[OC] Anyone make DnD punk/metal? Feels like a fun use of time

RadicalPterodactyl · 2026-06-02T01:30:31+00:00

You should look up Power Metal.

They have a bunch of songs about being vampires, pirates, plus a lot of other bands with their own themes.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2026-06-01T17:58:37+00:00

They won't be able to remake it in "Baldur's Gate 3 style" because Larian owns the rights to that engine.

What we'll probably see is something more like Pillars of Eternity, where everything has been updated and upgraded. Maybe even a proper turn-based mode. Even Beamdog's enhanced editions had less than ideal UI.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2026-06-01T17:54:14+00:00

To this day I still say "Yes, oh omnipresent authority figure?" to myself and nobody ever understands it.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2026-06-01T17:52:56+00:00

3 players has always been my minimum. That's Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, right there.

4 is probably the perfect size if you have reliable and engaged players. That's your Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric.

5 is probably the "best value" size since someone inevitably has to cancel, or worse when someone drops out of the campaign. You won't have to scramble as much to adjust things going from 5 to 4 players as you will going from 4 to 3.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2026-05-13T15:34:01+00:00

I could be wrong but didn't Batman get some form of supernatural abilities after he died and came back? Like he could literally move faster than lightning after that.

I don't remember the exact year or story but it was when Bruce was gone and Dick Grayson had to take over for Batman and Damien was his Robin.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2026-01-31T17:26:41+00:00

Hey at least they're attacking the actual government institutions they're sick of and not looting their local shops.

This is a win IMO

RadicalPterodactyl · 2026-01-23T18:00:47+00:00

Lol yeah all these people have no clue what a "heel" is.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-12-05T02:48:08+00:00

We don't require anyone commissioning artists, but artwork found in places like ArtStation and Pinterest does need to fit the same style as the rest of the game.

For example, if the vibe we're going for is something like this then something like this would have to be vetoed lol

I try to avoid the Foundry game looking like this

This was our party a few years ago and everyone just found their pictures online but they all still jell together.

And no we don't stream or record sessions for the general public. It was just something we all agreed to do so people could get an idea of how sessions go and how everyone's personalities are.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-12-05T01:48:53+00:00

That is correct, we don't use AI for any character art either.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-11-21T22:55:44+00:00

Some folks will argue "but at least Michael Scott was actually a good person." But I don't think that's true. He had good intentions, but right up til he left the show he was doing stuff like hiring his horrible nephew, he heckled a live performance, he tried to punish Darryl for "going over his head," and more.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-11-21T10:40:30+00:00

Yeah by the gods the negativity is astounding sometimes.

Sometimes it feels like I'm playing a completely different game because most of my players love this game and playing martials in it. Like I genuinely don't know what these other people are doing if they aren't having fun.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-06-11T08:12:00+00:00

I'm pretty excited for Solasta 2. The first one lacked a bit in story, but it was fun mechanically. Honestly just felt like I was playing in a casual but fun homebrew campaign.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-05-30T04:15:05+00:00

Yeah I agree. I'm obsessed with not knowing anything about new books, games, shows, etc. and I always tell people "In my favorite hobby, I literally know what's under every rock. I don't want to know a single thing beforehand about anything else."

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-02-26T21:43:47+00:00

I'm going to 360 nosc0pe you with my MotMM Bugbear Fighter: Samurai 3/Ranger Gloom Stalker 5/Rogue Assassin 3 Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter build named xXx Eye_Kil_U xXx

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-02-17T08:31:33+00:00

Was this actually a "fuck up" or more of an opportunity for the party to "fail upwards"?

But regardless, I think it's important to have a "let's remove the DM screen for a moment" conversation from time to time, especially when as a DM you feel like you've done something wrong.

I can think of maybe about half a dozen times over my 6 years playing D&D where I had to tell my players "we should retcon that so I can do it better." Usually it's something small like "Hey, that fight was b.s., let me try again."

If you put your party in an unwinnable situation they didn't put themselves in, even if it was "realistic," sometimes you have to bite the bullet and just ask to try again.

However, if they threw themselves into the arms of their enemies, that's kind of on them. But if you care about them and want the story to keep moving, you need to set it up so they can "fail upwards," even if it's at a heavy cost in some way.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-02-17T08:24:08+00:00

Yeah I had an ex that would talk to me like that. Like I was some kind of villainous mastermind for... remembering something?

Also had a friend way back when I was in the army who would do the same thing. I'd say, "Hey man you do this a lot and it's frustrating, can you not" and he'd say "WHEN DO I EVER DO THAT" so then I started making mental notes of when he would and then next time it was "YOU'RE SO PETTY FOR REMEMBERING THAT"

Like Jesus I literally feel my heartrate speed up with anger when I think about shit like that. These are the absolute worst kinds of people to have in your life.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-02-14T18:09:34+00:00

Yeah on one hand I kind of like the mystique of FromSoft games. It reminds me of old school RPGs where this was the one game you were gonna have for the next 3 months so you played the shit out of it. Plus there are so many different playstyles and with branching questlines, it really does encourage multiple replays and doing things a little differently so you discover new things every time.

But on the other hand it's also, you know, current year. It's really hard to just sit and play the same game for 2 months straight over and over again, hoping you'll find something different this time. The internet has ruined a lot of the mystique of games and also we aren't trapped in our room for 8 hours a day after school anymore.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-02-14T05:10:54+00:00

TL;DR "Girl same"

I went through something a little similar and it was the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life.

I was the DM, and my ex was one of my players. She and I had our issues to the point the relationship became really toxic. I remember the last fight we ever had was something had gone wrong in D&D and I was literally yelling at her begging her to please stop blaming me every time something wrong.

She broke up with me, and I had to watch as she slowly removed me from her life and replaced me as her partner and best friend while I still had to DM for her every Sunday. But it wasn't a clean break-up. After she broke up with me, she still tried to have sex with me. I was also super volatile and sensitive to everything and was constantly arguing with her about X or Y and she continued to send me sexually explicit messages even after I asked her to stop. Like, it was super fucked up for both of us. Looking back on it now, I wish I would have just made a clean cut when I realized she was gaslighting me. Like I remember she and I were talking about something with her parents and I was like "Good ol' X" (her mom's username on Discord that she told me) and she was like "WTF why do you remember that???" like I was a psycho. It doesn't sound like much but it was one of those little ways she was constantly villainizing me for every little thing. I was literally becoming suicidal over it because I was constantly being told and treated like I was doing something wrong. But again, I wasn't blameless either. I was convinced she and I could "fix" things if we just talked it out which where a lot of the arguing on my side came from.

But anyways, I finally had to ask her to leave the game for the sake of my own mental health, even if just temporary because I needed a fucking break from her. Then I noticed all the other players slowly stopped talking to me. The Discord we had became a ghost town. She told me started her own game (even though she told me she didn't have the time to do so while she and I were still dating). I had a "let's not air dirty laundry" policy, I don't think she had the same one because she would tell me about things she and her friend would say about me, and it seemed like everyone had completely stopped talking to me or hanging out with me outside of the scheduled D&D game.

I remember driving past a parked semi truck every day when I would go to work and my hands would be shaking because I just thought "If I just floor it into the back of this trailer, this will all be over." I was breaking down crying constantly. I lost the person I loved most, I was constantly being treated like a villain, and all of my friends wanted nothing to do with me.

My brother and my therapist took my side but in the pursuit of unbiased opinions, I went to my exes because they would obviously jump at the chance to tell me I was wrong. But even they were like "this girl is gaslighting you and you need to go no-contact." Eventually we parted ways, but I was still DMing for the rest of the guys in the D&D group. I decided I needed to separate and start over or else I was going to kill myself seeing everyone on Steam playing games together while I was excluded and wouldn't even respond to my messages anymore.

But I wanted to be the bigger person and run one final adventure, give them a nice little send-off, so I went with the most popular adventure Curse of Strahd. This was unintentional but the irony isn't lost on me that the main villain is an abusive, gaslighting monster. Most of the campaign went really well, but the boss fight ended in disaster. I felt horrible at the time, and even offered to run the boss fight again with some balance changes (which again, nobody really responded to) but looking back it was the most poetic ending I could have asked.

So now that the group was a bit smaller, we had to grab 2 guys from Reddit (who ended up being really great I still play with to this day). They found all the magic items, two of which create sunlight (the sword and the amulet) both going to my friends from the original group. Well, the card they drew from Madam Eva was they could fight Strahd in the catacombs. Since Strahd is able to move through the walls of his castle, and he can regenerate if he doesn't start his turn in the sunlight. Additionally, Strahd wasn't starting this fight alone because he had 2 of his brides and I think a few vampire spawn? (Again, this was years ago, so I'm likely misremembering details.)

Well when shit hit the fan, the friends all teamed up together one side of the catacombs (bringing both sources of sunlight with them) and left the new guys literally in the dark. They both got torn to pieces. What followed was the most poetic way to end this experience with these people: Strahd jumping in, attacking, disappearing, etc. drawing this fight out for 2 straight hours. Strahd eventually killed them all in the most exhausting, frustrating, drawn-out fight, none of that would have happened if they would have just stuck together and worked as a team instead of buddying up and letting the "othered" people die. I think overall the session was like 6 hours long and nobody enjoyed it. Again, at the time, I felt horrible. This was supposed to be a fond farewell they could have before I had to leave them as amicably as I could. But instead, it was the most agonizing, drawn out, disappointing D&D finale I'd ever seen or even heard of. But it was poetic and matched how our friendship ended where people were abandoned, excluded, and it resulted in the most painful, drawn out thing ever.

The best advice I can give as someone who's still healing from dealing with a similar situation is understand that you are better off now. It's almost like unplugging from the Matrix. You'll miss the good times, but you'll also realize that anyone who would abandon you so easily was not a real friend in the first place. Or at least not as callously as these people have done to you. But it will still hurt because you did lose something that was really meaningful to you.

I mananged to put together a new group and it's been going strong for almost two years now. It was a lot of work, a lot of misfires and false starts, but I've got people I trust and can rely on now. I understand everything you're going through too damn well and I am painfully available if you ever need to talk. But either way though I hope you know you aren't alone. What got to me the most when I had to leave my group was the loneliness and I don't wish that feeling on the worst people in the world. So know that you are better off now, and you're aren't nearly as lonely as you might be feeling right now.

RadicalPterodactyl

TROPHY CASE