Big update for my allegiances generator!
There's still a few things I have yet to add/rewrite (kittypet/loner residences, fleshing out fun facts and extra information, rewriting appearances, etc.), so keep an eye out! :D
When you pick up a sword for the first time you will be slow and awkward. This is frustrating, but refuse the temptation to try and become a “faster” fencer. Chasing after speed is like trying to catch smoke. If you try and pursue speed, all you will accomplish is haste. Haste is the enemy of 1st class fencing.
Speed is a lie the untrained mind tells itself when it sees an action it cannot follow. The truth is a combination of timing, control, and fluidity. Fluid motion, even done slowly, will always arrive before a hasty strike. Control will allow you to move without wasteful motion that will slow you down. Timing will eliminate the need to move fast almost entirely. There is no need to get somewhere fast so long as you get there at the right time.
So this is from the upcoming magnus archives roleplaying game, note the fact there is official art… official art of Jon.
This is unheard of (the art looks stunning)
Edit: they confirmed it not to be Jon but his bully, also this post is popping off…
wizards thinking of clerics as hacks cause we spent years of study learning the secrets of the universe they cheated and got a god to do their magic for them
clerics thinking of wizards as hacks cause we spent years serving and cultivating a deeply personal relationship with a god they copied down some cheat codes to make stuff blow up
And sorcerers are like "no wait, hold on. This is basically a curse. I've been *experiencing* magic against my will since I was born and it's hurt a lot of people."
... and then everyone glares at the warlock in the corner. Their response: "Yeah, no. That's fair. I blew Cthulhu in the parking lot behind the McDonald's and now I can do magic. Best deal ever. You all can (and should) suck it."
everyone's got that one homie who zealously adheres to his inflexible code of honor even though it has long since become a burden to him
Stop giving your fantasy heroes swords challenge
Swords are for dipshits with more dollars than sense, real chad warriors have spears and axes
Spears: probably the oldest weapon humans ever developed that took more effort than just picking up a rock or swinging a branch as a club. Spears are the most venerated and effective weapon in history, used by every culture across the world with very little - if any! - exception. Medium-to-long reach means wider defensive area, ability to change hand position on shaft means you can adjust tip distance for opponents closer or farther away. Fast, maneuverable, throwable; reach for keeping people outside your personal bubble and can be used to just bludgeon people because a wooden pole bonks just as good as another wooden pole without the stabby bit; various styles of tips and blades that can be used to slash (not as effective but still very possible because blood drawn is blood spilled), more room for cool decorations as well as can be used to bear a banner or coat of arms. She does it all and she did it first. (They also twirl real cool)
Axes: PROBABLY THE SECOND OLDEST WEAPON DESIGN MORE ADVANCED THAN JUST PICKING UP A ROCK. Brutal, practical, utilitarian, the axe is excellent for that sweet sweet CHOP. The full force of your swing being focused into an area less than a millimeter wide and several inches long can cause SO MUCH DAMAGE, and if it's dulling mid-fight you still have a brutal tool that will break bone as indiscriminately as any other hunk of metal tied to a stick. They can be small and maneuverable, used with a shield or paired with another axe. They are the most effective way to just hack at an opponent's own shield, and - due to the fact that axes tend to have a much wider, shallower blade than, say, swords - they aren't as affected by the blunt force (with regards to dulling/damaging the actual edge of the blade) or as prone to getting stuck in the wood of the shield. Combat/fighting/war axes are definitely designed and sharpened differently from their wood-chopping brethren with regards to balance and the depth of the blade, but the guiding principle is the same. Chop chop chop chop chop.
Polearms: they're spearses. They're axes. They're both and they're neither. Pikes, glaives, halberds, bardiches, guisarmes, guandao, naginata, scythes, tridents, anything we took a blade or pointy metal and a long pole and ductaped together.
Swords are cool! They can be beautiful! However, they are race horses being used to work the fields: too expensive to maintain, not optimal for the purpose they're being used for, and too easy to irrepably damage if misused. Your opponents are wearing armor? You better hope you have a sword maneuverable enough to work into its weak points, because you're not hacking through that before you find yourself walking through golden fields of wheat. You only have one hand on your sword? Better hope somebody doesn't smack that long lever in your hands in such a way that it just gets knocked from your grasp.
This is the same post as every other Spears and Axes in Fantasy/Fiction post in existence, but I wrote this one and its mine amd im in a mood this morning apparently
@scarletkilometers SO TRU ABSOLUTELY CORRECT I AM POLISHING YOUR HAFT IN APPRECIATION
Okay but @gamemakerm have you considered what it could mean for a warrior woman to hold her nemesis at spear point first from a distance, hands at the back of the shaft to keep her nemesis as far away as possible which unfortunately lets her knock away the spear and get away? So the next time she has her nemesis at her mercy again, she's holding a firmer grip, standing closer for faster reaction speed? To stop her from getting away (and failing again)?
The third time they're face to face, she's got her hand gripping the end of the shaft, almost a chef's knife grip on the actual tip of the point, holding it directly to her jugular. Pinned against a wall. She will not escape her this time.
(They kiss)
Imagine also a burly warrior woman with a bearded handax, holding her prisoner by the throat with one hand and the axe against her throat with the other. They are challenging the other to make the first move with their locked, heated gaze. Burly Warrior smirks and gently caresses her opponent's long hair, using the hook of the beard like a finger and watching those beautiful locks pour off it.
Her prisoner is still being held up by her throat, but she's watching, too. She can't not watch. The axe caressing her is as much a threat as it is a promise, and the implications of either and both make her heart race.
Another option. Just a big fuck off ogre style club. Give the hero a whittled tree trunk. Just for funsies.
So if you play Wanderhome you should buy my supplement where you get to play Wanderhome among the ruins of lost humanity.
Eldritch abominations also take sanity damage from encountering eldritch abominations
sometimes dnd archetypes annoy me because like. at the core of a paladin oath it's being so dedicated to something it gives you superpowers
they're not christian camp counselors or cops they're fucking autistic
dnd paladin character concept: a knight raised alongside a magic user, who loves his friend, considers them family — but the magic user through a twist of fate ascends to godhood, vanishing from normal human life. so the knight swears fealty to the fledgling god so he can have some connection to them even still & the god who loves him dearly in return blesses him with gifts and divine powers as a way to reach back toward him, back toward earth. this paladin’s vows are easy to keep, like second nature… and prayer is both automatic and personal
losing my mind at this amazing story from r/dndmemes some people’s dnd adventures are just. So Fucking Cool
Heres an attack I did for NicNocks (on art fight) of their dwarf Gabby!! She has such a fun whimsical design I absolutely fell in love with her 🧵🧡🪡
I have so many revenges to do but imma get there!
Proposal for a truly adversarial tabletop RPG:
A basic mockup of a character sheet might look like this (though in practice they should be much more needlessly complicated):
Information
Species: (1) ________ [noun] Profession: (2–3) ________ ________ [noun + verb ending in -er] Alignment: (4) ________ [adjective]
Skills
(5) ________ [verb] Rating: 4 (6) ________ [verb] Rating: 3 (7) ________ [verb] Rating: 2 (8) ________ [verb] Rating: 1
Known Spells
(9–10) ________ ________ [verb ending in -ing + noun] (11–12) ________ of ________ [noun + verb ending in -ing] (13–14) ________ ________ [adjective + noun]
(Note that the traits presented here should not be taken as normative, so not all character sheet variants will have slots for "Alignment", or "Known Spells", or even "Skills", and other sheets may have traits not seen here.)
Warning for cis men: if a trans woman invites you to play dungeons and dragons do NOT accept. She is attempting to induct you into her coven, and likely infect you with cooties
Out of my way loser I’m boutta get it
I am no longer a cis man
i think it’s p awesome that the first compasses invented in china were not magnetic, but in fact mechanical - the cart with the little wooden man pointing south was built in a way that no matter which way the cart turned, the little man would always point south
this is a model of what it looked like
how does this work? it’s so cool and confusing
the gears are aligned in a way to always turn the little man in the opposite direction as the cart at the same rate of rotation. so if the man points at you, and you turn the cart clockwise 90 degrees, the man will be turned counterclockwise 90 degrees, and still be facing you. if you turn the cart counterclockwise 90 degrees, the man will be turned clockwise 90 degrees, and still be facing you
as for how they got the cart to point south to begin with, that goes into fengshui and cardinal direction geomancy. but long story short, the workshops that built these carts would have their front doors facing south to begin with (using the sun and the stars to figure out which way is south), so all they would have to do is build the cart facing that direction, and the little man will always point south
thank you!
I feel like witches are sedentary and wizards are migratory. A witch has a home, a cauldron, herbs, you go to them with your problem. A wizard wanders, disappears, shows up at inconvenient times to fix nothing. am i making sense
some good theories in the notes but I choose to believe those are made by a village or perhaps king as an artificial home, to attract and keep a wizard. like a beehive
While artificially built towers do attract wild wizards a wizard will naturally build their own tower as they enter the later stage of their life cycle. For the first couple hundred years of their lives wizards are extremely mobile and may travel almost anywhere in the world or even beyond. A tower usually begins as a workshop which the wizard returns to during their migration in order to store trinkets and artifacts which they collect during their travels. As the collection outgrows the available space in the workshop a combination of the concentration of volatile magical energy and the wizards natural desire to build secret passageways causes them to begin expanding the workshop. This usually starts with basic "bigger on the inside" magic but due to constraints around energy usage for sustained large scale spacetime warping they will eventually turn to more traditional methods of building. There are some documented cases of wizards whose workshops expanded outward instead of upwards, resulting in labyrinth structures rather than the more traditional tower. It is still unclear what environmental pressure causes these divergent structures. As the wizard ages and their exploratory phase winds down their travels will focus on a progressively more narrow subset of arcane knowledge until they find one secret of the universe complex enough to prompt their transition into the final stage of the wizard lifestyle. By this point they will almost certainly have a fully fledged tower or have settled into one they've found already existing. Their desire to travel is generally severely reduced by this point and outside of quests to discover certain highly specific items related to their studies it's possible that they might not leave their tower for months or years at a time. In some cases they may begin this phase several times if the secret they started pursuing is less challenging or less fundamental to the operations of the universe than expected. When they do find their final subject of study and find the answers they sought, they will finally reach the end of the wizard life cycle, either via death caused by hubris, merging with a larger consciousness, ascendence to a different plane or to godhood, or metamorphosis into a litch. Other wizards may sometimes occupy the abandoned towers of a former wizard but most will move on in order to build their own before entering into these later stages. Very rarely a particularly social variety of wizard may build several connected towers and share resources, these are called schools and over time they will tend to attract a large number of younger and weaker wizards seeking shelter.
Absolutely brilliant analysis of wizards and their migratory patterns through the ages. I can personally verify that this is accurate, and you may now consider this properly peer reviewed and accepted.
