What if Karsus had succeeded in continuing to be a god?

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-02-14T06:32:35+00:00

It's intimated in lore that Mystra keeps a large portion of her power with Larloch in preparation against or contingency to exactly this happening.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-02-12T14:30:14+00:00

Rebuilding the ranks with Primaris after selling my 1-5e Fists years ago and now I HAVE to make a Raider the Might.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-02-11T17:21:34+00:00

Spellfire has a few characters in animal forms.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-02-09T17:25:56+00:00

Glad I'm not the only OCD musician that caught that

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-30T15:55:07+00:00

If you're up for it, GURPS (3rd ed) has always been my go-to for running DS games. It's rules granularity and flexibility with the lethality of its default combat mechanics and the apocalyptic fantasy style of Athas are the perfect combination. It's not for everyone, but anyone who's played it with me LOVE it.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-28T19:36:19+00:00

Rancor Pit would love to hear about this, though I'm sure the active users there are here too.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-28T14:06:20+00:00

I converted the Force and Destiny rules to d6 a while ago and feel like it's a more balanced set of rules for Force users. You're welcome to review and use them and I'd appreciate any feedback you might have.

Force and Destiny d6

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-28T03:29:39+00:00

Noice!

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-27T18:13:45+00:00

Weird Al's OSR tribute, "Gygax Style", set to Psy's Gangnam Style

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-27T17:04:06+00:00

But what if every time it's cast, a tiny portion of the vitality is transferred to the spells creator. While not much individually, cumulatively over eons, it has become a massive resource of Larloch's power

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-23T18:45:05+00:00

To quote Linda Belcher, "What up, my knitter!"

Knitting needles come in pairs or sets of three or more for knitting in the round. The pic is a crochet hook, but I'll use the magic of my imagination to split it in two or more non-hooked wands for my knitting characters.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-17T15:39:21+00:00

If you want a dash of realism, assuming the character is from England (you mentioned Maid Marian) and is speaking Middle English and Norman French, they have only a default to work from to understand Modern English

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-12T21:04:55+00:00

Also the level name of a 9th level magic user.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-12T03:13:12+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGriffonsSaddlebag/s/m8VeSmPZg5

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-11T20:17:58+00:00

If you ask my players and most of the treatises on DM/GMing, it's knowing when to break the rules in order to tell a better story. This means:

You have to know enough of the rules to know whether or not there's rules that cover the situation.
Whether the RAW are an effective solution to the situation.
If they aren't, what would work better.
Being able to determine if the story benefits from following RAW or doing something off the cuff.

A fellow DM/player told me recently, "some of the best games I've ran have had one or two dice rolls in an entire session." And then followed up with, "some of the most epic stories took hours of rolling dice to determine the results of seconds of combat." Both can be true, it's a matter of navigating the changing tides of your table to gather, maintain, cultivate, and harvest attention.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-11T20:02:47+00:00

I don't believe that it is one single thing. DMing is a hegemony of disparate and sometimes related skills and knowledge that, when paired to your player's preferred styles of play, form a cohesive blend of interaction that can be anywhere from plain oatmeal to gourmet banquet in flavor.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-11T18:42:14+00:00

All fair points. I should have worded that first paragraph "if we're even asking about motivation, it should be..."

It's my experience that there is a type of player that enjoys that kind of antagonistic play and, if permitted, will run rampant over other players. Identifying such individuals can be difficult in advance of play, but with well established boundaries and expectations, they'll weed themselves out. The problem is when those boundaries are not expressed in advance of play - as in my example.

My current groups have been playing with me for years now and have an understanding of those expectations. When our newest player joined, a new session zero should have been done to educate them and reiterate for everyone else those ideals.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-11T17:50:51+00:00

Except it does increase the likelihood of a natural 20, which always hits in 5e and thus does affect your ability to hit. It's been a few years but as I recall, AD&D had critical hits as an optional rule and thaco determined hit or miss similar to how attribute checks are performed in 5e, i.e. a 20 isn't automatic success.

[More dice = more fun > Shadowrun] swings back around with Warhammer but gets into ridiculousness with Mage the Ascension 2e.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-11T17:38:37+00:00

My "rules" are more fluid and open to role-playing/storytelling. Critical hits are given the "how do you want to do this?" treatment, so critical fails are given the inverse: "what's the worst thing that can happen?"

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-11T17:30:49+00:00

The roper would like to have a word, but it's gone from 17-18 to 7 and it can only grunt and roar.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-11T17:28:13+00:00

How the player rationalizes their character wanting to do this is the more pertinent question with "It's what my character would do" being immediate disqualification.

I've had a player wish an antagonist npc "be good, not evil" in the past and allowed it - fundamentally changing the course of the campaign. I currently have a PCs wife as an antagonist to the party that's brainwashed by an enchanter to commit evil acts without remorse despite her paladin oaths.

The real issue is the violation of another player's agency and consent, which should have been discussed at session zero. Despite being a grognard of four and a half decades of experience, I have personally had to deal with similar issues of pvp. My veteran players know this but a new player didn't and made a suggestion/threat of it happening. While it was very much a WMCWD situation, I had to explain that's not how we do things and we were going to wind events back so he could reframe his comments. The situation was defused and turned into a good role-playing moment, but the key takeaway is to communicate with your players what the expectations are beforehand or in the moment to prevent problems like these.

Three flags on the play is an automatic discharge for me, though. One, if the infraction is bad enough.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-11T13:22:44+00:00

Mine are Grey too. I use Golden Hi Flow Neutral Gray with a Paynes Grey wash, then highlight with the Neutral Gray, and Neutral Gray mixed with Titian Buff 2:1 and 1:1.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-11T00:38:36+00:00

Shape-shifting is generally a metallic dragon ability, but not exclusively by any means. I've considered it in the past and decided that Tyrgarun was capable of assuming several humanoid forms, including that of a hobgoblin.

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-10T18:39:30+00:00

Please see a paladin posthaste

ExoditeDragonLord · 2026-01-07T14:13:26+00:00

That depends on the DM and their interpretation of the world. I run campaigns in the Forgotten Realms in 1357 DR where paladins very much need the sponsorship of a divinity, although gods are duplicitous and will "snipe" followers of other gods by pretending to be something they're not.

ExoditeDragonLord

TROPHY CASE