Flushmaster @ Flushmaster @ttrpg.network

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Bunch of random thoughts and suggestions incoming.

You describe a setting but not a campaign. "You're adventurers going into a mysterious desert. Because adventure."

I'm guessing you have plans for what's out in the mysterious and foreboding desert, but a big part of getting players invested is giving their characters a reason to be there. Something more specific than "I sense adventure that-a-way!" Especially when advertising a game. This description suggests to me a lot of exploration and fighting random monsters. But I may be way off because while some anticipation of the unknown is good, undefined mystery as a campaign hook doesn't give anybody a clue what the game will actually be like.

And if you're planning to sandbox it and just pull stuff out of your ass in reaction to whatever the players do you should make that clear immediately. First thing. Some people love that sort of game and some people hate it. Personally I'm in the latter and nothing is worse than expecting to be presented with an adventure and at least some clues and hints to start from only to get, "So, uh, big desert! Very mysterious and shit. What do you do?"

Caravans are trading expeditions. It isn't good business to just wander into unknown and presumably dangerous territory with a bunch of valuable goods unless you know someone is out there who wants to buy your stuff. You send an exploratory expedition first to discover these things, because for all we know the previous groups just aimlessly wandered into the desert and got eaten by giant sandworms or something.

An exploratory expedition would typically be smaller than "a village" and only need a few skill sets who are there for very specific and clear reasons. A couple diplomats and negotiators to make diplomatic and trading arrangements, some surveyors and cartographers to make maps so the places are no longer uncharted, and some scout and soldier types to protect them. That last part is your adventurers. Considering previous expeditions have gone missing it would seem prudent to send along a larger fighting force because something has clearly prevented those groups from returning.

An issue with a large expedition is the party getting swallowed up by it. They could specifically be scouts, moving ahead and investigating those weird looking caves over there or such (and allowing the party to act independently to perform narratively important tasks), but this is a specific focus and not a vague "people of various professions who are there for their own reasons." Most players don't make a wizard, barbarian, or paladin because they want to be a random craftsman in a town. Anything in their backstory to that effect is exactly that. Backstory. Setup. Stuff that happened before they became a cool adventurer. Cover that as much as you want in RP discussion, flashbacks, or as part of the character's initial introduction but make clear what the party will actually be doing in the campaign so players can prepare appropriate characters.

If the idea of a mobile village is important to what you want to do with your campaign then you need a good reason for bakers, blacksmiths, and textile weavers to be wandering off into unknown and presumably hostile territory. Off the top of my head the two things immediately coming to mind are a nomadic community or a large number of refugees looking for a new place to settle after losing their homes in some sort of war/calamity/etc. Both would still need scouts, outriders, and guards as they venture into unknown territory, which is where people with class levels come in, either as part of the original group, hired on, or joining for their own reasons of adventure, altruism, or fleeing something themselves.

That's Ray of Ban, and only the Moderator and Admin classes get access to it. Proper form is to display the sunglasses on your face while walking away from the target as it explodes.

And Ray of Sickness actually flies over to the target and barfs magical vomit on them.

I'm not saying that anything to do with sexual content is juvenile or even "deviant." Everybody has their kinks and to each their own, as long as it doesn't harm others.

I'm saying that nonstop "look it the titties and dicks lololol" is only amusing for a short time and not as a constant stream unless the viewers are hormonal adolescents or are full adults with the mindset and immaturity of adolescents. And rape focused content or killing things with one's genitals is the kind of thing that directly appeals to people with an unhealthy sexual fixation and a desire to harm others, which is what makes sex offenders. Or incels, who are just as bad for different but often adjacent reasons.

Don't forget that whatever situation you can possibly imagine, Pathfinder has a rule for that! No reworking required as long as you don't mind stopping the game while you ctrl+F and read the results whenever somebody comes up with a new idea you haven't prepared for because it's literally a perfect system that accounts for everything.

I frequently see "sex positive" (like many other terms) being used by people who either don't actually know what it means or just don't care to defend juvenile stupid shit. Like almost everything NSFW that was posted on r/dndmemes as part of the protest effort against the API changes. Yes, I supported doing it as a protest measure, but any attempt to act like 99% of the content involved was anything resembling intelligent and independently worthy of being considered "art" beyond the strictest definition of the word was obvious bullshit. No, your image of a goblin being repeatedly raped as punishment for picking your pockets is nothing but base fetish porn, and describing your character defeating enemies by growing their dong to be a forty foot long spear and fucking them in half is, at best juvenile jackassery and maybe funny exactly once for about ten seconds. Any attempt to suggest either is legitimate and healthy entertainment worthy of repitition, emulation, and propagation is an indication that you are either twelve years old, inclined to be a sex offender, or possibly both.

Yes. I thought that was pretty obvious. All Knights Radiant would be paladins, with each order having their own specific oaths. Because each order already has it's own specific oaths and gain specific powers from swearing and abiding by them. It's probably the single most direct analog between 5e class and fantasy badass from another medium that you're going to find. Also Kaladin in particular has the "classic" paladin vibe of being Lawful Good and wanting to protect the weak, smite the evil, etc. Then there's the Skybreakers who would be the Lawful Stupid stereotype, basically worshipping law for the sake of law and insisting on brutal and remorseless execution of it to the letter in all cases and refusing to acknowledge any sort of extenuating circumstances whatsoever.

Also while I'm quite sure Sanderson was at least working on drafts for Stormlight well before 5e came out he did used to play a lot of D&D as well as some other TTRPGs. I've seen a post by him where he said he hasn't really played much at all since becoming a professional writer because he would feel burnt out telling stories for a job then trying to relax by telling more stories, which is why he switched to playing MtG to relax. I would say his magic systems generally tend to at least partially resemble and incorporate elements of game design and balance because they all have very specific capabilities and limitations (see Sanderson's Laws of Magic).

Unless you're restricting the parameters to official WotC content, the nature of an open license means literally anybody can make up whatever ridiculous dumbshit they want to.

Honestly I'm not sure. I'm a cleric of the Porcelain God and there isn't anything in our dogma or scriptures about whether or not dragons used to have feathers. Not really my purview.

There's a sorcerer over here yelling something about how his grandmother wasn't a turkey.

I was totally going to reference this myself and you beat me to it.

This is actually sort of similar to my usual character creation process. I start with some basic concept and/or gimmick that's usually a little bit silly, corny, intentionally weird, etc, then I add to it until I've built a proper character around that goofy idea. I made an "anti-edgelord" bubbly church girl cleric that inadvertantly became a badass magical girl and grizzled war veteran. A barbarian that wears clothes made entirely from skunk skins and acts like a wise woodsman calling himself "the striped sage" even though he's mostly full of crap (but really good at hitting things with an axe). A rogue fleeing his home city because he got the sheriff's daughter pregnant while she was in a rebellious phase and slumming it with riffraff (her father is very unhappy). Most recently a druid with the noble background and concept of "rich kid college dropout runaway vagrant hippy chick" that the DM approved "but you're not just a noble you're a full on runaway princess."

You get a clear gimmick to start with that works as an icebreaker with the party and an easy beginning point for roleplaying. You can play up that gimmick as much as you want to, or even hint at it and make it something your character is obviously trying to hide or minimize. Once the gimmick is established you start adding the serious parts you've built up around the gimmick. Conversely you could introduce them as a straight laced, serious character then start hinting at the weird gimmick or just spring it on everybody at an unexpected time to get that wonderful WTF reaction when the other players notice it. Either way it gives you a solid starting point that you can build and develop your character from as they interact with other PCs and the world in general.

Edit: This method also works great for making memorable NPCs if you're the DM. Take the basic narrative function you need the NPC for (merchant, quest giver, distressed citizen, local lord/lady, etc) give them a mildly weird gimmick that will stick in players' minds.

The only thing I have personal experience for something like this is the old D20 Modern, which is based on the same general ruleset as D&D 3.5 and PF1e with a bunch of little tweaks and different base classes and such that are based on a focus on skills and traits associated with a particular ability score. With a goal to being more flexible it's designed to be adaptable and generally expected for characters to do at least some multiclassing both with multiple base classes then to prestige classes that focus on things like Soldier, Infiltrator, Celebrity, etc. There's gear and modern equipment with rules for stuff like car chases and gunfights. It also has a full sourcebook dedicated to a campaign setting called Urban Arcana with rules for adding magic and other fantasy elements. Spellcasters generally feel a little bit weak because all classes only go up to ten levels and spells to 5th (with all casting coming from prestige classes so you need a few other levels first), with the general structure to go up to level twenty or higher by just adding more classes to your build after maxing one out. A lot of the spells are more useful for things other than direct combat and there are rules for doing things like planting an attack spell into an email or such. More powerful magical effects are achieved via rituals, which often involve occultish stuff like getting a bunch of people to chant around a big arcane sigil on the ground to add more power to a lead caster and can do some pretty crazy stuff if you get enough people with high enough bonuses to the appropriate skill (mystic lore or something, been a long time since I've actually played it).

My rogue has a 14 Con and took the Resilient feat to be proficient in Con saves.

All of that fiery stuff is actually defensive. Those are flares that are launched en masse to divert incoming heat seaking missiles. There's usually a bunch of antiradar chaff getting launched too but it isn't very visible. So it would be providing a bonus to Armor Class. The effect is sometimes called the "angel flare" because from head on all the fire and smoke patterns resemble angel wings (this mage is zoomed in to much to show the full pattern).

An important thing to consider with any direct gameplay focus on alignment is that everyone involved is working with the same definitions of good, evil, law, and chaos. Because if you don't clarify that up front you're might spend a lot of game time on out of character philosophical debate sparked by whether a particular act fit a certain category or not. Or how the "lol so random" CN chaos goblin player is just straight up playing a psychotic, schizophrenic, sociopath which isn't an alignment but a bundle of mental illness stereotypes. And also a dumbass.

This is also an aspect that many players actively dislike and prefer to ignore. Often because many see it as subjective and serving little point beyond sidetracking games with circular philosophy debates. Some folks do enjoy it, but you should make sure that your group is aware of alignment being a major element before even getting started.

For worldbuilding I recommend starting with broad strokes, then fill things in with tiny details first and grow out from there as needed. That may sound weird. What I mean is start with the big picture. Is your world a spherical planet or a flat Earth type situation, possibly something like Discworld where it's being carted around space (or the Astral Sea) by some giant elephants riding an even bigger turtle? Once you have that, scale down a bit one step. Are there multiple biomes/climates like deserts, jungles, temperate forests and savannah plains, or all a giant water world with scattered islands as the only landmass populated by mermaids, pirates, and one guy that uses a Simic Hybrid stat block and looks suspiciously like Kevin Costner?

Now think of the type of the story you want to tell and what the world needs for that. This may actually supersede the previous steps if it requires specific fundamental elements of the entire world but we're still working a mostly blank canvas inside of that frame you have so far. Tying in with "what about when players do something unexpected?" I recommend not planning the story too much ahead of time. I like to think of it like how professional wrestlers (who are really just theater nerds who also like getting jacked and doing all their own stunts) prepare for a big showcase match. They usually plan a few "spots" which are the key turning points of the narrative in their match. These spots are also usually what shows up most on highlight reels, big flashy moves like somebody getting thrown out of the ring, a particular high flying move, a third party interfering, and of course the big finish. They mostly improv all the action between the spots (sometimes they only have the end planned and improv the entire match but unless you're looking to run a pure sandbox game and just pull everything out of your ass as you go you should at least have something planned for your next session). Plan your spots as key events to advance the story. Make sure to drop plenty of hints and story hooks so your players know where to go for the next spot to happen. Plan for what you want them to do, anything you think they might do differently, and still try to leave wiggle room to improvise because they just might do something completely different. Start filling in the details around those spots, starting with the very beginning of the game. What's your hook to interest the PCs in the main story? Where is it? A tavern, a castle, a guild hall, or some empty field in the middle of nowhere that they all happen to be in for some reason? Then build out from there until you have a framework for that spot with necessary NPCs and locations like shops, taverns, dark forests, spooky caves, and haunted castles. Then other details like towns, cities, nations, and such that these places can be found in. But remember that you're going for a finely detailed picture frame to let your players paint within by their decisions because this is a game of collective storytelling and you're like the conductor of a symphony who is leading the team but not actually playing an instrument. Okay mixed metaphors but hopefully you get it. Then once you've figured out what they're doing you make adjustments to your next spot as necessary and drop hints, hooks, leads, etc to lead the party to that. Fill in the canvas between your frame as you go along with the help of your musicians. Sometimes you might have to change or move the next spot to fit with the way they reacted, like deciding an oval shaped frame is better than the square you started with for what's now a painting of a tuba instead of a piano. Also you're now out of brass colored paint, maybe use some of the leftover wood tones, ivory, and ebony for the next frame (this means if they skipped an NPC or plot twist you intended to be important just move it elsewhere and work it into the next segment of the story).

As to players going "wildly off course" that could be a few different things. First, are you all looking to be playing a game around the concept of linear storytelling (what I just described is intended to be a flexible approach to that) that follows a single cohesive and continuous narrative? Or is that player running off chasing butterflies or whatever wanting to play a sandbox game where everybody just does whatever strikes their fancy at the moment and expect you as DM to make stuff up on demand? Sometimes a player will say they want the latter but really just take pleasure in actively avoiding anything the DM provides and those people are sadistic assholes. I don't like to play with those. If this kind of thing happens often and you don't think they're just being dicks but rather just missing or misinterpreting the hints and leads you've presented, I recommend just talking to them about it. Admit that they are way off what you planned for and so far outside the lines you can't even hear what instrument they're playing. Or something like that I'm tired and fixated on mixed metaphors now. Very specifically ask them what they thought about you telling them the things that you intended to be hints and clues pointing at the stuff you have prepared and figure out why they missed them. It could be you not making things as obvious as you thought, or maybe your red herring was too smelly, or they're just dense and completely missed obvious clues. Unless they're just being a troublemaking jerk who brought a vuvuzela to the orchestra it's probably actually some combination. Talk with them and figure out how to more effectively communicate so everybody has fun and stays at least close enough to what you have planned and the music of your story doesn't stop with the sound of a record scratch because someone is expecting a DJ to drop beats for the freestyle rap of a sandbox game.

Okay I think I might have overdone the metaphors there but I'm tired and found it amusing. Hopefully some of that made enough sense to be helpful. Maybe take it as an example on improvising weird shit that just popped into somebody's head so that it fits with the story you had planned. Because I'm now insisting that the mixed metaphors tacked onto the advice I intended to give from the start are themselves metaphors for player generated chaos. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

This is why you don't allow homebrew from idiots.

There's also nothing saying the dog is going to be any good at it, but I've seen a few humans do worse than I'd expect from a Chihuahua so I guess it would be better than nothing.

Yeah, that's a great tool to use as a starting point. But getting a good looking number from that calculator doesn't mean that your party isn't going to smash the enemies or get wiped in three rounds. Different monsters will have different abilities (AC, attack bonus, damage, spells, resistances, saves, etc) just as your PCs will depending on their classes and builds. A group of slow moving monsters with high AC and low dexterity saves might be an appropriate or tough challenge for a heavily martial party, but add one wizard with spells like fireball or even burning hands at lower levels and suddenly they're all taking full damage at once. There's also the action economy to consider; a single enemy that attacks once per turn isn't going to deal as much damage as a party of four all attacking it (unless it has legendary actions or it's hitting hard enough to drop a PC in one or two hits) but a bunch of low CR enemies can potentially take out a half the party in a round or two via sheer volume of weak hits if they aren't hit with some sort of AoE attack. As the DM you have to adjust for such factors and that's really much more of an art than a science.

I'm guessing it means comparing how much XP particular monsters are worth per their stat block and adding those together then comparing the total to table on page 82 of the Dungeon Master's Guide for encounter difficulties by party level. I agree this is a good baseline to start from, but those XP values are based on CR, which is itself really only a general suggestion and starting point to balance from.

Like eerongal led with, you have to know your party and their strengths and weaknesses in order to prepare an appropriate challenge for them. All of the options in character creation and progression mean that there are far to many variables in even a low level group of 3-5 PCs for any static rating system to guarantee balanced matchups for any given group without the DM actually having to learn the rules and use their brain a bit.