As a writer, you should try to give your villains plausible motivations, backstories, etc. A villain is much more interesting if they think they’re the hero of their own story.
As a DM, this is still great advice in theory but in practice you should ABSOLUTELY NEVER DO THIS because your players will discover your villains’ tragic backstory, look at their motivation and find it sound, and end up adopting the villains, going rogue from the Celestial Intervention Agency to avenge the wrongs done said villains and ensure their freedom, accidentally kidnapping the President, and plunging Gallifrey into a civil war.
This is… extremely specific
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Tag: dnd
he’s not so smart, but hes a good boy
Trying to write a dnd campaign
Player 1: I want to play a cleric w a really sad and dramatic backstory
Player 2: I wanna play an orc who has his dick out 100% of the time
I did a thing.
Keepers of the Feather
wakeupontheprongssideofthebed:
dnd item: an enchanted hot tub that compels its occupants to confront each other over any grievance they have been holding onto
it’s called a j’accusi
Sometimes i think about the idea of Common as a language in fantasy settings.
On the one hand, it’s a nice convenient narrative device that doesn’t necessarily need to be explored, but if you do take a moment to think about where it came from or what it might look like, you find that there’s really only 2 possible origins.
In settings where humans speak common and only Common, while every other race has its own language and also speaks Common, the implication is rather clear: at some point in the setting’s history, humans did the imperialism thing, and while their empire has crumbled, the only reason everyone speaks Human is that way back when, they had to, and since everyone speaks it, the humans rebranded their language as Common and painted themselves as the default race in a not-so-subtle parallel of real-world whiteness.
In settings where Human and Common are separate languages, though (and I haven’t seen nearly as many of these as I’d like), Common would have developed communally between at least three or four races who needed to communicate all together. With only two races trying to communicate, no one would need to learn more than one new language, but if, say, a marketplace became a trading hub for humans, dwarves, orcs, and elves, then either any given trader would need to learn three new languages to be sure that they could talk to every potential customer, OR a pidgin could spring up around that marketplace that eventually spreads as the traders travel the world.
Drop your concept of Common meaning “english, but in middle earth” for a moment and imagine a language where everyone uses human words for produce, farming, and carpentry; dwarven words for gemstones, masonry, and construction; elven words for textiles, magic, and music; and orcish words for smithing weaponry/armor, and livestock. Imagine that it’s all tied together with a mishmash of grammatical structures where some words conjugate and others don’t, some adjectives go before the noun and some go after, and plurals and tenses vary wildly based on what you’re talking about.
Now try to tell me that’s not infinitely more interesting.
This is the first batch of enemies my players faced in the new storyarc where they are traversing the afterlife. So lots of undead (again).
– Tuz
half tiefs (and a full tief for reference)
A cleric who is the Team Mom and only heals by kissing you on the forehead and buffs you by licking her thumb and rubbing away some schmutz on your face
someone’s like “you know that’s not actually required for your job” and she’s like “shhhhh my beautiful child, my healing my rules, I made you a potion, it’s chicken noodle mana”
Their holy sigil is a macaroni necklace you made in second grade. You didn’t know them in second grade. You’re not sure how they got that macaroni necklace. You ask them about it, and they just slip you a twenty and tell you to get whatever you want at the food court. “What is a food court?” you cry, but it doesn’t matter because they summoned a hero’s feast and everything tastes wonderful, and at some point you crawl into their lap to cry about something you thought you were adult enough to handle.
“This is you handling it,” they say. “You’re never too big to ask your mom for help.”
“You’re literally not my mother,” you sob.
“But metaphorically,” they say, and you’re like truuuuuuuuuu and sob a little more before they tuck you into a bedroll because you’ve got a big day tomorrow stopping an assassination at a royal palace
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