My Tabletop Blog

That’s quite reasonable, and very easy to implement. It would be my first recommendation, for simplicity’s sake.

Now, if you want more detail, consider why we have two ears in the first place: yes, they amplify the sound a little more than one ear would, but mostly it’s in order to pinpoint the location of the sound source - its distance and direction. It also helps to make out specific sounds among ambient/background noise.

So if you want a better simulation at the expense of more bookkeeping, here’s what you can do:

Roll perception [hearing] checks with disadvantage only when there’s a lot of noise around, otherwise roll normally.

The DM shouldn’t reveal where the sound is coming from (unless you crit or it’s obvious).

That would be the most immersive method, and it would actually make a difference in game. Eavesdropping inside an otherwise quiet building? You got this. But in a rowdy tavern? That’s hard. And what if a strange noise comes from somewhere in the dungeon, possibly made by hidden or invisible foes? You heard them, but you can’t tell where they are. That would be my second recommendation.

For when you want some variety for your tabletop RPG.  These events will also give your players a chance to use character skills they don’t often have opportunities for.

Natural Disaster - Have the town the PCs are in catch on fire and see what they do!  Do they cut their losses and run?  Do they heroically try to save trapped townspeople?  What do they do about the aftermath?  Natural disasters are an interesting challenge because there can be lots of danger and drama without necessarily having a villain.  It may also get your PCs to use skills they don’t commonly have a chance to.  You could also try floods, earthquakes, raging storms while at sea, etc.

Powerful Fortress - Put one of your party’s goals in a location where they won’t be able to prevail through combat alone (Example: a fortress where they are vastly outnumbered).  Your players will have to rely on either stealth or guile (or both) to accomplish their goal.  The pacing of such events can be frustrating to some players, but few sessions are as rewarding as a creatively executed heist or infiltration.

Dangerous Crossing - Give them a dangerous physical obstacle to overcome.  A canyon, or a raging river, or quicksand or an old battleground littered with traps and mines.

Festival - Have the PCs encounter a festival or tournament!  With lots of contests! This could be a good opportunity for them to build their fame and fortune (especially if you allow gambling).  Some of my favorite sessions have involved festivals.

Entertainment - Put the PCs in a situation where they have to entertain someone.  What do they come up with?

Letter - Have one of the PCs receive a letter, either from an NPC they’ve dealt with before or from someone involved with their backstory.  This is a good way to make the consequences of their actions seem more real.  You can also use it to introduce new plotlines/sidequests.

Crafting Challenge - Put the PCs in a situation where they need to craft something in order to accomplish their goal.  Maybe they need to make something in order to fix a mechanism?  Or in order to satisfy some local gift-giving custom?  Or they need a forgery?  Maybe as part of an exchange for something else they need?

Lost and Found - Have your PCs discover someone or something that is clearly lost.  Maybe they find an infant in the wilderness.  Or a key with a strange inscription, or some kind of talisman.  Throw in a clue or two to present your players with a tantalizing mystery.  

Inhospitable Wilderness - Have the PCs go somewhere it’s an effort just to survive.  A barren desert, a treacherous swamp with poison gasses, a forest so dense the ground never sees the sun, or even the bottom of the ocean.  Test their endurance and survival skills!

Dinner Party - Have the PCs be summoned to a formal event!  Test them on the battlegrounds of social grace and etiquette!  Even better if it’s in a dangerous environment or an alien culture.

Thief - Have something important stolen from the PCs.  See how they handle it.

Needle in a Haystack - Give the PCs something very difficult to find.  Like a single specific housecat in a sprawling metropolis, or a legendary weapon of which there are many fakes/copies.  

So I have an idea. 

Anyone can use this in their game if you want, and please be sure to tell me aaaaalll about it.

There is a magical device.  You can only learn about its existence from a god. You can only learn how to make it from a god.  Once you know about it, you are unable to tell anyone about it. It takes a year to craft total (longer, actually, because people need sleep and food and stuff) The Ingredients are super rare, extremely dangerous to retrieve personally, and prohibitively expensive to purchase. It is a single use device, usable only by the person who made it.  Once you use it, it breaks, and you can never craft another. The effects last a single minute. Once the effects end, the character takes two levels of exhaustion and 2 points of Attribute Damage to each of their Attributes (even if this would reduce an Attribute to 0). The Attribute damage cannot be restored for a month (except by a God).

Here’s what it does.

You succeed automatically. At Everything. If you attack, it’s a critical hit.  If you need to roll a saving throw, it’s an automatic success.  If you bluff, success If you intimidate, success For one minute, you are the best. You are the boss. You are un-stoppable.

I have already sort of touched on some things in another post and a few things may be a little bit of a repeat. 

1.Plan, but not too much: When i first started, I would write a lot more than i needed to. It took up a lot of time i didn’t really have. Planning stuff like names and making it so you can whip up a map in the middle of play is all you really need to plan for. If you plan alternative quests, maybe just write a quick summary and use your imagination and improv if the players start to follow that path. Improvisation is a little tricky but after a while it gets easier and it is a skill all Dungeon Masters should have.

2. Organization: I talked about a binder i used to keep all my information in. Just remember to keep everything labelled and in the right spot. Also, only write down rules that you know you will need and ones that you might not remember for quick reference. Ex. I tend to write terrain rules in where i need them so i can remember. i also have a section with all of the terrain rules and conditions. The reason i re-write some rules into the adventure that i am going from that night, is because it is a little easier to find. However, if they do something i don’t plan for i can easily find the other terrain rules. 

3. Make sure your players are having fun. You don’t want to make them struggle to stay awake while trying to get through your game.

4. make an easy system for keeping track of initiative and other things such as health and conditions: when i use a screen, i write names on a piece of paper and write initiative on there. i also will buy stickers or some other thing i can easily put on them to track conditions. i do it on both sides so players can see what is going on as well. I use to use colorful strips of paper that i would put over the one that was hanging of the screen but that became to hard to clean up after.

5. Make sure you have read the rules: I have made mistakes before in not doing this. Make sure you know what you are doing and if not, make sure you know where to look it up so it doesn’t hinder the progress of the game. 

6. Hide your dice rolls: This is helpful if you make a mistake with making the encounters too high for players. You can correct them by changing some of your rolls.

An elf maiden dances on feet of living wood sung into shape, planted in soil and watered when she takes them off. Every year she plants the old ones and sings a new pair. (Incidentally, the pair of peach saplings from three years ago have produced an excellent crop- She makes preserves from them, and despite the inevitable jokes about “toe-jam”, they are appreciated.)

A dwarf king has a metal fist, all tiny gears and fine wires, kept wound by a mischievous mine-spirit bound to the spring as punishment- the more it struggles, the tighter the spring. 

An orc chieftaness is regularly asked for the story of how she earned the name Wyrmthrottler- she boasts of how she strangled the dragon that ate her arm, and had her shaman make a new arm from its bones, with its fangs as the fingers.

A necromancer simply re-attached his old leg bones- Sacrificing a few mice each day keeps it going.

A pirate captain lost her arm to a shark attack: a passing selkie saved her, and gave her tattoos of kraken blood. Now she has an arm made of salt-water, that grows and wanes with the tides, and swings a cutlass as well as the original. (She doesn’t sail as far these days though: she doesn’t want her wife to worry.)

A wandering swordsman was broken at the waist- his ancestral armour allows him to walk again, as long as he keeps it polished, and burns incense to the ancestors regularly.

A high priestess has an eye made from a crystal ball- to predict the future, all she has to do is wink.

A bard was struck deaf by illness- he struck a deal with the god of music. Now he wears hearing-trumpets made from his old pipes, and dedicates his every song to the god of music- the better he plays, the better his hearing. (It is said his music could make statues weep, and he can hear a mouse fart at 60 paces.)

A princess has the arm of a golem, enchanted clay with mystic words carved in- her music tutor despairs of how her harp playing has become even worse, but her calligraphy tutor is ecstatic over her handwriting.

A goblin pickpocket has an arm made of whatever he steals- no-one feels his fingers, and even if they did, they couldn’t find their possessions amongst all the rest.  

A witch has eyes made from shadow and starlight, given to her in a game with a demon. Nobody dares to ask what she wagered- they aren’t even sure she won.

The Rules Matter

Sometimes in tabletop RPG forums you’ll come across comments like, “The rule system doesn’t really matter,” as if rules are pork bellies or some other essentially interchangeable commodity.

But they do matter. Games are built with intention. People make new games because they want to put the ingredients together in a new way, to introduce techniques that provide different results.

1. The Paladin wakes up to find a dead prostitute in their bed, and they don’t remember a thing.

2. While walking down a remote trail the party finds a baby in a basket with a note that says “It’s your problem now”.

3. The local foppish son of a lord has challenged a member of the party to a duel.

4.The party is being chased by some crooked law enforcement and the only place they can hide is the bar of one of the party’s Ex(girl/boyfriend)(Yes, Casablanca)

5. There is a new designer drug that has hit the streets, it has minimal negative effects and is not addictive, but dealers keep ending up dead.

6. A young peasant needs help wooing the duke’s daughter, he offers the location of some lost ruins as a reward.

7. Assassins keep attacking the party, they have nothing on them besides a dagger and some odd coins the players don’t recognize.

8. The dead keep appearing in this small town, several locals have litterally been scared to death.

9. Use of arcane magic is slowly driving all the mages of the kingdom insane

10. A party member receives an official letter from a magistrate telling them that someone they care about has been murdered

/tg/ gnome request

Officially, nothing has been confirmed (that Mod is aware of).

Officially, we’ve also said something along the lines that iconics are bisexual until stated otherwise.

Don’t watch Lord of the Rings, the Hunger Games, or Avatar. At least, not for the archery. Hollywood is stock full of misinformation and misrepresentation about archery. Sadly, not a lot of writers have the opportunity to really delve into the practice. So here is my all you wanted to know primer from how bows are constructed, to lining up and releasing the shot, to treating your friend’s nasty broadhead wound.

Barbarian artwork by Aditya777

Bard artwork by Shadow-Net

Cleric artwork by Alexander Casteels

Fighter artwork by Genzoman

Sorcerer artwork by Sergon

Paladin artwork by unknown

Ranger artwork by Supanova89

Rogue artwork by ChrisCold

lightning, very hot fire

snow storms, ice, frost on crops

some types of fungus/mold

corpses, ghosts, bones, a diseased person

clothing, skin tone, hair, etc. of a bad person

fur, teeth, eyes of an attacking animal/monster

bleached out deserts, dead trees, lifeless places

poison

Some ideas for good things that are black/dark:

rich earth/soil

chocolate, truffles, wine, cooked meat

friendly animals/pets/creatures

a character’s favorite vehicle, technology, coat, etc.

a pleasant night

hair, skin tone, clothing, etc. of a good person

undisturbed water of a lake

the case/container of something important

valued wood, furniture, art

velvet

okay so, for background, this was a heavily homebrewed campaign in an original setting. it was hugely epic, and our dm considered it a crowning achievement of his. it was planned to go on for 40 total levels. it had four acts. the gods themselves were involved. we were reincarnations of the greatest heros of time. that kinda epic.

THE PLOT: we, a group of adventurers, met as children in an abandoned village. we figured out why, survived a horror movie basically, and then a mysterious figure (later revealed to be a god) aged up to maturity and threw us into the future. we became involved with Prince Eric of our home kingdom (the name of which I think was WhiteSomething) after we saved his fiance, Prince Adam of SomethingRose. they were to be married and join their kingdoms to become the new nation of WhiteRose! But everything changed when the Northern Empire Attacked. (actual quote.) Damion, High Douchelord, was trying to take over everything, and actually had taken over WhiteRose. our party was leading the rebellion’s army, and trying to put our friends, the Disney Princes, back on the throne.

so, on this particular night, our level 12 party was far away from our usual base of operations in the capitol, and was trying to get some more troops for our army. the elven king, Bubba (campaign canon, he also had a southern accent) had agreed to send us some troops, but we needed the support of the dwarves as well. our palladin was pretty well hinted to be the reincarnation of not-Durin so we confidant we could do it, but first we had to get to the mountain across some desert. we ran into a squad of the empire’s army, going to do the same thing, so we took them out and started questioning our prisoners, who said that Damian was going to install a fake Prince Eric on the throne.

we liked Eric, he was our fave NPC along with Adam, and so letting Damian steal Eric’s birthright was just Not On. the capitol was a two-week march away, but because of some actual bullshit from our four mages, we made it in just under 24 hours. exactly on the day the pretender was gonna take the throne. there was like a festival going on, and my best friend (who, for the sake of this story will be their character Asra) decided it would be funny to literally rain on Damain’s parade. As a summoner, she had a spell that let her do that, so she did the thing. and promptly got targeted by the magic-sensing guards, who started chasing us. we did the worst thing, and split the party. Asra, because she was specifically targeted, had to roll to see if she would be found and who would find her if she did, and then a luck roll to see what situation she would be in (according to our house rules).

nat 1, nat 1. she literally bumped into the level 43 boss of bosses, High Douchelord Damian.  at level 12. she’s like “OKAY FUCK. IMMA TELEPORT TO ANOTHER PLANE.” she picks a peaceful one where there is no violence. the dm rolls reflex. “damain grabbed you. still wanna go there?” “FUCK NO. will you let me roll to change it?” dm says she can roll randomly on a table to see what plane she ends up in. rolls- the plane of Cthulhu. it should be kept in mind we placed by sanity rules, and that plane did d100′s worth of damage to your sanity. she took too much damage, went insane, and died.

“okay,” says the dm. “now i’m gonna roll for damian. he has a perfect 100 sanity so it probably won’t do anything, though.” he rolls.

it’s a perfect 100.

the entire room was silent. “i guess i should roll… for damage?”

another. perfect. 100.

nobody even breathed for a minute. “that was the boss. without him, his army falls apart- you guys win. i can’t even. i cannot even think of a better ending than that. you win.”

and that was how Asha accidentally beat a campaign by herself.the best part?