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It's taken a few weeks to start moving peices (that is, the party finally stopped picking fights with librarians long enough to measure time in hours rather than rounds), but since their second night of resting after the murders they have been the targets of Nightmare spells, twisting their dreams. Unfortunately that's just been a soft chorus of clucking as they keep succeeding on the will saves, but it did prompt a round of worried discussion between the characters about whether chickens have souls.

After a new round of preparations they ventured back into the Gauntlight and started picking fights with librarians again. Also they tried to contradict a ghost administrator and got ghost slapped into purgatory for a moment, but eventually they got back en-route towards the first chicken ghost encounter: the smashed remnants of Krrrterra, who was obliterated with a landslide. Impressively, their first instinct was to go for diplomacy, apologising for killing it, and asking what they could do to help it move on to the afterlife. With a speak with animals spell and a critical success on a diplomacy check, I couldn't just have the chicken fly into a panic and cause a fight, so engaged in dialogue.
There were four issues here though: One, while ghosts are normally animated by unfinished business and can only be permanently put to rest by making right the injustices that created them, these ghosts are mostly reanimated by the giant spooky lighthouse that shoots beams of ghosts, so the primary answer is to destroy the 20th level artifact (they are currently level 4). Two, even without the lighthouse, they're motivated by revenge against their killers, so the secondary answer is for the party to be killed by the chicken ghosts. Three, ghosts are often unaware or in denial about their own deaths, nevermind what is needed to put them to rest. And four, chickens are not particularly capable of higher level thought, so the only thing their questioning actually established is that it wanted to eat some worms.

So they hit it with positive energy damage until it dissipated. It wasn't a difficult fight, a single PL-1 enemy, because even as a ghost a chicken isn't much of a threat (on its own), but it did teach them some embarrassing lessons about weapons attacks and incorporeal creatures while minorly inconveniencing them, as planned. The ghost chickens have been established as a fun callback, and soon a running joke. Once they start coming back (and in greater numbers), we'll have some good horror cooking and can really start the emotional rollercoaster, but I have to be sparse with details until future updates, as the Goblin Sorcerer's player is reading and I don't want to spoil too much for him.

New Art
It's bad. You wanna see some cool ghost chicken tokens, go back to the first post. First up, we have Krrrrterra, who was hit with a landslide:

get it? because she was... squashed. It doesn't get better.

Hyppokoko, bludgeoned and drowned by a blast of tsunami:

the file name is wetghost.png. like seriously i got no idea

And finally, and most [CW: meat]ly, Brrrkit, who was incinerated by a beam of pure heat: I'm sorry.

Mechanics
Applying the ghost template to a basic bird statblock didn't get me close to an appropriate challenge for the party, so I altered a ghost commoner statblock in different ways for all chickens. Krrrterra had the weak template applied, the Kinetic Assault ghost ability added, and a handful of minor additions and changes:

We're a small TTRPG group on Discord that's been active for a little under 2 years and for various reasons a number of our members have dropped out. So far we've played mostly stuff for/built ontop of D&D 5e, but we've also played a little bit of Roll For Shoes and Everyone Is John. The plan moving forward was to play some Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e (namely, the central Enemy Within campaign) but this may change based on how prospective players fit with the existing players (including EstraDoll and GarbageShoot)

We usually meet on Sundays around 6:30-7:00PM EST and end around 10:00, however the weekends of May 26th and June 2nd are kind of up in the air, which seems like a good time to recruit new players.

CWs are sort of hard to predict, however, when I find/build something that seems like it should be CW'd I will post such in the Discord server.

Comment or send me a DM to Join up today! Experience Role-Playing with reclusive author Thomas Pynchon as D/GM!

oky ghost chickens and it's so fucking stupid.

So they found the Dooms of Tomorrow in B29 and after some experimentation determined that the Annihilation Beams were specifically triggered by creatures passing by rather than having a physical trigger that could be interacted with. Their first plan to disarm the hazards ended with the inventor's construct companion getting Annihilation Beam'd into lots of tiny little pieces, so they decided to buy some chickens and lob them in. They were hit with beams of pure tsunami, inferno, earthquake, monster, and undead. First two were pretty easy, I went with falling debris for the third, big godzilla hand for the fourth, and void energy for the last. Gonna be real with you, the description is "From Monster" and I just don't know how that works as a beam.

The thing is, quite apart from the ethical issue of throwing a defenseless animal into something called an annihilation beam, the whole campaign explicitly revolves around a spooky lighthouse that makes undead. I've been more subtley referencing it through various random encounters, but the first big event of the story is the lighthouse shooting a giant beam of light that creates undead where it lands. And there are a bunch of haunts and undead inside. Like there's basically a sign over the entrance saying "Undead made here". So now the chickens' ghosts need revenge on their murderers.

Honestly, no idea where I'm gonna go with this, but I've made tokens for an undead ghost chicken and a kaiju ghost chicken, so I'll give them some nightmares next time they go to sleep and see where that takes us.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2581574

Another CYOA (Choose your own adventure) for my fellow Hexbears.

Pick one option.

I probably would choose the Diner. Since free and good food sounds amazing.

It was great, I remember being part of a Mortal Kombat rp session where I made an OC and we used a dice roller for combat (kombat?). I also remember being part of a Final Fantasy one based on ShinRa's military. Creative stuff.

The rogue went down at the end of a running chain of 4 encounters the party charged through, right as they decided they had bitten off more than they could chew and turned tail to run. Just walked off and left him with the remaining mini boss. If it weren't for the mini boss's tactics of getting other people to do things that require him to leave his throne, the PC would have been killed on the spot. As it was he regained consciousness about 10 minutes later, and slowly and carefully crept away with the aid of some great stealth rolls while the morlock tried to work out how to get a second casting of telekinetic manoeuvre.
And then the next morning he decided to be the bait in a plan to lure a drake out of its lair, got stuck trying to scrabble up an embankment out of the way, and was obliterated in a flurry of teeth and tail lashes. It was brutal, even with PF2e's generous dying rules he turned from alive to dead in only 4 seconds as the first strike knocked him unconscious and the next two burnt through his dying condition.

Luckily the player already had a backup ready so when the party turned tail and ran again I was able to maintain a natural flow of roleplay to reach a point where I could introduce the replacement, but it was sudden and shocking for all of us. For the players it was shocking because in a single turn the drake turned him from slightly damaged to chunky salsa, and for me because its not actually a difficult fight - I mean, a drake is still a dragon, so it is more dangerous than raw stats make it look, but if they'd put the tank front and centre instead he'd have easily withstood the initial barrage and they would have steamrolled it.

They're going to be so mad when they realise it's only as tough as the minotaur skeleton they took down instead in order to get some xp and level up before taking it on again.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2435866

Anyone else love TTRPG history?

PC and monster weaknesses are very easy to look up and apply, but finding out what the actual people at the table will fall for is a lot harder, so what have you noticed your players always get pulled in by?

I'm not good at making maps and I need a simple whatever-dimension battle map for a simple 5e encounter along a small path with a mountain face on one side and a cliff with a misty bottom on the other.

DM me or ask here for more details, thanks for any help!

Campaign or one shot premises, world building, systems or mechanics, whatever ttrpg related stuff you've come up with but not filled out yet.

My normal process is to plan a session and then have it almost immediately derailed through a mixture of distractions, roleplay (or skipped roleplay), and sequence breaking. The planning done for a single session generally correlates to either 1/2 of a session or 2-3 sessions of useful content.
This time though, they actually did the things I had planned. All of the activities and events came in useful, and they didn't even try to set any of it on fire. Everyone's character made use of their bit of time in the limelight, and I managed to give almost all the NPCs voices, including the spontaneous ones. We even finished the session exactly where I wanted, with the first combat of the module I'm using

Conceptually I'm aware that there's a nonzero chance of it happening at some point, I'm just a little shocked it's happened to me.

TTRPG history (for over an hour, mind you).

I'd just listen to this while you're doing other things.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1934302

Video is over 2 hours long and goes over 1970s history of D&D and other tabletop RPGs inspired by D&D during this time.

Here's the description:

Just one year after the publication of Dungeons & Dragons, four other games debuted and helped define the new genre that would come to be called "Role-Playing Games." Learn about Boot Hill, Tunnels & Trolls, En Garde!, and Empire of the Petal Throne in this video: who created them and why, the game mechanics they used, and their legacy in shaping the future of roleplaying games for decades into the future.

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Enjoy, y'all.

Listen to it while you're doing other things, ig

I highly recommend subscribing to this channel, even if you're not going to watch or listen to the video, as he does other more shorter videos, and it's always nice listening to the history of D&D and tabletop RPG games from someone that worked on them during his prime.

Welp, again, enjoy.

We've had threads on how D&D itself has a colonial mindset, but I think that undersells how fucked up and racist players can be. I want this thread to be about players who go out of their way to make characters that break the fourth wall and ruin friendships outside of the game.

I'll start: I had a player come to me with their character: "Gucci, the rapping goblin bard". The details were what you would expect. Like he literally put a picture of Gucci Mane in the chat. I told him that this was blackface and I wouldn't allow it. He had a tantrum about being called racist, and now we no longer speak (lol).

I've got competitive tree felling, log flume riding, and caber tossing. There's archery and boxing/wrestling. There's chess, there's a pie eating competition, even an obstacle course.

That gives me all the mechanics I'm interested in settling the players into immediately - ranged and melee attacks, skill checks, saves, skill challenges, and roleplay - but I need more fun side bits to help set the scene. There's food stalls, a bar, a little gambling, and I'm probably going to have a children's storytime place the players can go and make up wild tales, but what other kinds of flavour do you pepper around your festivals for the players to interact with?

The campaign is Abomination Vaults for anyone with setting specific ideas.

Hey, so I'm hosting a campaign of Comrades and next session I'm thinking of having the party on site when a spontaneous strike starts. For context the setting is homebrew, WWI ish with fantasy elements. Obviously they can participate in organizing the workers and talking with people who attempt to intimidate or buy off the strikers but I'd like to have a few more tricks and nudges on standby to keep things going just in case. Any suggestions? Currently I've got "dealing with potential police actions" and "the company sends Pinkertons/infiltrators" but I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Jennell Jaquays is a unsung game developer. She has a really rich history in games and design. Itchio had a game jam in her honor.

Salute to a real one 🏳️‍⚧️

Check out her website. It's old-school and good.

Hey everyone. What the title says. I've run a few sessions in my setting already, but my group is filled with s so I wanna try this campaign idea with a new group.

Setting? Political Space Opera. Big inspirations include: Star Wars (OT, The Mandalorian, Andor) , Firefly, Disco Elysium, Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex.
You can read and look through a visual guide of my setting here:
The Aesthetics of the universe, and a brief guide to some big planets: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yaC3-gXn-mO-4nwrXv3vNTBuspqe7XBO3zxCNpS8NTc
A brief guide to the political structure of the universe, and the megacorporations: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fYSHPLo0NV3nhrM9ayiAkY7TG_KPSCDnyPc1fCYC91c

System? My preferred sci-fi system is Stars Without Number. It's light-weight and easily modifiable, so it can handle adding new content unique to my game and playgroup. Quick to learn, especially for dnd veterans.

When? I'm located in europe, in the CET time zone. I'll be running the game in the evenings, which means if you're an american, you'll be playing right after waking up. Expect the game to start somewhere around 6PM CET, and run for 3 hours weekly. Which day of the week we play can be decided later, but it will likely be a weekday.

How long do I have to commit for? It's hard to sign up for a game and then feel like a weekday is locked in for months for a specific activity. We'll start things with a one-shot adventure, and if that goes well, we can plan out another month of sessions.

I'm interested! Great! Please send me a private message with a little about yourself here on hexbear and include your discord, I'll contact you from there.

About me as a DM I have 5 years experience DMing and playing. My style of DMing can be read about here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zcJZyZId7biVoC2iFk2DTQjyNkylmjWEKN5FytCT79s/edit

Review from a satisfied player: "I always felt like we as PCs had the opportunity to make our mark on the world. There were clearly things going on, "hooks" one might say, but if we wanted to handle those in a completely different way than what was obvious, Moondog let it play out. One of the most, if not the single most immersive DMs I've played with to this day in that sense. Real sense of verisimilitude in the world. I think a major highlight for me was playing a wizard and using my spells, even illusion ones. Moondog as a GM plays with you, will ask you to explain your intention and then you'll find a way it would work in the world. "

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1672667

Hello and thanks for the interest, I've been running a weekly cyberpunk roleplaying game for hexbear users for over a year now, and I'm looking for new people to join a heist/anti-corporate aktion/criminal syndicate intrigue campaign.

The current system is Shadowrun 5e and I can provide all the information to play the game on Roll20 the web-based tabletop simulator we use to play and utilize discord for voice. We'll build a character together to join the existing group of:

Mafia Orcish Gun-guy Ex-corporate Human Medical Mage Ex-corporate Elven Infiltration Mage Shadowy Human Drone Operator

We are looking for one to two people to join us on Sundays for three hours starting at 8:00PM CET / 2:00PM EST

Please leave a comment or send a DM if interested or have any questions