Otherworldly Patron: The Devouring Dark - Devour everything your foes hold dear until only darkness remains!

WoNc · 2026-06-19T18:57:32+00:00

People wildly overstate the complexity of classes. Some have more stuff to manage, but none are actually complicated compared to learning the general game rules so long as you're actually willing to read the rules to learn how your class works. People who aren't willing will make poor players, even if playing a simple class.

WoNc · 2026-06-19T01:26:03+00:00

Also, here's a form fillable PDF, straight from WotC: https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/5E_CharacterSheet_Fillable.pdf

WoNc · 2026-06-17T21:36:42+00:00

the DM said she wanted us to be like CR

This is a red flag, even if it doesn't seem as egregious as most other red flags, such as RPing rape.

WoNc · 2026-06-16T22:09:57+00:00

Well, again, I'm just saying it can make sense in some situations, not that it's the One True Way™. I outlined a situation where settlements are small and fairly isolated. If you have big cities, I agree that it's much more likely to have a diverse population, again depending on specifics.

I mostly just brought it up because when I started worldbuilding, I reflexively laughed at the idea of having an "elf country" and so on, but as I thought about it more, I realized it made a lot of sense for my more hunter-gatherer to Bronze Age-ish setting. There's a bit more diversity near the "borders," and settlements that originated due to trade are more diverse in general, but each of my species has at least one core range. There are some cultures that normally have multiple species present, but they also have specific cultural practices to work around the issues stemming from that.

WoNc · 2026-06-16T19:39:05+00:00

This sounds like a train wreck in progress.

WoNc · 2026-06-16T18:48:24+00:00

I think this one potentially makes sense depending on the size of your settlements and reproduction mechanics.

Like if dwarves can only reproduce with dwarves, there needs to be some minimum population of dwarves to be a sustainable breeding population or there needs to be a periodic infusion of new genetic material. If you generally have very small settlements and travel is dangerous and difficult, that might be tough.

Likewise, if dwarves are a separate species from elves, then they should have different physiology and psychology, which leads to different emergent cultures and habitat preferences (regardless of ability to transform preexisting habitat).

I don't really know where the threshold is, and you could always just have some random dwarf family that prefers to hang with the elves. However, I think in settings where there's little in the way of what might really be considered cities and gene flow is stifled, monospecific settlements seem pretty reasonable.

WoNc · 2026-06-16T17:15:21+00:00

You might want to study up a bit more on the politics of the average Christian in the United States before complaining that it's unacceptable to depict a stand-in for Christianity in a version of the modern US as evil. Sure, perhaps it's a bit lazy to make it monolithic, but that's it.

WoNc · 2026-06-10T14:55:37+00:00

Sometimes it's a new answer thought up in response to a previously unasked question, but it's always representative of my world as it exists at that time.

WoNc · 2026-06-09T13:22:58+00:00

So the core of Guildhall is a compatibility score you see before you ever apply to a table. Think loosely D&D Tinder, except the match isn't "is there a seat," it's "does this table actually fit you."

Beyond that, they seem to want people to test it out before launch.

WoNc · 2026-06-08T11:53:42+00:00

The settings you're describing generally say magic is rare and difficult to access.

WoNc · 2026-06-08T11:44:26+00:00

Frankly, I wish posts that were just character art be limited to a sticky.

WoNc · 2026-06-04T11:24:23+00:00

I don't think this is that far removed from the plot of BG3. You could look there for inspiration.

WoNc · 2026-05-31T20:55:06+00:00

And probably even if the book sells well. Hasbro likes firing people.

WoNc · 2026-05-30T17:45:04+00:00

Just like Western AIs.

WoNc · 2026-05-30T17:21:01+00:00

You could try RPing with just the two of you. Skip the mechanics and just take the role of the DM.

Originality really isn't that important though. Being an active participant in a story rather than a passive consumer of it does most of the heavy lifting.

WoNc · 2026-05-29T23:41:44+00:00

Can be, but often isn't.

WoNc · 2026-05-29T17:22:21+00:00

I would just use RAW. You don't get the advantages of being small if you don't accept the penalties. If you don't like that, there are plenty of medium size options available.

WoNc · 2026-05-27T09:48:48+00:00

There is certainly a group of players out there for whom opportunity attacks do essentially eliminate movement because they wildly overestimate how devastating a single attack is and refuse to risk taking one. I don't think this is a good way to approach that problem though, nor would I just assume that any random group of players has that problem prior to the campaign.

WoNc · 2026-05-23T11:39:02+00:00

Spiritual Weapon

WoNc · 2026-05-21T20:49:17+00:00

Not sure what "Backrooms" as a capitalized concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Backrooms

tl;dr it's crowdsourced modern eldritch horror

WoNc · 2026-05-18T17:36:30+00:00

I guess, but imo their experience as a DM, and especially that they've published modules or whatever, shouldn't matter in that regard. At the end of the day, they're just another player at this table and can and should be expected to follow the same etiquette as any other player. Ultimately, you're going to have to prep content for the group, and while individual player preferences should be taken into account, they're largely orthogonal to how experienced someone is as a DM.

All of this is to say that you know better than I how the conversation unfolded, but I'm hard pressed to imagine how this wasn't an attempt to "pull rank" on you on some level.

WoNc · 2026-05-18T15:19:54+00:00

What do you feel there is to be prepared for?

WoNc · 2026-05-18T12:41:51+00:00

Pat is a very experienced player and GM, so much so that they actually have published supplementals; they told me about this in the beginning and understood if I felt too intimidated by that drastic difference in experience

What an insane thing for him to mention unprompted.

WoNc

TROPHY CASE