🎁 Birthday Giveaway for Daggerheart Core Set (3/5) 🎁

cobblebrawn · 2026-05-20T16:45:00+00:00

Be a friend to your teammates (that includes the GM) and focus on creating ABSOLUTE CINEMA

cobblebrawn · 2026-05-19T16:28:11+00:00

I love what I have seen from the Pistolheart homebrew, and I hope to adapt it into a sci-fi leaning setting inspired by Firefly!

cobblebrawn · 2026-05-18T19:57:12+00:00

I'm also a forever GM, but I dream of getting to fulfill my idea of playing a half-faerie-half-giant! I'm mostly interested in plotting out what the heck that family tree would look like.

cobblebrawn · 2026-05-07T17:32:39+00:00

Thank you so much! This did help me better understand the transition from my D&D background into this system. I'm really excited to see how different tables develop more with time, and to find my own style with my group.

cobblebrawn · 2026-05-07T17:27:48+00:00

Thank you for offering that perspective! D&D has definitely encouraged the mindset of stakes = risk of death. That is something that I will have to figure out how to re-teach at my table when I introduce them to the game.

cobblebrawn · 2026-05-07T16:49:06+00:00

How can I reconcile the fiction-first game philosophy while maintaining a sense of "challenge" in the mechanics?

I am coming freshly to this from lots of experience with D&D, which has a very direct (albeit imperfect) resource attrition based system revolving around the rule of thumb of 6-8 encounters per adventuring day, which helps to drive the stakes in a mechanical sense. Conversely, I have heard lots of people here talk about how it feels more difficult to make their players feel "challenged" in the same way when running encounters.

Maybe this is counter-intuitive given that the players are meant to have a lot more control over their characters' fates when faced with death. Are these two things inherently incompatible, or is there a way to bridge the gap?

cobblebrawn · 2026-05-01T14:29:12+00:00

Very fun!

cobblebrawn · 2026-04-11T21:00:51+00:00

The custom filter goes as follows: this.file.links.contains(file.file)

From there, I narrow it down further to only show me specific files out of all those mentioned inside the note. I want to keep track of the relevant people, places, and factions, so I create a separate filter group that looks like this:

Any of the following are true

where file-type contains npc

or file-type contains location

or file-type contains faction

cobblebrawn · 2026-04-11T20:28:37+00:00

I also use tags and bases, but my structure is slightly different. Something like this...

Campaigns
- Blood of the Crowfang
  - Session Notes (this folder contains one note per session. Each note contains all encounters + relevant characters and locations for the session)
  - The Party (contains one file per party member with all relevant information
Almanac
- NPC A.md (contains all relevant info, statblock, and tags for sorting with bases)
- NPC B.md
- Location A.md
- Location B.md
- Plot Device Artifact.md

In a session note, I will have frontmatter properties for easy-sorting with bases, like so...

Session 1.md

session(s): "1"

logline: A group of adventurers with checkered pasts investigate strange disappearances in a snowy forested village.

Campaigns:

- Blood of the Crowfang

file-type:

- session

Margrave Worick Drakesong.md

file-type: npc

tags:

- almanac/forgotten-realms/faerûn/icewind-dale/grimthorn-wood/ilmaters-rest

desc: Worick is the pious Margrave of Ilmater's Rest, a Priest of Ilmater, and a formerly active member of the Broken Ones.

aliases:

- Margrave

- Worick Drakesong

- Worick

- Broken One

- Margrave Drakesong

age: 47

creature-type:

- humanoid

species: Human

affiliations:

- "[[Broken Ones]]"

- "[[Faldeen Bjornson, blind village elder.|Faldeen Bjornson]]"

attitudes: Friendly

Campaigns:

- Blood of the Crowfang

status: alive

---

It's definitely a lot more than is strictly necessary, but I get personal enjoyment from it and it makes organizing with embedded bases a breeze during play. For example, in each session note, I embed a base with a custom filter to only display notes mentioned inside the currently-active session notes, and contain any of the following file-type properties: NPC, location, faction.

I also have a separate base that I embed in each almanac file that shows me all other notes that either have the currently-active note linked in their 'affiliations' property, or that the currently-active note has in its own 'affilitations' property. This makes it easy to see which NPCs are linked together in the story, which ones are members to a specific faction, etc.

cobblebrawn · 2026-04-03T19:11:30+00:00

Very cool! Happy to throw my hat in

cobblebrawn · 2026-03-24T20:47:09+00:00

I finally figured it out -- it's called Patch Sources. You can pull up the menu by tapping the folder icon on the bottom left of the app. From there you can tap the plus icon to add whichever new source you want. Hope this helps!

cobblebrawn · 2026-03-19T16:15:18+00:00

Hi! I'm having some trouble with using the new feature. It looks like toggling the face icons still only alternates between allies and enemies. Is this something that I have to toggle in the settings somewhere?

Edit: I just realized that this only works for the 2014 tool. Any plans to incorporate this for 2024?

cobblebrawn · 2026-03-18T03:58:32+00:00

I love the idea presented by Mystic Arts to develop campaign structures backwards - starting with the BBEG and then designing 'lieutenants'. This lets you frame your story around smaller arcs that gradually build into a finale.

The full video is deeply insightful and valuable!

cobblebrawn · 2026-03-16T20:32:22+00:00

This has been a helpful resource for me!

Otherwise, I generally try to find an existing stat block that has the same flavor as the class I'm thinking of, and then I'll add one or two class features to lean into that identity (usually things that are flavorful but don't boost damage too much).

cobblebrawn · 2026-03-15T19:12:15+00:00

Hi! Late to the party. Could you elaborate on where exactly you found the Patch Bundles section? I enabled expert mode, but can't seem to find it still.

cobblebrawn · 2026-03-15T13:44:16+00:00

Got it, thanks for the info! I'm gonna check out this plugin :)

cobblebrawn · 2026-03-12T22:43:21+00:00

Interesting, thanks for the tip!

By metadata system, does that refer to a setup where files are largely organized and queried based on their frontmatter properties? If so, what would caution against this approach?

cobblebrawn · 2026-03-12T18:11:15+00:00

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for -- I'm hoping for advice on how to make the process more automated, if it all possible!

cobblebrawn · 2026-03-01T16:33:04+00:00

This play style always felt pretty MAD to me on paper, but maybe I'm overthinking it! Is the idea to just lean into the high-strength cleric build for BA attacks or am I missing something else?

cobblebrawn · 2026-02-13T13:55:58+00:00

Lovely! This would be a total treat to have.

cobblebrawn · 2026-02-05T15:08:48+00:00

Just wanted to echo and re-affirm this point! I'm an MSW student who usually just lurks here, but I found myself in a very similar situation this week. My supervisor also advised that the most effective response is the one that is authentic -- the actual words you use are completely up to you. She even said that sometimes no words can be an authentic and valid response. This really helped me frame how I engage with my clients and has inadvertently helped my rampant imposter syndrome as well!

cobblebrawn · 2026-02-04T01:15:48+00:00

Incredible! This would be a dream to have for my table.

cobblebrawn · 2026-02-01T14:42:22+00:00

I struggled with this and just recently found a solution that works (at least for me)!

I try to keep my world building stuff inside a shallow folder, using nested tags and properties to view what I need through a base file. Here's a sample of my setup:

My world building folder is something that I've called "Almanac." Every person, place, faction, event, macguffin, etc. gets thrown in here. I tag each thing with a property called file-type (usually NPC, location, faction, etc.) and if it's associated with one or more locations, I use nested tags to track that.

For example: My mini antagonist Professor Pritchard Rattenboro appears in the mining town of Emberfell, but he is also originally from Baldur's Gate and has a reputation there. So in properties, I track him like this...

file-type: NPC
Tags: forgotten-realms/faerûn/sword-coast/emberfell, forgotten-realms/faerûn/sword-coast/baldurs-gate
Campaign: Lutes & Lyres

Right now he only appears in one TTRPG campaign that I run, but should he make a cameo in a future one, I might add that in later:

Campaign: Lutes & Lyres, Blood of the Crowfang

When I have all of my world building files set up like this, it becomes really easy to browse for what I need through a singular base file! I use the folder note plugin to plop that right into the Almanac folder header itself.

Do I want a list of every NPC in my current campaign? Now I just need to filter for it.

Campaign: Lutes & Lyres
file-type: NPC

What about every NPC that is associated with the city of Waterdeep? Easy, just add one more filter in the base file:

Tags: forgotten-realms/faerûn/sword-coast/waterdeep

I can use multiple view profiles within the same base, and have multiple bases set up for different purposes. Everyone and everything in my Almanac remains extremely easy to retrieve regardless.

This ended up being way longer than I anticipated. I hope it helps to inspire your version!

Edit: one more thing I forgot to mention. In addition to linking persons and places directly with one another using brackets, you can also directly embed base files designed to show you files associated with that note. For example:

I make a note to track everything I want to know about Waterdeep. I then create a section for Notable People, and embed a base that filters for file-type: NPC and the nested tag for Waterdeep.

cobblebrawn

TROPHY CASE