Peak D&D world building is where domesticated animals have been affected by fantastical phenomenon just like humanoids. I'm talking about horse breeds with minor magical traits: Steeds from the feywild that can go ethereal and require riders to use enchanted saddles to stay on them. Horse bloodlines tainted by the shadowfell that have resistance to necrotic damage but have sunlight sensitivity. Not full on Unicorns or Nightmares or Pegasi but like... do you get what I'm say? It's good stuff, right?

barnlarn answered:

Hi! oh heck yeah that sounds dope! Next time I run a game I might put some of those kinds of steeds in 👀

~ Larn

#points at the screen #hey that's me #d&d #world building #speculative biology #speculative evolution #animals #horses

wealmostaneckbeard reblogged

c-rowlesdraws

Anonymous asked:

Unfun fact: gnolls in baldurs gate are born by gorily exploding out of hyenas that ate things killed by other gnolls. They are always chaotic evil, and only barely capable of speech. I believe they are also explicitly demonic in nature.

c-rowlesdraws answered:

aw man... well, honestly, gnolls are usually such a minor enemy/race in any given setting or story that unless I know they're featured as a main character or something, I tend to assume they're going to be evil with no nuance, and it's like, whatever. The gorily exploding thing is something extra though, I'm not looking forward to that when I play the game. That's so unnecessarily edgy lol

impossiblepackage

DnD gnolls frustrate me so much because like. They already didn't have a lot of depth to them to begin with in the 3rd edition version of them, and 5th edition just seriously doubled down on them being fundamentally evil with no nuances or caveats. They are created by a demon lord who just wants to eat everything or something, for the purpose of killing and eating everything. They reproduce by ritualistically killing and eating people. They spawn from the corpses fully formed, with no juvenile life stage. They have no culture beyond killing and eating things and maybe making stuff that makes killing and eating things easier (making weapons juuuuust serviceable enough to do a murder with and nothing else). The only thing distinguishing them from the hyenas that they hang out with is the hyenas don't have hands and are more chill and have a better shot at integrating into a society.

c-rowlesdraws

stuff like that is just so... deeply boring to me. It's so boring. I know lots of people enjoy always-evil enemies you can just murder by the pile without feeling bad about it, especially 5e because it's a game built for murdering things by the pile, and that's fine, but it's so boring to have like, these creatures that are humanoid, that have at least some intelligence and capacity for independent thought, and go, "nah, they're all evil and in exactly the same way, every one of them. Demon stuff."

wealmostaneckbeard

What if Gnolls are the natural world's immune system? Gnolls will congregate around planar incursion sites and devour everything that comes through. It doesn't matter if the things are good or evil, it's getting eaten. They derive power from whatever they eat. They are the descendants of the pink god Kirby.

c-rowlesdraws

now THIS is worldbuilding!!

wealmostaneckbeard

Glad you like it! BTW, Buried somewhere in your Asks is a more complex/serious version of what I've written here.

#gnolls #hyenas #gnoll #hyena #points at the screen #hey that's me

wealmostaneckbeard reblogged

kirby-the-gorb

reply roundup!

I guess vaguely once a month is just how these things work now, I do try to read everyone's tags and replies and stuff but a lot of them I just don't really have anything to reply with sorry! as always I appreciate the supportive words and well wishes and stuff <3

I also love the trifurcation of responses to [go to bed]: one group of people is like "yeah u right I sleep now thanks", one is like "sorry but I can't", and one is just like "no! I refuse!!!" lol

I did get two different "posts that have 10k to me" tags though, on [one] that actually passed 10k and [another] that is still barely triple digits and will probably stay there XD

anyway [chess kirb] was on the radar which is neat

also my birthday is this weekend :)

oh yeah and reminder that I also have a craft blog @sleepy-princess-craftery

#points at the screen #hey that's me #kirby