Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop

On Reddit recently, user wittmitin described a plane of existence : It is the realm of the Shapeshifters and is made of an ever-shifting forest of mist and reflection. It is very easy to get lost inside. And requested details which would make the place an interesting experience. This seemed like a fun opportunity to brainstorm, and below is what I came up with.

Logan (the DM) had posed question: @LogantheDM Bees would have to be a fey based fantasy race, right? Like say I am making bee people for #DnD and was trying to explain why they are more people than just giant bees? Fey, right? In my mind "fey" connotes things "liminal" in some way, an in between state. Like both familiar and strange. Or at the edge of cultivated lands (not deep woods or in town). Is it real or a dream?  You thought this person was dead, but (through magical thinking) they seem alive-ish. So the thing is to find some way that bees fit this vibe. The Fey Bees On a drowsy summer day, if you go to check furthest hives at 5 minutes to noon, the skeps seem larger somehow, though they measure the regular size if one has the tools to check. If you tarry for more than a few seconds, the soothing buzz makes you fuzzy in the head and the cloying sweet smell is overpowering. And you find you can go inside the hive, even though it should be too small for you.  ...

Originally in response to the question: In D&D is there a creature that is the good or neutral equivalent to a hag? I don’t know of any such creatures canonically in 5th edition which are good or neutral versions of the hag. Swanmays The closest equivalent I can think of from previous editions are Swanmay. The Swanmay are a secretive sisterhood of shapechangers (swan specific) with ranger-like abilities. I knew of them originally from the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual , but they also show up as a playable race in the Complete Book of Humanoids . Swanmays are not exactly the same concept as hags, but kind of have a  magic women of the wilderness  type thing going on. I strongly suspect that Gygax (or some other creative person working in the D&D sphere) got the idea for Swanmays for them from Poul Anderson's novel Three Hearts and Three Lions , where one of the primary characters is a Swanmay.

Previously I suggested ideas for how to run a 5th Ed. D&D game with lower availability of spellcasting.  Weirdly however, even though the idea of trying to run low spellcasting games of 5th Edition holds some interest for me, I've sometimes been at a loss what sort of game I'd find that combination a useful fit for, or (if I was a player) attractive to play in. This post is a follow-up, brainstorming various settings which might make use of such a lower magic system.   In these settings humans (and maybe other creatures) might have access to a few spells, but spellcasting classes as such are not available. Spells are mostly cast either through artifacts or rituals except maybe a few cantrips. Hyborian Age The obvious default seems like it would be something Conan-esque. After all, that is part of the inspiration behind D&D. A world build on the crumbling ruins of older things, but now largely a land of decadent city-states and harsh lands in between. Legendary/...

The following are a set of rules (limitations mostly) I came up with which would allow 5th Edition D&D to be used for lower magic settings and types of games.  Maybe something closer to historic-fantasy, though this might work for other kinds of settings as well. Note that each of the elements below is essentially a separate toggle, you can use some and not others, as the setting dictates. Races Players are generally only allowed to play human characters.  However, DMs might allow one of the following options: Option 1:  Quirky Humans  - Certain other races may be allowed, but are reskinned to simply represent slightly unusual humans. Option 2:  Shunned  - Certain other races are allowed, but represent weird beings from outside human civilization, shunned by most decent folk. Some individuals and organizations may view them with sympathy, but there’s every chance of a mob rising up against them. Option 3:  Dying Race  - Alternately, other ...

Anne (of  DIY & dragons  and  Bones of Contention ) has recently been running a weird post-human setting for for us using  Mausritter . Today she was reflecting how she realized the recent dungeon delve we were involved in lacked any real ability to socially interact with the occupants or phenomena it contains. But, while this might limit things in some ways, I don't think that's necessarily bad.  There can be a variety of different, valid ways to set up a scenario, and not all of them necessarily have to involve social interaction. Leaving aside for now specific physical challenges and dangers, or interactions with more recent denizens of an area; I like having locations set up based on an event or events that happened there in the past, with the nature of things in the area dictated largely by the consequences of those events.  There are several ways I think revelations about past events can play out, either in any given sub-location (room), or in the...

The Astral Navigator's Handbook is my completed entry for the HexDrive Zine Jam . The HexDrive Zine is something being put together by Micah Anderson & Anxiety Wizard. As they  described it : [HexDrive is] about the greatness of spelljammer, and how none of us have read spelljammer ... do not read spelljammer! (if you have, forget everything!) I'd never gotten involved with these kinds of game jams in the past, but this concept meshed perfectly with some ideas I'd been thinking about for years now, so it seemed like the prefect excuse to get things down in print.  Possibly this is the fastest I've ever written a game supplement from scratch, managing to crank the thing out in two about weeks start to finish. The Astral Navigator's Handbook is a largely systemless CC-BY licensed supplement intended for use with your preferred fantasy role-playing game.  But unlike Spelljammer, it could be shoehorned into a game of slightly more sci-fi style space opera...

Originally written in response to: Can a PC be a Lich in D&D 5E? An actual lich would be pretty powerful for a typical player character to be at lower levels. So, probably successfully becoming a lich would make one an NPC in most games.  Instead I suggest a compromise for those wanting to play a walking skeleton: The Hedge Lich Sometimes wizards try to become a lich when they just aren't well studied enough to pull off the appropriate ritual. Other times a mage creates a ritual attempting to resurrect someone, a gift which only divine power can truly provide. Often the result is simply failure, but occasionally the caster creates a lesser form of free willed undead sometimes referred to as a "Hedge Lich". The flesh of a hedge lich gradually rots away leaving only an animated skeleton. A hedge lich has the same ability scores they had in life as well as any classes, skills or proficiencies. However, they lose any racial abilities except those which are inna...

Someone on Quora asked: How would you make a goodly aligned necromancer in Dungeons and Dragons? This garnered responses from a lot of folks . Options that came to my mind included: The Good Doctor - A humanist medical researcher who feels that it is not ideal to trust gods and magical patrons for healing and support, since they may have motives not aligned with those of individual mortals. Only a reasoned approach to magic can be trusted. Unfortunately academic understanding of magical healing and revivification is still in its infancy, but research continues! A Gray Gift - A necromantic prodigy. You didn't ask for this talent, but you can just perfectly envision how the entropic and animating forces intertwine within flesh. Sometimes you wonder how something so easy is so difficult for most folks to understand. Others view your abilities as ghoulish and unpleasant. But the gods can't have given you this understanding in vain, surely there must 11be some way you ...

Armor of Agathys is a D&D 5th Edition spell. One of the few that is not open game licensed (OGL) under the system reference document (SRD).  This image is a rendering of what passes through my mind every time I read the spell name.  Agnathans include lampreys and hagfish. Also now my profile pic.

This was originally in response to the question: What are some villainous factions for a D&D campaign? Below you'll find just a bunch of well meaning folks who believe they're on the right side of history. The Trans-Planar Liberation Front (a.k.a. “The Egg Breakers”) Slogan: Crack the shell and let all fly free! The Trans-Planar Liberation Front has one goal: Break down the barriers which separate the prime material plane from all the others and set all those who live here free to wander among the planes as they will. They view the mortal realms as a prison, or at best a creche where overprotective parents have kept their children cooped up too long. This isn’t how souls of sapient creatures were meant to live! Surely everyone longs for the wild lands beyond this existence. If this was a personal goal of the members, things might be fine. But the TPLF view all mortals inhabiting the material plane as prisoners, even if they don’t realize it yet. So members s...