Being the DM is hard

I’m putting together a book of all the short comics I’ve drawn over the past year to have for sale at my spring conventions! Not sure what the title will be yet, but the uniting themes of all the stories seem to be Girls and Magic.

it’s called The Girl From The Sea, and it’s really good, you should check it out!

The Sea, and it’s really good,

you should check it out!

Been a while since I’ve posted a big collection of swords in one place - here’s some recent commissions 🗡️🗡️🗡️

Keep in mind that any lore or art I’ve made is meant as a building block for y’all’s ideas and characters and can be thrown out the window if you want! 💖

I just want to say thank you to everyone who has supported this homebrew project over the last year. The suggestions, ideas, questions and art that you guys have shared have helped me keep up the motivation to finish these guys and I hope you all like the final piece 💖

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.

This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)

If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.

If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.

[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]

Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.

You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)

You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.

“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.”

Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.

“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”

So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.

“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”

There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.

“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”

You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.

(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)

“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”

That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.

“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”

I have several answers to this.

Try showing them this post.

If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.

If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.

“I only watch actual plays.”

Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.

“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”

Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.

“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”

Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.

“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”

Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.

Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.

Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.

First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.

Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.

@indierpgnewsletter

@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day

@theresattrpgforthat

@haveyouplayedthisttrpg

@indiepressrevolution

Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:

Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)

Seth Skorkowsky

Questing Beast

The Gaming Table

Rascal News

Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.

Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

We also have merchanise.

✨New item!✨ Shawm of Sundering Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement by a bard)

When a creature adds one of your Bardic Inspiration dice to an attack or damage roll, and they hit a target within 60 feet of you, you can play the shawm as a reaction to deal thunder damage equal to one roll of your bardic inspiration die to the target.

Additionally, you can play the shawm as an action to cast thunderwave, shatter, or lightning bolt, and that spell can't be cast from it again until the next dawn.

Avast ye barnacle-born bastards of the sea, For a storm’s a-brewin’ and a reckonin’ there’ll be, A thunderin’ so loud, you’ll wet your wee panties, And a plunderin’ we’ll go, singin’ sunderin’ shanties! - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for over 170 magic items, item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️

✨New item!✨ Yves’ Thieves’ Tools Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)

You have a +1 bonus to ability checks using these thieves’ tools. As an action you can hold these tools up to a door to hear through it, as long as it’s no thicker than 1 foot, alerting you to the location of any creatures within 20 feet of the door. If you set off a trap while using these tools to pick a lock, you have advantage on any saving throws to resist the trap.

Yves ran the thieves guild supply store. He probably made more money selling thieving equipment to the thieves than the thieves did from thieving! - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for over 170 magic items, item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️

✨New item!✨ Captain's Coat  Armor (studded leather), uncommon (requires attunement)

Functional and fashionable, this long pirate captain’s coat is reinforced for combat and draws the eyes to its ornate design. While wearing this coat, you have proficiency in navigator’s tools and vehicles (water). If you are already proficient in one of these tools, your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses that proficiency.

Multiple pockets are hidden on the inside of the coat, able to conceal up to one cubic foot or 30 pounds of Tiny objects and weapons with the Light property. A creature attempting to search your person must succeed on a DC 13 Intelligence (Investigation) check in order to discover the hidden pockets.

Cap’n Cusstooth of the Cussin’ Corsair could kill a man dead with that mouth o’ his. - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for over 170 magic items, item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️

✨New item!✨ Burning Heart Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement by a spellcaster)

This heavy orb is extremely hot to the touch, but does not burn your hand. The grooves on its surface shift subtly in your grasp, endlessly retracing an arcane pattern.

You can use the burning heart as a spellcasting focus for your spells while holding it, and you gain a +1 bonus to spell attack rolls and saving throw DCs of spells that deal fire damage. 

Aura of Immolation. As a bonus action while holding the burning heart you can target up to 6 other creatures that you can see within 30 feet of you. The weapons of each target are set ablaze until the end of that target’s next turn. When a target hits with a flaming weapon, it deals an extra 1d4 fire damage. Once this property is used, it cannot be used again until you complete a long rest.

A burning heart is the power core of eternal automata. These orbs grant the ancient constructs a fiery semblance of life while embedded in the chest cavity. The eternal automata were engineered to be indestructible, and will rise again and again until their burning hearts are removed.

- 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for over 170 magic items, item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks, and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️

✨New item!✨ Briarguard  Armor (any medium or heavy armor), uncommon (requires attunement) 

Clusters of heinous spikes spring from the cuirass, pauldrons and vambraces of this wooden armor. 

The armor has 3 charges, and regains all expended charges daily at dawn. As an action while wearing the armor, you can expend 1 charge to gain 5 temporary hit points. If a creature hits you with a melee attack while you have these hit points, the creature takes 5 piercing damage. 

The miraculously regrowing armor of Lorb the Pincushion was worth its weight in wood, out of which it was made. - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for over 180 magic items, item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks, and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️ Thank you so much for your support! 💖

✨New item!✨ Sentinel Spear  Weapon (spear), uncommon 

The head of this spear is in the shape of a watchful eye. The spear has 3 charges, and it regains all expended charges daily at dawn. As an action, you can expend 1 charge to cast the alarm spell from the spear. You have advantage on the next attack you make with this spear against a creature that triggers an alarm set by this spear. 

After the guide had chosen a resting place for the evening, Abdou walked to the two spots in the perimeter most vulnerable to ambush and tapped the end of his spear on the ground. It emitted a soft thud each time it struck the dry soil, and Abdou felt resonant vibrations through the darkwood shaft as his mind tethered itself to the spot. The effect was invisible, but Abdou knew that he would be instantly alerted if an unwanted visitor attempted to sneak into camp tonight. After a song and hot stew, he would rest easy. - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for over 180 magic items, item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks, and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️ Thank you so much for your support! 💖

✨New item!✨ Scoundrel’s Rapier  Weapon (rapier), uncommon (requires attunement) 

The balance of this blade is impeccable. When a creature makes an attack against you with disadvantage, the next attack you make with this sword against that creature has advantage. This sword is most artfully wielded in the hand of a cunning scoundrel, who goads their opponent into a misstep before piercing their soft underbelly. - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for over 190 magic items, item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks, and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️ Thank you so much for your support! 💖

✨New item!✨ Tsuba of the Crane Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)

You can attach this tsuba to a longsword, greatsword, rapier, shortsword, or scimitar by pressing the tsuba against it for at least 1 minute, at which point it replaces the sword’s hand guard. Thereafter, the tsuba can't be removed unless you detach it as an action or the weapon is destroyed. A sword can only have one tsuba attached to it at a time.

If a sword is nonmagical, it counts as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage while this tsuba is attached.

While you are holding a sword with this tsuba attached and you are hit by a ranged weapon attack, you can use your reaction to deflect the missile. Make an attack roll with this sword. If the total number rolled is equal to or higher than the attack roll of the incoming ranged attack, you deflect the missile and take no damage. This attack cannot benefit from advantage or disadvantage. - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for almost 200 magic items (wow!), printable item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks, and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️ Thank you so much for your support! 💖