Tag: DnD

  • Using Feats to expand your setting: Church of Quar

    Using Feats to expand your setting: Church of Quar

    In the new Forgotten Realms books, Strixhaven, 5e Dragonlance and a recent Unearthed Arcana official D&D is using Feat trees/chains. Every published instance so far is a set of two.

    While there are mechanical reasons to have tiered Feats every expression to this point also leans quite heavily into the story elements added. In Strixhaven the feat-taker goes from early student to late in the class. In Dragonlance a squire becomes a knight. In the Realms you are early in a Faction and then a powerful member of it.

    The Feat helps tell the story in ways that a subclass wouldn’t because in all cases the feat has two expressions in Tier 1 available where a subclass gets a single expression. By the end of Tier 2 a subclass gets two expressions while a Feat chain can be up to four. There’s more space for story.

    An initiate becoming an expert is the most common example. The chain (I prefer that to tree as the published versions are two options linked) naturally fit this.

    Let’s explore how a Feat chain could tell a story in my homebrew world by looking at three feats connected to the Church of Quar.

    In the Six Kingdoms of the World of the Everflow the Church of Quar is a hybrid church-healing center-merchant guild. It controls access to the healing waters of the Everflow at the Font of Two Paths in Telse. Their tongue became the common language of the Six Kingdoms because of the strong influence of their healing elixir in a world without magic.

    No faith, no kingdom, no magic school after magic returned to the land has the influence of the Church of Quar. They’re in every town. That does not mean that every town has an Acolyte, a formal role represented by a member of the faith who is becoming a hero.

    The following three feats expand the story of the Church of Quar for heroes (and villains) using the Feat system.

    Acolyte of Quar

    Origin Feat

    You gain the following benefits.

    Cultured. You learn an additional culture (or language).

    Balm of rest. During a Short Rest you create a balm using a Healing Potion that removes one level of exhaustion and grants the creature advantage on a saving throw versus one condition with a save.

    Blessing of the Everflow. When you administer a Healing Potion to a creature they may use a Hit Die to heal as well as gain the benefits from the Healing Potion.

    Minister of Quar

    Feat (prerequisites: Acolyte of Quar, 4th+ level)

    You gain the following benefits.

    +1 to Charisma or Wisdom

    Oratory. You have Advantage when using Influence Action with Indifferent or Friendly peoples with which you share a culture or language (and Hostile creatures who are members of the Church of Quar).

    Lord of Life. You learn the Aid spell and may cast it one time a day without using a spell slot. It becomes a known spell for you.

    Lord of Rivers. You know how to create a Healing Potion (vial of Everflow) with only water and herbs. This lesser potion costs only 5 gp and can be created during a Short Rest. This potion is only half as effective as a standard Healing Potion. Sharing this concept is forbidden.

    Free Minister of Quar

    Feat (prerequisites: Acolyte of Quar, membership in the Reformed Church, 4th+ level)

    You gain the following benefits.

    +1 to Charisma or Constitution

    Rivers and Roads. You learn two cultures or languages and the Religion skill (or another skill if you are already proficient). You have Advantage on Constitution checks brought about by Environmental Effects.

    First Aid: Taking one minute you can grant a Hit Point to a stabilized creature. They are also subjected to Blessings of the Everflow if you have a Healing Potion available.

    Together these dual Feat chains tell the story behind the Orthodox and Reformed Churches of Quar.

    In just the tiniest bits of flavor text you see examples of how two branches of the faith are different, not just in their ability to be heroes, but what is expected from their most ardent believers.

    Where a subclass gains features at 3rd, 6th and 10th level (mostly). Classes have feats at 1st, 4th, 8th, 12th (mostly). By 8th level a member of Quar’s faith could take all three faith feats, going on a journey from being part of a merchant-church to dedicated hedge healer.

    This story doesn’t need to be connected to a class because they aren’t spellcasters. Plus, in the fiction inspiring the game contains people who are faithful without being clerics or druids or paladins.

    Maybe another feat deals with Quars pantheon. After being an Acolyte of Quar the individual is a Devotee to Belsem the Untamed (leaning into animal companionship?) or a Teacher (adherent to Glight becoming an expert at knowing things). These would emphasize branching, which fits the pantheon.

    The other pantheons may start dispersed and then unify (The Siblilngs) or emphasize bonding (Az and Sel) or only be about fellowship (Mehmd’s faith).

    Maybe an aspect of your world is a military organization and feats could be ranks or branches. Does your world lean into magical schools like Strixhaven? A feat chain from underclass, to senior student, to teacher, to dean could work. A setting that anchors the horrors of the environment could use feats as a way to describe various paths to survival (water, shelter, food, community).

    Feats are a discreet, light space that empowers all classes to carry bits of lore that connect to the world mechanically.

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  • Professional failure

    Professional failure

    Professionals fail all the time — in roleplaying games, in elite athletics, in special operations, in life.

    The idea that they shouldn’t miss in a game is built on a foundation of water, not even sand.

    There are still some valid reasons that one wouldn’t roll to hit, but they have nothing to do with professionalism.

    Matt Colville on Mastering Dungeons

    In a recent edition of Mastering Dungeons Matt Colville talked extensively about the business of RPGs. It’s a wonderful listen.

    Something stood out to me though.

    “You’re professionals; you shouldn’t roll to hit.”

    Now, the idea of not rolling to hit is part of Colville’s quite intentional design. I’m certain he’s said it before and will say it again. There are reasons in games to not roll to hit.

    They have nothing to do with the character being a professional.

    Let’s break down the idea of professionals not needing to roll to hit.

    Elite Failure

    Elites fail regularly. They fail when contested. They fail when on their own. Failure at elite levels may not be as common as for us normal people, but it happens.

    This is true for the real, actual elites, not those mere professionals. My personal history is blessed to experience a few elites in fashions that many do not.

    Special operations

    Assigned to 5th Special Forces as a peacetime soldier my Army days were defined by the Quiet Professionals — the Green Berets. Working alongside these masters in warfare I saw failure every single day.

    On the range those trained to be snipers, an uncontested contest in gaming terms, missed. There are reasons for each miss, but missing happened.

    When soldiers, even in highly trained units such as the Special Forces, go to war they miss even more. The human brain does not like to kill things, plus there is chaos all around you. Errors happen. They always will.

    Elite failure isn’t limited to elite warfare.

    High-level sports

    Leaving 5th Group I decided I wanted nothing to do with my high school dreams or hard journalism. I turned to sports. During that era I worked as a producer for the Sonics broadcasting network, baseball’s best postgame show, as an on-air analyst for soccer and founded Sounder at Heart.

    At the field and court level I’ve watched Ichiro, Ken Griffey Jr., Gary Payton, Michael Jordan, Megan Rapinoe, Kasey Keller and many others.

    The list of these Hall of Fame talents failing would be immense.

    But let’s use hard numbers.

    Ichiro is the best contact hitter of the modern era. The ten-time All Star and MVP had a batting average on balls in play forty points higher than his contemporaries, but it was still only .338.

    Jordan’s shooting percentage was just under 50%.

    Now, both of those are contests. What about the best athletes when uncontested? Steph Curry makes only 91% of his free throws.

    It doesn’t matter which sport we consider. Kasey Keller stops 74% of shots he faces. Megan Rapinoe put ~40% of her shots on frame, and scored even fewer of those.

    Failure among the elite is regular and normal. They roll to hit and fail.

    Business

    Pick your favorite business leader and their success rate is higher than average, but whether its Howard Schultz launching a magazine, or Steve Jobs launching NeXT, or Warren Buffet investing in a shoe company, they fail too.

    Gaming reasons to not roll to hit

    So professionals do miss. Elites miss.

    Are there good reasons to not roll to hit? Yes, absolutely, as part of intentional design choices for a style of play that has nothing to do with professionalism of the character

    Hit points vs meat points

    The long standing D&D debate about hit points being more than meat points can be ignored here. Games developing to-hit rolling or direct-to-damage techniques do not need to burden them with Gygax’s decisions.

    Direct-to-damage rolling is excellent when hit points are, as in D&D, a symbol of morale, luck, fortitude, energy and more than merely meat. Since every attempt to physically damage an opponent wears away at those elements you don’t necessarily need to roll to hit. Missing still costs luck, energy, mental health and morale.

    The meat of the opponent can be damaged eventually, even without rolling to hit.

    Speed of play

    Colville did this in MCDM monster design for his 5e books — minions and the like can be hit easily. And then eliminated easily. This speeds up the action at the table and mimics narratives from movies, TV, video games within role playing games. Slicing and dicing through waves of small threats feels great. Having that take only a few moments rather than many minutes is good.

    Additionally in games like Draw Steel, with extensive tactical choices being a goal, eliminating a set of rolling helps speed gameplay up. This is a wise and intentional design choice that amplifies the other intent of bundling morale with meat.

    This supports the designer’s desires for their game — and need not be connected to reality or even lore.

    A wrong justification, with the right idea

    Professionalism in the real-world elite activities includes failure. Even the arts that inspire our gaming include failure. Black Widow misses. Skywalkers miss. Robin Hood misses.

    Designers should embrace failure when missing, because Ichiro, Rapinoe, every special forces soldier, every business leader, every legendary hero misses.

    And when they do design away the miss they should do so with intent that supports their game, no matter what reality and lore suggest. Just as Colville’s done in Draw Steel.

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  • The D&D Stranger Things boom is bigger than you think

    The D&D Stranger Things boom is bigger than you think

    This post will not contain spoilers for Season 5 because I haven’t yet watched Season 5 of Stranger Things, though I do know it features more Dungeons & Dragons than Seaons 2-4 combined.

    If you were to go into Target this fall you’d see a massive Stranger Things display somewhere in the store. Part of that display would feature the D&D boxed set Welcome to the Hellfire Club, which is a continuation of Eddie’s D&D campaign. It felt late, because Eddie isn’t part of season 5.

    It was not late.

    Welcome to the Hellfire Club sold out at Target. It sold out on Amazon. A light informal survey of local-to-me stores have it as sold out. The physical boxed set can still be ordered on DnDBeyond.

    Sure, that could be a lack of ambition from Wizards of the Coast by not manufacturing enough of the sets.

    It’s much more likely that the heavy lean back into D&D by Stranger Things Season 5 drove more desire for D&D the game than previous seasons, Critical Role and Baldur’s Gate 3. BG3’s drive of interest into D&D is hard to quantify, but has an extended window over several years.

    Google Trends can show you.

    A chart showing the popularity of search for Stranger Things and D&D. The D&D element is tiny. Stranger Things had a big surge in Fall of 2022 and a massive surge in Winter of 2025.

    Search trends for Stranger Things

    Here are the four adjacent media and D&D

    Chart showing search trends for Stranger Things, D&D, Baldur's Gate 3, D&D: Honor Among Thieves and Critical Role. The Stranger Things spikes are in Fall of 2022 and Winter 2025. Baldur's Gate 3 spikes in Spring 2023. There are small increases in interest in D&D and Critical Role scattered on the chart.
    Stranger Things is more popular than the others by far.

    D&D, the game, had its biggest boom from the movie, but…

    Google trends chart for D&D, the game. It's biggest spike is Spring 2023 when Honor Among Thieves, the D&D movie released. It's next largest spike is from Stranger Things Season 5 and Season 4. BG3 increased it a bit.
    Stranger Things Season 5 nearly matches D&D: Honor Among Thieves

    There’s one major difference — lack of tie-in gaming products.

    Rime of the Frostmaiden contained a single adventure related to the movie. There was a boutique NPC download related to the movie, but nothing like the amazing boxed set Stranger Things got. Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus was barely related to the video game and its release timing was horrible.

    Nothing sold out because of Honor Among Thieves, the best D&D marketing in the history of the game, because D&D wasn’t run as a franchise system with business units failing to talk to each other.

    Both the current starter set and Welcome to the Hellfire Club are selling out.

    What’s that mean for us Dungeon Masters?

    1. Be welcoming to new and returning players.
    2. Reduce house rules when they join you.
    3. Talk about the intent of your table and what type of play you focus on .
    4. Be familiar with the most popular products.
    5. Help teach your current players to DM.
    6. See if local cafes, libraries, schools, pubs, etc need DMs.

    We are responsible for growing this glorious hobby. Thanks to the Creative Commons, various SRDs, the eternal nature of homebrewing and the thousands of other roleplaying games there is always something that’s right for someone.

    Find what’s right for your family, your friends and your community.

    People are interested. It’s up to you to be the reason they stay interested.

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  • My best of 2025

    My best of 2025

    As seems to be a now-trend, I published fewer articles and stories in 2025 than I did in 2024. That drift towards being a consumer of writing more than a writer is one that challenges me in my soul.

    Upon reflection unlike other slow periods of publication this is not because I microblog on social media too much. Instead it is a combination of stressful but wonderful work and helping Aslan recover from a back injury. Our beautiful red lab is now walking again, but it’s taken 90 days to get close to normal and will take a few weeks more.

    The biggest win of the year is not something written — my presentation on how to use RPGs as training aids prior to natural disasters. I’ve now delivered it at AIRIP, GSX, the Global Security Briefing and in just over a week I’ll present a version to OrcaCon, a local-to-me gaming convention.

    Let’s review my favorite writings of 2025

    Full Moon Storytelling

    These selections may not be what was most read on the blog. They are what I enjoyed writing the most.

    Your players aren’t supposed to die – one member of my D&D campaign passed away last year. We celebrated his life by playing a multi-table, public session of the game he loves in public.

    Potential – a personal essay on what it means to be anti-completionist, an essay writer, a blogger, someone with narrative thoughts without a novel.

    Pencil sketch of a tiny dragon resting on a book. The pointy tail arches over the back with drips of ichor coming out of a feathered tip. The arms seem to be vestigial wings with opposing fingers capable of handling obects
    Art by Dragons of Wales in the forthcoming book Dragons of the Dwindling

    Inkling Dragon – when Dragons of Wales offered sketched commissions I had to take part. A goal of mine is to eventually replace every standard D&D dragon in the World of the Everflow with Dragons of Wales’ style of dragons, particularly those from Deep Time. The Inkling Dragon is my dream of what a dragon who works as a writing assistant would be.

    The Ferments: A campaign one sheet – my regular D&D group transitioned to me being a player, but we weren’t playing enough. Borrowing from the West Marches concept The Ferments has the action come to the players, who defend their homes from a world with threats like fire tornadoes, earthquake swarms and mud mephit slides. A large part of The Fermends involves Militia Actions, a way to include local forces in larger combats while centering the player characters.

    Capturing the magic of the mundane Utilize action – the main campaign still runs with the 2014 5e rules as the baseline, but The Ferments uses a foundation of 2024 with dashes of Black Flag, Advanced 5e and 2014. One thing that’s fun about 2024 is that the Utilize Action can become a Blades in the Dark style clock. My review of the 2024 Player’s Handbook was my most read D&D writing of the year.

    Review: Sanguine by Found Familiar Coffee – getting back into cupping at home reminded me of tasting something like 350,000 roasts and origins back in my coffee quality days. I’m doing this without publishing, but if people want me to cup more coffee and share my thoughts I’d love to do it again.

    Published again with Homebrew & Hacking

    PJ Coffey invited me back to write an essay about how to create backgrounds for the 5e ecosystem, including new creations for Crafting Heritages, Cultures and More: Worldbuilding. The two sports (The Pentiad and Throwing Stars) shared in that book are now my default to how I integrate sports into 5e D&D. They are a divergence from sports as a tool.

    Sounder at Heart

    A composite image that includes the Ship's Log branding with a notepad and a quill. There is also a photo of Sounders leadership with the Leyva family holding up a Sounders jersey numbered 75. Below that is a photo of Danny Leyva in a black Defiance top.

    My weekly column, the Ship’s Log continues. The nature of a weekly column is that most subjects are only relevant weekly. Four of the newsletters this year felt bigger than that.

    Watching them grow up – when Danny Leyva transferred to Necaxa it was a crisp reminder that the young talents that came through Defiance, where I used to work, were teens, but now they are men, full on adults with wonderful path in front of them.

    Humanity requires that we care – watching Reign FC lose in the playoffs I cried tears of joy. My home team, another former employer, lost. But I was happy because it was a symbol of the joy available in soccer when the world can be so harsh.

    The Campaign of 2025 – of course I did a D&D+Sounders mashup. Similar to what happened the last time Wizards of the Coast released a new set of core books I created the key players for the Sounders as if they were D&D characters.

    Factal

    Work is mostly leading the blog, writing marketing emails, producing/presenting the Global Security Briefing and managing social (yeah, I’m a marketing generalist who does a little of a lot on a small team).

    There are two things I helped write that I want to share with my D&D readers.

    I didn’t write Security at the core of Amnesty International’s human rights work, but I was part of the interview and editing process. Factal helps more than 300 human rights and disaster relief NGOs for free. Knowing that we help tell these orgs where they are needed and help keep their people safe gets me excited to start my work days.

    Why the LA fires have been so hard to respond to – and how Factal members met the challenge – between misinformation, information overload, false alerts Factal’s editors and platform helped those NGO partners and huge enterprise companies keep their people safe.

    Factal North America lead editor Joe Veyera was on shift during Factal’s earliest alerts. “Finding information about the LA fires isn’t the hard part, but parsing what’s real and what’s not can be far more difficult. As a team of experienced journalists with experience covering large-scale disasters, we know which sources to trust and our members know they can trust our updates.”

    I love what I do, because we are that wonderful intersection of ethical company that does lifesaving journalism. I complete year four there in just over a month.

    Finally, I repeat my annual call to get rid of linktree or any of its competitors. Your link in bio should be to a place you own and control.

    Where to Follow Me
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  • A letter to the workshop

    A letter to the workshop

    TO: Flasfur Wreltor with Blackbirds and the gobkons Chofs Chupmolea badged al-Chems and Bolnis Abica nox Qawaha via Artok at the Keep

    Aboard the ship you’ll find a vial of the corruption I discovered. Additionally this letter’s addendum includes a report of testing as well as a sketch-print of a mechanical hand discovered on this long journey. When I return is unknown. This journey shall be long and ideally fruitful. It is also violent and absurd. Tsavancoast is a land of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, with many artificers, tinkers and crafters mostly gobkon with a few goliaths, plus you wouldn’t believe if but I think there’s a human using cattle to turn wheels like we might a mill. I saw a monkey pushing bellows.

    It’s a large city. Where Sheljar is one with the land and full of righteousness Tsavancoast is bright even at night, garish. There’s gambling where we stay. I win regularly.

    Sorry. Too long. I get distracted.

    You are probably wondering what’s happened with the corruption. It’s a much bigger problem than we or Le Remoden Eisha or the Dragon Council thought. There’s also a local leader in Tsavancoast who is working to spread the corruption while supposedly being in Le Remoden Eisha.

    I found that out after repelling an army of walking trees and this weird elf-insect hybrid creatures. Yes, others helped, including some great dwarven sappers who brought down a bridge, scouts that helped save outlying communities, a lot of wizards. It was a staged battle. Midqh helped quite a bit. I learned how to make even bigger fire and booms through its apparatuses.

    Anyway, after that massive series of battles — yes, we won, that’s how you’re getting this letter — we chatted with the leaders of the wizard and dragon groups, plus a gent named Ryghast. Don’t ask me the order of who talked to who and when it happened. We were in a casino! I won a few games, many games.

    Eventually we chatted. But chatting with Ryghast was difficult. He took me into a magical silence to spill secrets. I tried and tried and tried to break his spells with my own systems. A wizard of his power is well beyond my teknical abilities.

    BUT, in his confidence he told me of his double-crossing ways. I immediately told Amos, Rolf, Crag and Nandi, who passed the information around.

    Probably created a big enemy. Hopefully he didn’t follow the Sadijh back to the keep. If he did please flee. Artok cannot defend you on his own.

    Anyhow, we’re back off to the wilds. The source of the corruption that created that army of trees is our goal. I don’t know when I’ll see you again. I have ideas about what we can do with this hand and I’ve started to work on armored carts with Rolf. There’s also a clockwork amulet that can give one a second chance. My latest invention is to burn a bit of corruption to power our items.

    See you again under the Dragon Moon.

    Xabal Gaitee Quarter-Flagged Optigraph Balaneer nox Free Tink and non-Commissioned Officer of the Sadijh (on leave in absence)

    This recap of the Defense of Tsavancoast is written in first person by Xabal, a gnome artificer, to their hirelings at Xabal’s Workshop set in the Age of Myths campaign.