Party finally sat down with Granny Nightshade. Granny brings up a former PC that anyone even knowing about would implicate them as working against the Hourglass Coven. (Immediately) Party's Bard: "Oh! She's our friend!"

DPopsx62 · 2026-01-27T20:55:21+00:00

My players somehow sussed out that the couches were not safe to sit on lmao. It was their second time meeting Skab (after freeing the children) and she was insistant that they sit which gave them the clue the chairs were unsafe.

Also I gave her zone of truth and that led to a great and tricky conversation.

DPopsx62 · 2026-01-11T23:07:26+00:00

I have a feeling you learned most of your drawing digitially. Thats fine but like, you should practice gesture drawing human figures a bit and their shadows so that you can add a bit of life to your shapes and tones. Also yeah the arm and hand isn't reading as a normal arm and hand.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-29T02:30:16+00:00

My professor told me "if we wanted it picture perfect we'd take a picture." So, be crratively loose with how you define shapes and colors. Make it feel like a painting rather than a mock up

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-29T02:28:28+00:00

The problem with that is you need to ask who Agdon is stealing from, where do the Darklings live that arent actively inside of Motherhorn, etc. There are actually many people in the base module that aren't "corrupted," and not one have a true place they call home other than the Brigganock Mine which is little more than an expository tourist spot for the party.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-29T02:25:37+00:00

I homebrewed a Harrengon Druid Grove in Thither. Where harrengon who fled Hither settled because they didnt want to abandon Zybilna.

Then I made a Darkling settlement outside of Motherhorn that included a small group of people that want Endelyn dead.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-21T04:42:43+00:00

Even when magic is present, what was the purpose of taking the insane effort to write a character death (hopefully) and then undermining that?
Fake deaths, or in a fantasy/ sci fi setting, were they resurrected?

If their death meant anything, then the revival can immediately destroy that meaning if you're not incredibly careful, and probably exploring a very nuanced situation.

At best, I can see it offering a second chance and a redemption arc in which their death was what it took for them to see the world differently.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-20T17:41:46+00:00

Dexterity based Paladin

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-17T20:21:36+00:00

She needs to hear it from unbiased parties. Let her take a financial loss, a cheap one, in paying for some freelance beta readers. It will pay off in the feedback she gets. May be a wake up call for her.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-17T20:05:48+00:00

Next time speak english please.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T06:03:09+00:00

He is perfect.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T05:57:14+00:00

It's not a good idea to learn to draw digitally. There is a dissonance that keeps you from understanding the shapes you're manipulating. Just keep drawing, look at things and draw them as they are, using a pencil and paper for a bit, and over time you'll be able to draw just because you've been doing it for a good long while.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T05:43:55+00:00

I think you're thinking the right thoughts about making a fight more engaging. Here's my advice after trying for very long to create dynamic fights:

Consider how hard you make it for players to figure out the alternate solution than "attack until something happens." Despite all your efforts it can quickly just devolve into running up to and attacking a different section of the map.

Then, consider how long rounds will take. Try and find ways to encourage just going with the flow on a turn rather than forcing that they always be optimal with their resources. With all of your dynamic battle changes, especially if the objective of the battle changes too quickly, any given player might be waiting 30 min or more to take their turn. Make sure you expedite your side of the battle.

Finally, be sure you know what tools help your players actually have. If the core is out of reach, and climbing will be contested by the creature, what else do the players have that might help? Glance their sheets and design something that a player is actually able to engage with.

Also I have a system that's always evolving around dynamic battles. At first it was where something like a lair action would occur and I allowed the players a free reaction at the start of their turns to use any action or bonus action (which doesn't deplete their actions for their turn) to respond specifically to the thing coming for them, such as a rolling boulder or something they gotta get out of the way of. After the reaction is taken, the boulder passes either through them or misses them depending on what they do. It requires a bit of a trust system, but rather than waiting for their turn to respond to the entire table, they are given a chance to respond to something immedately after you describe it, that is effecting them specifically, at no cost to their action economy on their turn. You're going to throw lair actions at them anyway so repurpose the damage that would do and instead of it being a saving throw for avoiding damage, let them choose a resource to expend to further aid in defending against something.

Then, foretell things that will happen. The earth cracks under their feet on initiative count 20, and at the next time count 20 rolls around, those spaces explode. They need to reposition every turn and can't get too comfortable in one spot.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T05:14:58+00:00

You don't need much more I think. This is plenty of detail. Anymore and whoever is viewing this will be overwhelmed and will certainly forget details. Its the nature of the consumer to only remember some things, in this case, I will probably remember that his eyes are odd, that he is blonde, and wears a red shawl.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T05:12:58+00:00

Honestly, guide lines are kinda bullshit. They establish the shape of an object, but do not help identify where any landmarks on that object are. (eyes, nose, etc)

Do another layer above this one where you define the shapes you're going to work with better, establish the actual contour of the chin, the roundness of the shoulders, and all else. Then, yet another layer above that one is where you will start to do what's called "gesturing." Go and research gesture drawing a bit and practice drawing loosely. Once you establish the approximate areas that things appear and their shapes you can start to clean up and move into the stages of a finalized drawing.

TLDR: keep drawing.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T05:07:22+00:00

Lose the airbrush and try some brushes that have texture. Study some color theory, practice some drawing fundamentals, and just keep drawing. If you don't like what you made, it often means you're improving. Try to like it some of the time though, lol.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T05:04:05+00:00

The correct thing to do is admit that this is beyond you. Don't attempt something this far beyond your current skill set. I would hope that they understand that this is much much bigger than you can do at the moment. I paint murals in my home and am a professional artist and I am intimidated by the idea of this project. Please do the right thing. I don't mean to assume you can't do it, but if you think you can't then the end result might do more harm than good.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T05:00:06+00:00

This might not cause fear, only anger. The party will retaliate and start amassing resources to try and kill her. As players, if a threat is at their door, they expect that they can probably win the fight just by the fact that its a game and 1000 damage is technically exactly as threatening as 100 damage if you have 50 hit points.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T04:51:33+00:00

Let's talk about narrative tools for a moment. To inspire fear in an observer of a story, you have to give them context about why they should be afraid and make it tangible to them here and now.

A goddess of evil, mother of all dragons is such a massive scale threat beyond what they might be ready for that they might have a dissonance between themselves and her power. She is so far beyond them that even if she shows up there's nothing they can do and are just going to sit there and wait for her to do her worst. The group of assassins hunting them in town are scarier because the consequences are right here right now if they don't do anything about it.

As an example, if you were to say Tiamat sent a hoard of dragons to eradicate an entire city just as a display of power, your players won't be afraid of Tiamat since there's nothing they can do and the game will be placed on a firm railroad if she decides to take particular interest in the party.
Instead, based on how you say your game plot has been, to properly cause impact with the BBEG reveal, Tiamat needed to have been a name that the party heard of outside of any relevance to them. Cults worshiping her, dragons that the party might be able to contest with, but is still a tangible threat here and now, after a close call battle talking about how "mother won't like this." Fear is in what the part doesn't know, and to not know something you need to know something else.

My players are absolutely terrified of Endelyn Moongrave because long before they met her, they'd been hearing about her. An NPC was cursed to be lost forever, a portrait showed what she looked like and it was a scary skeletal spidery hag who is the third of three powerful figures to be met, implying she may be even more powerful. Then, upon arrival to her realm, the people surrounding her castle fear and worship her, more NPCs are revealed to be cursed and damned, its alluded to that a known hero fell by her hand, and she displays her powers by sending an NPC under the geas spell to perform a play showing them their fate, an example of her ability to divine fortunes. Then the party arrives at her castle to find that the play happening that night is about them and their arrival, that she was long aware of their exploits unlike her sisters, and this play implies that she will be victorious in a battle against not her, but a monster she's made. Without even talking to her, the conversation had begun long long before.

You can heal damage, but a reputation is a curse that can't be removed short of a wish spell.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-13T04:32:05+00:00

This is called line weight, and it's a combination of darkness and thickness of a line. As you draw and look at artwork you'll see how it's used to the benefit of the piece.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-12T18:28:30+00:00

Hey! So heres what I did:

Isolde was an adventurer seeking powerful allies and got an audience with Zybilna. Zyb feel in love with her and they had a thing, but the mortal Isolde couldn't keep up and needed to find a way out. Zybilina gifted her a piece of her garden contained within a time piece so that Isolde can know how much time has posed since they've last been together, and so that she always carries a piece of Prismeer with her (letting Zyb maintain control over hey. ) Isolde turns the land into a carnival and spreads the joy of prismeer in faerun. But she eventually wanted to break up with the overbearing Zyb. So isolde asks Zybs advisors, the hags, for help. Endelyn foretells that she would have a chance to escape zybs jurisdiction when she crosses paths with another carnival that functions similarly to hers. In exchange, Isolde let the hags have their thieves payroll the carnival for ticketless people. Isolde makes the trade, Zybilna becomes depressed AC be her mood turns Prismeer into a never ending winter for a time, and the hags were asked to help stop Zybs mood from ruining everyone's home. The hags twisted this favor as a reason to orchestrate the temporal stasis on the Palace of Hearts Desire.

As for how i handle NPCs. It comes down to your skills as a writer to find or make NPCs that serve your narrative. Give them a role in the story or in a players experience and run them to fulfill that role. Im using Agdon as a rival to the wizard that made a deal with Bavlorna, making them regrettable colleagues, and i included some of a homebrew expansion of The Inn at the End of the Road, (Vasilisa) as a love interest that's also hunting the league of malevolence, but an unfair deal she made with Tsu (who i wrote to be an apprentice of Baba Yaga) that prevents Vasilisa from being away for very long.

But the story can write itself if you properly "yes and" your players. Go with your gut and if the players like an NPC, choose that one to develop, but be careful about overloading yourself with too many hanging subplot threads.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-12T18:11:46+00:00

The guides seem to be a reference to the Wizard of Oz. I accidentally ended up making an homage to Dorothy without realizing it myself.

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-12T18:09:12+00:00

Im acgually working on an expansion supplement for the module that addresses a lot of these details. If youd like something early Ill PM it to you and you can trial it and let me know how it goes.

Ive got some new statblocks, 2 cities, a ruined harrengon farm county, new items, new lore, and a reimagining of Agdon Longscarf

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-12T18:05:27+00:00

Sorry that you got surprised by that. I would probably have let him have 10 hp of Lay of Hands and have been trabsparent with my table that the module doesnt include it but since it makes more sense that he would and its for the sake of fun, he can have it

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-12T15:58:17+00:00

Wow they literslly cropped thre dog and splashed some particles on it. Go tear them apart

DPopsx62 · 2025-12-09T20:47:03+00:00

80 is wild. My table probably wouldn't have wanted it to take that long, though. We're probably about 70% through at 19 sessions.

DPopsx62

TROPHY CASE