Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop

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...

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...

Another post regarding languages, this one came about as a brainstorm in response to a Quora question: In D&D 5E, what (possibly exotic) languages could a monk have picked up in a monastery? Depending on the monastery, I think a case could be made for literally any language.  Examples below could probably apply to other other religious, arcane or academic institutions of the right sort as well: All normal languages - Might be common if the institution focuses on learning in general. Axiomatic and/or Gith  - Axiomatic was proposed as a descriptor of lawful plane traits in D&D 3rd Edition. A language of this sort might be common in monasteries run by by the Githzerai, or those founded on Githzerai teachings. Possibly also useful for legal training. Anarchic  - Similarly Anarchic was proposed to describe chaotic qualities.  This might be used by sort of "anti-monks", chaos-warriors, or covenant of  sorcerers of unmaking . Basically any gr...

Awhile back now, Ann (of DIY & Dragons ) and I were chatting about Traveller RPG character creation, specifically the fact that players can roll a result that ends in character death during creation. Traditionally, at that point one starts the character creation process over again. But what if, we speculated, you did not start with a new living character?  What if rolling death merely changed the focus of the game? A series of adventures with undead astronauts in a dark secondary universe took place? We were both intrigued by the idea, but (to me at least) it seemed like the sort of thing that could take a lot of work and an entire setting to flesh out. And, at the time, due to other commitments, didn't find much time to pursue it further. But every now and then I'd jot down a couple notes about the sort of elements one might find in such a basement-universe setting. The results gradually became influenced probably less by Traveller and more other favorite space o...