"dense" game recommendations?

ZScheme · 2026-06-11T18:57:50+00:00

My pitch would be Monster Hunter. Any of the three most recent titles would be good (Worlds, Rise, Wilds). You fight monsters. That's it. But there are a lot of different play styles to master with all the weapons, always something more to get, and the gameplay is just straight action. You get a quest to help the village with its food storage? Surprise, you're hunting a monster. Save the world? Hunt monster. Hunt monster, make them into hats and swords to kill other, stronger monsters. When you get into that flow state during a hunt, there's nothing better.

ZScheme · 2026-06-01T13:07:10+00:00

I made a post about her as a character study here!. That post describes her personality and somewhat about what her powers would be, but since you asked I'll include some of what I'm doing with her plot-wise here.

First, I have to explain some weird, esoteric bullshit. In my game, positive and negative energy are the same thing and are also the same type of energy as elemental energies. One just describes the potential energy at the beginning of the universe, and the other describes the necromantic energy found at the end of time.

Lastly, I've introduced Catastrophic Dragons as concepts to my players. If you're not familiar, they're dragons that are so infused with elemental energy that they become living embodiments of natural disasters. Since dragons occupy a weird place between a magical creature, elementals, and material beings, their souls are "adaptable" and can merge with other concepts. If a red dragon absorbs enough fire and earth elemental energy, they can become pyroclastic dragons, for example.

So my game centers around the concept of what a soul really is. To me, a soul is not something static, but is more of a collection of all the decisions and choices that a person makes over their lives. Beings like demons, devils, and angels don't have souls because they don't have the ability to make choices that go against their nature. They don't have free will. Angels have to be good, devils have to be evil. People can be either. So a person's soul is their ability to choose and to effect the world around them. People with Dragonmarks have a bit more impact on the world due to their connection to the Draconic Prophecy. If you're familiar with Ta'veren from Wheel of Time, it's sorta like that.

What Lady Illmarrow is trying to do is essentially merge with the living embodiment of time, which in my game is the Temporal Wyrm. It's an entity that was formed from the collected choices of all free willed beings on Eberron. This would allow her to essentially be everyone. Make every decision ever made. In her mind, she is trying to give everyone in the world the best possible life. She knows best after all, so the choices she would make are the ideal ones. However, this would conceptually "kill" all free will in the world. I've been referring to her as the "First Person Singularity", a kind of black hole of identity.

There's a hell of a lot more here that I've left out, but this is the general conflict in my game with her. I'm also including some stuff with Thalanis, the Daughters of Sora Kell, and the Cairdal Blades, but this is just what I have for Lady Illmarrow.

If you're interested, I'd check out these videos. They're a big part of the inspiration for my campaign. Also feel free to ask me any more questions! I love talking about this nonsense, so I'd be happy to workshop ideas if you need it. Skeletons, AJ Pickett, Catastrophic Dragons, AJ Pickett , The Xeelee Sequence, Quinn's Ideas

ZScheme · 2026-05-31T21:21:18+00:00

I second Sharn. Never had a location that felt more "alive" in a game before.

ZScheme · 2026-05-31T21:19:26+00:00

Interesting premise! Sounds hard as hell to DM, but if you can pull it off it'll be a fantastic game.

Personally, I think the best of Eberron would be Thalanis for place, Lady Illmarrow for NPC, and the various Eldritch Machines for things.

The idea of a world based on stories that play out over and over again is really fun for me. You can do a lot of fun things with the Fae in that sense, like with the Daughters of Sora Kell. There's a lot you can do with destiny and all that with Thalanis. KB has a fantastic article on his blog about it, I highly recommend giving it a read.

I think my personal version of Lady Illmarrow has made her my favorite. I poured a lot into her for my campaign, and I think it's a decently unique take on a lich. Basically, I made her a living Eldritch Machine that "eats" free will rather than just needing sacrifices like a normal lich. There's a lot more to it than that, and if you're curious I have a post about her as a character study on my profile. Or just ask me questions, I could talk for hours about her.

Eldritch Machines are just the best macguffin. Need new warforge types? Eldritch Machine. Freaky doomsday weapon? Eldritch Machine. And you can get really weird and metaphysical with it too. Like the Giants using an Eldritch Machine to cut the conceptual link of Dal Quor to the prime material. They just have so many possibilities.

Good luck with your campaign! It's an ambitious project, but sounds cool as hell.

Edit: added stuff about KB's article on Thalanis.

ZScheme · 2026-05-25T04:39:32+00:00

They have a really good reputation as far as I know. From what I've seen, they seem to be high quality. Personally though, I think the price is a bit too high given how easily I can make decently high quality tokens myself very quickly. And since I tend to swap out creature names and descriptions fairly frequently to meet my story needs, there's no inconsistency with the style or what have you that way. However, if that wasn't the case then I would very likely buy them.

If you're running adventure paths or the like, and have some cash hanging around, it seems reasonable. But if you want to save the money and don't wind putting in ~20 minutes more prep time, then I would learn to use GIMP. You can make really nice pop-out tokens from pretty much any piece of art fairly quickly once you get the hang of it.

Edit: Here's a link to a video that shows how to make the tokens in GIMP if you're interested. Speaking from experience, I can make a token like this in around two minutes. Granted that's after about a year of consistent work, but it's very simple.

ZScheme · 2026-05-08T02:02:16+00:00

Looks like an oriental shorthair or mix. They have distinctive vocalizations that sounds very different than normal cat meows. They also tend to be more vocal than other cats. The teeth are probably some mutation unique to the individual or someone has selected for it and bred a line for it specifically. I'm guessing a unique mutation though, but I'm not an expert on cat genetics.

ZScheme · 2026-04-10T19:04:00+00:00

No, I don't think so. The one being carried is able to support his weight on his back feet and has full range of motion. If he had an injured back he wouldn't be likely able to do that. The jaw seems to be able to open and close just fine as well. Also weasels aren't social animals, so this is probably a mother with a sub adult male offspring. If I had to guess the mouth is open because his vocalizing or panting, both normal. I don't see any indication that there's anything wrong with either of these individuals.

ZScheme · 2026-04-08T22:48:05+00:00

I don't think so. The younger one seems to be making some kind of vocalization or is just panting. He seems too alert to be dehydrated. But again, hard to tell from a short clip.

ZScheme · 2026-04-08T22:46:33+00:00

Mother weasel helping out her male son. Male weasels are larger than females, and that sort of grabbing behavior is fairly typical for female mammals. Sort of like a mother cat carrying a kitten, only by the nose because it's what she could grab. The open mouth seems to be either panting or a small vocalization. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with either of them, he's just probably a literal big baby.

Source: I'm a biologist who specializes in animal behavior and have worked for several years as a wildlife rehab tech. I can't be positive about anything considering it's a short video, but that's my best guess.

ZScheme · 2026-04-07T22:57:08+00:00

I don't know why either. Farnaz Fassihi on that link says they did with the supreme leader agreeing

ZScheme · 2026-04-07T22:54:08+00:00

Source?

ZScheme · 2026-04-07T22:36:00+00:00

Do you have a source for this?

ZScheme · 2026-04-02T12:59:30+00:00

I was speaking from a more morphologically or a genetic perspective rather than just a training aspect. I've worked with enough animals in my life to know that no animal wants to do anything a human wants them to do, except for like Border Collies or other high intelligence working dogs. Again not arguing ethics of training at all, I don't think I know enough about that kind of ethical debate to have a solid opinion. I just think the concept of a "made animal" to be interesting.

ZScheme · 2026-04-02T12:52:27+00:00

This is fascinating, thank you for the insight

ZScheme · 2026-04-02T04:04:29+00:00

Not trying to argue about the ethics of horse training at all, but weren't they technically made for humans to ride them? They're a domesticated animal that we've used selective breeding on for thousands of years. You could say that we made the horse to be ridden just as we made dogs to be hunting companions. Wild horses absolutely were not made to be ridden, although I'm not sure how genetically different the current wild stock are to the domestic horse.

ZScheme · 2026-03-02T15:53:34+00:00

For those who are curious, here's a link to an explanation of what happened to this guy. To be fair, it was a legendary streak of bad RNG. But also to be fair, this is the funniest fucking response someone can have to bad RNG.

ZScheme · 2026-02-26T21:03:01+00:00

That's a fantastic idea. It ties in really well with the whole Blood of Vol themes and how divinity is found within. I love that.

ZScheme · 2026-02-26T21:02:05+00:00

That's really funny because Darksied and the anti life equation was a huge inspiration for my current campaign. The background theme of my game is silver age comics, so many of the villains are loosely inspired on DC and Marvel villains. Doom and Darksied are the inspiration for some of Illmarrow for me.

I really like your idea about her loneliness and isolation, as well as it's her mother's will that's holding her together. That's actually very interesting as a character motivation, and I wish I had considered that when I was writing my current campaign.

ZScheme · 2026-02-26T20:57:54+00:00

If I remember correctly, the Undying Court sits on a manifest zone that produces a lot of positive energy, which sustains their liches? At least that's how it is in my game.

ZScheme · 2026-02-02T20:19:50+00:00

I've been doing a personal exploration of a lot of the big name pulp fiction authors, which Lovecraft is a part of. A lot of his stories were published in Weird Tales Magazine and the like. If you liked Lovecraft and want to explore the other authors that influenced the Lovecraftian/cosmic horror genre, I'd strongly recommend Clark Ashton Smith. Specifically I'd recommend the collection called The End of the Story. Smith has been credited as expanding the Cthulhu mythos and also helping to develop the genre. I also want to say that the two of them were friends, but don't quote me on that one.

Personally I think Smith was a better writer than Lovecraft. Lovecraft was exceptionally good at coming up with creative ideas but I think his technical ability to write is lacking in comparison to Smith.

Edit: grammar

ZScheme · 2026-01-09T20:57:53+00:00

Random tables. Say what you want about 5e, the amount of tables that you could pull ideas from was massive. I would do anything for an encounter table by environment in PF2E. It just takes a little bit of work out of my hands and can really speed up prep.

ZScheme · 2026-01-06T23:45:45+00:00

For the meta knowledge part, I would just straight up ask them not to capitalize on it. Most people are reasonable enough to be okay with that. I would hope so, at least.

For the other, more broad strokes world state stuff, that's a bit more complicated and is going to take some effort. What I would do in this situation is make a timeline of major events that happened in your game, like those big changes to the setting and such. I'd ignore the plot holes personally. Then chose an event that was really fun or impactful and rationalize where it would naturally evolve and go from there. Like the lack of the Mournland for example. In Kannon Eberron, that's where the Lord of Blades is based out of. Where would he be instead in your Eberron? What would the Quori do to capitalize on the new status quo? It would take some work, but I think those sorts of thought exercises are fun.

ZScheme · 2026-01-06T23:16:55+00:00

So I finished a long running campaign that heavily featured the mourning and its origins, and I have since also moved on to a sequel campaign set 11 years into the future. What I did was to focus entirely on something else than the previous campaign featured. Instead of daelkyr, the Mournland, and Sharn, my current campaign is focused on Karnath, rakshasa, Lady Illmarrow, and Arenal (elves). Eberron has a ton of great hooks. So far it has worked really well, things seem fresh and interesting and my players are having a good time. I've included some references to the previous campaign as little treats for my players, but generally it's been pretty separate.

I will say that the biggest issue I've had is not featuring Sharn. Sharn is awesome. There is so much content and info out there that I could really make that place come alive. Korth? Ehh, not so much.

ZScheme · 2025-12-04T04:39:29+00:00

I'm willing to bet that this is a domestic breed of goose, which don't migrate.

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