Hm, I was pondering about the recent-ish trope of Adventuring Guilds (effectively trade unions for protagonists in fantasy rpg-inspired settings, which I’m sure I’ve seen in a bunch of things but the main example that springs to mind is Goblin Slayer to my annoyance but the Hero Association in One Punch Man has a similar albeit superhero-slanted deal), and how mechanically in the setting they exist to ensure x reward is provided for x amount of work/danger involved but in a meta sense are there so the characters don’t have to go looking for heroing gigs on ye olde Craigs Lyst or something.

It’s an interesting idea, similar in a manner to the many fantasy trope-tinged guilds in the Discworld novels of the late great Terry Pratchett, although an amusing idea occurred to me with the idea of trade unions for fantasy heroes.

Like, if there are unions to ensure employment and fair pay for folks clearing out dungeons, getting gnolls out the cabbage patch, stopping gnomes from going through your bins, and so on, then, logically, there much exist fantasy hero scab workers as well.

Folks that the local king or something brings in for lower pay on more dangerous jobs. Folks who are, say, completely new to the setting, out of their depth, and are thrust into a dangerous situation by a seemingly benevolent authority figure because said authority figure is too cheap to hire someone who understands the risks involved and asks more suitable wages for the role…

Y’know…

Oh my god… the entire isekai genre is a way for Big Adventure to avoid negotiating with Adventurer Unions!

I mean, even as the person who suggested it I’d admit it’s really silly, but at the same time even modern capitalism sucks when dealing with organised labour, I’d imagine that in a pseudo-feudal setting they’d be even more awkward about it.

Kid from earth: What? Where am I? Who are you?

Wizard: Do not be afraid young one, I have summoned thee from across time and space to our world, we are in desperate need of a hero to save our world from the forces of darkness. It is your destiny to save our world from utter ruination. Will you take on this epic quest.

Kid: Sure!!!

*Bunch of adventurers kick open the door*

Wizard: Oh shit oh shit no no no no.

Head adventurer: AINT NOBODY GOING ON ANY EPIC QUEST.

Kid: Um, who are these guys?

Wizard: Um, they are agents of the dark lord sent to stop you, quickly run past them and go do that quest.

Head adventurer: Yeah you can shut up now. PAULIE. SILENCE SPELL.

Paulie: You got it boss. *Silences the wizard*

Head adventurer: Look kid, we’re representatives of the local 102.

Kid: Uhhh….

Paulie: The adventurer’s union.

Kid: Ah. Okay I know what Unions are. They have those here?

Head Adventurer: Sure do kid, and we got word that this douchebag was using magic to pull in unqualified under aged non union adventurers from another dimension so that he could avoid having to pay us our proper due. How old are you kid?

Kid: Um….14?

Head adventurer: Come on.

Kid: Okay twelve

Head adventurer: *Turns to wizard* You kidnapped a twelve year old kid to go fight the dark lord? Were you even gonna give them any equipment? Any magical training? Any supervision?

Wizard: *shrugs*

Head adventurer: *Hands kid a scroll* Here is a portal scroll back here, you want to still do this in like six years, give us a holler and we’ll set you up with some basic training and an apprenticeship, Until then, go back to your world and do whatever kids there do.

Kid: Yessir.

Head adventurer: As for you ya douchebag, Go tell that fat gasbag of a king he wants the dark lord defeated he better pony up the cash to hire a real, union certified adventuring party. And you try this crap again then the next kid you summon is gonna have an epic quest of dislodging my boot from your ass.

I love this…

“The Pevensie kids are unwitting scab workers for Big Jesus” was not the take I expected to see today, but I think it’s the take I deserve.

Some of y’all’s games sound like they go like this:

For real, a friend of mine told me this story from a group they participated in: DM: You are in a forest.

Group member: I roll to look for firewood. *Natural 1*

DM: You don't find any. Group member: Well, then I look for trees I can cut down. *Natural 1*

DM: You don't find any trees in the forest.

That's a problem with asking for (or worse, just rolling) a check first, especially with more unsure DMs it'll put the idea in their head that yeah this needs a check.

Not to derail, but this is compounded by the notion that a 1 always fails and a 20 always succeeds. Rules as written in D&D, that's for combat only.

So you'll have someone decide that they want to roll something that shouldn't be a roll (e.g. "I persuade the king to give me his kingdom") and then the result is a "critical" and now the DM feels obligated to react to that number.

I've seen DMs bend over backwards to make something impossible happen on natural 20s*. Namely on Wisdom (Perception), where suddenly the thing that was being looked for has to be there, even if that would make no sense.

I kinda wish they had gone with the proposed rule that nat 1 and 20 actually do always fail/succeed, but DCs below 5 and above 30 (I think) can't be rolled at all, they automatically succeed/fail, really encoding the idea that sometimes you don't need to roll into the rules. But that would require players to read it to work so…

*and if you've read the previews I posted about the 2024 rulebooks, you know that's part of the official rules now!

I had not seen those previews; now I feel the need to find them, and I also cringe in fear at what I may discover

I've seen the finished book and these are all in it! :)

I still remember an animation back in the early 2000’s where two characters were playing DnD and one of them went “I rolled a 20! That means I see all the traps!”

The dms response of “congrats, you see ALL NONE OF THE TRAPS” stuck with me forever. It was a constant joke after that between me and my group whenever someone rolled exceptionally badly or well on a nonsense roll of just yelling “you see all none of the traps” because it was a way to point out we probably didn’t need that roll

D&D has too much rolling and a big part of that as a problem is cultural, because for a lot of people the rolling is the game. In a lot of indie systems the rules specifically only call for rolls if something dramatic is at stake, or where the act of failure will advance or alter the current encounter. Often rolling occurs at points of importance for reinforcing the genre of the game. Following this principal for D&D you're only collecting firewood if your game is about survival, then you would roll. Otherwise you just hand wave it, it's not important.

In something like Pathfinder 2e the system is set up so success and failure are graded and a critical in either direction upgrades or downgrades the current success level. This is paired with PF2e's altered critical system where passing or failing by ten or more triggers a critical, but could be adapted for D&D.

Without changing anything though we can change the way we discuss failures in Dungeons & Dragons. There was an old OSR blog (which I do not wish to name for reasons) which talked about it like this: "Captain Kirk doesn't lose fights".

Picture the scene; Captain Kirk has been captured by this week's aliens, he goes to throw a punch at one of them and then thinks different. Sullenly he accepts imprisonment and bides his time.

Captain Kirk's player rolled poorly, perhaps even a 1, but Kirk's DM says: "You square up to hit them, but looking around the room you see their number, weapons levelled at Spock and Bones and think better of it." Kirk doesn't get what he wants, but the DM lets him maintain and even reinforces the fantasy of his character.

Taking it back to D&D and the examples above: Rolling a natural 1 for wood in a forest doesn't mean you didn't find it; maybe the wood is damp from the rains and won't take the flame, maybe you realise that the smoke of the fire will attract local patrols, maybe the old oaks recall the lick of flame and the Druid quietly advises you eat cold rations that evening.

If you're a DM and ask for a roll, know why you're asking for it.

What does success look like? What does failure look like?

If you don't know ask your player what they're picturing in their head and even how they can picture it going wrong. The collaborative in collaborative storytelling isn't just for when the PCs are sat in a tavern or parleying with your BBEG, don't put all the weight on yourself when you've got the players there to help out.

That said, sometimes it's fun and funny to have someone roll a nat 1 arcana about a glowing rune and they find it completely mundane.

That kind of interaction, depending on the context and the game, can be memorably hilarious and fun for everyone. It just depends on the game.

my dnd party has run into an npc who may or may not be evil and may or may not decide to betray us and the dm was in chat today like “just so everyone knows…not addressing this comment at anyone in particular…his favorite colors are red and black…wink” so now i’m desperately trying to get a real physical friendship bracelet done before session tomorrow in the vain hope that i can somehow stop this npc from trying to do a murder on my party

UPDATE: the npc was in fact a shapechanged adult black dragon with violence and conquest in his heart. however he did let merry put a friendship bracelet on him and then when she was like “hm okay how big is your wrist in dragon form” he was like “you wanna see?” and then turned into a dragon and let merry measure him for a second, dragon-sized friendship bracelet. the dm described him afterwards as being deeply confused as to why he did this or let any of this happen to him. call that the merry effect

this guy is now a recurring npc because merry was SO determined to make him her friend that it actually somehow worked. he cast dream to talk to one of my party members like “hey…how’s it going…how are the tieflings in the party…not that i care…also i’m not lonely. bye” and the player was like “is he still wearing merry’s friendship bracelet in this dream” and the dm was like “yeah…”

fsdfjhskdf the dm just sent us all this image

so merry taught naeric (the dragon) the power of love, obviously, and because his heart was open and beautiful he started dating…a SECOND evil dragon. and then that gf betrayed him and cast ninth level imprisonment on him so now naeric is our damsel in distress and we have to save him from his girlfriend, the actual villain. how the turntables…

and. in the most horrible plot twist of all. the gf stole his friendship bracelet.

The thing that gets me about Aabria's dming style (or well. One of the things) is she seems so very nice. "Here, have inspiration. Of course you can add your magic die. You rolled a 6 on perception, okay well I'll still give you a little thing at least."

She's so nice and so friendly, she will yes and almost anything the players want to do.

And this is all very fun and nonthreatening and easy until suddenly she says yes to something a player does that they absolutely should not do. Until she says "you did this so now this happens" and sets the DC for not dying at 30. Oh but she's still nice! You can use your magic die! You can keep the magic motes from last time since it was a cliffhanger so you can use those too! It's totally possible!

Aabria will let you do anything. And you don't realise that that's not as "nice" as you think it is until it's too late

They actually talked about this exact thing in the Worlds Beyond Number patreon fireside chat that came out today

Erika: That was also one of my favorite exchanges. Him [Lou] saying, "Oh yeah, detail is bad because Brennan is telling you what he's about to take away"

Aabria: I know that trick! That's a GM looking at another GM going like, "Okay, I see what we're doing here. Thank you for the inventory check. Fuck"

Brennan: Well that's the thing, right? Detail is always your deadliest weapon and your biggest give away. Aabria does it when you're considering an action, that's when I know she does it. She's like, "You get to a new town, what do you wanna do?" And you're like, "I wanna go to a tavern! I might treat some of the locals to a drink?" "What drink? What drink?"

Aabria: cackling

Brennan: And you're like, "I, I make an investigation- how many- what kind of drinks do they- I, no, I- No actually I don't drink it! No actually I go straight to bed! I stay on the ship! I don't do that! I don't do that!"

Like, I'd be lying if I said I was into fucked up yuri RPGs purely for the game mechanics, but it's unavoidably true that Tumblr lesbians as a demographic are doing some of the most innovative rules design the tabletop roleplaying hobby has seen in years. That this often means we're getting fucked up yuri and novel ways to abuse big stupid dice tables in one convenient package is more of a fun bonus.

show me the fucked up yuri rpgs please

What, all of them? That's a very tall order!

(Seriously, though, it's a pretty broad genre. I have to confess a certain bias toward dungeon crawlers, so my reading list is mostly going to consist of stuff like Songbirds, Doll.Bod, @cavegirlpoems' Dungeon Bitches, etc. – just to cite a few I've perused recently – though I'm also a sucker for a good genre emulation piece, like @open-sketchbook's Double or Nothing or @sarahcarapace's forthcoming Violet Core.)

For good measure (and also on the non-dungeon crawling side of things) I'd like to add @kkdreamboat's Crooked Mile, the highly underrated mind bending liminal horror Dungeon Bitches supplement about being a queer 1990's punk band on the road in the rustbelt and Velvet Glove by Sarah Doom, the 70s girl-gang game that is a wonderful, kinda distressingly good game. There are so many cool sapphic leaning rpg writers and games out there!

hey that's my game! i dun did make doll.bod!

but also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention @darlingdemoneclipse's Biotrophication, Sapphicworld, and We Live Forever (and We Love To Live) (made alongside the unfroggetable @i-feel-odd)

There's also @blujayh's Euphoria 2180!

You know, I could have sworn you had a Tumblr blog, but when I was tagging authors in my initial plug I couldn't find the thing. Problem solved, I guess!

Here's a tabletop RPG history question, and also an etymology question if your nerdery bends that way.

d66 tables – as in "roll a six-sided die twice, reading the first roll as the 'tens' place and the second roll as the 'ones' place, yielding a number in the range from 11 to 66" – have been around at least as early as 1977, when the Starships book for classic Traveller used them to randomly generate trade goods for players to buy. However, the term "d66" wasn't yet being used to describe them – the book's text simply describes in detail how to roll on them each time such a table appears.

Conversely, we know the term "d66" was being used to describe this type of random lookup table no later than 2004, because several popular Japanese indie RPGs which came out in that year use it. However, none of these games seem to have originated it – the way they're using it suggests they're dropping a piece of jargon that was already well established at the time.

So the question is: what's the earliest tabletop RPG that specifically uses the term "d66" or "d66 table" to describe this type of random lookup roll? i.e., not "d6/d6" or "d6,d6" or any alternative verbiage, but "d66" specifically? It has to have been published in or before 2004, and (probably) not earlier than 1977. No speculation about which games might have used it, please; if you're going to suggest a candidate, be prepared to cite a specific title and page number.

Got one! Mordheim original rulebook, 1999. Page 119, "roll d66".

edit: not sure this is "the original" but it provides an older date than 2004

Fantastic – that pushes it back five years. An unambiguously pre-1999 citation of an occurrence of the term "d66" to describe this type of table is our next target, then.

Warhammer Quest Roleplay Book (copyright date 1995), p. 14 describes the procedure: "For each Hazard roll 2D6 on the Hazards Table, opposite, but instead of adding the two dice together, count the first dice rolled as your tens column, and the second as units. For instance, if the first dice comes up 2 and the second dice comes up 1, you have rolled 21. Looking up a result of 21 on the Hazards Table you can see that the Warriors have been struck by a tornado. For convenience this process is termed 'rolling a D66' even though a 66-sided dice isn't involved at all!"

Thanks muchly. It's looking increasingly like Games Workshop may have at least been the term's populariser in the West, if not its originator – unless we can come up with an earlier occurrence of "d66" being used to describe this type of table by someone else, of course!

(Folks in a separate thread kept citing Necromunda 1st Edition [1995], but there are no d66 tables in that volume; upon examination, it appears they may actually have been thinking of the 1998 hardcover compendium, which does include d66 tables labelled using the term "d66", but comes several years after this example.)

Pushing it back even further, to White Dwarf 161 (May 1993):

Thanks to @torlibram for the lead! Re: Necromunda 1st ed, are there no d66 tables in the Sourcebook? I coulda sworn that the territory tables it used were d66.

Thanks again. That these citations feel the need to reassure folks that d66 rolls aren't as scary as they sound suggest we're probably getting pretty close to term's point of origin, at least in this context.

So: a citation from 1977–1992 is our next target. It's separately been pointed out by @tokoeka that Toon (1984) uses d66 rolls but doesn't call them that, so that may suggest 1984 as a lower bound on the term's popularisation, but it could also simply be that Toon's author didn't care for the term.

(As for Necromunda, you're quite right – it turns out the confusion is that folks were correctly citing the 1995 version, but giving page number citations from the 1998 version!)

Right, and an explicit definition on page 106:

That's two separate citations from different publishers, both in 1993, then; unless they each independently invented the term (which isn't impossible, mind), it's likely neither is the source.

It looks like we also have a citation from the 1989 edition of the French tabletop RPG In Nomine Satanis:

Thanks to @starstrucklucky for bringing this one to my attention, and apologies for the slight delay; the excerpt they'd provided included an example of conflict resolution, but no explicit definition of "D66", so I had to chase down a copy of the game to see if it was actually defined in this way anywhere in the text, which indeed it is – top of the first column in the included screenshot.

(Interestingly, In Nomine Satanis appears to prescribe reading the first d6 roll as the "ones" place and the second as the "tens" place, while every other source I've bumped into has it the other way 'round.)

The term was in use by 1989, at least in the French tabletop roleplaying community, then. I wonder if it was adopted in the French-speaking hobby earlier than it was in English, given that we haven't yet been able to find any English-language examples earlier than 1993? I confess that I don't know much about pre-1990s French tabletop RPGs, so if there are any French-speakers reading this post who were into tabletop RPGs during that period, your input would be welcome!

Shout out to @ribstongrowback for bringing to my attention that the 1989 edition of In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas includes a brief bibliography which cites several contemporary tabletop RPGs and tabletop wargames. In particular, it names Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness (1988) and Space Hulk (1989), as well as crediting Warhammer 40,000 more generally. As far as I'm aware, neither Realm of Chaos nor Space Hulk use d66 rolls nor the term "d66"; however, the fact that Warhammer 40,000 products are cited so heavily supports the earlier supposition that if there is a pre-1989 source that In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas cribbed the term "d66" from, it's probably something from Games Workshop.

(The only non-GW game cited by the INS/MV bibliography is GURPS, which I'm about 99% certain had not adopted the term "d66" by 1989.)

@prokopetz I’m not a tabletopper, but I found this research from 2021!

It looks like y’all have traced the use of the term “D66” further back than this person, but his research supports your GW conjecture, makes note of In Nomine (also noting it has a gimmick “D666” roll), and, like @tokoeka, suggests Toon as the most likely lower bound for when it became popular as a game mechanic.

There’s also this thread from 2006:

People here make note of In Nomine as well, and D66 is briefly attributed to Gary Gygax (what a name, he sounds like a Superman villain) before it’s noted he actually used a different, but at-the-time-equally-unusual, die mechanic. There’s also significant discussion by people saying they mostly see it used in wargaming.

I’m going to suggest that if three separate groups of TTRPG nerds—which is all the discussion I can find on it—all stopped at In Nomine Satanis, that is indeed probably where the term began. Given the discussion of wargaming in 2006, and your own find of In Nomine crediting 40k, I think if the term doesn’t start with In Nomine then it almost certainly originates in Warhammer. Wikipedia tells me the first edition rulebook for 40k was released in 1987, and the first Warhammer game was actually called Warhammer Fantasy Battle and was released in 1983.

I’d suggest your next stop is to get hold of a 1st ed. of the 40k rulebook. Based on the other dates you have I think Fantasy Battle was probably too early to be the source, but 40k being, well, 40k, seems like a natural way for it to have spread in a pre-internet age.

a hypothetical d&d party

The bard is mute.

It’s not the first thing people notice about her, usually.  The first thing is generally that she’s young, and female, and lovely–the first thing people notice about their entire party is that they’re all young, and female, and lovely, and that’s gotten more than one would-be thief or mugger in far over their head when they haven’t noticed the the paladin’s hammer or the ranger’s axe.  It comes up rather quickly though, often enough.  Whoever heard of a bard who can’t sing?

She plays a lute, mostly, or a lap-harp made of shell and sinew, string instruments she can pluck while she smiles in secret and watches everyone around her.  She dances quick, except when she’s tired, when she’s scared, when she forgets to remember the feet at the ends of her legs.

She doesn’t tell her story to strangers, but enough of the other girls have learned to sign by now, and it’s easy enough to sketch out the outlines of the old bargain: the voice, the prince, the witch, the thousand shards of glass she walked upon on her way up the beach, the look in her sea-green eyes when they travel too near water.  The thousand shards of glass she walked upon when she left the palace, and turned back towards the sea to throw herself upon the rocks, and then made her way up the road inland, and kept walking.

.

The warlock is beautiful and mild and self-effacing and shy, is tidy and generous and charming.  She’s small with herself in exactly the right way to shout abuse to the half of her party who knows how to recognize that same look in the mirror in the morning.  The bird on her shoulder is too small, too bright, too sweet for a real warlock’s familiar.  The knife at her belt is sharp enough for anything that needs doing, though, cooking or otherwise.

Her fae patron visits sometimes, in the quiet hours between dusk and midnight, a sweetly old godmother made of moonlight and shadow.  She’s kind to the whole lot of them in her own chaotic way, free-handed with transmutations and illusions that break halfway through the evening, for better or worse.  She once spent three hours around their campfire drinking brandy and gossipping outrageously about the Feywild and teasing the wizard into fits of laughter.

She’s never told the story of how she met the warlock’s mother, or what debt was owed there, and the warlock doesn’t know herself.  It was never meant to be a debt paid in power and violence and the deft will-sapping enchantments the warlock weaves now, but, well.  The prince wasn’t meant to be cruel, the warlock says.  The palace was meant to be warmer than the fireplace cinders in her stepmother’s house.  The faerie was meant to be saving her from her lot, not throwing her into something worse.  The power’s an apology of sorts.

.

The wizard is awkward and joyful and nervous.  She has no fear of heights or small places, which just stands to be expected, she says, after all those years in that little tower, and she’s got no skill at lying or even edging around the truth at all, which is why she isn’t in the tower any more in the first place.  She says too much or too little or the wrong thing entirely, always, but the most well-socialized member of the whole party is the ranger who walks around with a dire wolf at her hip, or maybe their mute bard, so who are any of them to judge.

There was nothing to do in that tower but read, and brush her hair, and sort through the witch’s endless stockpile of dried herbs and potions ingredients, and watch out the window as woodcutters and hunters and princes rode by, and dream.  The reading was more interesting than the dreaming, most of the time, and the witch didn’t mind it as much when she talked about it.  She never bothered to actually use any of the magic in the witch’s books until the thing with the prince and the haircut and the desert, which she’s told them all about in all the detail they could ever ask for, but most of the girls get uncomfortable when she starts talking about princes.  It’s a little easier if she just starts rambling about conjuration and abjuration and illusion theory, about the 400-year-old history of a city that doesn’t exist any more, about the proper grammatical structure of Celestial, until maybe one of the quiet ones finally answers back.

Her hair is too short.  She keeps an illusion up over it whenever she can, while it grows back slowly, tickling the side of her face and the back of her neck and leaving her head too light and unbalanced.  

.

The ranger doesn’t care about princes, which makes one of them at least.  Then again, the ranger doesn’t trust anyone, really, prince or no, not wolves or monsters or the men who kill them.  She more or less trusts the rest of them by now, mostly, when the wind blows in the right direction.

She wears bright red in the middle of the woods and it shouldn’t help her slip into the shadows half as easily as it does, but most beasts can’t see color and red’s just another shade of gray if the light’s low enough.  She never uses her axe against trees.  She doesn’t need to.  She can find a path through any brush without it.  She picks flowers when she finds them, and tucks them into the other girls’ hair.

Her wolf’s mother killed the man who taught her to use the axe, and the man who taught her to use the axe killed that wolf’s mate before that, and the mate had an old woman’s blood on his teeth when it happened.  The ranger’s blade found the wolf’s mother’s throat.  The ranger’s mother sent her out into the woods in the first place.  It’s not as though anywhere is really safe, cottage or forest, axe or teeth.  One of these days maybe her wolf will turn and go for her in return, and maybe one of these days her axe will be faster and maybe it won’t.  In the mean time, there’s flowers and berries and pastries and enough game to keep everyone sated, for a little while.

.

The paladin’s hair is raven black and her skin is chalky as a corpse.  She’s not undead, mostly.  The undead are her job.  She knows that much.

She was sweet, once (they were all sweet, once) but apples are bitter now and so is she, and there’s judgment to lay out in the world.  Her grip on her warhammer’s all wrong–she holds it like a mining hammer, but it hits as hard as it needs to.  Her armor’s all dwarven make, and her shield’s black and red and white like snow.

She was sweet once, and frightened, and when she says it quietly around the campfire in the night when none of them can quite make out the glimmer of understanding on each others’ faces, everyone still nods.  She took a bite of poison and somebody left her a full year in a glass coffin of Gentle Repose, dangling on the edge of the Raven Queen’s domain while all the other newly-arrived dead passed by and faded away.  She woke up to somebody’s lips and hands and skin on her lips and her hands and her skin.  She doesn’t like princes.  She doesn’t like necromancers.

She likes sunlight, and summer, and colors that aren’t black and white and red.  She likes the way the bard grins when she whirls into a dance, and the look in the warlock’s eye when she sets her feet to say no, and the wizard’s laughter on high with a Fly spell, and the ranger’s gentle fingers braiding flowers into everything she can touch.  

Low-level Dungeons & Dragons adventure where one of those big goofy skywhale things has died and crash-landed in the middle of town, and what initially appears to be a simple cleanup assignment abruptly takes a combat-heavy turn when the party gets to find out what feeds on skywhalefalls.

I've been thinking about this some more, and also looking through the notes, so here's what I have to add.

With a "normal" whalefall, we're talking about something (a dead whale, to be precise) that lands in an EXTREMELY nutrient-poor environment, the deep ocean. It's not the equivalent of "a truck full of free hamburgers lands from the sky in the middle of your neighbourhood". This is an environment where an important part of the food chain is "marine snow", aka flakes of organic matter (including feces) that drift down from above, and they eat that because it's possible to get nutrients from it. So when a whole-ass (or partial-ass, because it's already been nibbled on from sharks and the like) whale carcass arrives, it is something MAJOR. It starts a whole new localized ecosystem, an oasis of life; those that eat the dead whale, those that eat those that eat the dead whale, and so on. And as the whale is consumed, the creatures there shift, leaving when there's nothing left that they'd eat, arriving when parts of the whale that they DO eat are now exposed, and it continues until the very bones have been devoured.

Whalefalls are fascinating.

But to get back on topic… if we're looking at this as like a WHALEFALL, and not the equivalent of "dropping your fast-food order on the parking lot and now there's seagulls everywhere" (which also has promise but it's substantially less weird), then the town has to count as a "nutrient-poor environment". And since it's a TOWN, which means a settlement where people are able to survive and overall have enough to eat, then the skywhalefall-eaters must eat something other than what can be easily acquired in the area, so they're extremely rare there because there's not enough to support a larger population. Creatures that would only have been seen singly, and are rarely active because they need to conserve energy. Something like the local cryptid.

When you first see it, you try to memorize every detail, because it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience to actually encounter one of them for even a brief glimpse. And then, you see another (its mate?). And another. And another.

As the formerly-cryptids arrive, their presence -- combined with that of the skywhale carcass that's STILL there -- effectively shuts down the town. They don't even need to be hostile or frightening, it's just from sheer numbers, body mass blocking easy transportation. Some people leave, with plans to come back once things are less crazy. More people arrive, to see what weirdness is happening, or to try to harvest from the skywhale or the formerly-cryptids, or to try to make money off of those who are visiting. Normally you'd welcome the influx of visitors and their money, but parts of your infrastructure got squished by a giant dead skywhale, and a good chunk of the rest of the town's infrastructure is currently inaccessible due to formerly-cryptids having a feast.

And then, weirder things arrive. Creatures you'd never even heard of, creatures you'd been sure were just a poet's hallucinations, creatures you're not sure how they even exist. But they're there, and they feed. Some of them on the skywhalefall, some of them on the formerly-cryptids, some of them on others of the weird creatures. A visiting scholar is FASCINATED, and offers you more money than your family has seen in generations, to take samples. Your neighbour responds before you even have time to think it through, and rushes in. The creatures didn't intend to harm your neighbour, that's not the kind of food they desire, but that's faint consolation for one who'd gotten in the way of hungry jaws. You politely decline any further requests from that scholar.

Time passes. The skywhale carcass is unrecognizable from what it had been when it first landed. So is your town. Whole areas have been effectively abandoned, and damaged from the skywhale's original impact, or the frenzy of what has been eating it, or attempts to combat them, or simply lack of upkeep. Temporary dwellings and places of business, at what had been the outskirts of town, are now more built-up and permanent since it became clear that this wasn't going to go away in a few weeks. People have moved away, for more normal settlements. People have moved TO your town, for specialized resources that can be (carefully!) acquired from the skywhale and what eats it. It has become normal to you.

It's the now-resident scholar -- who'd learned a valuable lesson about the use of observation from a DISTANCE -- who notices it first. Certain types of the weird creatures are being seen less and less, then not at all. The creatures start taking up less room, because there's fewer of them. It becomes feasible to go back to some of the buildings that had been abandoned, even if it would be a lot of work to get them back in inhabitable condition again. The formerly-cryptids are now ACTUALLY cryptids again, with only rare sightings of them.

Time passes. The weird creatures are now restricted to only what parts of the skywhale still remain. These ones barely even look like "creatures", more like red flames, dancing on what's recognizably bones but not the bones of any normal animal. It's easy for the area to be fenced off, no hazard to anybody but those who would make direct contact with the not-flames.

Eventually, nothing is left. No bones, none of the weird creatures. Its effects are shown in the altered shape of the town, from where the town had been forced to build around it, and in the town's mascot, a cartoonishly-dead skywhale.

…that got away from me.

What are some chronic illnesses that can only occur in a fantasy setting?

Sensitivity to ambient magic - like the thing where peoples’ joints ache before a storm but for being near ley lines or people with a lot of magic built up or other magic reservoirs. - The potential for magic, but where the magic has not yet begun.

So imagine a DnD character who’s whole motivation is ‘X guy killed my parents and I need to find them’ and the party just thinks ‘ok, revenge quest, that’s normal’

But when they finally find the guy the person with dead parents is just like “Hey buddy, long time no see. It’s a shame we got separated, here’s some money” and they’re super chill.

The party is just confused and goes “Wait, why are you giving him gold?”

The guy just goes “Cause I owe him money?”

The party “But he killed your parents???”

“That’s why I owe him money!”

What I love about this is that it implies that the assassin, for whatever reason, was forced to skip town before collecting what he was owed, and this guy full-on went on a quest to track him down and pay him. Like.

Assassin: You know most times if I get run out before collecting, people are just, yay, now I don’t have to pay him! Some of them even arrange to put heat on me just so they can weasel out.

Dude, with full, paladin-like gravitas: What do I look like, a cheat? A cheapskate? You did me a service, and I can never repay you, but I will honour the debt!

Assassin: … Hey, you ever need anybody else knocked off, here’s my card!

This is I think, my best prep tip as a DM:

When the players are about to visit a new town, pre-generate several NPCs who fit the demographics of the town, but don't give them jobs. Your town is Mostly human, with a number of halflings and gnomes? Make a list that's mostly humans with some halflings and gnomes mixed in, with names that match the vibe you're going for and maybe the barest description + a quirk of some sort.

So the list would look something like this:

Then, when the players are like, "Can I go to the blacksmith?" You look at your list of NPCs and the one at the top is Ophelia Bracegurdle. She's your blacksmith now. Then they want to go to the tavern, where Norabecka is the innkeeper and Geraldofinio is a patron having a drink at the bar. He's using a straw so he doesn't mess up his mustache.

If they had gone to the inn first, Ophelia would have been the innkeeper with Norabecka as the patron, and then Geraldofinio should have been a blacksmith with some sort of mustache guard to keep the sparks off.

Making the list ahead of time doesn't take much time, and you can often re-use the people you never got to at the next town.

Your world will seem vibrant and interesting and like you have everything planned out.

Have fun!

Since this post has been getting a lot of notes, I would like to clarify a couple of points. This method has a few different benefits I would like people to note:

I've been in games where literally every NPC except the pretty barmaid is a man, and pretty much everyone is a light skinned dwarf, elf, or human. I've also been in games with awesome diverse characters who bring the game to life. I know I want to be a DM who creates the latter, and this system helps push back against our unconscious biases. When you have the list of everyone in the town, you can see ahead of time if you have a good gender ratio, whether your descriptions include any people with disabilities or people from different points of view.

Hey! Welcome! Since my silly garbage truck anglerfish post is getting me a bunch of attention right now, check out a post I'm actually proud of while you're here

Wizard: Oh, I like your Goblin detecting sword! That's funny.

Goblin who thought they just had a cool glowing sword: ... My what now?

These comments are breaking me

me every five minutes: if I built another weird electronic contraption I think it would fix me

folks you don't understand. I have a tinkering compulsion. last week I was bored one afternoon so I built a rechargeable electronic D&D dice set that seeds its random number generator by measuring the ambient electromagnetic field. it took four hours and I didn't need any parts that weren't already in my house.

in case you're wondering what that looks like

people in the tags have been 10x hornier about this post than anything else I've ever put on the internet which is equal parts refreshing and validating. I do in fact believe making and discussing Whatchamacallits is an underappreciated form of flirting

OP is a Spark. Possibly a Heterodyne.

DMing is hard. I acknowledge this. Weaving a story with words for long periods of time means you’re gonna say something silly sometimes when your brain blips. And it’s not your fault that it’s so silly that your players share it around turning it into an inside joke, immortalizing your brain fart moment forever.

My DM was narrating a scene between our tiefling rogue and the NPC she was romancing. He was trying to set the mood for their first kiss, up on a tower overlooking the city, looking into each others eyes. They’d just been on a romantic date, there was a bottle of wine between them. And this was their moment.

The NPC leaned in to kiss the rogue and the kiss was, according to our DM, “long and normal.”

The entire session went off the rails. We became ungovernable creatures of hilarity. How long is normal?

We are informed normal is six seconds and we devolve even further into chaotic paroxysm of laughter. The DM desperately tried to rein us in but for the rest of the session everything took a long and normal amount of time.

My betrothed and I would kiss each other while counting to six in our heads then declare afterward, “Ah yes! Long and normal!”

I accidentally told my school team about it, reasoning that they’d at least never meet the DM who lives out of state. They’d say we needed the scene to be the long and normal length, or hold a pose for a long and normal time.

At the end of the year I invited them to my house for a celebratory meal and was surprised when my DM joined the DnD video call early. My teammates looked at him, expressions slowly spreading into evil grins. “Long and normal!” They greeted him.

He turned a look upon me of utter betrayal while I hustled them out of my house.

“It’s been a year!” He cried at the unfairness.

“Maybe it’ll phase out by next year,” I told him.

Okay so I just saw the new Dungeons and Dragons movie

gotta say from the moment they went with the "let's dive out the window onto the Aarakocra" plan even as the council was like "WE PARDONED YOU" I knew it would be great because that is the exact kind of stupidity a D&D party would get up to

Create an ancient horror so unspeakably hideous that none who see it can even recall what it looks like without a very hard check.

When someone finally passes the check, DM them a description.

It's just a photo of their face.

So in Goblin Squad D&D yesterday, our Barbarian had just… the stupidest, DUMBEST, most terrifying, absolutely godlike thing happen to him.

This is a story of numbers, but it’s still beautiful.

We were fighting a dragon.

The dragon is hopping around while the Barbarian is just racing around trying to catch up to her

Dragon finally decides, no, really, fuck specifically THAT ranger and goes hog fucking wild on me (I LIVED!) but holds still long enough for the Barbarian to finally rage and LEAP ONTO HER BACK and go STAB

Dragon sees this and goes, “Oh. Sick.” 

and just goes VERT

Pro: I am not tanking anymore

Con: She instantly moves FOUR HUNDRED FEET STRAIGHT UP INTO THE AIR…. with our  raging Barbarian holding on for dear gottdamn life

One round later, she’s another 160 feet up, still getting stabbed by a Barbarian who has somehow held on, now getting attacked by ballistae and we’re all starting to get CONCERNED

Because if they take that dragon down, that is 560 feet our Barbarian is also falling out of the sky, and he is not attuned to the ONLY THING WE HAVE that can save his fucking life from that height

I’m sitting there doing math, trying to determine if 560′ is enough to kill him outright, silently being very grateful we still have exactly ONE diamond to rez his ass

and the dragon just goes VERT again, ANOTHER four hundred feet in the air

The Barbarian, now finally free from any potential collateral, cackles, as he is at long last, unshackled by the restraints of his conscience.

He has a tattoo, you see, which allows him to cast Fireball once per day

centered on himself

with a save which he autofails

But he is a tiefling.

And this fucker still has 160 hit points by the time it’s done exploding. But the explosion sends him backward as he fails the Athletics check to continue holding on and he begins to fall.

He falls for 3 fucking rounds and we can only watch our friend fall to his certain death.

The DM… has to roll ninety six d6s

let that number sink in for you

NINETY. SIX. D6s. They normally roll with real dice, you can hear the clickety clack through the discord, but  they had to get out a fucking app for this because they do not OWN ninety. fucking. six. d6s.

It comes out to 402 fucking bludgeoning damage he takes on impact as he leaves a Barbarian shaped crater in the center of the forum, 10 feet wide, 5 feet deep, a cloud of dust and broken brick shooting out as he lands.

And do you know what happens next?

Do you know what the fuck we see as the dust settles?

We hear a cough, and a see a thumbs up come out of the crater. 1 hit point left.

402 damage. Raging as he landed, halved to 201. He had 160HP left, it only brought him down to -41, not enough to kill him outright (you have to get equal to negative your max HP), AND HE’S LEVEL 12, which means he has access to Relentless Rage: the first time you’d drop below 0 HP, if it doesn’t outright kill you, you have to roll a Con save of 10 or higher to instead drop to 1 HP. He rolled an 11.

He fell almost a THOUSAND feet from the air off the back of a fucking dragon, took NINETY SIX D6 FALL DAMAGE, AND LIVED.

His arena name lived up to the hubris of this fucking swan dive. All hail ALTANIN, THE UN-FUCKING-BREAKABLE