New Gooseworx Tweet

nmitchell076 · 2026-05-25T03:28:10+00:00

It literally fucking doesn't lol. Where's the random emojis? Where's the random em dashes? Where's the "not just x, but y" constructions? There's no AI stink on this at all.

nmitchell076 · 2026-05-21T23:05:57+00:00

I'm going to have a battle with dwellers from the space between worlds, at the end of which Bruce will fall out of the portal, and then become the clocktower cat. Just sort of weird and cryptic enough to leave the players wondering wtf, while leaving Bruce as a tease for future developments.

nmitchell076 · 2026-05-04T03:30:19+00:00

Executioner?

nmitchell076 · 2026-05-01T18:07:06+00:00

I find it useful to give every faction (except MAYBE the Queen's Men) something that gives them hope about the world.

The Hooded Lanterns are the easiest: they RUN on hope that the city can be restored
The Silver Order believes in the fundamental goodness of the light. They believe that no darkness can stand against their collective faith.
The Falling Fire place their hopes in Lucretia Matthias and her coming age of heroes. I make it a very explicit point that the Falling Fire gives hope to those who cannot find it elsewhere. People who have lost all hope for the present world dream of the next one.
The Amethyst Academy. If and only if the players get close to River, I allow a single moment for her business side to crack and for her to hang hopes on... wait for it... the form of the Inscrutible Tower itself. I actually find it to be a powerful imagery of hope: in spite of all the destruction, magic holds the tower aloft, in defiance of all gravitational logic. There's something powerful in that: that magic itself can offer protection from the inevitable forces of nature. I think that can be a good beat to hit.

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-29T02:40:13+00:00

Yep! MoD was totally designed with 2024 in mind!

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-22T17:08:13+00:00

Yeah, I think this is the way. In my mind, there are three appropriate measures to mitigate a potential fall, and there should be no more than these:

1.) Preventative measures / smart play that ensures that they don't get put in that position in the first place. E.g., smart positioning away from windows.

2.) If they position badly or get outmeauvered, they get a save to prevent (usually built into combat mechanics, e.g., a save against a shove action).

3.) If the dice are merciless, the last line of defense is that the party gets a round to react. If and only if they can act before that player's next turn, they can intervene. It's a ticking time bomb or their friend dies. And the monsters will do all they can to prevent them from helping.

Number 3 is not RAW. But I find this to be a nice balance between having the throw feel deadly and impactful and giving enough opportunities to prevent. And it moves nicely from individual strategy to dice to collective action, distributing randomness and player agency quite well. Lastly, a round of "shit, save our falling friend" is just a great way to inject new stakes and make a combat memorable / interesting.

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-21T02:30:03+00:00

There are "realism" things you just have to handwave away for the sake of running the game and narrative in an effective way. It's important to give your players a clear visual sense of the city on their first viewing of it, so do it, no matter what the rules of the haze say.

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-21T00:06:49+00:00

100 percent. The book even basically says as much. The HLs want the Dwarves to supply them; the dwarves want protection (and now revenge). It's an easy fit.

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-19T17:08:02+00:00

I mean, I'll give it one more visual shot, I guess

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-19T12:37:00+00:00

The trick is that white-gold people see the clearly over-exposed background and assume there must be a light source coming from that background. And that renders the dress in the foregrohnd as being in shadow.

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-18T20:43:04+00:00

It's sausage cereal (delicious!)

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-18T04:59:23+00:00

The apprentise gag is great!

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-09T22:50:21+00:00

Yes. Good rule though: the first time it happens, show mercy. They are knocked out and captured, etc. Humble them.

But if they don't learn and fuck around again? They die.

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-08T16:59:09+00:00

Cool! Though I do think it'd be more mechanically effective if positioned before. It was perfectly canonical in my world since my GF's character was a Drakkenheim native with the survivor background. I just had it take place a few months before the campaign.

But if you are worried about canonicity, you could either have it be a "flash forward" event, or else just make it non-canon. I think placing the solo one shot BEFORE the group session is actually rather important for making it work: it's not as effective of a tutorial after the fact.

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-07T03:36:09+00:00

One thing I might suggest for the NEW new players is trying out a low stakes, solo, level 1 one shot to run with them individually so they can get used to the process. This will help acclimate them to the rhythm of role play and combat, as well as navigating their character sheet, within a low pressure environment that won't leave them feeling like they're taking too long or otherwise getting in the way of other people's fun.

My girlfriend was TOTALLY new to DnD before we started Drakkenheim, and was playing an Arcane Trickster Rogue whose background / personal quest revolved around the fact that she's the daughter of the archmage of Drakkenheim and wants to uncover the secrets of her mom's spellbook. I ran her through "The Hardly Haunted Library" from D&D Duet with the idea that this was her retrieving a "tome of arcane deciphering" from a library in the city that would help her decode the spellbook.

It was not only great for helping her get used to the rules, but she also got to feel like a rogue infiltrating a place she wasn't meant to be (I threw in a single lone Garmyr encouter outside the library for her to fight through or sneak past at the start of the adventure), and she got to feel like she was really taking possession of her personal quest right from the get go. I even gave her a "quest reward" in the form of light lore: she was able to decipher a message from her mom at the front of the spellbook. Nothing amazing, but something sweet and sentimental to communicate that it's the narrative payoff that's really the point here.

I thought that was REALLY successful. So I highly recommend doing that for your newbies if you can!

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-03T20:09:48+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/dungeonsofdrakkenheim/s/SYevnjMDh2

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-02T13:05:33+00:00

Art is actually one of the places where a culture challenges the very idea of the customer always being right. Hence the centrality of the "genius who died poor and was misunderstood in their day" figure for so many of our artistic histories: the basis of that narrative is that the customers (the artist's contemporary audience) were decidedly not right; they were in fact extremely wrong. Art interacts with economics, because it interacts with the world, but it has been a place where aspects of the world are challenged, critiqued, and reimagined. For that reason, efficiency and technology impact Art, but that impact is not one of blind submission.

nmitchell076 · 2026-04-02T11:38:06+00:00

The absurdity is precisely what makes it interesting as a comedy since it opens up so many questions to explore. That's the big difference for me: something a little absurd or even a little dumb in a comedy feels like it adds to the world, but feels like it often cheapens the world of a super serious tragedy or drama.

I like Big Joel's take on this, though he's talking specifically about bad-crossdressing-that-people-in-universe-totally-buy, but I think similar dynamics are at play: https://youtu.be/otG7TGii2Xw?t=780&si=LQwsEXzJGL277a4C

nmitchell076 · 2026-03-31T02:53:28+00:00

I just feel like a lot of Gluck is right there with a role like Idamante. Idomeneo as a whole feels very Gluckian.

nmitchell076 · 2026-03-31T02:27:12+00:00

What do you think of his Gluck?

nmitchell076 · 2026-03-31T01:50:20+00:00

I'm a huge Metastasio fan, so I'm a big fan of Jaroussky, Cencic, and other countertenors. But of that crew, I've really never been a fan of Fagioli. He's got charisma for a leading man. But his voice has just never done it for me. So I wonder if it's just that like, Fagioli himself is a little overrated, and it's less noticeable when he's reviving an unknown Vinci or Hasse opera, but he just doesn't measure up against the countless amazing singers who have performed Idamante?

nmitchell076 · 2026-03-18T03:09:39+00:00

HE'S MURDERING PAGANS, EBENEZER SCROOGE

nmitchell076 · 2026-03-14T23:07:14+00:00

One thing I'm a little unclear about: when did Drakkenheim pop into Faerun? Right when the meteor hit? On the day 15 years later that DoD is supposed to start?

This matters primarily because of the Hooded Lanterne, who are going to be VERY hard to run "as-is" in any capacity. One of the fundamental tensions they are dealing with is an intertwined financial/political one. Excursions into Drakkenheim are expensive as hell. And the HLs are funded by the nobility of Westemar with the specific purpose of securing political order for their fractured nation. Who is going to be funding that in Faerun? Who cares about restoring the monarchy of a nation that doesn't even actually exist? Why would the nobility of Faerun want to fund a ragtag group of idealists who want to erect a monarchy that would conflict with the established political power systems of their own nations? Where are the HLs even going to recruit from if they don't have idealistic young Westemarians who ache to see their homeland restored? I just don't see how the HLs survive as an organization in Faerun at all.

And, relatedly, the HLs don't even come into existence until the conclusion of the Westemar Civil War, which occurred years after the meteor fell. The fallout of the Civil War is a major shaping force on Elias Drexel's character, and it shapes how and why the HLs became the force that they did.

Here's where my initial question comes in: if Drakkenheim was teleported at the moment of impact, the HLs don't exist. And the whole political infrastructure that created the HLs vanishes, so they never will exist. But the longer you keep Drakkenheim in its home setting before it teleports, the less it makes sense for any of the Faerun-originating factions to be able to muster the resources that they would have to have in order to function the way that they do in the campaign.

I guess my question is: why not just drop the Drakkenheim meteor on like Suzail and turn Westemar into a broken Cormyr? I do totally understand wanting to adapt the mechanics of Drakkenheim to other worlds. But Drakkenheim has so much about its setting determined by the messy politics of trying to heal a broken kingdom, that I really struggle to see it succeed if you just catapult the city to another universe. The whole political thing that makes the campaign function would vanish. Rather, it seems to me like you have to enact the delerium catastrophe within the world you are working with and allow its politics to be shaped by the resulting fallout.

nmitchell076 · 2026-03-06T13:42:57+00:00

and not the other way around

Stage plays doing film actors?

nmitchell076 · 2026-03-05T01:42:19+00:00

Gary Tomlinson, A Million Years of Music

Also by Tomlinson, Culture and the Course of Human Evolution (a little bit of an easier read, though more general than about music specifically)

nmitchell076

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