laws. I wanna see a guy carefully cultivating magic flowers and pressing their petals for perfumes. I wanna see a guy reinvent flushable toilets. I wanna see a guy weave textiles using thread from giant sentient silkworms. I wanna see a guy create new fashion trends with enchanted clothing. I wanna see a guy carefully designing, protyping, and crafting custom mobility aids, with entire arcs dedicated to the creation of each one. I wanna see a guy work at fantasy Amazon and create labor unions. I wanna see a guy make delightful and affordable toys for the children of commoners. I wanna see a guy reinvent a bicycle for the sole purpose of performing kamishibai, a form of Japanese puppetry popularized in the aftermath of WW2 where a travelling performer would affix a stage to their bike and perform stories using small paper puppets on sticks. I wanna see a guy finally kill a once thought unkillable monster and then figure out the best way to properly skin and butcher it, complete with breakdowns on the properties and quality of its organs, bones, hide, and cuts of meat. I wanna see a guy reinvent comic books and print them cheaply and watch as the art community splits between those who are excited to try out this new medium and those who only want to work for the nobility and find this new trend distasteful. I wanna see a guy become a reporter and travel around taking interviews during a large-scale civil war within the kingdom. I wanna see a guy try to recreate the periodic table using elements that exist in this magic world, constantly being blindsided by things like how iron doesn't work exactly how it's supposed to by earth standards and try to figure out why. I wanna see a guy incorporate modern medical practices with magic healing to create a new and far more effective type of doctors. I wanna see a guy start a maid service by reinventing modern cleaning products and creating a new system where maids are hired through a third party instead of being hired directly to various households, helping to combat the abuse of maids that is often swept under the rug (pun not intended.) I wanna see a guy create fantasy denim.

dailyadventureprompts

Random encounter: Flotsam of a Far off Shore

All rivers flow together, and what is lost on one bank may yet be discovered on another.

Adventure Hooks:

Tales of strange flora and mutant fish in the river bring the party to an isolated valley in the highlands, where they find an alien landscape has taken root and a derelict ship run aground in technicolor mud. Searching the ship’s cargo hold they find long spoiled crates and vessels full of unidentifyable goods, as well as a wealth of raw rubies and a a few esoteric magical devices. Figuring out how these treasures work and where they came from will be a puzzle in and of itself, and may require someone with esoteric skills, or a lot of trial and error.

Cages in the ships hull reveal that it was also carrying live cargo, though whether these were livestock or prisoners is impossible to tell given the small scattering of aberrant bones or hollow carapaces that remain in the few unruptured enclosures. These alien beasts now populate the valley, stalking the party as intruders into their territory.

Perhaps the oddest salvage from the ship is it’s log, not a leger but a midnight blue crystal about the size of a satsuma, that the party finds in possession of a sharp toothed skeleton near crumbled to dust. When attuned, the crystal floats about the head of the activating creature and silently observes, occasionally pestering them with alien words projected into their mind. After a long enough time together, the crystal will begin probing them every couple of days with a random word it has overheard and a concept that might be related to it. Should the party indulge this game, eventually the log will synthesize their language, being able to communicate everything it has eidetically recorded.

Setup: Though trading barges are known to take roundabout routes through the highlands in hopes of reaching resource rich frontier settlements, it’ll become obvious to a party with a lay of the land that this particular valley is bracketed by rapids and waterfalls, making the strange ship’s appearance even more implausible. As it turns out the vessel the party discovers hailed from the miasmic plane of Leng, a place of terrors and traders most of the multiverse would prefer forgotten. and was brought to the valley by a teleportation accident brought about by a cutrate ship’s mage.

Intending to teleport the vessel to a prosperous trading port somewhere across the astral sea, this Leng mage used poorly made maps that ended up conjuring the ship a few hundred feet in the air. The crash killed most of the crew, shattered the hull, and released those creatures it was intending to sell. Coincidentally, it also released all the parasites and spires infesting that hull, which over the subsequent years took root in the surrounding muck.

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e-102

you guys need to let go of any rigid belief in what being nonbinary is because it can be anything. like someone can look completely average in gender presentation and do literally nothing to set themselves apart from their assigned gender and still be nonbinary.

e-102

okay well i’m your nonbinary enemy and i say so.

dailyadventureprompts

Adventure: Lost in Oldalth’s Labyrinth

A prison without walls for a king of forgotten halls

Setup: None remember whether Oldalth was a mortal king who earned the ire of a fey lord, or a fey lord who took umbrage with a mortal ruler, as the story is old and like many things that originate from the feywild the identities shift between tellings.

What remains of the truth is a patch of twisted trees somewhere in the feywild that become more winding and claustrophobic as you venture into them. Not merely content with leading travelers astray like most patches of enchanted forestry, the trees of Oldalth’s Labyrinth close around intruders like quicksand, their branches taking on erratic and unnatural shapes and interlocking with one another like puzzle pieces. The only sure way out of the tangle is to perfectly retrace your every movement through them (near impossible once the branches have closed so tightly around you) or to have some means of controlling the entangling plant matter. Otherwise one must simply wait in the timeless eternity of the feywild for something to come along and lead you out of the labyrinth, invariably ending you in a whole new form of trap.

Adventure Hooks:

While fleeing from a Hagga’s lair, the twisted creature calls up the magic of Oldalth’s Labyrinth to slow the party’s escape. This leaves them with two bad options: confront the creature they’ve just royally pissed off with their backs to a wall, or delve so deep into the fey-infused woods that they fall into the feywild and have to make their way back to reality the long way around.

Seeking to hide a secret/treasure/other sort of mcguffin, a powerful druid used powerful magic to cast the item into the depths of the Labyrinth where none but the most skilled could ever return. For added security, they then sealed the forest inside the semi-mythic “Vault of Fables”, a magical prison that was capable of keeping even ideas under lock and key.

Lurking in the heart of the labrynth is a formless shade known by some as “Oldalth’s Shadow” Possibly because it’s a guardian left behind by the original fey lord, possibly because it’s the only part of the mortal ruler that was able to make it out of where the maze had sealed him. Regardless, the specter hunts those who traverse the Labyrinth, seeking to drive them even deeper into the tangle and feed off their panic and agony as they struggle against their tightening wooden fetters.

Defeating the specter grants the heroes a powerful artifact which can guide them out of the maze:

The Crown of the Ensnared:

Legendary (attuned)

Effects: while wearing this crown, the bearer knows the thorn-whip cantrip and casts it as a druid of class level equal to their own, using wisdom for the save. If the bearer already knows the cantirp, then both the range and the distance targets are dragged is doubled.

The bearer also gains a proficiency dice on any survival checks made to navigate out of a space, or perception/investigation checks made to notice hidden doors.

Awakened State: The Crown awakens once the bearer has traversed Oldalth’s Labrynth or defeated Oldalth’s Shadow.

Once Awakened, the bearer gains the benefits of the inspiring leader feat ( although they may use wisdom in place of charisma for determining temporary hp), as well as the ability to cast “Find the Path” once per week.

They may also cast “Entgangle” using their hitdie as spell slots, and wisdom as their spell modifier.

Exalted: The Crown enters it’s exalted state only if the attuned creature possesses land and a noble title.

The attuned creature gets a +2 bonus to wisdom, and the areas affected by their entangle spell cast by the crown are under the effects identical to “hallucinatory terrain” spell save for duration. The Bearer can also cast Hallucanatory terrain using their hitdie as spell slots, and may treat areas affected by this spell as if they were also subject to an extended “Entangle” effect.

Hidden effect: While Exalted and attuned, the bearer suffers disadvantage on all mental saves vs magical effects produced by the fey or feywild. On any day in which a character uses the Exalted abilities of the crown, some time after they go to sleep they are confronted with dreams of tangling branches and spiraling paths. They must make a strength saving throw (affected by the crown), dc+the bearer’s wisdom score +their proficiency bonus, or be restrained by sleep paralysis. This paralysis persists for 10 rounds, by which point if they are not free, they will be dragged back to Oldalth’s Labyrinth back in the feywild.

A character cannot become unattuned to the Crown of the Ensnared once it has become Exalted.

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