House rules that I’m probably going to go with

Basically the firearm rules in the 5E DMG are bad but I understand that 2E’s way of handling guns was overcomplicated

For clarity’s sake, 2e’s handling of guns was that they were essentially stronger, more expensive crossbows that also get to reroll damage everytime you roll max, but also fail to fire on a natural 1 attack roll. I don’t remember if the C&T ones had additional rules over the Ravenloft ones but I also do remember that the ones in Mighty Fortress negated the physical armor bonus from AC at short range which fair.

Instead I’m basically going to go for reskinned crossbows that do blunt damage; light crossbow -> arquebus; heavy crossbow -> musket; hand crossbow -> pistol or something like that. This also happens to make them fairly useful against undead.

I’m probably going to mostly limit the existence of magic items to “mundane magic” type things with a few extremely rare exceptions (but players get one of the exceptions each probably)

Final one is possibly reviewing the armor list a bit and moving Chain Shirt (which is in a weird place) to replace the Studded Leather statline but that’s mainly aesthetics. That or like “Silk Jack” mainly because I kinda like the idea of Ulrika Magdova being a functional light armor aesthetic in my games

Second time as...

The Camille Paglia revival basically confirms that we’re in the farce of the Reagan admin

Cooking without meds is fun

I ended up prepping too much of some veggies and running with it without realizing I was doubling prep time and especially the sheer amount of energy spent along with quantities.

Character families and hooks

Since my rl players are currently working on characters for a home game of D&D, I’ve been wondering whether it’s weird as a GM to suggest players consider having some sort of extended families and maybe a hook or two.

Like I remember characters being inevitably single orphans with no name became such a cliche that a lot of GMs started at least requesting parent names for anything more elaborate than a dungeon crawl, but I kinda wonder how far would be too far sometimes.

As a player my first impulse tends to be having at least some named extended family; as a DM I feel like it can be at least useful for story hooks, even though I suspect a fair amount of bad DMs would only do this for easy expendable cheap drama fodder. At the very least it feels like it makes characters more anchored to me?

While putting together the campaign and reviewing the 5e splats

I’m pretty much convinced the Core 3 + Xanathar’s guide is probably going to be all that I need.

Also reading Horizon Walker and loving it, pity I never get to not GM. It’s close to dethroning my opinion that the 5e Warlock is more Bard than the 5e Bard pre-Xanathar could ever be (although the Xanathar specializations come close to making me happy about it) at least for specific bard variants.

I sincerely don’t have a clue what the devs were thinking with their concept of the bard as a full caster with a humongous spell list (compared to sorcerer) and anyone who claims that the bard only got good in 5e just wanted to play a slightly less embarassing wizard.

The Count must go

Setup for the home D&D campaig

Lamoral Axel Edmond Ferdinand de Rinigoz, count of Kandertal; he’s not a good lord but then who is, and with his ailing father (the margrave of Rinigovia) a high officer of the royal court (who he’s set to replace as soon as he kicks the bucket), he’s also virtually immune from consequences. He’s been spending the last six months in a relatively impoverished part of Kandertal which has traditionally been neglected for various reasons.

His presence for so long has been taking a toll on the region, his followers have been causing problems for the inhabitants and the tithes extracted are also straining resources. And his extravagant requests to have Pear Orchard Lodge (the old family estate in the area) fixed up and expanded are actually making things worse.

Knowing full well that getting rid of the count violently would cause a crackdown from either the margrave or the king, representatives of various villages have banded together to find someone, anyone, in the region who might be able to get rid of him subtly, but who would manage?

I still need to flesh out the region which isn’t even named in my notes, plus this is going to be open ended enough that I’ll probably leave it open for the group to be dicks and side with the lord if they decide to be contrarians

Magic and rituals

One thing that I’m not actually sure is so bad about pre 3E is Vancian casting.

Mainly AD&D’s version of it had incredibly hefty requirements for preparation and memorization that absolutely didn’t lend themselves to taking an 8 hour break or reworking your spell list on the fly (I don’t care how the IE games handle it, any DM worth their salt would have found a way to curtail this).

On the other hand I do admit that I like rituals being a thing if only because they let me an out to not have everyone who has access to some form of magic be an actual mage or casty-hybrid.

I’m sure I could think of alternate systems, like the skill-like system that Ars and a few other games use, or alternate casting systems like spell points or even purely blood or reagent powered magic.

Rituals might be an acceptable out honestly to justify paring down spell lists to something more skill-like. I’m thinking maybe a dozen, maybe a few more spheres of magic (broad but not too broad) with magic-oriented classes gaining a certain number and power of them.

On the other hand I can’t say I’m not a fan of spell books, and the idea of spellbooks that are essentially a series of increasingly more powerful philosophical arguments about the nature of the universe intended to ultimately chip at it seems like a thing it would be hard to replicate with.

Maybe if there was a limit to the number of prepared rituals within the known spheres, which would have to be partially pre-scribed.

I know houseruling D&D is incredibly basic

And I’m sure some people would just say to use Fate or something (I’ve considered Ars) but it’s definitely hard at times to get around familiarity

I do like 5th edition for the most part but I feel like a bunch of my tiny annoyances with the system could potentially be served better by something that’s closer to 2nd edition; possibly fewer ribbon abilities, magic buffing that’s less taken for granted, none of this at-will magic stuff.

Funnily enough I think a system closer to 2e would also let me get rid of the thing I like least about D&D character building, namely attributes, which as a rule basically did nothing besides limit your class selection unless they were in the extremes of the range (the exceptions to that are carry weight and a few minor things). I’ve never liked that subsequent editions tried to make them more meaningful rather than less.

Currently weighing story ideas as initial pitches

1 - A rivalry between two local mages comes to a head as they try to find people to steal each other’s ritual tomes without alerting the authorities to either the theft, the fact that they’re mages, or really anything else about them.

2 - Rumor is that someone would reward anyone who might find something valuable in the abandoned home of a supposedly penniless dragon. Additional rumor is that the dragon might be back in town under a different identity than his old one.

3 - The local count has decided that now was the time to visit his lands, and is either blissfully unaware or utterly uncaring that his little court’s lavish needs are ruining the area. A number of local villages are banding together to find someone who can get them rid of the aristocratic locusts in a way that does not bring royal authorities on their heads.

As a bonus broad background; the Astigian crown is a bureaucratic nightmare; if it’s reminiscent of the mess of certain defunct empires, this is intentional. And with a new ruler, administrators are feeling free to double down as a way to build favor, including levying absurd new fees, fines and taxes to help pay for an extravagant coronation.

Thinking about what my roommates like of D&D

Specifically “something seriously absurd”

I have some ideas but I admit I’m a bit struggling about the small details, and how to start the campaign. It’s not that low levels are inherently a massive struggle, it’s also that I do feel that 5e’s starting toolkit is weird to write ideas around sometimes; it makes 3rd and 4th edition assumptions about some things that I’m not a hyper fan of.

Thinking of reviving this

For one it’s probably a better idea than going back to LJ anytime I have things on my mind.