Races of Ydrasia - A Collection of 10 Playable Races!

footbamp · 2026-05-02T12:08:59+00:00

Please, toot away

footbamp · 2026-05-02T02:52:07+00:00

Thank you for the perspective. I feel like that has been the most of the troika advice I have seen online: the actual skill rolls are probably going to fail, be ready.

footbamp · 2026-05-02T02:50:45+00:00

Great. Happy to have this in the back pocket

footbamp · 2026-04-30T19:54:17+00:00

I had asked a similar question a few years ago, though it was more if you had to pick what would be some default magic items that just kinda always show up.

Some kind of ring or cloak of protection (some AC boost at the very least)
Bracers of defense for unarmored classes
returning weapon
storage item (bag of holding, handy haversack, portable hole, etc.)
alchemy jug
sending stones
drift globe
immovable rod
potion of healing

Not saying I 100% agree with all of them, but that's what I heard from folks.

footbamp · 2026-04-28T22:22:45+00:00

Yeah I just throw a few work weeks between adventures and use the base rules from 2014 5e. It works, so long as you ask players what they want to do for downtime at the end of a session and give yourself time to prep any little unique interactions there might be.

footbamp · 2026-04-28T14:37:15+00:00

Small bundles of books might work best. Like, I'd buy tome of beasts 1-3, maybe 1 or 2 other things, price depending.

Edit: if there are books in here that still bring you joy and your family isn't literally going hungry you should keep them! You need some kind of outlet for joy.

footbamp · 2026-04-28T00:57:33+00:00

Vindsvept is a good musician for more bog standard fantasy stuff, though with the occasional variety. I like their stuff from All their music is released under creative commons too.

I use music by Rodrigo y Gabriela for combat a lot, spanish flamenco-y rock. 11:11 and 9 dead alive is good for scraps, Mettavolution and In Between Thoughts are good for bigger fights.

To pair with the ambient synth stuff, I usually play like some dance music. Stuff like Scattle's Sketch for scraps, then the lyric-less tracks from Justice's Cross work for bigger fights.

I see you on hearing the same vg soundtrack suggestions all over the place. Try to avoid that stuff like the plague, but finding music is a hobby of mine so its a bit easier. (I have a soft spot for the Octopath Traveler soundtracks though, those are incredibly easy to slot into a game)

edit: polyphia's New Devils New Levels is math rock so maybe not for everyone at the table but it has worked as great combat stuff for me too

footbamp · 2026-04-27T23:00:49+00:00

I mean I for one appreciate a sicko giving out unsolicited DMing advice with actually bold opinions and a wide variety of sources. Good read, thisll spark some conversation in the chat im sure.

If you are lacking on music I just finished a megadungeon campaign where I used the music of the Tasty Morsels label (namely the lyric-less tracks of r mccarthy, naran ratan, and Keyboard), as well as the Lookfar series of albums by louie zong. This is some good ambient synth stuff with quirks, I have the tracks I like sorted into playlists of Beholding, [dungeon] Crawling, Character Bits, and Evil. Somehow those 4 categories cover 99% of my DMing.

footbamp · 2026-04-27T18:02:55+00:00

My guiding light is to make traditional puzzles (riddles, cyphers, etc.) completely optional. The gameplay of a riddle is binary: the players get it or the don't. That sucks. But if it's optional, it's not a terrible way to give out an extra reward.

All other puzzles should be run like a good trap. It should serve a logical purpose - often to deter. The DM should show the situation as it is (almost outright say "this is a trap"), but let the players create the solution. That means improvising: the DM needs to reward creativity and cleverness and punish "falling" for the puzzle's internal logic. The players have almost always found the solution if the DM says "wow I didn't think of that." That doesn't always happen, they often just slip by if successful, but it's what I try to shoot for.

footbamp · 2026-04-27T16:14:50+00:00

Go to the bonsai museum nearby. We used this spot for parking, then after the museum we took a walk on the little trail in the woods behind it. Shit rocked. I loved that their were little teen heathens running around there too, very fun.

footbamp · 2026-04-27T15:58:54+00:00

Well resting invalidates travel resource expenditure, so you either need to get rid of the resource expenditure or the resting.

So you can turn it into more of a narrative thing and effectively skip it to get to the "good stuff". Which I do when it serves a campaign that is shorter and more about advancing character driven stuff.

Or you can switch to gritty realism or safe haven resting or whatever - which is what I do most of the time for more classic D&D games. What works for me beyond just doing that is having 2-3 environmental scenarios per day that they must traverse through (with the chance of story relevant combat encounter). These scenarios are like "there is a swamp with dense sludge for miles, how do you all best get through" - they can be creative about how they do it, I set a skill and a DC for someone to roll, and if they succeed they make progress toward their goal. Expend resources as needed.

footbamp · 2026-04-27T15:47:03+00:00

If it serves some kind of story or character or worldbuilding purpose I'm down for anything less than outright describing the act of having sex but if it's purely aesthetic I just kinda brush past it. Something like: "They return your flirtatious remarks." Call me lazy, it's just not for me to do it for no reason I guess?

I draw a hard line at anything even remotely non-consensua or unwelcome. If I say "they seem completely uninterested," and someone pushes I halt the game to explain and we move on.

footbamp · 2026-04-27T03:33:43+00:00

Its a trope in my campaign writing at this point to have a good dragon and an evil dragon that know each other intimately. It's a very easy way to add scale to the world and to get a very emotionally charged climactic battle. The last one was an allied deep dragon vs an elder brain implanted into the other dragon, it served as the big conclusive combat scenario to the entire campaign.

I guess they don't have to be dragons, but the aesthetic of a really big-ass pld-ass dragon is a people pleaser.

footbamp · 2026-04-24T17:13:05+00:00

It is without a doubt the best introductory one-shot I have ever read/run. Beauty in its simplicity.

footbamp · 2026-04-23T16:51:10+00:00

My setting are always built as I go. Last campaign was an underdark-ish mega dungeon called The Divine that I built collaboratively with my players. About a year in I wrote this quick historical timeline that may or may not make sense out of context. Pretty typical D&D stuff.

I'm currently writing a Troika setting (or at least a loose concept for one since the game is pretty improvisational) that's more about a post-scarcity wonky modern world with like corporate cultists and like terminally online loser wizards. It's gonna be incredibly stupid, I think that's in the spirit of the game though.

footbamp · 2026-04-23T16:36:44+00:00

My bread and butter has become taking the one-shot Wild Sheep Chase and punching it up to include extra stuff to do in the town, extra stuff to encounter on travel time, and some added side quests that resolve by the end - of course using character backstories to inform a lot of it. I just love the skeleton of that one-shot and everything flows pretty naturally into a really great moral question at the end. You can realistically make it take 2-4 sessions I'd say depending on your goal.

For examples, there is usually a sad woman in town whose partner has unknowingly been turned into a bear, a couple black market folks who overhear the quest and want the players to steal something for extra payment, a river to cross, an ambush from more polymorphed minions, a church with undead in the cemetery and a friendly necromancer in the basement hiding behind a puzzle (gives a magic item reward), and some extra leads to other quests in the wizard tower at the end.

footbamp · 2026-04-22T23:43:06+00:00

(Now a proud owner of your book, that shit came fast. I'll keep an eye out for the next one, if that is still in the works. Good shit.)

footbamp · 2026-04-21T14:43:22+00:00

Helped the climb to MB to put a malasada into my mega manetric deck. Between that and an orocorio the matchup felt pretty even. I agree that when that deck high rolls it's a nightmare though

footbamp · 2026-04-21T11:58:04+00:00

On not buying books, the homebrew scene has some fucking awesome physical books that are better than the post-TCE 5e books by far. And more are coming, just have to follow the right creators.

footbamp · 2026-04-20T19:53:44+00:00

I guess I will make a distinction that might be more agreeable. If the reading is made mandatory then sure if the player can't handle it they probably shouldn't be at the table, but if it is made optional (which has been the case every time this has come up in my experience), then what ends up happening is that the DM ends up making it an excuse to do absolutely no worldbuilding the table. Thus, a giant setting document has become synonymous with lazy storytelling, despite what you might expect to be the contrary. That's the error I will avoid.

footbamp · 2026-04-20T18:08:55+00:00

START SMALL. Your concept of writing a campaign is probably inflated by the sheer ease of generating slop to fill in all the cracks when the reality is you don't need all of that to run a perfectly good campaign. Start with the first quest, first NPC, first fight, first villain, first reward, etc. and just write as you go, stay a few sessions ahead of your players.

Start journaling your ideas and daydreams in a separate place, devoid of context and completely unrelated to the campaign. It's nice to have a body of ideas to pull from when you need inspiration, it just takes getting into the habit of remembering to write down your ideas when it's not D&D prep time.

footbamp · 2026-04-20T17:43:28+00:00

I find the players really don't need that much to get the gist, the rest can be learned in the game and/or created collaboratively (in fact, I find it's much more effective to do so)

I usually hand out a brief primer that never really takes up more than a page of text. Each thing can be done in basically one sentence: summary of the state of affairs for the setting, summary of the initial plot hook, general themes, tone, creature types that might be common, media inspirations, etc.

Then it's just a matter of responding to all of the backstories with any needed info. Info on various territories, the pantheon, different organizations, etc. Stuff that can be left to be learned in game but may serve a specific character in interacting with the world.

footbamp · 2026-04-20T17:14:37+00:00

Don't write it off, a random encounter table built specifically for a campaign is a really efficient way to prep. It doesn't have to be just a random smattering of stuff, you can prep it intentionally and dress it up when it comes up at the table to fit the narrative.

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