RPG ideas Reblog Blog

if you find something a blogger said insensitive, it probably is! privilege & social environment leave way too many blindspots for that to never happen. and it’s super okay to alert people to their blindspots! but do so with the awareness that those not used to having their speech policed by strangers may respond with baffled defensiveness if you come at them aggressively.

On the one hand, it’s a nice convenient narrative device that doesn’t necessarily need to be explored, but if you do take a moment to think about where it came from or what it might look like, you find that there’s really only 2 possible origins.

In settings where humans speak common and only Common, while every other race has its own language and also speaks Common, the implication is rather clear: at some point in the setting’s history, humans did the imperialism thing, and while their empire has crumbled, the only reason everyone speaks Human is that way back when, they had to, and since everyone speaks it, the humans rebranded their language as Common and painted themselves as the default race in a not-so-subtle parallel of real-world whiteness.

In settings where Human and Common are separate languages, though (and I haven’t seen nearly as many of these as I’d like), Common would have developed communally between at least three or four races who needed to communicate all together. With only two races trying to communicate, no one would need to learn more than one new language, but if, say, a marketplace became a trading hub for humans, dwarves, orcs, and elves, then either any given trader would need to learn three new languages to be sure that they could talk to every potential customer, OR a pidgin could spring up around that marketplace that eventually spreads as the traders travel the world.

Drop your concept of Common meaning “english, but in middle earth” for a moment and imagine a language where everyone uses human words for produce, farming, and carpentry; dwarven words for gemstones, masonry, and construction; elven words for textiles, magic, and music; and orcish words for smithing weaponry/armor, and livestock. Imagine that it’s all tied together with a mishmash of grammatical structures where some words conjugate and others don’t, some adjectives go before the noun and some go after, and plurals and tenses vary wildly based on what you’re talking about.

#how are u supposed to fight if youre very dead

Necromancy, obviously, but there are at least two ways of looking at it:

1) Necromancy is great because you can keep fighting after you die, and thus would be encouraged among orcish society.

2) Necromancy is not good enough because you’re literally a brain-dead zombie, and where’s the fun in that?

A possible middle route would be reanimating shamed and disgraced orcs, since they never did anything worthwhile in life so maybe they can do something worthwhile in death and freeing up other able-bodied orcs for war.  Obviously, such undead orcs would be used very carefully or limited to fully-scrubbed skeletons because of the disease risks.

If necromancy was acceptable, then orcs would have some of the best necromancers in the world, and if retaining enough self-awareness to continue being an honorable warrior was a concern, then orcish necromancy would have a lot of useful techniques for creating intelligent or semi-sapient undead.  Even unintelligent orcish-made undead would some measure of innate understanding of martial honor.

Nott was just as interested in the party popper explosives as the guns. After she stole the gun, Matt warned Sam it only had one bullet, to which he replied “that’s all I need.”

Nott’s super into chemistry and figuring out how things work. She might just be interested in seeing if she can recreate black powder. 

mermaids would have to be dark-skinned and chubby to survive in the ocean 

water isnt a great means of protecting oneself from the sun theyd have to be very dark if they were shallow mermaids and they didnt want to be constantly sunburnt and they may be paler if they lived deeper in the water but theyd have to be buff and/or chubby as hell to resist the water pressure and cold of the deep sea

the party got… attached.

they lugged that statue back with them when they left the shipwreck, even though they were being chased by a sea serpent. they brought it back to the inn where they were staying. in-character, they started seeking out all the information they could about this silly throwaway goddess.

out of character, they started flooding the group chat with lobster memes.

By human hands I was made,

To tend to green should they fade.

If humans lose what they have wrought,

Built was I, to do as they ought.

I, a guardian of trees and birds,

See to my task with little words.

Should you try to invade today,

Or think to fight and flay,

Remember well you shall return to clay.

the party is tasked to retrieve the moon, which has been stolen from the sky. 87% chance the moon is also sentient. 

a color that was locked away by the gods for being too beautiful/terrible/powerful is released again and a dragon of that color now threatens the land. also because it’s new it’s in fashion and everyone who can get their hands on it is wearing this color and it’s starting to give you a headache. 

relieve the land of their drought by finding what happened to the rain and bringing it back. 

“I signed a contract with a demon lord!”

“I sold my name to an elf queen!”

“I use forbidden math to parasitically tap into the power of a vast alien god-monster that’s unaware of my existence and would destroy our world in an instant if I ever manage to get its attention!”

As time goes on, what started as a safeguard becomes a hobby, and she starts to create ornate webs filled with wondrous illustrations, ranging from lovely patterns to portraits of scenery in the Underdark.

Eventually, her medium expands to shadow art. Hanging treasures and objects up with her silk and using bioluminescent plants and fungi to light up her work, she creates a wonderful array of sillouhettes portraying a wide variety of subjects.