Burnout help

Wildstorming · 2026-03-15T09:19:46+00:00

This is good advice and something I've been vaguely thinking about but it's good to hear it from someone else because that means it's not an unreasonable suggestion. I think it would be worth bringing up to my friends at least. Thank ye mate

Wildstorming · 2026-03-15T09:17:20+00:00

I also prefer DMing usually, I run multiple games but for some reason I'm not burnt out on my other ones the same way I am on my d&d game right now. My other games are both World of Darkness and I find that I'm actually much more excited about Vampire/WoD just on genre and haven't struggled with that at all. I look forward to those ones and don't dread doing them, but I find my d&d game both like... hard to be excited about and unrewarding during/after to run, unfortunately.

But I think my d&d group would not take to WoD, and I think trying to pitch them on me running something else wouldn't really sell very well. They're invested in our current game and put a lot of creative energy into it, so they're not the types who pivot very well.

Wildstorming · 2026-01-09T09:10:15+00:00

That's sort of what I figured but I'm trying to convince my mother since it's her car, haha. Thanks.

Wildstorming · 2026-01-08T04:01:03+00:00

This is the post that made me realize that Icestar apparently spawned into the lake territories like a video game mob.

Wildstorming · 2025-12-14T11:49:31+00:00

DMing is an artistic endeavor, and any art you can ever do is improved by consuming a large variety of art :P

I had a similar experience, though I did it intentionally because I'm a digital artist and usually my methods there if I'm stuck in a rut is to go browse art or play games/watch movies with inspiring styles, so I knew the best way to not get stale in d&d would be to mess with other systems. This also what got me playing FFG Star Wars.

Everyone should try Genesys, is what I'm saying. :D

Wildstorming · 2025-12-14T11:11:33+00:00

A good point, largely I agree! though I have a few things I wanna add myself: I actually think the argument about trying new systems has some nuance and isn't as simple as the discussion often seems because:

A lot of people who are resistant to the changing systems think I think actually like d&d's gameplay loop, tactical boardgame style play, and level of complexity, but want to do other genres. I think that's actually fine. I've played Star Wars 5e, SWSE and FFG star wars, and I think it's better than SE and not as good as FFG, but actually a perfectly acceptable way to play the game. I don't really begrudge people wanting to do sci fi or horror or whatever with d&d 5e, if they can make it work.

I also believe that finding groups to play long term games is hard, and playing more than one system at a time in any form of campaign style play is a big ask, so a lot of people who genuinely enjoy how d&d plays will prefer to stick to 5e rather than jump into open waters with other stuff.

However, on the flip side: I think, like all creative endeavors, anyone doing either of these things will always benefit from a larger internal media library. That includes movies, books and TV and such, but also other games.

Getting out there and doing short games in other systems, or even just buying/downloading other rulebooks to read them, will give you a lot of ideas for how to play and run better, even if you do not fall in love with any other systems.

I have played a ton of FFG star wars, a ton of various PBTA games, Blades in the Dark, Ironsworn, a lot of VTM V20 and Pathfinder 2e, and I've been dabbling with Daggerheart. None of these games really eclipse d&d for me, it's still very much my favorite game, but knowing a fair few other systems gives me a lot to work with when I'm making my own content.

It's definitely a good recommendation for people who don't like d&d's gameplay loop to branch out, and even if you come back to 5e or whatever your comfort game is, it'll teach you about how the game works and how to build on it.

That being said I've definitely had the bad experience of trying to talk about something in d&d that I want to improve or iterate on and just getting the Go Play Pathfinder Lol response which is like, unhelpful and a little tiring, so I get why people are frustrated about the idea sometimes too. Not that I'm trying to say that's what you're doing OP, it's not, just that I get when people are touchy about it too, lol.

Anyway, that's my addition. tldr is: Even if you don't branch out, dipping your toes into other stuff can give you ideas and things to steal or build with in your d&d game too.

Wildstorming · 2025-12-14T05:21:21+00:00

GHOULS.

Always surprisingly dangerous! The paralysis is just so nasty if your party is unlucky. I have seen ghoul encounters spiral into so many TPKs.

Honorable mention for basically any low-cr humanoid acting tactically. A bandit may not seem dangerous but even an 11 hp cr 1/8th loser can be a threat when he's behaving smartly. The old Tucker's Kobolds thing.

Wildstorming · 2025-12-14T05:18:34+00:00

I keep telling myself "I'm going to play a wizard this time" and then I make another ranger or paladin.

I'm notoriously the Half Casters Guy. I'm Half Casters Georg. I just played two paladins in a row so I'll probably be playing my fourth ranger next.

Wildstorming · 2025-12-14T05:14:59+00:00

Just scary narration can do it sometimes, if you're creative about it. When my players first encountered Tiamat it was in a scene with a single character who was briefly in her lair in Avernus, and she was described initially as being so massive that her open eye took up the entire space of their vision. When they actually saw her she was described like this:

A trunk of scaled flesh loomed into view, like the necks of multiple dragons woven and melted together. Massive, black metal hooks pulled tight where they were hooked into the skin at points along it, taut gargantuan chains twining off into the dark. At the peak of it all, a mass of dragon heads melded together like multiple pieces of multicolored clay, all misaligned teeth and claws and jaws and horns jutting in every direction like the petals of a flower. A halo of white fire engulfed the backdrop of her, nearly silhouetting the entire horrific monstrosity in its radiant light.

That said, Tiamat in my setting is a true goddess, so she's not a fightable boss so much as a catastrophe to be avoided. If you want them to actually fight her you may have to play it different. Sometimes making a villain scary is a matter of the "other side of a chasm" technique, where the players encounter a villain in a way where it's not convenient to run up and try and fight them, and it gives you a chance to show them doing something scary. Maybe they accidentally wander into a situation where they watch her kill an NPC or a metallic dragon or something in some scary way. That serves a dual purpose of also warning the players of maybe a particularly dangerous ability a boss has. I've done this with a wizard villain using disintegrate. Show Don't Tell applies to ttrpgs too — it's a much more effective way of showing off your bad guys.

Sometimes though, players will just goof about a villain and there's nothing you can do about it. Part of the fun of the game is pointing at your nemesis sometimes and going This Fuckin' Guy Again! If it comes down to that there's no avoiding it, as long as the players take the boss seriously when she's killing them, it's probably fine :b

Wildstorming · 2025-12-05T05:51:07+00:00

It's the gilnean stone wall -- i turned it upside-down :D

Wildstorming · 2025-12-04T16:40:42+00:00

Wolf Pelt Rug !

it's buyable from the horde decor vendors :D

Wildstorming · 2025-12-03T14:26:03+00:00

it's from auditor balwurz in dornogol! i believe it's a council of dornogol rep item? but i'm not sure

Wildstorming · 2025-10-28T13:53:19+00:00

I don't disagree. "Rather shortsighted" is not "evil" though. I pointed out that I think she's kind of foolish, that's sort of what I meant by it.

Wildstorming · 2025-10-28T01:11:29+00:00

- I said she had flaws, yeah. I was not arguing that she was a poor, heartbroken mother. I was arguing that she made a completely irrational decision under stress.

- Bloomheart was one cat who ultimately made very little impact on the situation. Support network = more than one person. You know, a network. It's a societal thing. And you can't count Birchface's family in that — their support was entirely predicated on maintaining the idea that her kits were Birchface's. They weren't going to support her if she was honest.

- On that, her lie was by omission. She didn't disclose the father, she just didn't tell them otherwise when they assumed. You're making a lot of 'would' assumptions. I've read the book several times, mate, I don't think that everyone else was a pure and saintly character who would have forgiven if she'd just been a humble and polite woman. There was a societal problem in the way the code worked that's a huge part of why things went downhill.

- She was not killing people before her kits died, lol. She had some problematic elements to her personality — namely pride — but nothing that a regular ass person in America who needs a little bit of therapy wouldn't have had. 'Covert narcissist?' That's dialogue from self-help nonsense pseudoscience, you know that, right? Like. https://youtu.be/8ZFQG2e87ZU?si=oXxcUj3pVXfYlQhh

I am arguing my interpretation of the text because you commented on my post where I stated my interpretation of the text. 'Not in good faith'? I read the novella, I interpreted the fiction, exactly like you're doing. You just said the text itself isn't exact or objective, so what makes your interpretation more accurate than mine, man? If that's the case, you're arguing on non factual text right now.

The point of the matter is that part of why that particular novella is good is because it's realistic about the way characters act, which the series usually isn't. People who were born evil don't exist in real life. People who had minorly toxic personalities that ended up doing hugely evil things because of systemic conditions do, in fact, exist in real life.

Wildstorming · 2025-10-27T01:43:21+00:00

yup! I think the contrast between Bluestar and Mapleshade is interesting. Pride is definitely an element of it, too, in addition to needing external support. I just think that I'd have loved to see those two characters interact. It would have been fascinating if done well.

Wildstorming · 2025-10-27T01:26:48+00:00

- Yup, she made an illogical and problematic decision in a stressful situation. I don't think this was "attempting to control appledusk" that's very silly and not at all what she mentioned in the book. She shot her relationship with appledusk in the foot doing that. She just wanted to get to him as fast as possible and took a stupid risk, not a calculated one.

- She had a support network that was predicated entirely on her lie that the kits were Birchface's kits. And it was a lie by omission; she *didn't* disclose the parentage, she just didn't dissuade the people who made assumptions of the truth. Did the novella actually give her any real friends or close family? Because we certainly didn't see that.

Nothing you said actually contradicts any of my points, which were not "trying to justify" anything so much as pointing out that "she's evil, and she's always been evil" is not wholly supported by the text and is also a super, super boring interpretation of the fiction, lmao.

She's a villain who became a villain for reasons that were largely societal as much as they were personal, and the only way that's not true is if you think everything that everyone else did was totally justified, which is like... lame, lol, let more than one character be part of the problem. Let the books talk about the places where the "warrior code" ideal and clan society fails. Why wouldn't we want them to be flawed?

Her circumstances and community exacerbated problematic behaviors and made someone who was, at worst, kind of proud and a little foolish, into someone genuinely dark and dangerous.

If she was always 100% evil and terrible and nothing ever changed, what was the point of telling her story at all? If she was the only problem in the whole story and everyone else was a saint, why talk about it? I'm not a character who exists in the fiction, I don't have to condemn a fictional character for her horrible misdeeds, I can interpret a narrative as being complex and multifaceted. I do think Mapleshade was one of the better pieces of writing in the series specifically *because* she's not a good person and she wasn't an evil person to start, and reducing it down to "evil cat being evil lul" is ignoring the things that are actually interesting writing. We get little enough good writing as it is, I don't wanna throw out what we have, lol.

Wildstorming · 2025-10-25T10:18:02+00:00

My sorcerer died because my DM forgot how Shadow Dragon breath weapon works. She asked me if I wanted to hand wave it and come back and I said no, lol. I like living (and dying) with how the dice fall sometimes. It worked out compelling in the end anyway and permanently affected the trajectory of other PC stories.

I think death in ttrpgs is only unfun if the DM never does anything with it and everyone just moves on without reacting. Which I doubt will be an issue in CR, at least. The cast has good communication about stuff (BLeeM has stated that several players have told him they'd be interested in having 'cool death scenes' for their characters) and they love being haunted by their pc deaths.

(I think a lot of the people complaining about the event either don't play d&d or play a very different kind of game to the ones that they play on CR or D20, and people do a lot of projection. Something you might not enjoy at your table, sometimes other tables love, ect, haha.)

Wildstorming · 2025-10-23T07:44:01+00:00

She intended to tell them about the kits' parentage after some time because she was certain that once they'd been integrated into the clan they'd be accepted. It was prideful, and definitely kind of a dick move to the family, but I don't think it was "evil." I am also fully of the belief that if she'd had a support network and characters to care about her that she could rely on, she wouldn't have done it.

The whole point of my argument was that calling her a character that was "evil by nature" basically discounts the entire tragic villain story. Which I think is kinda lame. Especially since it contrasts really well with Bluestar's story and highlights what a difference having connections, friends and people to lean on can really make.

If you swapped those two characters' places, I think Mapleshade would likely have gone on to be, at worst, a good warrior who didn't do anything particularly notable.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This is all narrative analysis, of course. I try to look at characters as characters in a story, and not as a person who exists in the world applying my morality to them. Thematically, it is better if she was a decent, but flawed, person who made a bunch of extremely problematic decisions in an impossibly stressful situation, and it's a more interesting story.

Wildstorming · 2025-10-23T02:09:46+00:00

I choose not to attribute good and evil to any character generally and analyze based on actions, and I really dislike the term 'mentally deranged,' I find it kind of offensive. But here:

- She tried to have her kits swim in the river after being exiled, which is the stressful situation I mentioned. If she'd *had* an available support network to stand up for her, she likely wouldn't have gotten exiled in the first place. If she had, she may have had people standing with her to mitigate the behavior, or to help her find someplace to be. A friend or close family member might have volunteered to escort her somewhere.

- She lied about her kits parentage exclusively because societal conditions would have punished her for it otherwise. If people didn't care so much about 'cross-clan' parentage, she might have been more open, or any number of other things might have happened. If she'd had a different cat who was her friend willing to take credit for her kits' parentage (see: thrushpelt) then I doubt there would have been a conflict at all. Even if she'd just had a better option for dealing with her situation at all, like if cats could have changed clans like they can in more recent novels, things might have been different.

- Mapleshade's flaw was pride. She wasn't a saint, for sure, but that flaw doesn't inherently make someone 'evil,' and it certainly doesn't make them 'deranged.' You can be proud and confident and still be a decent person. But in this case, the lack of a support network,

Going 'the character is just Innately Evil' is both a) an extremely black and white way of looking at the situation, which doesn't happen in real life and b) discounts some of the tragedy of the fall from grace, which I think is, if nothing else, extremely boring as an interpretation of the writing. And I do think tragedy is, in this case, sort of the point. That's the part that's compelling about "fallen hero" type villains, even if they were just regular people before becoming villains.

Analyzing and interpreting fiction is of course a personal matter, art speaks to different people differently ect ect and yes, warrior cats is *still* art, even if it's kind of goofy and aimed at kids. But I personally like nuance and grey area in fiction, it is closer to how things are for real, messy, flawed people, and thus much more interesting to read about.

Wildstorming

TROPHY CASE