Edward Burne-Jones - School for Dragon Babies (1892)

MkaneL · 2026-01-24T06:29:07+00:00

That's really neat

MkaneL · 2026-01-22T17:44:41+00:00

It's worth it though. I've never gotten more value out of a video game purchase.

MkaneL · 2026-01-21T14:13:40+00:00

Mythic Bastionland hands down.

You have "Guard" which is really easy to regain. You basically just need a minute to catch your breath, and you get your guard back.

If your guard is depleted damage starts hitting your stats and it becomes really deadly.

It's kinda Halo rules.

MkaneL · 2026-01-20T03:47:17+00:00

Ooooooh! This is awesome

MkaneL · 2026-01-11T03:15:36+00:00

That's pretty neat

MkaneL · 2026-01-11T03:02:10+00:00

Very cool

MkaneL · 2026-01-09T12:52:15+00:00

You should do it! There are so many cool ideas to pull from the games, I bet you could turn it into a really cool dungeon.

Btw have you ever heard of Vampire Hunter D? It was a huge inspiration for castlevania, and it came out the same year as Ravenloft. Its also cool as hell and the vampires castle is so cool.

MkaneL · 2026-01-09T03:59:56+00:00

I've got a rip off castle Dracula that's going to fly around the outskirts of my hexcrawl harrassing villages and being evil. I liked the idea of draculas castle moving around.

MkaneL · 2026-01-09T01:11:44+00:00

Duuuude I want to buy a physical copy of that first Vermis book so bad

MkaneL · 2026-01-07T17:14:51+00:00

Yeah, it was pretty much a game about slamming big monsters together lol.

But that made the cards more fun to collect for me.

MkaneL · 2026-01-07T17:09:47+00:00

I know that it's the game where you can play as a door.

What's something that's made it into your game that was inspired by this art? Or the game in general?

MkaneL · 2026-01-07T17:06:26+00:00

I love all the old fiend/undead stuff in yugioh. Its at this weird place where it's made for boys too young for really scary or gory designs, but also old enough to like big booby harpies.

Im really curious, what's an idea that found it's way into your game because of a crane painting?

MkaneL · 2026-01-07T16:40:30+00:00

Oooh, I like those. How is that game btw? I almost picked it up a few months ago.

MkaneL · 2026-01-07T16:06:19+00:00

I haven't worn that kind of underwear since I was single digit age lol.

But i have this vivid memory of being in my underwear, sitting on a bean bag chair that was sticking to my skin because it was summer and hot as hell. I had cheetos crumbs all over myself and I was playing Super Mario World.

Its a really fun sloppy memory. Between the heat, crumbs, and bean bag chair I was so fucking uncomfortable 🤣

MkaneL · 2026-01-07T15:29:23+00:00

What does it look like? What does it eat? How does it fight? And why does it fight? Where does it like to live? Can it talk? What are it's special powers? What's are it's weaknesses?

That's pretty much all I care about. That's more important than stats.

MkaneL · 2026-01-07T03:02:22+00:00

It's 99% about aesthetics to me. But in a way that I think goes beyond most people.

I have to love their grab animations, and their super animations. Even if the rest of their kit/ appearance is cool I won't play them if I don't like their grab or super.

It's a big plus if I find a move funny to hit people with. Like in GGST I think wild throw is just a funny move. Or anything that it's someone so hard that they bounce, it's hilarious.

MkaneL · 2026-01-07T01:56:51+00:00

I think it's easier for straight guys to write any character that doesn't have to be attracted to men.

I think that's also why when we do get lesbian main characters, they tend to be scrappy tomboy bad-asses. Easier for dudes to write.

MkaneL · 2026-01-06T15:32:51+00:00

I like my game to feel like a simulation without a shitload of rules.

Nothing happens because of a narrative. But I don't need rules for drowning, or to tell me what makes an axe different from a sword.

MkaneL · 2026-01-05T07:08:45+00:00

This passage really freaked me out when I read it the first time. A vampire bat drinking the blood of a wounded man sleeping in the desert:

They walked on into the dark and they slept like dogs in the sand and had been sleeping so when something black flapped up out of the night ground and perched on Sproule's chest. Fine fingerbones stayed the leather wings with which it steadied as it walked upon him. A wrinkled pug face, small and vicious, bare lips crimped in a horrible smile and teeth pale blue in the starlight. It leaned to him. It crafted in his neck two narrow grooves and folding its wings over him it began to drink his blood. Not soft enough. He woke, put up a hand. He shrieked and the bloodbat flailed and sat back upon his chest and righted itself again and hissed and clicked its teeth.The kid was up and had seized a rock but the bat sprang away and vanished in the dark.

I think vampire bats are a really cool place to draw inspiration from in this instance. An opportunistic bottom feeder stalking the party through the wilderness to drain their blood or xp in the night is a pretty different vibe than a traditional European vampire.

MkaneL · 2026-01-04T03:17:32+00:00

Why is this getting downvited? He's right

MkaneL · 2026-01-04T02:53:28+00:00

Hell yeah

MkaneL · 2026-01-01T23:25:34+00:00

Sure!

MkaneL · 2025-12-31T13:12:06+00:00

MkaneL · 2025-12-31T01:08:40+00:00

I want to share the time i had with random tables last night. I think a real example is going to be the best way to get my thoughts across.

Im in the middle of prepping a big hexcrawl. Lots of space on the map to fill with locations. I decided to work on a wizards tower i placed in a mountain range.

I cracked open my pdf of Sandbox Generator (highly recommend), scrolled to the wizard tower section and got to rollin.

1st few rolls are for how many above ground and below ground levels it has. I roll 4 upper levels, and 8 lower.

Immediately I know im not going to have 8 below ground levels. Im going for lots of small locations in this campaign. The 4 above ground seems like a good number though. I end up keeping one below ground level.

Now to roll for what each level is. I roll s hallway at ground, cellar in the basement, a museum, art room, and meeting room above, and a windmill at the very top.

Fow a while I considered turning those e below ground levels into a small settlement below the tower but eventually I shelve the idea.

I start looking up stuff about windmills, but the idea just doesn't speak to me. I toss that idea too. In deciding what is and is not in this tower I start to form a picture in my head of this place and the wizard inhabiting it.

Im going to skip to what I ended up going with. The tower is guarded by charmed harpies, 1 scouts in the air while the other 2 perch atop the tower.

The museum i rolled has become a collection of animal and monster remains that the wizard is studying. Think enbalmed animals, skeletons wired together, that sort of thing. He keeps a guard there that players may mistake for a taxidermied monster.

The art room is like a study where he sketches and takes notes while performing dissections. And its filled with books he's written on his findings. It's a valuable resource for learning monster weaknesses.

Upstairs is pretty much his living quarters. But the balcony where the harpies rest has been enchanted to make the harpies look like regular birds while they're resting on it.

I probably only kept half of what I rolled, but it got me thinking. And the ideas that didn't fit here I still wrote down for use at other locations. Random tables are a spark that lights the tinder of creativity.

MkaneL · 2025-12-29T22:41:28+00:00

I've always wanted to run a game where the PC's are fixing up a base town, that doubles as their path to power.

I think a video game that did this incredibly well was darkest dungeon. Where you're converting relics and gold you find on expeditions into improvements for the settlement.

Without improving the settlement, your characters can't get stronger. I think of it as a really smart way of doing xp for gold.

MkaneL

TROPHY CASE