if you’re looking for a higher level, beer and pretzels dungeon for Shadowdark, I’d look no further than Chateau Amongst the Stars.

I only watched parts of the Critical Role stuff but I believe they never released a session zero?

Also, Daggerheart is newly released so it might be interesting just because of that.

Welcome to the Underdark City!

Mostly residential buildings sprinkle this neighborhood, with the exception of a temple to the Spider Queen, a prison, a bathhouse, an inn, and some artisan stores.

This map pack features Shadowfell, Hell, Haunted, Aboveground, and Mushroom variants. Foundry VTT modules with pre-built walls and lighting are available to patrons.

Download the map for free here.

So a friend of mine does a lot more DMing than I do and they asked me if I knew about a digital battle map where they could have movable tokens to keep track of effects, position, terrain, and HP more easily. We talked a bit about how it should function and agreed on this basic functionality:

• Square grid with the ability to colorize squares to draw terrain, walls, obstacles, etc. It's 100x100 squares, we agreed that'd be enough.
• Movable tokens with name, HP, and initiative attributes.
• A sidebar with an overview of the tokens sorted by their initiative.
• Automatic handling of effect duration. So if you correctly press "next turn" every time, it should automatically count down the duration of every token's effects.
• Save and load the full map state in case a battle is split between sessions or you want to prepare the battlefield beforehand.
• Tablet support.

I incorporated this and thought that maybe some of you might either have recommendations for a system that is better than what I've made here, or want to use it too. If you're interested, you can try it out here: https://illectrility.github.io/mapify/

It's currently in a state where my friend and I agree it's all we personally need, so I probably won't be adding more features in the near future.

Edit: I'm aware that it doesn't properly scale on smartphones. That's because it's not intended for smartphone use and I can't be bothered to implement proper smartphone scaling because it would be huge hassle and neither I nor my friend would use it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/26486013

I really like this system, let me know if you guys want to see more of it!

Part 1 of 2

I'll go over these in more detail later, including things like skills and stats.

Boggarts

Boggarts are the most ubiquitous inhabitants of Eem and come in many shapes, sizes, and colors. They can be small, medium, or big folk, and are closely related to goblins, although they don't have sharp teeth or pointy noses like goblins do.

The Mucklands - the area of the setting that is fleshed out in the rulebook - is the ancestral home of the boggarts, and the whole land is full of customs and cultural practices that originated with boggarts and have since been picked up by other folk that migrated to the area.

Land of Eem doesn't bother with languages much - the Mucklands is small enough that they all speak one language - but the 'Folk tongue' spoken in the region is most certainly derived from the language the Boggarts spoke in ancient times.

Boggles

Boggles are the smaller cousins to goblins, and share their green complexion and pointy ears and noses. They are small to tiny folk. They are often employed in risky and/or thankless jobs that require them to work in small spaces, such as in dungeons and mines. Due to this treatment, boggles have strong solidarity with one another, and will nearly always do other boggles a favor.

Bogrils

Bogrils are amphibious frog folk that hail from wetlands and marshy areas. They are medium to big folk. Bogrils are a relatively rare sight in the Mucklands, as they prefer a nomadic existence out in nature instead of the cramped city living of the Dungeon Era.

Most folk's primary association with Bogrils is from legends of the Bulwarks, knights of old who upheld justice in the Mucklands. Though the Bulwarks still exist, their numbers have dwindled and they are not the powerful presence they once were.

Bugbears

Bugbears are tall, broad-shouldered, and hairy folk who hail from the mountains. They tend to be down to earth folk who enjoy hard work, 'rassling, an' a tall glass o' cider. While their overall size, coloration and build is generally reminiscent of a bear, bugbears also sport pointy ears and sharp tusks that display their (somewhat distant) relationship to other goblinkind.

Gelatinous Goos

Gelatinous goos are amorphous folk made of slime. They have no mouth, or indeed no organs at all, but they clearly have some senses akin to hearing, sight, etc. How goos manage to perceive the world is still a mystery.

Because of this difference in anatomy, Gelatinous goos cannot speak Folk Tongue, although they understand it. Instead they speak Gelatinous Gooese, a language the other Folk cannot properly speak but can learn to understand.

Goos can be small to medium sized and come in any color, although blue seems to be the most common. Goos are extremely rare in the Mucklands - to the point that there are no sizable communities of them and no real goo culture to speak of.

Gnomes

Gnomes are both a character class and a Folk, as they are the only Folk born with magic. Gnomes are extremely long-lived and see themselves as chroniclers of history and protectors of the land.

Gnomes are small, stout folk with pointy ears and tall, pointy hats. The hats play an important part of gnomish culture that is poorly understood by other Folk - but it is known that Gnomes choose hats based on their season, which reflects their identity and role in gnomish society.

While true magic - the kind the wizards of old wielded - is only available to the wisest and most studied gnomes, gnomes are constantly touched by magic in their everyday lives. Many can speak with animals, display an uncanny amount of nimbleness and luck, warm objects they touch, or create minor illusions.

Goblins

Goblins are green-skinned, pointy-nosed, and sharp-toothed cousins to Boggarts who began to live underground long ago. They see well in the dark and are generally regarded as ambitious, industrious folk. Like Boggarts, they can be small, medium, or big, and they have become a fairly common sight in the Mucklands.

Goblins are often hailed as the primary architects of the Dungeon Age, which makes them alternately revered and reviled by many. While this may be true of the upper crust of goblin society, the average goblin is just as overworked and underpaid as any other Folk.

Humans

Humans are rare in the Mucklands, and make up only a few small remote communities of hunters and farmers. While they are often seen as boring by the other Folk - humans could pass (at a glance) as particularly drab-colored boggarts if they cover their round ears - human history is actually full of legendary knights and ancient kingdoms. Unfortunately, few humans even know those legends and most have only a dim connection to their own history.

@rpg Ttrpg in the night-time econonmy: where can a group get a table in public at night?

https://dozensanddragons.neocities.org/75

(Experimental cross-posting to lemmy. Hi lemmy!)

My girlfriend is really slow at text roleplaying. It’s been getting worse, and today we got mad at her because we went two hours in her game without any plot happening during a session where everyone was in voice call.

Do you have any advice for her on how to improve the pacing of her game?

Can your players cross this bridge before it comes crumbling down? Welcome to a stone bridge that stretches across a wide and deep ravine, where falling would mean certain death. A natural event, monster, or the power of time has caused this old bridge to come crumbling down.

This phased battlemap features 6 phases that depict a crumbling bridge across a wide ravine filled with fast moving water. The map depicted above is the 5th phase of this encounter.

I have also made 6 additional variants including Desert, Dwarven, Hell, Underdark, Winter, and No Bridge.

You can view the entire encounter here.

Generic high-fantasy setting (d&d 5e if you want to use specific spells), what security or defences would mages use to secure the place where they keep all their magical stuff? I'm thinking decoys, reinforced and hidden location, guards (hired or summoned), locks (both magical and mundane), booby traps, and spells to discourage or confuse passing snoopers.

Also it's going to vary depending on the resources of the wizard and of the players. Is this an independent student wizard protecting their studies that a low-level party could reasonably break into, or is it the king's secure vault of confiscated magical horrors that's a final boss for the campaign?

I'm looking for ideas for fun obstacles, and critically that the players can't just sidestep with a single low-level spell!

Other than it's sold in much smaller bottles that is. Is it chemically different? I'm not talking about the primers, I'm talking about the color paints.

In the same vein, are oil paints for miniatures different from classic oil paints? I find it hard to believe one would be using the same type of paint. Oils (as those sold for canvas painting) take ages to dry, especially if on plastic. They mix up too easily and I would predict a mess if you had to paint something that needs a lot of handling, such as a miniature.

Most miniature painting guides online focus on techniques but gloss over materials specifications. As someone with a fair amount of experience in traditional painting, I find this frustrating.

I'm running a Lasers & Feelings game over at Every Post is an RPG. Join up if you want to participate in some quickplay (week or so, maybe two) Galaxy Quest/Star Trek shenanigans! It should be a Phase Blast! (ok ok, I'll see my way out...)

A really fun comparison of some sample hacking/decking/netrunning runs in Shadowrun (1st, 4th, 5th), Cyberpunk (2020, RED), and a couple of systems I'm unfamiliar with.

It's interesting to see the ludic philosophy for each system:

• Shadowrun seems to value stealth for deckers, meaning cybercombat only occurs when something goes wrong.
• Cyberpunk seems to expect netrunners to steamroll everything in the system they're attacking.

I have a personal attachment to the Shadowrun style, and I'm trying to figure out how "sneaking" works in Cyberpunk RED. I think the short answer is it doesn't, and I'll have to figure out what an alarm means in this system and how it should be triggered.

I'm looking for feedback for generic opposition.

Problem

My players have gotten to the point where gangers and bodyguards don't really threaten unless they show up in force (like 2x the number of players). The Solo has made great choices about equipment and IP assignment, so they're dancing around most mooks I throw their way.

I'm trying to create a general corporate "Rapid Response Team" (borrowing from Shadowrun) that can pose a serious threat to the PCs. I plan to use them as reason why the players try to avoid triggering alarms or waltzing into corporate areas guns blazing.

Solution

Rapid Response Teams are deployed when an alarm goes off, or there's a confirmed threat in an area a corp wants to keep safe. They're deployed in groups of 1.5x the party size (6 in my case). One group is deployed at each exit, to a maximum of 3.

Loadout:

• +14 on weapons and brawling skills. They are "Elite" according to the 3 Goon Method.
• MOV 5 or 6.
• Melee
  • Nightstick (heavy melee: ROF 2, 3d6)
  • Karate: hit with nightstick, then hit with Martial Arts attack, then break armour. (4d6 due to linear frame's BODY stat)
• Range
  • Nearish range: <6 squares, Shotgun (ROF 1, 5d6), AP ammo
  • Longer range: 6+ squares, Assault rifle (ROF 1, 5d6), AP ammo
• Grenades
  • Indoors: smoke
  • Outdoors: AP
• Cyberware
  • Thermal optics
  • Linear frame Sigma (Body 12)

Tactics:

• Goal: overwhelming force to flatten opposition
• Move in groups. Take extra turns to stay together. Move silently.
• Cluster at the end of hallways, on their turn, step out to fire then back under cover.
• When entering rooms: cluster at doorway, throw a smoke grenade, then rush in.
• Focus targets - aim for whoever they think they can pick off.
• Fill space with smoke grenades to blind opposition, then use their thermal optics.

Some alternatives

• Flashbangs rather than smoke grenades - they trigger 20 rounds of Damaged Eye/Ear critical injuries. I think I'd rather save those for the next level of operatives tho.
• A ROF 1 heavy melee weapon. I'd prefer to stick with ROF 2 so they can use martial arts attacks when in melee range.
• Give them four arms and shields. Again, I'd prefer to save that for the heavier hitters.
• Other martial arts. I haven't looked at the new Interface, but I'd prefer to avoid choking, since that means a player is just rolling against a DV for 3 rounds.

So, any suggestions or improvements?

This weekend I was able to play a Land of Eem one-shot. I like this system a lot! It reminds me of some of my favorite action-adventure media.

If you're looking for a ttrpg that evokes the same mood or vibes as ATLA, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, or The Owl House (just to name a few) then I couldn't recommend this system enough.

I was flipping through the rulebook and I was honestly very pleasantly surprised at every turn at how the game's creators balanced lighthearted, fluffier elements of the game and setting with grittier, crunchier elements that give the setting realism and depth. So far it seems to be everything I would want in a ttrpg (including a really detailed, already-keyed hexmap full of rumors and plot hooks!!!) It manages to evoke whimsy and wonder while remaining a dramatic, grounded low-fantasy game with real stakes. And it seems to have a really awesome crafting system too!

I'll have to see how it feels to run but so far it seems absolutely perfect.

So I've just learned that Chasidim had released a new edition of Quest Worlds that I have heard precisely nothing about.

As a long time fan of Hero Quest/Quest Worlds I winter if anyone here can tell me anything about this new version.

First disappointment: they're doesn't seem to be a Glorantha dedicated version.

But is there anything new and exciting about it?

Sadly, I just found out that it has ceased publication just shy of its 50th anniversary, and over 590 monthly issues.

Alarums & Excursions was one of the longest running, if not the longest running APAs ever. It won numerous "best amateur magazine" awards, especially in the 80s and 90s, including being inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in 2022.

Is this still "RPG"?