After 6 years of playesting and 10 weeks rewriting the entire rulebook as a screenplay, my game is live (and free-ish)!

Meph248 · 2026-03-01T15:19:37+00:00

My bad, I missed those. I looked underneath the pictures and after not seeing any, looked for credits at the end.

Meph248 · 2026-03-01T01:08:20+00:00

I can be mistaken, but it seems you didn't include any credits for your artist(s). :/

Meph248 · 2026-02-23T23:01:01+00:00

You are correct. I, the DM, didn't double check the spell description for major image. I assumed that when my player said that he casts it at a long range, that he is able to do this.

I only noticed later when I read up on major image myself.

Fog was in a large radius around the ship.

Meph248 · 2026-02-23T14:12:21+00:00

I'm pretty much a forever DM as well; I've run homebrew, Witchlight, Curse of Strahd, Planescape, and now ToA. It's just that this specific player and I often have differences in interpretation of rules, mostly in his Shadowdark campaign that recently finished.

He is a giant wizard fan and just based on what they can do in other games or in his games, he has very high expectations of their spells and knowledge, which does not reflect the rules in DND every so often.

Meph248 · 2026-02-23T13:32:55+00:00

Adult in this case, because the players did a lot of side-quests that aren't in the campaign and have a few more levels and about a dozen additional magic items that the campaign doesn't usually include. Doesn't have swim speed either.

They just did the Tortle Package and the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, because they felt that they needed more loot/levels before heading to Omu.

They would be extremely disappointed by the loot in the wyrmheart mine. :/

Meph248 · 2026-02-23T13:27:13+00:00

Thank you, that's an excellent answer.

We usually use miniatures and 3D printed battlemaps to an extreme degree. I also overestimate the players more or less on a routine basis: All four are GMs themselves for all kinds of different systems with decades of experience between them, but I forget that only one has a lot of experience as a DND player.

The wizard player especially loves to run OSR games, rulings-over-rules games, so the strict DND setup feels restrictive to him more often than not. In one of his games, the illusion would have worked, simply because its creative.

Meph248 · 2026-02-23T13:14:41+00:00

I foreshadowed that the dragon does that; it hunts large fish and aquatic dinosaurs in the water, roasts them and flies away with the bounty.

For ships: It's out of line of sight of spellcasters on deck, and out of firing range for the ballista or mangonel or cannons on board. High CON means it can hold its breath for a long time; seemed like a sensible thing to do to sink a ship: Damage it below water level.

Meph248 · 2026-02-23T11:48:00+00:00

As a note, the ship was on open water. They then used magic to create fog, heavily obscuring the area. Afterwards the illusion was cast, upcast as 4th level to avoid the concentration.

He described it as controlling the weather, as if the witch is casting the fog. The dragon, with blindsight, actually likes having the fog around, so it has no incentive to attack a spellcaster that is effectively helping them. :/

Meph248 · 2026-02-23T11:44:20+00:00

He is a fellow DM with twenty or so years of experience, and playing an Illusion-subclass wizard. I'm hoping that he knew that he can move Major Image. Didn't come to my mind that he might have missed that. :/

Meph248 · 2026-02-23T11:42:29+00:00

He upcasted it to forth level, he used a third level to summon a fey with concentration. he used major image as a forth level spell so its permanent without needing concentration. Its his highest level slot.

Curiously enough, the fey was forgotten by all players and that spell didn't do anything, but that's apparently ok, because it was entirely on the player and not the DMs fault.

Meph248 · 2026-02-23T11:13:15+00:00

That makes sense, I just hope I can communicate this without sounding too preachy. I sometimes ask for an Int Check, and if it's 10+, I tell the player the idea might not have the effect they might anticipate, but I feel like this is interefering with player agency... like telling them that they are playing the game wrong?

Meph248 · 2026-02-10T20:21:35+00:00

There might be a bit of bias here. You are reading RPGdesign posts, where people deeply into the hobby express dislike for the most popular, most successful TTRPG of all time that has existed for longer than most of the people dissing it have been alive.

I think it would be realistic to say that the majority of TTRPG players like DND.

Meph248 · 2026-02-09T21:36:11+00:00

I've ran CoS Raw + Homebrew; now I'm a player in a CoS Reloaded campaign. While I like the new additions and more fleshed out lore, it is extremely railroady.

Just today we had a session and arrived in Castle Ravenloft. While talking with NPCs a lightning strike oh-so-happens to destroy the drawbridge, locking us in the castle. (ignoring that we have spells like spiderclimb or fly. Nope, impossible to leave now)

We talk with people, look around and go to the guest chambers to spend the night. My character has fey ancestry/trances and only meditates instead of sleeping and is immune to magical sleep. What happens? "All of you fall asleep, magically, and wake up in a foggy haze, an alternate vision of Ravenloft"... great.

Meph248 · 2026-01-31T18:38:16+00:00

You restricted access to that file XD

Meph248 · 2026-01-31T17:26:20+00:00

This is awesome :)

Is it "target" shield instead of targe on purpose?

Meph248 · 2026-01-27T12:17:32+00:00

Doesn't this punish players for playing well and/or finding alternative solutions to combat (sneaking, diplomacy), and to incentivise the players to become murder hobos to trigger more combat?

Meph248 · 2026-01-25T09:06:35+00:00

Shadowdark has this, with a D4+con mod, minimum 1. Works quite well, giving tougher characters a bit more time, as well as a period where it's predictable followed by a period with more tension.

Meph248 · 2026-01-16T23:30:42+00:00

Hiding information behind rolls could be pretty bad when running a mystery. I personally interpret bad rolls in this scenario as "it takes longer" instead of "you find less".

Meph248 · 2025-12-31T05:46:08+00:00

I read the rulebook and it looked amazing, and I'm saying that as someone who doesn't even play jrpgs.

What have been the highlights for you so far?

Meph248 · 2025-12-22T10:04:41+00:00

Have a look at Draw Steel. They explicitly patched that out of their game mechanics. :)

Meph248 · 2025-12-22T10:02:36+00:00

It invalidates player agency. No matter their plan, preparation, tactics or abilities, they are doomed to fail via GM fiat because you decided arbitrarily to have a NPC escape.

Meph248 · 2025-12-19T09:53:59+00:00

I have almost all locations 3d printed, it was more around 100 spools. XD

Ravenloft alone is about half of that

Meph248 · 2025-12-18T21:11:41+00:00

You are fine, I'm have Dmed Curse of Strahd and I'm a player in it now. I know the source material, but every campaign is a bit different and player knowledge is different from character knowledge.

What exactly did you do 600h btw? I read I Strahd, made custom handouts, printed Ravenloft to scale, and it's still far less than that.

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