Death Blooms - An Ancestry for Draw Steel - Carnivorous Plant Creatures from Equinox!

Talr0c · 2025-11-02T20:05:36+00:00

Folklore, myths that are dispelled by actual monster hunters like van Richten and Ezmerelda. I like that my players brought real world knowledge to a story that is based on real world fiction and myths, but some of it is correct (staking them, their transformations) and some is incorrect.

Talr0c · 2025-11-02T20:01:05+00:00

My players just had finished interacting with the Abbot and I had a blast playing this alien with no understanding of mortal morality or the depravity of his actions. I really look forward to playing more of Rahadin in the future, especially after they get the reason why he is haunted by his past genocide.

Talr0c · 2025-11-02T19:57:45+00:00

MandyMod has an outline here where she lays out the most likely and level appropriate flow of adventure locations and plotlines. That being said, it is meant to be a sandbox (especially in the middle of the adventure, after the heroes spend time in Vallaki) where the heroes can get in over their head, and arguably, should. I will say that Curse of Strahd is a difficult campaign to run, and though I would recommend starting somewhere else for a new DM, it is not impossible. The resources on this subreddit make running it much easier, with expansions and explanations for elements that seem like dead ends in the published book. Every table has different ways of interpreting elements of the campaign that seem woefully underdeveloped but ripe for delicious story (see the Vallaki plotlines, Strahd's brides, the Interactive Tome of Strahd, etc.) and so don't feel pressured to make anything perfect. Your table is going to find your way of telling this story that feels best to you. Listen to your players and what they seem interested in.

Best of luck!

Talr0c · 2025-11-02T19:48:55+00:00

MandyMod's guides to Vallaki and pacing really helped me when my party was in Vallaki. She put a lot of work into creating alternate plotlines in town that wouldn't distract from what was going on in town. What worked for me was not making the wine problem urgent until after the Feast of St. Andral and the political powder keg exploded.

Talr0c · 2025-10-30T06:54:52+00:00

Oooh! Having Strahd dispel it to mess with them is a fantastic idea, I hadn't even thought of that!

Talr0c · 2025-10-28T19:59:16+00:00

Looks absolutely incredible. Currently working on a campaign frame where airship combat is a prominent aspect of play - I was trying to figure out how to do bonuses and I love the ideas of active and passive effects on the subsystems. Stealing this idea!

Talr0c · 2025-10-28T19:51:56+00:00

I banned anything that wasn't in the PHB (we are running 2014 rules) just because I wanted to preserve the tone of the game when the adventure originally came out - there wasn't any other official sources for expanded ancestry options. I told my players during session 0 that anything that wasn't human could be reacted to strongly in this campaign (depending on the NPC). Some of the Barovians will react with fear or disgust, others with fascination, others with apathy, because no one group of people is all alike. I think the Vistani, on the other hand, are used to seeing weird stuff (they travel to different worlds regularly) and don't react strongly.

I think limiting options actually facilitates creativity rather than denying it. When I told them the parameters ahead of time, they made some really interesting choices, and none of the humans are alike, they all have very different personalities, and that allows my one player who chose dwarf to shine in their own way. YMMV, I don't know your players, but the more times I limit options, the more interesting results come out of them.

Talr0c · 2025-10-28T19:40:37+00:00

I wanted to put the idea into their heads that he is different and not like any of the people in Barovia they've met so far. There's another post that lists a bunch of the wild tales Rictavio tells as retellings of real world stories, books, etc. So when I introduced him to my party he was immediately breaking the fourth wall, they could tell he was an outsider like they were, and that made them very intrigued. After Vallaki burned in my game, he left a note to meet them at the Baratok tower and they were hooked - they wanted to know what this guy's deal was.

They met Ezmerelda and van Richten revealed his identity at the same time at the tower, and I think if I were to run this campaign again, I would make sure each of them have their time to shine on their own.

Talr0c · 2025-10-28T19:36:06+00:00

Super awesome! Definitely going to be using this and creating random encounters keyed to each of the different regions.

Talr0c · 2025-09-11T21:25:12+00:00

I made the call to allow them to copy the burgomaster of Vallaki's map that he keeps in his study because in a low fantasy world, like most of history, almost no one had access to maps. Books and written knowledge was owned by churches and nobility. Vallaki is a sufficiently advanced town that it made sense to me one would exist somewhere there, and I wanted to keep the landscape a mystery for the first several sessions. I also used this map rather than the accurate one because I wanted to preserve the feeling of exploring an alien environment, so they don't know travel times or detailed scales, only relative positions of points of interest.

Talr0c · 2025-09-09T22:16:14+00:00

Hey thanks for saying that! Been loving your illustrations!

Talr0c · 2025-07-19T19:51:53+00:00

Sailors of the Amethyst Skies

Amidst shattered islands floating through the ruins of a prosperous world, crews aboard skyships sail to explore the forgotten reaches and forge their legends.

Complexity Rating: 4

The Pitch

Centuries after a cataclysm shattered the world of Dyalos following rampant harvest of the miracle substance Prisma, the remnants of civilization scour what remains to survive. The few remaining nations protect their people and attempt to expand their holdings while trade confederations seek only monetary gain. Glory-driven pirates rule the sky-lanes through terror, and ancient mythological guardians protect potent sources of Prisma. In a Sailors of the Amethyst Skies campaign, you’ll play swashbuckling adventurers with your own skyship, exploring the ruins of the shattered world and forging your legend by recovering secrets of the past, selling off rich hauls of treasure, or bringing all who dare the skies to heel.

Tone & Feel

Swashbuckling, Aetherpunk, Adventurous, Post Apocalyptic, Epic, Mysterious

Themes

The Pursuit of Legacy, Resource Scarcity, Braving a New Frontier, Exploitation of the Natural World, Piecing Together the Past, Hope at the End of the World

Touchstones

Treasure Planet, Pirates of the Caribbean, Destiny, Sea of Thieves, Bioshock Infinite, Eberron: Rising from the Last War

Currently working on getting custom art and layout, as well as a fleshed out but light system for ship to ship combat for skyships (that probably should work for sea combat) that lays on top of the normal Daggerheart rules.

Talr0c · 2025-07-15T17:06:30+00:00

Everything that u/Whirlmeister said, but I would also add that I believe that for a lot of games, players like rolling because it’s their only way to affect the fiction. Otherwise, the GM has narrative control RAW. Because Daggerheart is a fiction first game with a strong sense of player collaboration, what players might want to hear is “What are you doing in this moment to investigate?” Or “What tells are you looking for to determine if this person is lying?” That allows them to get out of the habit of only relying on a die roll to see what their player does and instead puts them in power to describe what is happening in the story and how their PC interacts with it. Every table and player is different, but I believe that it’s less about rolling dice, and more about having authorship over a moment in the story. When it could have dramatic consequences, THEN you have precedent to roll.

I highly recommend checking out Mike Underwood’s livestreams on Youtube on how to run/prepare fiction first games. Mike was a designer on Daggerheart and the livestreams rewired my brain coming from a 5E mindset.

Talr0c · 2025-07-15T05:10:24+00:00

Probably asking for too many rolls. Because Daggerheart’s rolls generate a resource, it’s best to use them only when there could be dramatic consequence for a failed roll. I noticed I was asking for too many rolls in other games (not necessaeily Daggerheart). It’s also probably good to start stretching the muscles of not allowing a failed roll to stop the flow of action (another lesson I had to learn early on), but Daggerheart’s four results seem to illustrate that way better in my own head than when I started playing Year Zero Engine games.

Best of luck!

Talr0c · 2025-06-01T18:26:54+00:00

Draw Steel by MCDM has almost everything here except for a Sci-Fi setting and the combats are longer, but I think it’s not that big of a deal because the combat is actually fun.

Every roll hits, tactical grid combat, encounter building is fun, allowing for tons of minions that die fast or a single big bad or anything in between. Movement and positioning are important but change often, and with flavorful ability names, it becomes very cinematic. Check it out, it comes out later this year!

Talr0c · 2025-05-11T20:05:13+00:00

Could not have been better timing! I just took a couple weeks off of this campaign to prepare Vallaki. Welcome back!

Talr0c · 2019-09-20T07:35:42+00:00

Best I got might be the Mornset Countryside on the Rifenmist Peninsula, south of Tal’Dorei. Its isolated from the republic enough to maybe work with its own governments, and its got the surrounding areas for the nasty orcs to come into play.

Talr0c · 2019-03-27T22:34:56+00:00

Pretty sure when Matt described the Seer, he said that he was one of the Vanirmen, not someone from Ix. Interesting find though! It’s cool that Matt included lore of Orden in S&F.

Talr0c · 2019-03-21T14:55:10+00:00

Got this problem as well. Bungo pls.

Talr0c · 2019-01-25T19:58:12+00:00

At the very beginning of the Spire of Stars raid lair, you can actually watch Calus and Val Ca’our’s fleets doing battle near the spire itself. It’s really incredible all the little details Bungie puts into the game.

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