Many D&D worlds are anachronistic in their approach to the world space. The inn has rooms with bunks for a single person. Clothing and bathing habits also mimic our current world. Reading is common.
Here’s the thing — the idea that these things are too modern for a “real” approach to world building is wrong. The ancient world through the Renaissance contained modern conveniences, and they didn’t have magic.
Beer Factories
No, your average inn or tavern will not have canned tall boys to crush when the adventurers visit. They most certainly would have lower carbonation beers that are mass produced, not just niche ales, lagers, meads, and such. Beer factories were present in ancient Egypt.
Archaeologists found eight huge units — each is 20 meters (about 65 feet) long and 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) wide. Each unit includes some 40 pottery basins in two rows, which had been used to heat up a mixture of grains and water to produce beer, Waziri said.
That’s a lot of beer. In Curse of Strahd there’s the embrace of a rather large winery.
Embrace this. Have a popular beer, wine, liquor, etc within a region. Develop trade routes with it. Maybe your character tried it when their richer friend gifted them a bottle, jar, or cask. Maybe they carry a small vial of their favorite with them to remember home. Were they part of the merchant class that helped ship the goods from town to town?
Related to beer is that recipe books go back to the dawn of writing. Your brewer or vintner could be producing a recipe from many towns over, not due to word of mouth, but because the recipe is known to the world.
Grab Heroes Feast for some modern foods inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, or just follow Dollop of History for pre-WWII foods going back to the early Middle Ages.
And, of course, the Redwall Feasts bot has foods that work for any indulgent culture.
Your world can and should include the senses of taste and smell. Street foods and walkups should exist. Develop a vibrant food culture not because it adds verisimilitude, but because it expands the stories you can tell with D&D.
We talked about critical fumbles last week while covering the Gunslinger’s Misfire mechanic. While I stand by the conclusion that you shouldn’t build a (sub)class around a critical fumble mechanic, there may be a solution to the problem fumbles experience interacting with extra attacks.
The Problem
Critical fumbles impose an additional penalty on players who roll a 1 on a d20.
For the sake of discussion, we’ll assume you’ve already set your heart on running critical fumbles, notwithstanding the narrative perils.
The mechanical problem you still need to resolve is that extra attacks make more proficient martial characters more likely to fail. This is not an impediment that “linear” fighters need to experience against “quadratic” wizards. Especially considering the spellcaster’s reliance on fumble-immune saving throw spells at higher levels.
The Solution
For tables that insist on using critical fumbles, a tidy solution comes courtesy of reader Alexander Davis:
Four Fey-folk are explored in the March 11 Unearthed Arcana drop. This includes the classic Fairy, two animal-folk (rabbit and owl), and a Fey Hobgoblin. While all of these races are connected to the Feywild, they are not called out specifically as being from the Feywild, just connected to it. Only the Fairy is Fey, by creature category. In some ways this makes the other three racial options (the document does not call them out as lineages) like “normal” Elves rather than Eladarin. If this UA gets strong feedback there will be two Hobgoblins in existence, one a martial warrior and the other that creates a unique bond through gift giving.
The “Creating Your Character” section provides special character-creation rules for the race options in this article. The races that use these rules can coexist seamlessly with races that use other rules. For example, the race options in the Player’s Handbook have built-in ability score increases, while the races in this article don’t. Race options from both sources can adventure together. If you’d like a race that doesn’t appear in this article, such as an elf or a dwarf, to have similar ability score flexibility, the book Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything provides a rule, called Customizing Your Origin, that gives you that flexibility. That book also gives you the option of building your own race, rather than choosing an existing one. That option is called the Custom Lineage. No matter which option you choose for your character—a race in this article, a Player’s Handbook race, a race modified by the Customizing Your Origin rule, or a Custom Lineage—you can adventure with characters who are built with a different option. This sidebar builds on the design note in our previous Unearthed Arcana, “Gothic Lineages.”
Any fey centered story has to have fairies as playable characters. Fifth edition is finally adding them. They fly, of course. The Fairy joins Aarakocra and Feral Tieflings as able to fly at first level. Owlfolk join that group shortly. These are the only races limited away from some versions of Adventurers League.
All of the abilities just make sense for what we expect from fairies, but the one that stands out to me as unique and situationally potent is Fey Passage. The ability of a small fey to enter nearly sealed spaces fits so much of the legend and lore surrounding these peoples.
Hobgoblin of the Feywild
Whereas the Volo’s version of Hobgoblins focused on every single one of them being at least a light fighter, those Hobgoblins with connections to the Feywild are helpers. Rather than armor or weapon proficiencies, your Hobgoblin gains a leveling version of the Help action. This is much more interesting flavor.
Hopefully when the Fey Hobgoblin gets dialed into official material the two version appear more like subraces, rather than having similar, but still different abilities. There is language drift between the new Fortune from the Many and the old Saving Face. Also, the older version of the Hobgoblin is just weaker. Three proficiencies is just weaker than Fey Gift and Fey Ancestry.
Owlfolk
Another flying creature, of course. The choice to be either medium or small makes sense, as there is variation in size for real owls, as well as the stories upon which the Owlfolk are based. There are two sight based abilities, but neither directly relate to Perception. This UA does insert a third scale of Darkvision. It should likely be changed to either 60′ or 120′ to be inline with other races. 5e is about those kinds of simplicity.
My favorite ability for Owlfolk is Magic Sight. Adding a ritual spell makes so much sense for a race that is so storied in wisdom and intelligence. It combines well with spellcasters and martial types. Hopefully there are more races that access rituals rather than the now standard 1 per long rest usage of a 1st level spell.
Rabbitfolk
Hip, hop and hippity hop. Yes, there will be a Rabbitfolk Bard in my future. There’s some interesting mirroring of Halfling abilities here, which makes sense. The two generally smaller folk both love freedom and large families. Rather than Lucky, the Rabbitfolk get a minor bonus on failed Dexterity saving throws. These similar abilities maintain interest while connecting to their stories.
Here, the Rabbit Hop is the ability that leaps out. Being able to jump around is key for a rabbit. Getting to use it with no cost is wonderful. The d12 of additional feet is clunky (just as the similar rules regarding Athletics are clunky). For gridded play something like +5′ per proficiency bonus would be simpler. For those playing with Theater of the Mind the difference between 3 feet and 4 feet is meaningless in combat.
Overall these should be popular. There are entire game systems dedicated to animal folk. Humblewood was extraordinarily popular, because people just enjoy being little floofs of magic and power. Official support for similar folk makes sense.
Hopefully the feedback helps dial in some changes to the various hobgoblins and other non-core races that have clear subraces but operate as completely separate instances rather than those that share story and abilities.
There’s a packed week’s worth of news around Dungeons & Dragons this week — two books are in the preview stages, the movie keeps getting attention, a new AAA video game is now public and more. This amount of news should no longer be a surprise, as Wizards of the Coast and D&D are the fuel to Hasbro’s machine now. We’ll dive into that as well.
Before all of that a reminder that though DDD:253‘s table is sold out YachtCon has plenty of other opportunities to support the Autism Center at Seattle Children’s Hospital. You can also audit the game with Tacoma Defiance Head Coach Wade Webber, Defy Wrestler Ethan HD, and myself. Even if you don’t like Puget Sound soccer, there are classes on pizza making and cocktail shaking for you to enjoy.
Check out the Remarkable Drudge, a laborer background for your 5th edition D&D game.
Official D&D Product Releases and Reviews
Candlekeep Mysteries Previews
Physical copies of Candlekeep Mysteries are out in influencer and media hands.
The iconic library-castle is a huge part of the story. Candlekeep gets a map and chapter to expand your own setting or your understanding of the Forgotten Realms.
Adam Bradford, formerly of DnDBeyond is off to Demiplane. This move indicates that the expanding digital options around D&D and tabletop roleplaying games will continue to grow and compete with each other.
Several miniature manufactures are making wheelchair users for D&D play. Yorktown this week connects with Strata Miniatures and Sara Thompson about the Combat Wheelchair.
LevelUp released a preview of their Exploration pillar. The baseline rules of the game address this pillar less than any other aspect of the game. It will be interesting to see where LevelUp diverges from Adventures in Middle Earth, which also expanded exploration.
Advice for Dungeons & Dragons Payers and DMs
POC Gamer’s OrcaCon session on worldbuilding is now available to all.
In Indiana the Lawrenceburg Main Library is hosting D&D in its café. As regions climb out of pandemic social distancing it will be interesting to see how many libraries take their virtual sessions into real life.
Ingenious, Indigenous: The Tunumiit (E Greenland Inuit) practice of carving portable maps from driftwood, used for navigating coastal waters. Representing coastlines up one side of the wood & down the other, they fit in a mitten, are compact, buoyant, & can be read in the dark. pic.twitter.com/FkNHBoXf9s
— The Decolonial Atlas (@decolonialatlas) March 7, 2021
Over the past five years I’ve participated in YachtCon — sometimes as talent, sometimes as green room host. In 2019 and 2020, while with Tacoma Defiance I sold off the opportunity to join the broadcast booth for a match. Those 2020 winners are still waiting to do that, as the covid-19 pandemic made that option unsafe.
Still wanting to give some South Sound flavor to an event that will be entirely virtual I needed to come up with a different idea. Ambition got the best of me, and with Sounder at Heart/Nos Audietis manager Jeremiah Oshan’s approval Dungeons & Dragons & Defiance: Invasion of the Trees was launched. DDD:253 is a charity game with two celebrity guests and five PC spots for people who donated $60 dollars to the Autism Center at Seattle Children’s Hospital. DDD:253 sold out in 24 hours. There’s still plenty of opportunity to join the audience for the live stream of this 3-hour tour of D&D.
There are also many other opportunities to join in on classes about pizza making, wine tasting (observer only), cocktail shaking, watercolor painting, and so much more. All of them will have twists related to the pro soccer teams in the area, including celeb participants. Just as gaming conventions had to adapt, so did YachtCon. The group of passionate Sounders/Reign/Defiance fans haven’t been to a match together since March 8, 2020. It’s possible that the 2020 YachtCon was the last time we were all together. This year’s event is as much about re-connecting the community as it is raising funds. That’s why you can audit every “class” for free. But, it’s also a way to raise funds. The Nos Audietis/Sounder at Heart/Ride of the Valkyries group has raised over $30,000 dollars in the past five years. Please join us. There’s even kickass soccer gear.
This is a short adventure inspired by Tacoma and Tacoma Defiance, set in a small frontier town common in so many fantasy worlds. This port village has a tavern where a local leader needs help. Our adventuring party is going to help the city defend itself from an invasion from the south. Along the way they will meet hazards, possible allies, and of course the enemy(ies?).
Railroads have been avoided, which means there are nearly a dozen encounters, but in a 3-hour session only a handful will ever be used. Maybe, just maybe, the whole world will see the product after the live adventure, which will be streamed. There will be no VTT, everyone will track their damage, spells, etc with paper sheets in their own homes. Maps and art will be via a shared screen and the experience will be Theater of the Mind, rather than tactical. The model being followed is the Stranger Things x D&D game from early winter rather than highly produced streams like Critical Role.
Each participant is getting an individual session zero, which will involve character creation and an agreement on option rules. They are also getting pixel art of their PC, using the ReRoll app. Each will also get a set of dice, which is especially handy for those who are playing for the first time.
Lorenzo is a human bard, run by Tacoma Defiance Head Coach Wade Webber. He’s as handy with his lute as he is with a dagger or rapier. Sometimes he’ll bang a drum or play a recorder, but mostly he likes the strings to accompany his songs and poetry. Snapdragon is likely to be the charismatic face of the party.
Du-Rag, The Honest, is run by Defy professional wrestler and Destiny City Comics owner Ethan HD. Du-Rag is a half-orc cleric, who is as comfortable in the streets as he is in the pulpit. His friends? He’ll heal them. The Honest will usually try words first, but those that stay enemies face the dagger, or the power of his god.
Rest of the Party
Over the next week the rest of our adventuring party is being filled out. When those are done we’ll share the character art for them. There’s already a tortle warlock, a half-orc barbarian joining the cause. The group is banding together to defend a lumber town, with a port, a gritty city of unpaved streets with a good bar and neighbors who gather together in defiance of the odds against them.
Again, DDD:253 Invasion of the Trees is part of YachtCon: Back to School. All proceeds from every class go to the Autism Center at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
It was just last week when Wizards of the Coast announce their latest product release, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. It’s easy to miss big news these days, as if you miss 36 hours online the conversations die off, so we’ll capture a bunch of previews for the new book set in the Domains of Dread as we scan all the news and advice around D&D over the past week + a day, as much of my weekend writing was focused on Sounder at Heart’s 2021 Seattle Sounders season preview and DDD: 253 – Invasion of the Trees (more on that adventure soon).
Official D&D Products Releases and Reviews
Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft
Thirty different flavors of horror are coming to D&D (which has already featured three horror-themed books in 5th edition – Curse of Strahd, Descent into Avernus, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden).
Van Richten’s release is currently scheduled for May.
Dungeons & Dragons Movie News
The Big Bad Evil Guy in the D&D movie is Hugh Grant. The Hollywood Reporter also mentions that Sophia Lillis joins the cast of Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, and Regé-Jean Page. As a reminder, John Francis Daley, co-director and writer with Johnathon Goldstein, was one of the authors in Rime of the Frostmaiden.
Fandom, the owner of DnDBeyond.com, is expanding its services. They’ve just purchased an e-commerce site and in the statement plan to offer more options for direct purchasing of fan products as well more audio & video content.
I love this job board, and will likely add things like it to my next adventure, even as the players won’t go on any of them.
Advice for Dungeons & Dragons Payers and DMs
How you handle a character that is removed from the game determines the style of table you run. A player who is only able to roll a save every round could miss out on a majority of a session. Gnome Stew has ideas on how to handle that.
One of the most popular questions I get is “How do I start to play D&D?” In the Before Times I would invite people to join in my World of the Everflow campaign with fully half of the more than a dozen participants in that game being new to Dungeons & Dragons. Now, with the explosion of digital and remote play I tend to guide people towards the Adventurer’s League. The robust program from Wizards of the Coast just had a major shift.
As someone who builds most of their characters via DnDBeyond the looser rules help. There was not a simple toggle to limit to the PHB+1 rule on/off, so to make an AL character I had to think through which book a spell, background, feat, race, subclass all showed up in. The digital era makes the +1 rule a touch obsolete. A character built on Beyond or any VTT will have all of its abilities publicly facing the DM.
Sometimes you go to bed thinking ‘self tomorrow’s story is already written.’ Then you wake up and major news breaks as Wizards of the Coast is teasing a product announcement for Tuesday. Before we get into that, and the movie news, let’s review what Full Moon Storytelling had for you last week. There was a review of what the site is all about and a post related to this month’s Blog Carnival as the history of the Everflow was made public for the first time.
Let’s get into the news, which leads off with the Dungeons & Dragons movie from Paramount and eOne, again.
The teaser from Wizards of the Coast doesn’t announce a release date, but thanks to online retailers we know that the product announcement is Feb 23 for a book coming out on May 18 – a great birthday gift for me.
Guess we’ll all be heavily online this week as we learn just where in the demiplanes of Ravenloft we’ll be going. This will be the second book with a Ravenloft theme, the first time that Wizards of the Coast returns to a non-Forgotten Realms setting for a second book in 5th edition. The most recent Unearthed Arcana featured mechanics for three horror-based races as well.
Avoid Total Party Kills by giving the players the types of tips that their characters would already notice.
Playing D&D in Civic Spaces During the Pandemic
Madison, WI public libraries are hosting D&D, as well as expanding their other tabletop gaming content. Their games use DnDBeyond and a video conference softward. This makes a lot of sense, as Madison is one of the birthplaces of the game.
Up bright & early for today's stroll through the capital: a tour of Roman London. We shall walk the line of the city walls, and then visit the sites of its vanished monuments. (The archaeological sites, alas, will be shut, but there is always the imagination…) #Londiniumpic.twitter.com/SpIiLrxwqK
The Font of Two Paths, the Two-Headed Spring, Pool of Life, Lake of Wonder — the Everflow. This supernatural gift from Quar is the result of the last action of gods who turned their backs on Kin. The Lake of Wonder has two exits, a thing that shouldn’t ever, ever happen when making maps. This wasn’t because of Quar, but instead due to the people who wanted to spread these waters as far as possible. The Font of Two Paths is as much a study of Quar as it is of the ingenuity of his church.
Telse and its immediate surroundings. Map developed using the beta of Hex All Things by Fantastic Maps
In the land of Kin the time of creation of the Everflow started one of the popular calendars. This day is known, only due to the Church of Quar (in actuality it is the date when the first Bishop took the Church from religion to merchant guild and non-national power).
The modern era, 21-26 Post Awakening (PA), the Everflow has a few mechanical benefits. This is true in a world where common magic is merely cantrips and the kinship between beasts. A vial of Everflow, attainable in many markets in Telse and through the rest of Kin only at the Church of Quar, works as three uses of a Potion of Healing. In this world it takes only a Bonus Action to consume a use. Taking all three at once is an Action, and also removes a level of Exhaustion. Again, magic is quite rare, so this healing power has created the potency and power of the Church, which profits off of controlling the Source.
Make up new items or stat up those from myth, describe places where lost items can be found or quests set by the gods for those who wish to “borrow” item for an important task, what artifacts would your campaign villain seek? What is the craftsman of the gods working on?
When the Western Wildes were controlled by the Empire of Sheljar the Church’s influence was so strong that Telse remained a mostly-independent city, though the defenses of Telse and Upper Telse were provided by Sheljar as the mighty empire controlled all lands around the lake town.
This power dynamic shifted at the Fall of Sheljar. As the Necromancer took power in the bog city the other cities in the west earned their freedoms, for the most part.
Telse, Mira, Qin and the other cities near the Everflow and its two rivers.
Sheljar then sat empty as people fled the Tunneling Nightmares and the Night Peoples.
Mira is a port city in the north, with some influence over Fort Ooshar.
Qin is the city of guilds in the south.
The Ferments are a region of hot springs, alcohol, homesteads, and vibrant independence.
Bell’an’aur is the community of mines and glass blowing.
But Telse and Upper Telse remain influential. Bishop Ollium maintains power through the wealth of the church — both in the masses of gold and the healing powers of the Everflow. His church-shops are scattered in all kingdoms (Crinth, Azsel, Kirtin, Daoud, and even Mehmd in the dry east). Though smaller than Qin and Mira, Telse’s gift from the gods, an everflowing fountain of healing water that fills a lake with large locks controlling outflow towards both Mira and Qin.
This gift changed the world. Due to the corruption inherent in the People of Love (humans, halflings, goliaths — the Kin) a gift of healing created a church more powerful than nations, able to control who lives and dies, able to topple dynasties.
In times legendary, Quar expected his gift to be a lasting connection created through generous health, as the Font never runs dry everyone would benefit. The flawed god of life did not expect the flaws of man to control this ability.
Other worlds may have mighty boons from the divine that shake the land, or summon kaiju, or protect cities. In the World of the Everflow the minor gift of healing created a non-national empire, a form of currency, and a town that now has a large refugee populace fleeing the Fall of Sheljar or the cursed magicks now entering the Western Wildes — and dragons.
No matter how large or small an artifact of the gods is it will change your world. The Waters of the Everflow did so much more than a god intended.
It comes with just a single question. What if? What if I started a new blog? What if we talked about fantasy fiction? What if the stories told coincided with a role-playing game? What if I set myself back two decades and cracked open Dungeons & Dragons again?
Every storyteller needs their tools – a good mug, a notebook (or netbook), a satchel for tokens and memories and a block of cheese maybe some sausage, and a trusty sword.
What if the themes were strong adult subject matter that made for gritty tales of life, death and heroism? What if magic was real? And the gods could talk, but then they stopped?
What if the continents were small, the peoples plentiful and not all human? What if humans didn’t believe in magic because it had disappeared in the only continent they know? How about making it so they are defined more by their cultures than by their phenotype?
Have they stopped believing in themselves, in their gods? Do they see good and evil? How?
Is there slavery? Why? Is there nobility? Can someone be both?
These questions and the cascade of answers start to form more questions. It’s a nearly infinite series of responses. World building, particularly the creation of a world that breathes, is hard. Crafting a world-space that can withstand episodic gaming is harder.
Take chunks at a time. That’s what Full Moon Storytelling will be. Small chunks of content for use in a campaign setting, built around a custom set of rules adapted from 5th edition D&D, but with accompanying tales. If the setting says “The Necromancer is just someone trying to be good” there will be a story that explains how that happened.
As The Worthing Saga took a novella and broke out portions into branch stories, Full Moon Storytelling takes a campaign setting, rule set and crafts micro-fiction, short stories, plotless narrations and episodic adventures within the World of the Everflow.
Maybe that’s where we start, not with a character, but with a story about a fountain that flows from a cliff and diverts along two paths – the Font of Two Paths, the Two-Headed Spring, Pool of Life, Lake of Wonder. The Everflow influences the western peninsula of Kin, is clearly unnatural and …
This is Full Moon Storytelling. It’s a way to share writing, writing process and to think aloud, while words spring forth from tiny digits. Things will happen live, in front of you. Process will be as important as output. Creation is play. Come, join me at this fire under a full moon with clear sky as we look up through trees staring towards the open world of wonder, knowing that behind those trees at your back is whatever reality you can imagine.
