A Take on Prologue Sessions

Prologues prepare the reader for what is to come. They provide background and context to the story, as well as potentially providing a larger context to the story's significance within the setting.   In roleplaying games, a prologue can be used for the same purpose. They also provide good opportunities for players to get used to their characters, the game system, and any homebrew rulings you may be using.

My experiences with them haven't been fantastic. I want to share those experiences with you, and then take some key points from them - both what went well and what didn't - that you can use when considering running a prologue session for your players.

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My first experience with prologue sessions involved a group of level 1 characters, in what was both a prologue and a time-skip; our adventurers were exploring a crypt of some sort, eventually cornered by the resident undead, and made to recount our adventures thus far, leading into session one. It's worth noting that whilst the group had played together for a while, the DM wasn't super experienced at the time.

Within the first half an hour of playing, my character had been incinerated. Taking a wrong step, my sorcerer went foot-first into a fireball trap, leaving the DM somewhat confused as to why I was dead, as 23 damage surely wasn't enough to do that (for reference, my character had 6, maybe 7 hit points - about standard for a character of that class & level).

My character was very quickly brought back after the damage taken was retconned to a more manageable number, and the prologue continued as planned.

The second time around was a few years later, with a group prologue* that took place over several sessions with a group of experienced players. Our characters had been fleshed out over a longer period of time, and we had all worked with the DM to integrate them into the setting. The prologue therefore was mainly to allow the players to learn more about the game world, and also to give our characters a chance to meet one another (and those of us using homebrew a chance to try it out).

This time, the game ended with a 50% TPK for PCs and allied NPCs. The reasons are understandable - our group went charing into a dungeon with full knowledge that the DM made challenging combat encounters, and the party split up once inside - but nevertheless, this was the prologue: the pre-game content.

The dungeon quickly turned on us, with two PCs down, one trying to commit seppuku via animal companion so that they wouldn't come back as an undead thrall, and two NPC allies dead. The last memories I have of that campaign were several minutes of two of the players (one an undead thrall, the other the previously mentioned seppuku attempter) and the DM rolling failed attack rolls on loop, each trying to drop someone so that the session could come to an end.

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The Issues at the Table

During session zero, or whenever you pitch the game to your players, a social contract (an overview of ground rules and expectations between players) is made. Part of this contract includes player expectations, such as what world they are in, what the focus of the adventures is going to be, what kind of threat levels they will be facing, and what kind of story their characters may tell. Players then enter the game with these expectations in mind and expect to meet those expectations during the game.

Prologues are awkward in that they can very easily, and often justifiably, ignore these expectations - not because of the GM trying to screw them over, but because it's a ttrpg; random chance is part of the equation. When the dice start rolling, there is a chance that your PC might die. There is a chance that the background content you are playing through may change significantly, or events that were planned for the campaign may not happen. It is the same risk and reward as in regular gameplay, but under the notion that this is not the 'true' content.

The main feeling that the above prologues give when thinking back on them is one of missed potential: of the fun that I was looking forward to having, and of the context and justification for character opinions and actions that was promised.

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Elements that would make for good prologues

Short: we're talking two sessions at most. Longer than this and it no longer becomes a prologue to the campaign: it is the campaign. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, but if the idea is to give players a taster of the atmosphere and setting, then you don't want players to be in the taster for too long.

Informative: a prologue should do what a prologue is meant to do - develop the backdrop and atmosphere of the story. Note that this doesn't require it to be in the same time or place as the adventure, nor does it require the prologue to use the same characters. The players could play future NPCs, or other individuals wrapped up in your game's conflict.

Is your setting in the middle of a civil war? Split the players and have them take the role of rival soldiers forced to cooperate to escape a mutual threat - give them only one side of the conflict to work with and have them figure out what each side is fighting for. Is your campaign about an ancient sealed evil, soon to return? Have your players be present as the sealed evil's forces last breached, located in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It's worth noting that my second prologue game did this fantastically, in my opinion. All characters came to the table with at least some opinion on the major worldly conflicts, and various aspects of the plot and NPC interactions reinforced elements of the setting and worked with or against our opinions on the main conflicts and goings on.

Establish Relationships: similar to the last one, with a greater focus on the relationships between characters (i.e. initial perceptions, how the group came to be) and between setting elements (e.g. where are the main sources of conflict).

In the first of my prologue adventures, we were informed that at this point we had been travelling for a while and our characters got on - this didn't feel very natural at the time, and I think that part of this could have been mitigated if the group was still considered cautious of one another (in other groups that know each other better this might not have been the case). The second prologue meanwhile did this quite well, but I would argue that this was in part due to the increased amount of time our characters had to get to know each other, and an increased effort on the player end to get our characters interacting.

Low Risk: perhaps not the best name for it, but the most appropriate given my past experiences An alternative heading would be Set Game Expectations, Maintain Social Contract, or perhaps Reinforce Expectations. Essentially, if your prologue is going to potentially result in PC death, this should be communicated. The base expectation that I've seen from players is that prologues are the 'tutorial zone' of the game, where long-term consequences aren't likely to arise.

If you want to go for something high-risk, a good example of this is the first episode of Matt Colville's The Chain. The series prologue starts with a group of mercenaries preparing to assassinate someone, only for it to go horribly wrong and result in the death of the PCs, making it memorable and a harrowing event for the team. This worked well because the player and the DM both had in mind that this character was temporary. The social contract was maintained throughout the prologue.

Contrast this with my most recent prologue experience, which was roughly 6 sessions long and ended in a 50% mortality rate for PCs and allied NPCs. Yes, it informed us of the setting tone, but it also meant that the preparation made for the game that we signed up to play - i.e. the game after the prologue - was rendered moot.

This is the point that I think most people will disagree with; there are players that will argue that removing the risk of death hinders the gameplay, and I understand that argument if you are drawn to ttrpgs for the mechanical elements moreso than the narrative elements.

In conclusion, prologue sessions do best when the DM approaches them as a narrative tool to help contextualise the world that players will be exploring in their campaign, and if necessary also giving players a chance to gain a feel for the game rules and mechanics. If PC death is on the table and the session takes place with characters intended to be used beyond the prologue, this should be discussed with the group beforehand. I was hoping to bring up some examples of prologues I like but find myself drawing blanks - I will aim to do a follow up post when I find some.

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* I specify 'group' prologue here after a discussion I had with the DM and two of the other players in that game a few days ago, in which the following came up: the DM didn't consider these sessions to be prologue. In their mind, the real prologues were the single-player one shots he ran with the group to explain why they were in the starting area looking for work. The players meanwhile considered the group sessions as prologue because, prior to the campaign start, we had been told that the big events of the campaign would take place after a scripted event that would occur after this first adventure.

Thinking back on that, this makes a lot more sense, and if that had been clarified more then I think this post in retrospect would take a different perspective, because I loved the single-player sessions we did before the prologue-but-not-prologue. They were well paced, established prior character relationships, informed us about our place in the setting, and whilst risk was present the intent was not to challenge our characters entirely, but to instead give context and background. My character's prologue involved the events prior to their betrayal of the local tyrant, joining the resistance, and finding themselves directed to the starting point as part of a covert mission.

It was a fantastic prologue reference, and I feel bad that I spent so much time analysing why the following sessions didn't work as well as prologue material when I could have been thinking about the one shot instead.

Aarakocra: Nope No Longer

Aarakocra art from Tomb of Annihilation (2017)

this post specifically deals with 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons content.

Bird people are a cool concept. They combine the speed, gracefulness, keen eyesight, and predatory drive of a raptor with thumbs. Wizards of the Coast exploited this niche with the introduction of aarakocra as a player race, added to 5th edition in Princes of the Apocalypse. These hexapodal avians became the first player race in 5e to have an innate flying speed - giving them 50 ft of flight, provided they aren't wearing medium or heavy armour.

Since then they have been systematically banned from almost every D&D table I've sat at and every online game I've taken part in. The same goes for games across the globe, as the notion of a player race that can move vertically instead of horizontally is declared time and time again to be an unwelcome addition to the game. Personally, I think this is a shame, as aarakocra strike me as such an interesting player option that opens up various doors of gameplay and campaign design to both players and the DM. What's worse, the way that some DMs have gone about trying to "correct" this issue for their tables both completely negates player expectations and is arguably a more work-intensive method of getting the result they initially wanted of not having to deal with aarakocra in the first place.

So, before we "fix" these wonderful bird people, let's ask: "Why do DMs not allow aarakocra in their games?" The answers that I see most often roughly fall into two categories: balance and compensation.

Player-led Game Conceptualisation

Not really a post-proper, more of a writeup of some stuff I've been thinking about over the past few days as I go through GM withdrawal. It is by no means meant to be a gripping read.

I think some of my favourite games to plan have been the ones where the players suggested the base premise. The players-to-be sat in a group, eating snacks and talking about what would be cool to play. In one instance, the group said they wanted to be somewhere non-temperate and fight a classical D&D villain of high level. Tomb of Annihilation was just about to launch, and from it the Jungle-infested island of Sebek was born, under threat from a slaad-growing lich. In another instance, the group had seen a comic premise for a prince & his allies seeking to reclaim the throne. From this we created the starting blocks of a realm-spanning political campaign, as the group designated one player to be the prince they rallied behind as they went to gather unlikely allies and reclaim the throne from a mysterious usurper.

The reasoning for this is obvious. It immediately creates player investment: this is what they think will be fun. Much can be gained from players having characters they are invested in, but starting off with a story that they want to see through, or themes they want to explore, or a setting that comes from a shared moment of creativity can also work wonders.

It builds hype as we discuss the idea: spoilers are out the window as the game isn't made, we're just throwing ideas around of what would work and what wouldn't. It keeps me on my toes and gives me an opportunity to try something new. I would not voluntarily choose to create a campaign about succession and the merits of monarchy, but it was super fun to explore the idea and make it into something; it was even better to see the ideas the players came up with and weave them into the story.

There are of course limits. In both of these cases, the ideas just clicked with everyone in the group, but this won't always be the case. Perhaps if this was going to be refined into a more organised system – a player led Session Zero perhaps? – then some guidelines would need to be placed, both in terms of majority preference and what the DM is not interested in running.

I should try and do this more often.

Arcane, Divine, Psionic

Magic in 5e D&D is divided into arcane and divine, with psionic being the figurative cousin twice-removed. I discussed this with two of my friends on the Discord of Many Things – ImFromNASA and tiredmoieties – and this is a rough take on the ideas we came up with for how scholars within a D&D world may interpret these three studies.

Magic is, at its most fundamental level, is the distortion of the natural state of things - the warping of reality. Traditionally we distinguish mages by where they take magic from: for example, druids take magic from the latent power of the natural world, whilst sorcerers are themselves producers of magical distortion.

The methods by which individuals seek to create distortion can also be categorised. These refer not to schools of magic, but instead schools of philosophy and ideology: states of viewing the world through which magic is magnified. The effect is similar to that of light refracted by different shaped lenses; the light – magic – is the same force, but the lens – an individual's philosophy – shapes how the magic emerges on the other side.

Premonitions of Chaos by Davide Ottoveggio

The most common of these mental states is that of Arcane magic. Arcanists view magic through the lens of trying to understand magic itself: breaking down the world into its fundamental components and learning how to reorder and reshape them. Spells, rituals, and incantations are all attempts at recalling the equations of creation. It is a form of magic that requires intense research and understanding of multiple fields of knowledge (unless of course you're a sorcerer who simply has an innate understanding of the way they may interact with the world, or a warlock who has such knowledge directly implanted into their minds).

Divine magic views magic through the lens of belief and faith. The individual views the world through a set of ideals and values, as well as through the pre-conceived notions of what their focus of faith (be it god, patron, ideal, or idol) is capable of. The individual then evokes this power, using their belief as the focus of magic. It is due to the nature of belief that clerics and the like can dip in and out of arcane power; as their faith wavers or is tempted, so too does their power. This also goes on to explain why different deity worship evokes different powers: the idea of what magic should do within a cleric's faith is just as influential as what magic theoretically can do.

Finally, there is the most elusive of magics: psionics. For many it is not considered true magic, due to the lack of material components or rituals. However, this is not due to the absence of magic, but instead due to how psionics is channeled. The Invisible Art is the inverse of Arcane magic: instead of focusing on known truths about the world, psionics focuses on the known truths of the self. It delves into one's own mind and notions of the world, using magic to then shape reality to fill in the gaps where reality doesn't quite match up. A psion's power is drawn from the understanding of the self and the self of others, allowing them to connect to the minds of others and free themselves from illusions designed to cloud the truths of their own senses from them.

Reintroducing Alignment

I wanted to get some vague ideas down on how alignment could be made into a more integral part of 5e, either in general or for a specific setting or campaign. Many of these suggestions are mechanical and come down to the same root point of having alignment be more mechanically present than it is currently, but there are a few lore suggestions here and there as well.

Unfortunately this post is going to be a bit disorganised, though that's nothing new here.

It's also worth mentioning that this isn't a post on why alignment should be implemented, merely how.

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To start off, I'm going to give definitions of alignment. The notion of what is or isn't under which alignment is flexible and open to interpretation, but for this post I'm going to steal and tweak my definitions from a previous post I made on alignment-based factions:

Good: acting for the benefit of others, especially when no personal gain is achieved from it. Altruism, compassion, and empathy are tenants of Good.

Evil: allow or enforce suffering upon others, for one's own benefit or for no benefit whatsoever. Selfishness, manipulation, and abuse are tenants of Evil.

Law: adhere to and enforce a set structure to life and society. This could be a city's laws, a factions rules, a deity's oaths etc.

Chaos: promote free will and metamorphosis, opposing control and restriction, and abiding by one's own sense of how to behave.

Alignment for characters has a dominant trait and a recessive trait, as shown with capitalisation. This is used to indicate which of the two alignments - law-chaos and good-evil - overrides the other in decision making. For example, a Lawful good character will choose Law over Good if pushed, whilst a lawful Good character would choose Good over Law.

Unaligned creatures are such because they lack an understanding of the alignment system and as such are unaffected by its influence. Whilst an animal may act in a chaotic neutral manner, it does so because of its instinctual drives, not due to a sense that the alternative is morally wrong or unfavourable. Creatures with completely different senses of morality and alignment are also classified as Unaligned - in my books, this should arguably include oozes and aberrations, given that their minds are so alien to ours that they may not work on the same notions that we do. They are outside of alignment.

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A game that brings back alignment as a prominent aspect should bring it to the front mechanically as well as in theme and lore. D&D does do this, but 5th edition does so significantly less than past editions. We mainly see alignment present in these aspects:

Spells: spirit guardians has its damage type vary on character alignment. This kind of thing should be expanded upon. Different character alignments or deity alignments should influence damage types, or potentially further influence spell effects. Perhaps casting burning hands whilst Chaotic in alignment makes more things ignite on contact, or bless and bane could be the same spell, with the effect changing based on whether you're Good or Evil?

Monsters: There are some monsters that have alignment-based abilities. Sprites can detect alignment using their Heart Sight; rakshasas are vulnerable to piercing damage from good-aligned creatures; demiliches and unicorns have lair traits/regional effects that affect non-evil and good creatures respectively. Planar creatures especially show these traits, which is to be expected given their stronger connections to alignment.

Items: Items show some of the more prominent alignment mechanics in the game, with items that can only be attuned to if you are of a specific alignment. This makes sense to include, or potentially to expand upon: perhaps an Evil artifact can be attuned to by a Good person, but the abilities they get are different. Alternatively, maybe their abilities are warped? A Good cleric attunes to the Evil item and now all of her healing spells instead deal necrotic damage, or only give temporary hit points?

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As a vague idea, why not have the forces of alignment be more conventional large-scale forces, like deities? We have dichotomous notions of deities in real world religions (e.g. Abrahamic God and Satan), and Forgotten Realms already has the alignments act as planar forces, so why not have gods of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos? These could in turn create the gods of dual alignments, and/or create emissaries to spread their influence - the devils, slaadi, celestials, modrons etc.

With my personal prefernce for Chaos and Law, I'd potentially go for a god/entity of each of these, which in turn have six opposing spawn (for Chaotic and Lawful good, evil, and neutral).

Alternatively, why not go the route of Avatar? Each alignment is an ideology and way of life, none perfect on their own but best seen in their interactions with one another and the balance of the four. In such a setting, Neutral may be seen as the ideal state to be in, with players traveling the land to learn about the different ways of life and their influences on the world. This could also be an interesting way of exploring how different alignments look from outside perspectives, and how they can come across in many different forms.

An important idea in such a setting to get across for me is that the prescriptive nature of character alignment is something special - it is an indication of free will and the ability to make choices. It is this that differentiates them from celestials and fiends, and this that links them to giants, dragons, and other such creatures. Whilst they may lean towards certain alignments, this isn't set in stone.

This is in contrast with extraplanar entities that directly serve the ideals of their alignment. Their alignment is a fixed state, a constant (yes, even the Chaotic entities) mindset that is unwavering. It can be confused, misled, possibly even manipulated, but their actions and personality are inherently shaped by what they are. Unlike players and other such entities, where alignment is prescriptive, these entities have descriptive alignment.

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Alignment Thresholds
Alignment is on a scale for a reason. There are degrees to which an individual shows alignment, and having thresholds is one way that players can quantify how Good or Lawful their character is.

This is akin to Ravnica's Renown rules, where completing certain actions increases your level of influence and benefits within a faction. It could also be compared to the Humanity and Path tables in Vampire, where committing certain acts influences your behaviour and abilities.

The DM would have a table for each alignment. On these tables are actions and modifiers - actions such as harming an innocent, forcing an ally to face the force of justice, starting a rebellion or putting yourself in harm's way to save another. When players commit an action, the DM can alter the number of points they have on the alignment axis. You need a minimum number of points to be classified as an alignment; under this you count as Neutral.

Upon reaching certain point thresholds, different boons become available to you. These range from being more amiable with creatures of the same alignment to actual abilities based on the tenants of your alignment. They should ideally be beneficial to both martial and spellcasting classes, and have some flavour based on your alignment of choice. Perhaps there could be multiple to choose from, depending on how detailed this system was.

EDIT: After some discussion, these boons should ideally be focused on non-combat aspects of the game to prevent players going specific alignments just for certain attacks or combat benefits.

If you drop below your alignment threshold, the boons you had beyond your new score are lost to you.

These boons may also be available to NPCs, giving nice flavourful mechanics to your allies and enemies, and also informing players about what kind of person or creature you're dealing with.

Response to A Tradition

I haven't posted anything here in a while, and I often find the best way to get back into blog post writing is to start off with something simple and keep that ball rolling. So for today, I decided to respond to the following Tumblr prompt by sonatagreen (original post here):

In peacetime, the ruler grows their hair long. In war, they cut it short.
A ruler with long hair is held in great esteem, for defending the peace.
The traditional declaration of war is for the ruler to send their cut off hair to the enemy ruler. The statement carries greater weight the longer the hair: the receive long hair says that you have angered one who is slow to anger, that you have incurred a wrath not easily woken.

And here is a response by wakor-rising that was included in the screenshot I initially saw of the post:

Violent war-mongering leader frantically and aggressively tries to shave just a LITTLE hair off the top of their head into an envelope.
A faraway king receives a heavy wooden crate filled with a coil of the longest hair he has ever seen.
A despised ruler finds hundreds of pounds of cut-off ponytails at her castle entrance, each one belonging to her own people.
A young emperor refuses to cut their hair and insists on trying to make peace with invaders. The enemy leader steps forward, draws their blade, and cuts the emperor's hair themselves.
Hellen cuts her hair off and throws it in Cathy's face at her son's soccer scrimmage.

The notion of hair as a symbol of power and the symbolic losing of one's hair isn't a new concept. In the Hebrew Bible, we have Samson, who gained supernatural strength from being a nazirite (an Israelite who, amongst other things, allows their hair to grow long and doesn't cut it). When his hair is cut, Samson loses this power. A more recent take on this theme can be seen in George R R Martin's Dothraki, who braid their hair with bells after each victory and have their hair cut as a symbol of shame upon defeat. Culturally, we see hair and its presentation have prominence in multiple cultures, as a sign of power, life, beauty, and civility.

So the idea of hair as a sign of stability definitely has roots in real life and past fiction. The notion of cutting hair short in times of conflict also serves as a good practical practice: just as horse tails may be knotted to stop people using them for leverage, so too might rulers wish to have short hair so it cannot be used against them in combat.

Of course, there are multiple factors that could also come into play in such a culture, which add a lot of depth to such a setting. For example, methods of masking the true length of one's hair: in ancient Rome, Caesar hid his thinning hair with a laurel wreath, as a full head of hair was seen as desirable. In a similar way, rulers with short hair may use hair extensions or wigs to mask the true length of their hair, whilst hats and crowns may be seen as obvious forms of deceit, and as such be seen as unfavourable for a ruler to wear. Rulers who aren't gifted with long locks may have to seek other ways of providing large quantities of hair, such as having professional 'hair growers' to harvest from.

There is also the potential for scalping: forcibly removing hair - roots and all - from the scalp, leaving the victim with heavy scarring and the inability to grow hair in those areas. This would surely be seen as a ruthless form of defeating or humiliating a ruler. Alternatively, it could be seen as a dishonourable act on the part of the aggressor, as it gives the victim no option to participate in this culture of peaceful presentation and forewarning of battle.

Societal customs outside of nobility could also show influences from this practice (as in the case of wakor-rising's soccer game). People with long hair are seen as more level-headed and reasonable whilst those with short hair are more temperamental and violent. Barbers may hold a higher status, given their profession of shaping and shearing this status symbol. Those with long hair may wear protective head garments to stop others from cutting it off - assassinations of character may come in the form of skulking into rooms at night with scissors, providing temporary shame without risk of bloodshed or the crime of murder.

A final point I will bring up is that if this took place in a setting with magic, then there is the potential for a lord's challenge to go poorly for them if the ability to curse people with samples of their body parts is present. As in fictional depictions of Voodoo dolls, a ruler's hair could be used to harm them, and as such this cultural practice may require extra precautions in order to be done safely. Alternatively, the potential for curses may make the declaration of war that much more prominent, given that the ruler is willing to risk their own life and chop off their symbol of peace and strength in order to declare battle against an enemy.

Game of Mold: Assorted Notions

I found this video a while back. It's pretty neat.

It inspired me to try and make some kind of politically-charged fungal setting, but I haven't yet honed it down to its key components or what the general notion of the setting is. I still got some ideas down that I feel like sharing though.

This is a world of decay, where fungal houses fight over territory and power. Politics is dealt through spores, mycelium, and control of organic matter. The setting's land is heavy in themes of decomposition and rebirth. The living die and are reborn once more in new bodies, ready to feast upon the dead and die once more.

Through the Southern Gate by Cze Peku

The noble Houses are fungi. Their territory and their physical selves are one and the same, making them all very dedicated to their cause. Each has its own names (never only one), desires, smells and preferred substrate.

The houses have always struggled for power, and have been doing so since the First Flesh died. The world is built on layers and layers of composting political parties and failed rallies.

Cordyceps by Jacob Dunkan

Titans of past civilisations and worlds still stand, slowly encroached with lichens and fungus.

Fruiting bodies spread their spores throughout the land, creating an ever-constant mist. Vague whispers of slogans - "ours is the cure", "death is not the end", "untied we rot" - drift through the clouds, subtly influencing the behaviour of humanoids and beasts alike.

On the Shore of Dreams by Cze Peku

The Dreaming. The collective world of ancestral subconscious; hallucinations of the dead and dying, live and living. Sometimes spores and creatures lose themselves here, becoming more sensory entity than physical. These creatures are abstract forces of synesthesic being, and they have escaped decay by exposing themselves to mental decay. As long as they are sensed, they exist.

Mushrooms by Anastasia Wyatt

There are living beings here. The next generation of fertiliser, or the descendants of detrivores and fungivores. Ghouls, flyfolk, gnolls, and other such beings have been and gone. The fungus enters their bodies at a young age, grooming them into political weapons and tainting their bodies. Some have the gift to turn these infestations into weapons of their own, combining hedgemagic, basal druidry, and diplomacy.

Mushroom soldier by Maxim Verehin

The living that lose themselves to the infection become walking envoys of the houses. Visually similar to myconids but equipped with speech and eyes for a while. These envoys are invaluable to the houses - they provide a rare glimpse into the minds of their voters, allowing them to see where their allegiances lie. The minds of humanoids are as alien to them as a fungal mind is to us.

Meat by Maxim Verehin

A pastor of the Exquisite Corpse. His life and entrails are laid out before him, all the better for him to predict future omens and aid in medical research. Surely their power must be great, for none of their open wounds become septic- those that do are, of course, not truly faithful.

High Priests take offerings from their flocks of the sick and dying. These offerings of functioning organs are integrated into their own, allowing the priests to better love their charges.

The Exquisite Corpse is a faith of purity and fullness in one's actions. They teach that one must act with full intent of their actions, and that doing so will help them distill their essence and allow their bodies to reject external entities.

Assassin's Trophy by Seb McKinnon

The casualties of war between the houses are many. Fortunately, this one cannot speak of the atrocities it has seen.

Societies rise and fall throughout the layers of rot, and dedicated excavators can earn a living by trudging through the grime and bringing back relics that haven't decayed. The way is harried by giant worms, fungal abominations, oozes, and hidden guardians.

Parasitized Moth Warrior by Vasco Mariano

A fungal inquisitor infects and interrogates a dustknight. Their methods are curt and its questioning equally so. For some, infestation and decomposing before one's own eyes is enough to make one betray their house. For others, the inevitability of death makes their threats worth little.

Arachnid Knight by Chenthooran Nambiarooran

Mannimarco, The King of Worms by Shamine King

Left: a dustknight, plated in chitin and wielding large blades. Their oaths are made to preserve the memory of the living, to stop people straying too far into the Dreaming, and to fight against the final decomposition: the time at which there is nothing left to grow upon, and the final fungal bodies break each other down into dust.

Right: undeath is one of the ways to escape fungal enslavement. Mushrooms grow on dead things, and those that remove decomposition from the cycle are free from their influence. As such, the study of necromancy is rich, with liches wandering market streets alongside worms that walk.

decay by Vladislav Orlowski

Speakers of the Chytrid. An ancient household, noted for the slaying of many of the great Olms that hide in dead lands.

universal carcinogen scp - 135 by Vladislav Orlowski

A prophet's birth is rare indeed, and many lords hope for their death to bring about the coffin birth of the realm's next saviour.

UA Artificer v2: Tool Usage

WotC's new artificer UA has many traits that are cool, confusing, and interesting. One of these is that the artificer can use a set of artisan's tools that it is proficient in as an arcane focus. This particular box especially caught my eye as an interesting aspect of the artificer to explore:

Keith Baker hit a similar conclusion and similar beats to me on the potential this has for really distinguishing your character and providing unique flavour to your spells and other class abilities. It's worth noting as well that an artificer can be proficient in multiple tools, and whilst they may specialise in one or two, there's nothing stopping them having a variety of options for invention origins.

Please see Baker's post for some examples of this; read on below for some alternatives and additional thoughts on how spells and subclass traits could work with tools in mind. I've left some out but will go back to them in time.

Alchemist's Supplies: Potions, salves, and poultices. Some must be thrown or applied directly to the target; others require mixing just before creation, breaking down and reapplying. You could alternatively go the Fullmetal Alchemist route, though this is likely more a combination of tinker's tools and loosely applied alchemical theory.

Brewer's Supplies: Your tools have given you experience in short hours of work followed by a long duration of waiting for the best results. Your tools can be used to distill and purify. You know just the stiff drink to get a good night's sleep and cure a wound or two along the way.

Calligrapher's Supplies: Baker's ideas of writing the words of the spell or reading them off of paper are solid choices here. Though this may be classified more under painter's tools or an independent tool set entirely, I also like the idea of artificer tattooists, channeling magic through ink and skin, constantly patching up their work as the magic burns out and the ink fades away.

Reptilian Campaign

A friend of mine recently proposed running a campaign based on Dinosaurs of the Wild West by Shaun Keenan.

Image from Shaun Keenan's ArtsStation.

I chatted with him about potential ways that the idea could be used, which in turn led to him making the following (abbreviated) setting premise:

Long ago, the divine pantheon split into those that would strike out against the devils and those that would not. The warring gods were victorious, but in doing so disrupted the power struggle between devils and demons, resulting in demons breaching the surface world. To destroy them, the gods that had avoided hell used much of their power to banish the fiends back to their pits and lock their more violent brothers away, turning them into the new archdevils. This war caused mass arcane fallout, making a world where those with thicker skins (figuratively and literally) could endure moreso than others. This is the age of reptile supremacy.

Whilst it does detract from the simplicity that was dinosaurs in the Wild West, I ran with the ideas a bit further to see how players would actually interact with these concepts in a way that their characters would know and understand. Here are a few ideas that I'm especially happy with.

Gods & Devils

I am under the assumption that my friend was planning to either use or heavily be inspired by the Forgotten Realms pantheon, with Tyr as the god that headed the fight against the archdevils. With this in mind, the trapped gods are now the new archdevils. From this, you gain two pantheons; the pantheon of Old Gods that ended the great war but are now drained of power, and the pantheon of Fell Gods that have increased power but at terrible cost. The new archdevils take their duty- fighting the demons- seriously, and only they truly know whether they feel remorse for the position they now find themselves in.

All sacred animals and relevant symbols are of course replaced with dinosaurs and other large reptiles.

Tiefling Martyrdom

The first tieflings could mostly be paladins & clerics of the old gods, meaning tieflings (at least some of them) could be a very religious/zealous lot, seeing their makers as martyrs instead of evil entities. It could be a strange surprise for people to see these infernal humanoids practicing the same faiths they do, just as pious and humble as those around them. They know their forefathers fell from divinity out of their belief that they could make the world safer, and they still hope that if their gods can break free of the prison, they can continue their good work and fix the mess that the material plane now is.

Skull Collector by Raph Lomotan

Mammalian Underdark

Deep beneath the earth, the underworld houses an echo of what the world could be now; one without dinosaurs and reptilian overlords. It is a cold, harsh place, dwelled in by strange mammalian goliaths: cave mammoths, echolocating terror birds, pale smilodons. Hidden in small communities, shamanistic neanderthals hide from the cavern beasts and praise the remnants of the god war that have fallen through the cracks of the earth.

I pitched this idea to myself as an underground ice age. Imagine traveling through caverns and tunnels with low light and food, but everything is cold, covered in thick snow or slippery ice, and there are sabre-tooth cats lurking around the corner.

Watcher of the Ancients by Bjarke Pedersen

Giant skeletons

In my friend's original idea, the remaining gods that fought the demons used an army of giants and dragons to fight them. Whilst some dragons survived to help introduce the age of cold blood, the giants fell in battle.

Their skeletons litter the land, ripe for taking by those skilled with necromancy. In this land, 'undead' does not invoke memories of shambling hordes, but of gargantuan striding beasts that rise from the sands, called to new wars beyond the grave.

I am reminded of the Japanese gashadokuro: giant, invisible, vampiric skeletons.

Bound devils

People make pacts with weakened devils, binding them to objects to access their power. Some call them artificers, but others know the real truth. How else do their crossbows shoot hellfire bolts, or their cloaks shrug off damage and reveal a winged, horned shadow standing behind them at all times? What is devil worship but another kind of prayer? Can any of the believers in the weakened gods above claim to have communed with their lords face to face, to have shook their hand and left with blessings?

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I'd also highly recommend checking out Goblin Punch's mutant dinosaur generator, as well as their dinosaur cleric. It's a cool idea that could be fun to play with.

These ideas definitely aren't the most directly related to Wild West Dinosaurs, which is possibly why I like them- they can be used for other things outside of the initial premise.

Faction Prompt: the Dreambreakers

A bit of a shorter post today- just want to get ideas down onto a page so I can work on them later when I have more mental energy.

Beholder dreams warp reality. To dream of another beholder creates more beholders; to dream of blood loss creates a death kiss. Many have speculated as to where beholders go in their slumber, by what power they can bring new life into reality, and whether this power is solely limited to a beholder-like manifestation.

Enter the Dreambreakers*.

Mages and psychics. All working to decode the psyche of beholders, to access their dreams and probe them in the desired direction.

Their large scale methodology is simulations. Sometimes simulations within simulations. Interacting with the beholder's subconscious, interpreting the characters and setting to gain further insight and access. There they travel as shades of their past selves, warped by the beholder's madness and subconscious influence.

The Dreambreakers of course must have beholders to indulge their research, and precautions against their physical forms being destroyed by whatever entities the beholder dreams up. Some choose to infiltrate beholder cults and organisations, acting as servants to get close to their aberrant masters. Others hire adventurers to incapacitate beholderkin, or to find weakened and diseased individuals that can be easier to exploit.

Conflicts are frequent. Different people interpreting dream aspects often results in mixed views. This conflict and tension ripples through into the dreams, which in turn shape the dream itself. Little is truly hidden within the dreams of the beholder.

As the members enter the dreams, they too may be dreamt into existence. These copies are mostly the same. They hate their originals, and will seek their immediate destruction. The Dreambreakers are aware of this- they all have their own copies to hide from, small gangs of not-entirely-themselves that seek their deaths. They also have experience encountering (but not stopping) the other entities their experiments bring into the physical world.

*Dreambreaker is a sucky name and I need to come up with a better one if I ever intend to use this in an actual game presented to players I respect.

Porcs: Swine Orcs

Monsters and Manuals pointed out recently what utter bastards boars & their domesticated cousins can be, and how they make for much more sense as a visual and behavioural reference for orcs than simply making them green-skinned humans. Whilst I'm usually more inclined to deviate from the savage side of orcs and and focus instead on developing their culture, I thought having a little bit of a nose dive into this idea could be fun.

There is little structure from here on out (think of each new paragraph as a bullet point and it becomes a lot easier to read). Also the images are from Darkest Dungeon, because their swine are pretty much exactly what I envisage for this idea.

Specifically, this one.

Heads of Lerna

Based on some brainstorming for a cult dedicated to the Lernaean Hydra.

Awakened Hydra by Artur Treffner

The Heads of Lerna are cultists that treat the hydra as their totem and idol. They provide her with protection (from her perspective, they provide a distraction for those wanting to disturb her slumber), food, and treasure, and in return the hydra provides the tools for the cult's machinations: her poison.

The toxins of the hydra emanate from everything: blood, tears, saliva, breath, shit. All of it is toxic, most of it is lethal. The cultists have gained resistance over time to the noxious fumes she produces, but her blood is still dangerous. Most of the toxins they take from her come through saliva and waste products, or collecting the water that she wallows in.

Stone Erodes, Names Remain

There are many ways to start off a campaign (or prose). Here's one of them (note: nsfw art used below the break).

You slump to the ground. Everything aches. You cough and splutter for air and dust spews from your mouth. Your tongue tastes of chalk and there's grit in your eyes.

Looking around you, others are in a similar state to you. Standing above your collapsed forms is an adventurer of higher level, wiping blood off of their weapon of choice. On their belt is a small burlap bag, writing, containing a head-sized object. A vaguely humanoid, headless corpse lies on the floor in the corner, covered in dull green scales.

Congratulations, you have been freed from petrification.

An Alternative Kobold

Ribbons of meat falls from the dragon's flank, splattering to the ground in a grotesque cluster. The beast roars in pain and vengeance. Dragons are chaos and sin made manifest, and their whole being is driven by the desire to be mighty and powerful. Their still-warm flesh still holds this drive, and wills itself to continue the pursuit. Slowly and clumsily, the flesh begins to stir, slithering and dragging itself into piles. They wind around each other, grafting into shape.

Kobolds are flesh given thought. Scraps of offal and fatty layers filled with greed, wrath, and envy. One spends its first few hours of existence without bones. As the mass attempts to regenerate, energy is focused into the head, providing a maw to bite and teeth to pierce. The kobold has little need for other bones: all the better to wriggle through gaps and squirm into people's houses.

A Case for Lovecraft in High Level D&D

Spoilers for The Case of Charles Dexter Ward to follow.

As my understanding of D&D and the gameplay it allows has progressed, I have become more and more sceptical of the potential for running effective Lovecraftian games at high levels. This is often because Lovecraft's works have focused on their protagonists being small, naive, and powerless, whilst D&D creates player characters that are borderline demigods. There is little to fear from the Great Old Ones when you can summon them to your doorstep or banish them to other realms with a snap of your fingers.

Recently though, I was reminded of a lesser known tale of Lovecraft's work that I think could work well for a campaign. It isn't one that is so hands on with the eldritch lore or summoning of outer realm entities, but it is one that I believe would still work for higher level play, whilst also working with the pulp-like style of D&D: H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.