BalanceInAllThings @ InEnduringGrowStrong @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

I love those, I binged through all of them.
❤️

Nice.
If you made a community for comics and posted that there I'd subscribe.

Maybe this?
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/197540

Mentions work fine, you just have to say his name 3 times in front of a mirror.
@slyflourish@ttrpg.network
@slyflourish@ttrpg.network
@slyflourish@ttrpg.network

Libraries are mainly places of knowledge.
They could also include second that aren't just books: a museum or natural museum, an art gallery, a meeting space for academic conferences, etc.
Was that part of the library used by an underwater civilization? Or was it about one?

If it's the former, even our idea of a book or scroll might be wildly different from them.
If they lived underwater, instead of using ink on paper/vellum, maybe they carved on things, or arranged shells or sand, tied knots in strands of rope like material, or tapestries, or influenced the growth of corals in ways to display their ideas, etc. If they used ink, maybe it was more like a 3d holographic representation but with pigments suspended in water.
Turbulence, moving through might simply make it ineligible (or maybe it can be reversed, see below)

1 minute science video about fluids

Did they even have light?
Bioluminescence might be something cool here, where the "books" themselves might literally be live bio things that are alive.
Or maybe just the ambient light can be provided by bioluminescent plankton as you move around.
Maybe their way of displaying an idea was recreating specific movement in the water so the plankton is simulated in a specific pattern to display.

You can probably also steal and reskin some of the stuff in the candlekeep adventure if you need side content. Won't be a drop-in replacement but the general vibe is there.

Indeed, didn't notice the community name.
Seems I was browsing All instead of Subbed too. I'll go read about BitD though, that sounds fun.

I'm assuming we're talking long term injuries and not just mid session HP.
I'm also assuming you want something more efficient for maybe a shorter downtime, but not something they carry with them all the time.

Invent a "bacta tank" thing, something that makes sense for your world, and give them access to that?

Maybe it's a magical pool of healing in a long lost cave that's powered by a beam of moonlight.
Maybe it's powered by some offering or sacrifice to a divine (or darker?) being.
Maybe it's a particularly proficient doctor who uses new methods.
Whatever, since you created it, you can fine tune the healing vs resource cost exactly how you'd like.
Maybe a an hour/day/week in it refreshes x/y/z, it might be static amount or dice based. It might require some material or not.

Whatever it is, I'd make it location based just to be sure they don't haul that thing across all your future dungeons for infinite healing shenanigans.
Having that thing is their stronghold (if they have one) would be nice for sure, and maybe it'd make sense for them to build a sort of homebase around that magical place, but moving it around should be either impossible or highly costly, long and complicated.
Otherwise it's gonna be a bunch of shenanigans and they're gonna have that thing hauled by servants through the dungeon so they can refresh between every encounter. Or they're gonna bottle it up for sale and become BigFantasticalPharma or some other random PC idea.

Whether it's a place or an NPC, they'll likely become very protective of that, probably wanna keep that a secret and it can become a plot hook in itself.
"Sure... the blacksmith's daughter has been kidnapped, but — wait they got McDoc McShizzleWounds? Letsss gooo^oooo!"

"The misty fog is weird, sure and people have been disappearing... we could investigate that maybe, but — what? there's a very remote chance that the fog is impeding the healing pool? Ready the horses! /clop clop"

Whatever it is, you're in control of exactly how much it does, you just need a believable and fun excuse.

Don’t pre-plan outcomes—let the chips fall where they may. Use failures to push the action forward.

This bit should apply to most TTRPGs

Most of my exposure to D&D is in English but we speak French at home.
Improv is slightly more natural for us in French, but my D&D vocabulary is mostly English.
Whenever we talk about any of this, we end up spraking almost an hybrid language that's both English end French.

I don't have much advice to offer but we don't generally translate names except if they're too weird or hard to remember, etc.

Falling a cropping skill check

Whoops, I meant rest

We used to go multiple sessions without an opportunity to test rest, which really tones down caster classes quite a bit.

Edited to fix typo

Also, WOTC recently announced a Planescape supplement which may or may not contain more stuff on Limbo.
Either way, it'll surely contain fluff on Sigil, the city of doors, which may be useful in transiting to or from Limbo and basically anywhere else.

Imagine learning you're demiromantic/demisexual through a meme.

Limbo really is something else.
I'm no expert on it, but I think pretty much everything works differently in Limbo.
Gravity exists but is subjective to the visitors' will.
That's the easy part.

Any moment they can get crushed by a flaming ball of ice shard tornado of primordial energy soup nonsense metal rainbow vapor.
Unless they manage to stabilize a sphere of limbo, which according to the DMG is a Wisdom DC5 +5 for each additional 10ft or something.
Limbo's randomness make it unique and certainly interesting, but also insanely dangerous and difficult to actually explore.
To me, being in raw Limbo is not unlike rolling on a wild magic table every second, although I'm sure there are more practical ways to run something there gameplay-wise.

You could dump the PCs in a Gith city (or just outside), this way they don't just get swallowed by the raw swirling chaos of Limbo. Cities do exist, stabilized pockets maintained by Anarchs, who exert an unimaginable amount of willpower over the pure chaos. MM says an Anarch has a wisdom of 20, but the willpower they exert over their surroundings is way beyond that. A PC with a wisdom of 20 (+5) would still need to roll a 15 to create a simple 40' bubble, let alone a city, so Anarchs making miles of complicated structures definitely have some unique lore ability thing specific to them. That's a pretty small bubble for an adventure.
(Comment on the monster manual: An Anarch is literally the antithesis of raw chaos, not that I'duse alignment much, but if there's any entry in the MM that should be Lawful it's the Anarch, anyway)

I don't want to discourage you from running in Limbo, quite the opposite.
In fact, I think it's a very (maybe the most) fascinating place and it can be a great medium for epic storytelling that's been (imho) underused by TSR and WOTC, etc.

What makes it an interesting place, the weird, random and unpredictable also make it intimidating and a challenge to use.
In a traditional adventure, there likely was a time of somewhat "stable" statu quo, that the BBEG then disrupts, creating a background tension to your world.
As in, you inject just enough chaos into the world to set things in motion.
Limbo is kinda the other way around, its natural state is raw chaos. You need to inject order, just to exist there.

Now... one thing is you could use pretty much any frontier town from any adventure out there and just plop it down in Limbo. Rename and rework a few things to make it live in its own bubble.
The adventure itself would be much easier if it was constrained into that bubble, maybe with short bouts in the raw Limbo, instead of navigating an endless maelstrom of randomness for the whole adventure.

Limbo would be a great place for a maze too, one that's ever shifting.
Or maybe the PC is an Anarch and they eventually learn to use their power to create a stronghold for the party or a prison for the biggerBBEG. But then they're kinda stuck there otherwise it all ceases to exist.

Limbo has existed for a long while, I'm sure someone already created something much more helpful than that tiny section in the DMG.

Definitely following this thread and I wish you the best success in that.

Planescape: Torment is a favorite of mine.
Sadly, Torment: Tides of Numenera didn't really scratch the itch for me.

Thanks, I watched those too and they were very helpful.
I think I just need to stop overthinking it and just start running it.

Bonk

I have no real experience, but I think you don't really need to jump from one point to another if you dont "zoom in" too much on those points to begin with.
If you go the skill challenge way, I think the idea is to use the collective results as inspiration to paint broader strokes of their journey without each roll being something that happens in fine sloggish detail.
Ask your players to commit 2-3 skills they're proficient in that they think would be relevant to the journey and how they do that.

But mostly, the skills are just an excuse to ask the players what they do during the journey instead of coming up with everything yourself?
I've never done any of this, but offloading creative work to your players seemed like a really smart, lazy idea that I stole that from someone.

Obvious skills like Survival, Nature, Cartography, Perception. Maybe animal handling works for taking better care of horses? Maybe religion helps if they're travelling in the vicinity of a temple.
Maybe Stealth or even Intimidation can lower the odds of an encounter.
Asking the players which skills and how they use it, having them come up with the reason they think that skill would work kinda does half the job for you.

The point not being to roleplay each individual roll, but more like... using the collective results for a short "cinematic" between the places.
The rolls not being a fail/succeed, but more a degree of success kinda thing.
Maybe the DC is absurdly low, but a Survival roll of 10 means they forage just enough food without needing to hit their rations, while a 15 means they hunt a nice animal for a particularly nice meal.
Maybe they fail Perception, but suceed Stealth and nothing happens to them.
Might be easier to take the rolls (or even their passives) and narrate the travel in the past tense based on that. Taking the passives could make a lot of sense as it's pretty much a textbook passive rather than heat of the moment situation, takes less time but since it's much less swingy, that's not as helpful to narration.

Idk, maybe they get 3 out of 5 successful rolls:
You rode by day and camped by night for a few days. PC x survival skills allowed you all to subsist on the nuts and berries these plains have to offer, you even had an omelet one morning which was a welcome change from rations. PC y thinks they've done a good job of hiding your camp sites, maybe you were just lucky enough to avoid the roaming creatures of the night, but it certainly felt safer than camping in the open. PC z's flute kept you in good spirits and you've made good progress and you've arrived half a day earlier than you expected and you are well rested.

If they failed hard on every roll, they don't fail to travel and go back to square one that'd just be annoying.
They're just a bit late, hungry and tired from the journey. Which in itself... might prod them to the local inn, whereas they might jump straight into something a job if their travels went better.

Hell, depending on their level, you could even narrate a past mundane combat encounter: on the third day, a small pack of ghouls found your camp in the night but you were well prepared and made quick work of them.
Although, getting rid of them proved easier than the stench, you didn't have much appetite in the morning and you were happy to break camp early.

Pathfinder:Kingmaker crpg kind of has something like that for overland travel. With "roles" you can assign each character. Watch duty, Stealth, Foraging.
Maybe ask them what they do in their downtime too.

Maybe the warrior sharpened their weapons, and you can give them a +1 damage just for the next encounter.
Maybe the bard's performance lifted their spirits and they have advantage on their wisdom saves.
Cooking utensils already have rules for recovering more hp during a short rest, but that's not too useful in a longer travel, maybe they get a few temp hps instead.

Again, I've never done any of this, so use appropriate amount of salt.

Try a few things out, switch it up, but also ask your players?
It's perfectly ok not to bother with the mundane sometimes if you just wanna get to the next big thing. Fun is the only real rule.

It seems a pretty safe assumption that players never run away until it's too late.