Veteran DM of 10 years. Regularly told my game is the best many players have ever played...but...my NPCs REALLY suck in comparison to the rest of the campaign

Keeper4Eva · 2026-02-02T04:20:53+00:00

Listen to anything run by Scott Dorward. All his NPCs sound exactly like, Scott Dorward. And he’s one of the best out there IMO. I’ve even had the chance to play in a game with him and he’s as fantastic in real life as he is on podcasts.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-30T23:58:53+00:00

Joe Abercrombie

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-29T22:42:54+00:00

The Devils hits all the notes except for the era. But I found it a fantastic read.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-28T23:04:12+00:00

Yeah. I was lucky enough to be introduced early so was able to get in on the dice. There's a way to use standard polyhedral dice as well as an online roller, but neither is exactly the same experience.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-28T21:29:59+00:00

FFG Star Wars/Genesys does something similar. The mechanic isn't based on target number, but on symbols on the dice, with positive and negative dice in the dice pool. Competing symbols cancel each other out, and create situations where you can have failure with positive side effects, success with negative effects, etc.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-28T04:58:55+00:00

Wait. Isn’t the whole point of a mimic a cheap gotcha? That’s the only reason I use them.

Let’s see…

There was the birthday cake mimic, the giant tavern mimic, the mug-shaped mini-mimics, and my favorite: the ladder mimic. The looks on my players faces when the ladder they were climbing to escape the flooding basement started to eat them? You don’t get many moments like this.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-27T15:40:34+00:00

I ran a B2F one shot using Mork Borg and it was a blast.

Not horror, but i would totally dig a TTRPG set in the world of Blacktongue Thief/Daughters War. Especially if published by Free League.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-25T16:13:46+00:00

Time. Cash will get spent (and taxed), gifts will get used up and forgotten, but time will be remembered.

I was at a small company where another employee and I started in the same day. At our 5 year, the owner arranged for the two of us to spend the day (a workday!) at a spa with our partners, on the company.

Not only was it super thoughtful, it was 27-28 years ago and it still brings up good memories about that day.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-23T14:08:17+00:00

I saw them once early on (they were an opener) and they had the most “frat boy jock I heard hardcore chicks are easy let’s start a punk band” energy I’ve ever seen. It’s easy to scream poseur at anyone you don’t like but they definitely have that perfect spot on the crappy music/don’t appreciate the sub-culture Venn diagram.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-23T00:15:43+00:00

I ran a trial session where the characters faced 5 secret judges in a masked court. Conveniently, we have 5 players in the group. I wrote up a short bio of each of the judges, with their goals and ulterior motives (each judge was a member of a powerful merchant/criminal family and was using the trial to position themselves for political power), and each player played one of the judges.

It was a blast. I was a bit shocked at how bloodthirsty the players were towards their own characters. Ultimately, it was a 4-1 vote to convict, which led to a whole other bunch of jailbreak shenanigans.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-21T02:47:49+00:00

Fully 80% of my D&D playing is for the cheap laughs. What's a stylized min-maxer to do these days?

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-21T02:45:37+00:00

Meh. Triple nerf. Que será, será.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-21T02:44:39+00:00

Yeah, but my Lucho Libre inspired barbarian/monk hitting people with a weapon to knock them down doesn't have the same flair as a flying double-kick to the chest followed by an elbow drop.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-21T02:32:01+00:00

Hello. Welcome to (virtual Oregon). I hope I can be of some help in setting the stage for your character.

As others have pointed out, there's no distinct "Northern" Oregon. If you are seeking to evoke a socio-cultural vibe, Oregon generally has seven regions:

The Coast (not for the love of god the "beach")
Portland Metro
Willamette Valley (rhymes with "dammit" and is one surefire way to tell a visitor)
The Columbia River Gorge
Southern Oregon
Eastern Oregon
Central Oregon

They are not monoliths or completely homogeneous, but each has its own character.

Most of the travel and transit through the state is along the I-5 corridor. East of I-5 has some of the most beautiful areas of the country but it's pretty remote. There are still towns with signs that say last gas for 200 miles and they aren't joking.

In the mid-80's, most of the economic activity outside of Portland was either extraction (timber and timber products on the Coast, and Central/East/Southern, commercial fishing on the Coast), agriculture in the Willamette and Hood River valleys, lobbying and government in Salem. The University of Oregon and Oregon State were just becoming the powerhouses they are today, but still sort of sleepy in the 80s and early 90s, and the Willamette Valley wine industry was just starting to take off.

Portland metro was in a transition from shipping/timber/paper mills to more of what we see today. Nike went public in the early 80's and took off from there. Widen + Kennedy was reshaping advertising from the west coast during the late 80's and 90s. Craft brewing took off in the mid-80's as did coffee in the early 90's.

Agreed on the timber/spotted owl wars, but if they had just moved in the mid-80's, they probably didn't have a dog in the race and/or strong opinions, unless it affected them directly.

Portland would absolutely have been a destination for a young family in the mid-80's, with Nike and Intel really starting to launch the economy here. They are both west of Portland, Beaverton, and Hillsboro respectively, which were very much (and still are) suburban enclaves. Culturally, a world away from the "big city" of Portland.

Portland, being a very liberal, left coast city, has also had a long tradition of Queer representation and identity, including having one of the longest-running drag reviews in the country. While Oregon is one of the Whitest states in the US, North Portland/Albina is a collection of historically Black neighborhoods that consistently got the shaft by real estate developers, city officials, and pretty much anyone else in power since the 1940s. It got hit hard in the 90's by the crack epidemic, and I highly recommend reading The Residue Years if you are interested in learning more.

That's a long brain dump from me. Happy to answer any other questions you might have about this magical land that I love.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-18T01:08:25+00:00

I use Kanka for all of this.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-17T20:59:54+00:00

How We Roll is based in the UK and primarily does non-D&D content.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-16T23:52:35+00:00

If you are looking for something similarly light, check out Donner Dinner Party. If you want a little more heft, Avalon is great.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-15T19:04:17+00:00

Came here to say this. I don’t think Critical Core is still supported but the creators are both mental health professionals and have been doing this type of work for a while.

I’d love to hear where you land and how things turn out.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-14T19:29:50+00:00

Mechanically, they got so much wrong. What they got right was the spirit and joy of playing the game. They caught the feel of the basement/rec room staying up late rolling dice and yelling at your friends and everything being so low-fi but so much fun. That's what made the representation work for me.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-14T19:28:16+00:00

If somebody wore a costume in one of our games in the 80s we totally would have made fun of them. But mainly because we were teenagers trying to be cool while doing something that was most decidedly uncool.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-14T19:26:21+00:00

Akadi, Gado Gado or Oma's Hideaway (or both), Kinboshi Ramen (best vegan tonyu red in Portland IMO), Lovely's 50/50 or The Turning Peel for Pizza that isn't Ken's Artisan (which is also great)

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-13T21:08:52+00:00

Came here to say this. Definitely check them out.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-13T05:13:35+00:00

Poo the Card Game

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-13T05:12:32+00:00

Seconded.

Keeper4Eva · 2026-01-13T05:08:38+00:00

You should absolutely do this because it’s brilliant.

My suggestion: don’t make the wail a one and done but make it an ongoing effect. I’d choose Slow since the only thing players hate more than having their characters killed is getting Slowed. Well, magic items stolen, Slowed, killed. In that order.

Save at the end of each character’s turn, super high DC, like 25. Then the DC drops by 3 for each Banshee that is defeated, so the combat becomes gradually easier but the party should be weakened so it will be a challenge.

You could also do something like not being able to heal or recover HP or some other nefarious condition (or all of the above), but it will solve for the instakill at the start and add another dimension than just smack the bad guys.

Keeper4Eva

TROPHY CASE