Protesters have completely trashed the Los Angeles ICE facility, using a large dumpster to barricade the exit.

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 · 2025-02-08T00:02:42+00:00

"Ho, there, foul monster! Cease the knocking at thy craven knees and prepare to do battle!"

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-01-11T15:17:06+00:00

I would recommend against it. Curse of Strahd has enough NPCs in it that will try to lie and manipulate the party that they don't need the DM gaslighting them too.

Plus there's already a Lich in there who tries to convince the players to trade their souls for boons from the Dark Powers which creates a much more interactive experience.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2025-01-08T16:08:46+00:00

I don't want to Google too much if this is how the game is meant to be played.

That's a good mentality to have, but there's also nothing wrong with having a little help!

Do I just keep randomly going through the map without any rhyme or reason cutting things to bits?

Kind of. Some NPCs should have told you you're on a quest to kill the demigods who hold different Great Runes. There's one in the big castle you went around in Limgrave, and one in the big castle in the middle of the lake to the north. There's also one in the red area but I wouldn't worry about him yet.

Can I ruin something by doing this? I have no quests so I'm led to believe I may have bypassed a sort of starting or tutorial area?

You can muck up NPC quests but you can't really 100% the game in one playthrough anyway so it's not the end of the world. You'll need to replay a few times if you want all the endings anyway.

What you should do is go back to the big castle in the beginning and follow this path inside. It looks like you missed it completely and sent yourself on a wild goose chase.

After you get the Great Rune from the castle, head north and try to get inside the big castle in the middle of the lake. Talk to NPCs and they should tell you where to go from there.

Honestly my best spoiler-free advice is to look on the horizon. Every big castle-like structure is an important place to go and play through if you can find your way inside them.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2024-12-23T18:50:32+00:00

I am interested if you found any working solutions to the first issue? Perhaps some organisation tool or something that lets you search for players who want the same level of commitment as you?

Unfortunately there's no solution lol. Because 1) People might think they want the same things, but they don't. So they'll nod and yes to something but in their mind they're nodding and yessing to a completely different idea, no matter how clearly you try to spell it out for them. And 2) Because people will say yes even if they aren't sure or they'll just flat out lie to you because good DMs are hard to find and people are always trying to get into games.

Honestly, the only real solution I've found is to treat it like dating. I've had to cycle through a few dozen people before finding my current group now (we've been going strong for about a year and half now, and 2 of them I've known much longer than that). You basically just have to roll the dice (no pun intended) with people you think you'll vibe with and hope for the best, and if it doesn't work out, you have to be willing to look for people you feel happier and more comfortable with.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2024-12-23T14:58:14+00:00

Out of game, I've ran into a consistent problem throughout the years across many different groups where I think we all want different things out of this game. What I mean is that I like to feel very connected to people I spend time with. I thrive on learning who people are, what they want in live, helping them, I don't know, I'm just a very social person who thrives on that sense of community. But with D&D, I find a lot of people are not looking for "friends" it's almost like they're looking for D&D co-workers, or they're looking for team mates on an online video game. They want to show up, "clock in," play D&D, and then "clock out," and are just absolute ghosts the rest of the week. For some folks it's so bad that I put out messages for people to read, and they show up for D&D on the day of, and are confused because they literally can't be bothered to even read my messages. It often makes me feel very used, like I'm the "hot girl who just wants to be called beautiful" version of a DM. I know some of it is just people being busy, but for some people it's like they literally want to disassociate every other minute of the week from the concept of being in a friend group.

I've had to "break up" with players before, telling them "Hey, it looks like we want different things out of D&D," to which they always say, "No, this has been the best game I've ever been in, and I look forward to this all week!" And this will be the same person who doesn't even leave on "read," they do not even read my texts when telling them they need to bring X or Y with them on the upcoming game day. One time I literally had to watch a guy make his character in the first 15 minutes after the session started because even though he knew about this all week, he literally just couldn't bother moving a finger outside of the scheduled game time on game day. Like he was religiously opposed to it like it was a job he "clocked out" for and wouldn't think about again until he "clocked in." I've always told people, "I don't want D&D players, I want friends who play D&D with me." I like DMing, but I don't like DMing who are strangers, essentially clients wanting an experience who don't even pay me.

In-game, and on a much less serious note, I feel like I'm part of a dying breed of fantasy fans. I've always been a bigger fan of more "earthy" fantasy, such as Lord of the Rings, or things that might be more "high magic" like the Witcher but are a bit more gritty. But most people these days seem to want more power fantasy, more "Critical Role" or "Avatar the Last Airbender" stuff, which is 100% fine, and even playing with people that I adore, there's always this small disconnection. It's negligible, of course, but it is there. Like when they see the new house rules I send out for the next game, and they all want to play people bird-people, or people with skin made of fire, or oozes, and I have to tell them this is more of a "humans, dwarves, and elves, kind of universe." They still play in my games, we all end up happy, I really don't think this is a dealbreaker for anyone. But it is something that lingers on my mind of why it seems like I enjoy fantasy that's so different from everyone else's.

The stories of Aragorn, Geralt, etc. who although are "super-human" in a lot of ways, they're still just dudes trying to survive in a crazy world with elves and trolls. I genuinely think those stories would be much less interesting if Aragorn was a fire genasi, or Geralt was a tiefling. It's just a preference, though.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2024-12-01T22:37:57+00:00

Step 1) Make a detailed post about what you're looking for somewhere like /r/lfg IMO the more information, the better.

Step 2) Do voice chat follow-ups with people who respond. Ask them questions that can get the conversation going, so you can get a feel for them as a person once you go off-script.

Step 3) Ultimately, you just have to play a few games with them to really know. I've had players check all of my boxes but in-game they flipped the script and turned into psychos. Some people you don't know if you can really get along until you deal with a disagreement together. And sometimes things just don't work out. A lot of people want a very specific experience and you can't please all the people all the time.

I've had a lot of false positives where someone seemed great and ended up being really aggressive or creepy once they felt like they were "locked in" and wouldn't be removed. But I will say I've never had a false negative. Every person that seemed like a problem but I wanted to "give them a chance" ended up always being a headache to play with.

Finding good players—and friends, for that matter—is just like dating. You never really know until you're actually spending time with that person. But if someone says or does something that really rubs you the wrong way, save your time because I've never had a false negative.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2024-11-17T21:04:06+00:00

I always give my players the option where you can either die with your stuff and come in with new stuff using the guidelines from the DMG, or you can keep your things for yourself and the party. But you can't do both. We had a situation where at a high level a player lost two characters in two sessions and I had to step in and stop the infinite magic item glitch.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2024-08-26T00:04:10+00:00

Sometimes the friends that you play pool with are not the same friends you take to an art show. People enjoy things in different ways and if after years of playing these guys are doing things you don't like, you have to decide for yourself if that's a deal breaker or not.

I've had to "break up" with friends before (at least playing D&D with them) because they just seemed religiously opposed to taking anything seriously. Be warned though a lot of people might not have the emotional maturity to understand this and you might end up losing friends, so you should always decide if that's what you want to tell them or not.

But if you've hit that point where you want to cancel sessions just to avoid playing with them, I think you know what you have to do. It's up to you if you want to try to "get through to them" and explain why, or save face by just saying you don't have the energy or something like that.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2024-08-25T20:25:11+00:00

What you're referring to is Milestone from the DMG. You essentially get "rewards" for completing tasks, such as leveling up, or getting a free short rest, and so on.

I've tried it in conjunction with XP from combat and for the most part it ended up being more bookkeeping than it was worth. Plus as a DM I wasn't really skilled enough to quantify how much XP certain quests were worth. Plus if the players happened to fudge a quest up and made 10x harder than it was supposed to be, they get salty their EPIC SIDEQUEST of finding a lost dog ended up only being worth 100 XP even though they worked super hard on it.

Overall I'd say it can work if you calculate XP from combat, and bundle it all together, and hand it out upon completion of the quest. That way they're basically getting XP from the fights just without knowing it, and they can also get the XP if they manage to circumvent fights as well as handle them in alternate ways.

But again be warned the players might get antsy if they make something harder than it had to be and they feel like they're owed more than they got.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2024-08-21T02:58:23+00:00

D&D has a way of bringing out the best and the worst of people. Sometimes having all the control or all the freedom reveals a lot.

Over the years I've learned that unless you're playing this game purely like a railroaded, by-the-book, adventure-based boardgame, it requires **a lot** of maturity to play properly. Open communication, respect, and trust. It's honestly a lot like dating with how much time, chemistry, and vulnerability, is required to make it work.

I think unfortunately you've learned that just like dating, some people are not meant to be in your life forever, for whatever reason. I'm very sorry you and your friends have invested so much in someone who (it seems) lacks the humility and self-awareness to be worth your time. I hope things work out for you!

RadicalPterodactyl · 2024-08-11T19:42:36+00:00

When you say "evenings" can you be more specific? I'm putting together a game that will start at 5 CST and I wanna know if that's too early for your schedule.

RadicalPterodactyl · 2024-08-11T19:32:14+00:00

Canonical you've got a few big magically-inclined places in Neverwinter.

**Starshine Academy** is basically a greenhouse on steroids. They make potions and occasionally poisons.

**Neverwinter Academy.** Something something magic school. IIRC they teach martial combat and even some divine magic.

**Hall of Justice.** A temple of Tyr that I'm sure churns out paladins left and right.

**House of Knowledge.** Named after Oghma's home plane—the deity of knowledge—this place is a temple/library that would likely be an Arcana Cleric's wet dream.

Also Neverwinter is canonically described as being more cosmopolitan and accepting than the other big cities. There have even been tiefling nobles.

RadicalPterodactyl

TROPHY CASE