I am feeling inspired by #mcdm_productions worldbuilding where all Dragonborn have a bounty on their heads, which was set by the current king. I would like to do something similar in mine with Orcs, but I'm not sure how to handle that lore-wise.
In my scifi campaign based on Star Control II, all genetic engineering was illegal (one of the primary antagonist groups is a race of blade runner style artificial humans). So of course two of my players teamed up to be an outlaw geneticist and his awakened capuchin monkey. They played it 100% unironically and it resulted in some of the best role-playing it has been my privilege to DM for.
Our bard got a magic item that let them cast Wall of Thorns before we would normal have access to a spell that high level. We used it on a boss pretty much immediately to trap it in one side of a room while we mopped up the rest of its adds that didn't get killed by the Wall. The boss we were fighting was a bug queen. What we didn't know was that, while we were fighting the first adds, it spent the whole time spawning more behind the wall, since it didn't have any other actions it could spend. That did not go well lol
It was our first TPK, most of us were new to the game, and we put a lot of focus on RP, so the DM gave us the choice if we actually wanted each of our characters to die, or if we'd prefer to be Deus ex Machina'd. I was the only one that chose to let their character die. My warlock had made his pact initially as part of a deal to save his sister who was crushed in a cave-in. He decided to swear more oaths, fully giving his soul for eternity to his patron, in exchange for saving the lives of his friends.
It was a pretty cool way for him to go out, and now he gets to be an antagonist later. That's going to be interesting, because our bard took up his fake religion out of a desperation to know that he went to a better place
Curse of Strahd in 3.5: Who knew Con damage to a mostly spell caster group could be dangerous not just once but 4 times.
In comparison both fights were Strahd were a f**ing walk in the park.
More of a test game than an actual campaign: We were testing if a CR appropriate group of goblins with levels vs a group of players would play out for the players: Well as it turns out I suck at calculating CR so our first fight was 5 players vs 5 goblins level 15 (Same as players) plus 10 starting goblins.
We adjusted it for a correct CR and it was still a massacre. Ambush is a HELL of an advantage.
Anything goes campaign. Well turns out anything goes for the DM too so Level 3 half colossal half minotaur barbarian opponent with a posse of gobs with a ballista safely away means players die every other round or so.
"Aren't there many unhappy couples, if cross species reproduction isn't very common?"
This question was posed tonight in my #ttrpg session. While I'm open to the concept in my homebrew, looking at for example base #dnd where we got Half-Orcs, Half-Elves and Half...-lings(?), I found the question very interesting and wanted to ask the wider community.
@Imperor@dndhomebrew@dnd@DnD@askgamemasters@worldbuilding@ttrpgs I can only really say that for my part, in my setting of Enrathe, humans, "orcs", "elves", and "dwarves" are actually all the same species who diversified long ago into different cultures, and "halflings" don't exist.
Something I've been puzzling over with my #homebrewdnd stuff is about the classic #dnd elf. I don't really know what makes the Elves a compelling race to play. I'm thinking of changing them quite significantly for my campaign, but how far can I change them until they no longer hit the same buttons?
I'm making a new #homebrew#dnd setting. The mistake I felt I made last time was trying to devise an orgin from whole cloth for each playable race, which wasted a TON of time and energy while also confusing my players. So, herein I wish to ask: What playable races would you miss, if you joined my table and noticed their absence?
Humans, dwarves, halflings, orcs, goblinoids, and elves will all stay, but I am not sure about all the others.
Not what you're asking, but relevant:
I've mostly played in homebrew worlds and exclusively DMd homebrew, and what ive found is actually having the different races have some representation means more than their historical heritage in the world. If it comes up, maybe in prep detail it out a little. If there's only one Tabaxi in the world, it's origin is more suspicious (needs explanation) than if players encounter them occasionally.
Wanting my players to be open to trying less common races I recently made a d100 including every race I could find so that the NPCs can be anything instead of whatever pops in my head in a rush to describe the shopkeep.
I have an idea for a get-rich-quick scheme: using the Bessemer process to create massive amounts of high-quality steel. However, I'm sure my #DM has not given a single thought to this (because I know her) so I'm worried that this might give God fun #worldbuilding ideas to fuck with our party. How do I tell my group my plan, without having the industrialized slave company I know is on the other side of the map spontaneously develop a similar process?
@GrimSheeper My backstory gives me an excuse. Essentially, my warlock has a pact with the embodiment of the big bang. This pact was made after he spent four years squatting in its library on the astral plane reading all the books it had. The whole point of this character is to inflict science on the setting and see what happens. The dm knows this.
On a side note, I'm starting to think it wants to be incarnated in the mortal world. I'm not sure having the big bang happen again is a good thing.
Fair enough! My compliments on your character's backstory - that sounds fun!
Also, I would think that a second big bang would be morally neutral on a universal scale, but that's not much comfort for the people currently existing...
@dnd Hey everyone. I recently went to a miniature store to pick up some more premium paints for my miniatures I'm 3D printing for DnD. While I was there I saw a really nice paint cup for brushes. I knew I could get a model offline so I didn't buy it and instead opted to print one. I found a really nice one, but it lacked that little extra something. So I modified the original design and added the DnD logo. I think it turned out really nice.
What do you guys think?