leahazel reblogged
The template for the ideal D&D party! Who's up to play a game of "Caverns & Cheesecakes"?
leahazel reblogged
Regé-Jean Page as Xenk in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Film, 2023).
leahazel reblogged
AAAAND WE ARE LIVE!
Head on over to my Twitch to watch a fantastic game of D&D featuring @ayeforscotland, @tgraywrites, @erinustv, Luke Boogie and myself while we raise money for Mermaids - a Trans charity here in the UK!
Chris Pine as Edgin the Bard and Hugh Grant as Forge Fitzwilliam the Rogue in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
finally completed my dnd quiz! featuring a mix and match of 30 races and 14 classes, discover who you would be in the forgotten realms! i'd be a satyr artificer :)
Kalashtar warlock
You are a kalashtar warlock. The kalashtar are a race created from the union of humanity and spirits from the plane of dreams. They are wise and compassionate, though alien, often emotionally reserved and concerned with otherworldly conflict. Those of them who chose the path of a warlock are the most curious of all: they seek knowledge of which most would dare not speak, harnessing power forged within their otherworldly pact.
I like what they did with Holga in D&D HAT on several levels:
- Her arc starts out as 'the story after the story', which I always love.
- It's based on a 'lover vs. family' dilemma, but it refuses to take an easy tack of either choice being easy and uncomplicated.
The end result is very satisfying, IMO.
My favourite thing about the D&D movie is it never stops trying to be a D&D movie even down to the most minute, unsung details. There's initiative order gags (I'll go last!) there's rolling a 1 gags (setting off the trap on the bridge by inexplicably just walking up to it) there's stat gags (nobody had high enough Intelligence to be in danger from the Intellect Devourers). Almost every spell is identifiable, from Xenk using smite to Sofina whipping out Finger of Death. Simon's character arc is about his self-confidence being tied to his mastery of magic because Charisma is the spellcasting stat for sorcerers. The era of movies based on games being afraid of their source material is over.
And the second best thing about it is that none of this makes it inaccessible to newbies who have never played the game, it works great as a pulp fantasy story, with a truly great mix of genuine character moments and humor. It takes the subject matter seriously but also embraces the absurdity of living in a world where a cat could fall down your chimney then turn into a young woman and walk out your front door.
A sketch of Castor Arcadian, the paladin husband of my d&d character Silas Lockhart :)
Gorgeous!
leahazel reblogged
Anonymous asked:
Regarding the DnD Orc posts:
What would be a less problematic way of describing a fantasy “race”/“species” that is meant to be “evil” and “vile”, (because maybe they were created by a evil deity to cause havoc etc).
#honestQuestion
you're positing an inherently paradoxical project mate. "how do i construct a fictional Type of Person who is ontologically evil, whose murder is prima facie acceptable or even laudable, while unimpacted by the titanic weight of historical discourses that did the exact same rhetorical work in service of real-world violences?" -- the answer is that you've invented an impossible task!
there is no fantasy of uncomplicated and meritorious ethnic violence that is neatly separable from the historical context those fantasies are produced in. that's just the way it is. genuinely, i feel compelled to ask--not because i want to hear the answer, but because i want you and others to think about this--why is this a fantasy you’re so desperate to salvage?
re: that posed last question -- why this fantasy? -- i recently read this short essay that uses necropolitical theory to analyze the function of orcs and similar 'evil races' in games and thought it was useful.
A recurring anguish in certain circles of fantasy roleplaying involves the never-ending search for ethical, commendable, heroic murder. This often externalized as an issue of the murdered party, the one fantasized murderer ever the silent passive subject; a quest for an intrinsic quality of the murder victim that makes it A Good. This is phrased and re-phrased in variants of the same question: What would be an acceptable target for my character to kill in a dungeon?
for a peek into the etiology of ontological essentialism as it pervades TTRPGs I have to recommend Charles W. Mills’ The Wretched of Middle Earth: An Orkish Manifesto as an analysis of how Tolkien was able to establish orcs as ontologically null for the express purpose of being killed en masse. you can, of course, trace a direct path from the mythos Tolkien set up and the widespread practice of constructing entire populations as essentially evil for the sake of gameplay:
For the genocide of the orcs is, of course, part of the climactic victory over Sauron and Mordor. Yet if it were to be suggested to the average reader of the book that it ends with a great crime, the claim would probably meet with complete bewilderment. The killing of the orcs generates no moral concern (either for the Allies or the vast majority of readers and critics) because, of course, the orcs have been successfully depersonized by Tolkien, rendered as ontological zeros. The pen here prepares the way for the sword. Indeed, a case could be made that LTR should be required reading for courses in the literature of genocide, for precisely because of the celebrated “reality” of Middle-Earth, it becomes possible to watch, in synoptic overview, the construction of an epistemology that makes mass murder possible.
How has this been done? To begin with, there is the denial of history and geographical rootedness to the orcs—almost, one could say, the denial of time and space. The density of detail and cross-referencing which give Middle-Earth its solidity and reality are deliberately withheld from the orcs in keeping with their ontological shallowness. Certainly, there are no genealogical tables, no accounts of culture and history, no etymological speculations about their languages, no maps of their territory. The orcs are defined simply by negation, as the antipode to white culture and civilization.
and:
The average reader does not perceive these inconsistencies, does not feel in any way disturbed by the systematic slaughter of the orcs, because, as I have suggested, Tolkien is in many ways simply retelling an old tale. The racially-differentiated structure of LTR’s moral and juridical codes simply reproduces actual historical earthly norms, going back at least to the Crusades, where “the same behavior, considered objectively, was ‘persecution’ when it was perpetrated against, and not when it was perpetrated by, the Christians.” Similarly, the fantastic kill-ratios and body-counts of LTR—the party in Moria killing thirteen orcs at the cost of a scratch to Sam (FR, 422), Boromir single-handedly dispatching twenty orcs before succumbing (TT, 18), Gimli’s grisly orc-killing contest with Legolas, which he eventually wins 42 to 41 (TT, 188)—are made both normatively acceptable and fictionally plausible by the racially-coded non-personhood of the orcs.
leahazel reblogged
what is a DnD character but an imaginary friend who has been let out to play with other imaginary friends
what is a DnD session but an enrichment activity for your OCs
leahazel reblogged
please read the description for awesomedice.com’s 1-sided die
Propose to me with this challenge.
Somebody who has never played DnD list all the DnD classes
Here they are folks, the 12 main DnD classes according to tumblr:
- Librarian
- Scientologist
- Crazy cat lady
- Himbo
- Monsterfucker
- Girlboss
- Malewife
- Business (derogatory)
- Sith
- Boytoy
- Lesbian
- Sophomore
No comment
tag your dnd characters
- Stabbing
- Stabbing from far away
- Fire/lightning
- Healing by, like, praying (?????)
- Disney Princess
- disaster bisexual
- Stabbing for Jesus(tm)
- monsterfucker tbh
- Disney Princess but with unwashed hair
- cop with a “heart of gold”
- noble with a fetish for slumming
- Thief, I assume
The whole “how the hell does this predatory creature get enough sustenance” thing that plagues fantasy and sci-fi occasionally gets so absurd it loops around into being funny, like the scene in Star Wars when the Millenium Falcon is flying through an asteroid field and gets swallowed by a worm.
I could complain about that, but I could also conclude that the supply of reckless space pilots flying into asteroid fields has been consistent enough for the past few million years for animals to evolve to prey upon them.
Who knows. Maybe there are enough adventuring parties roaming about the Forest of Doom to increase the available biomass at their trophic level in order to sustain tertiary consumers like giant spiderwolves...
“You’re going into the Catacombs? No one survives the Catacombs! Many an adventurer has tried!”
“Uh, how many have tried?”
“Enough to form an entire ecological niche for species specialized to prey upon them!”
“Oh. That, uhh, that is a lot.”
“Right? It’s pretty fascinating actually. I’m writing my thesis on it right now.”
leahazel reblogged
A desperate cleric slamming every healing spell so hard to bring someone back to life the ground is forced to grow plants and flowers around the body.
Decades later, guarded by a forest of roses and thorns, lies a corpse refusing to rot.
Some random necromancer lost in the woods, stumbling across a pristine hundred year old corpse: O neato
leahazel reblogged
My D&D character so far:
- I, Gaudy, am a warlock’s patron. They wear me like a scarf.
- My warlock is named Madly Sadly. They’re a nonbinary young adult with bushy blue hair. They wear a crown or halo of stars. They are an exhausted bitch and often have bags under their eyes. Their ethnicity is unspecified but I envision them as darker skinned.
- Madly’s costume design includes a straw, for unknown reasons.
- Sometimes Madly puts me in the timeout jar.
- We met one day not long after Madly left home. They stepped on a pile of pink goop in the woods, and we’ve been together ever since.
- It’s a simple relationship. Madly learns magic. Gaudy gets to hitch a ride and nibble on treats.
- An uncooperative Gaud may be bribed with snacks.
- Gaudy is generally not allowed to touch the sword. Often, Gaudy does indeed touch the sword, to everyone’s dismay.
- On a related note, Gaudy can spit out weapons and other objects, not unlike a cat with hairballs. Nobody knows why or how. These objects are rarely good or useful, and you are more likely to receive a butter knife than a sword. They are always sticky and slightly chewed.
tumblr give me your character headcanons
- Gaudy can be flung like a projectile weapon at an opponent. Results vary.
- “Do NOT touch the sword” *gaudy curls around sword like a boa constrictor & hisses*
- Like many warlocks, Madly wears robe-like clothing. It is strongly implied most of these clothes are bathrobes. But they’re covered in stars and celestial patterns so no one is 100% certain. Madly’s clothing choices are as ambiguous as their gender.
- “I am going into my jar to sulk”
- Sometimes Madly wears a starry veil. This is mysterious and sexy etc of them, but really it’s just to cover messy hair & avoid eye contact. They are chronically sleep deprived and do not want to talk. Sometimes they take a nap under it.
- Madly is your typical tired & confused millennial/gen z. They are sick of dealing with the world’s problems and just want to go back to bed.
- After a large meal Gaudy may be used as a cloak
- “STOP cuddling the sword BAD Gaud”
@mkay-thats-cool-too did this incredible design!
I’m about to reblog some new fanart of this character, for those who haven’t seen this yet.
Game will be livestreamed next weekend!!!
May 31st, 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30 Eastern time). Link will be posted here!
Quickest player death.
D&D story time. I was running the first sesson of a new campaign. Everyone starting at level 1. We had an Elf Druid, a Half Elf ranger, a Dragonborn Sorcerer, and a Tiefling Rouge. As the party was going through introductions,
5'2 90 lb. Tiefling “I don’t like to be touched.”
6'3 250 lb. Dragonborn “I pat her on the head.”
Tiefling “I bite his hand”
Ok so you bite his hand… roll to hit
Rolls NAT20.
Roll 1d4 damage…?
Rolls 4 doubles to 8
Dragonborn sorcerer only has 8 hp.
Ok so you bite his hand off and he is now bleeding out.
No one has any healing pots or magic. All level 1 charactors.
Dragonborn rolls 3 on death save. Next save Nat 1.
Dragonborn is dead.
Tiefling “I said I don’t like to be touched.”
It me.
leahazel reblogged
Kids these days who think that being a bard is just about swinging swords and playing lutes disgust me. Where’s the pizzazz? The showmanship? The seduction??
probablystrangerpgideas
you ain’t a real bard until you seduce your way out of at least 19 situations that would normally end in combat
probablybardrpgideas
You’re not a real bard until you make your DM cry because you seduced the Big Bad that they’ve built up to for 10 sessions
Once a bard friend rolled a 1 for a seduction and ended up killing a girl and tried to hide the body. He was caught, rolled low on deception and they all thought he was fucking her corpse. He then tried seducing the guards and rolled low again so all the guards had boners while arresting him and the DM had to sideline the entire game and make up a dungeon for the rest of us to get our stupid bard out of. But we didn’t. So for like 3 nights the DM essentially ran 2 different games, one of us questing without ol’ corpsefucker and then the adventures of corpsefucker: escape from boner castle.
He seduced his way out, naturally.
deliciouslycookingrpgideas
A true bard
morthils
I saw this in a screenshot on Pinterest and spent 20 minutes tracking it down to reblog.
Side note: fuck screenshots.