The Pink Dice Chronicles

 Tasha's Cauldron of Everything starts off with a set of optional rules for customizing characters. These rules have drawn a lot of discussion on the internet, so I wanted to do a dedicated post just to address them For reference, we're talking about pages 7 and 8 under "Character Options" in TCoE. As a quick summary, these rules give optional rules for: Adjust racial ability scores, languages, proficiencies, and personalities Making your own lineage (race) Changing skills and subclasses after the game has started Okay, let's address the racial customizations and adjustments first, since this comes first in the text, and is, by far, the most talked about optional rule on the internet. This change adds some interesting dilemmas. In particular, once must assess whether all of the races are still balanced if you can move ability scores wherever you want them. Let's look at some specific extreme examples: Human: +1 to everything Variant Human: Two +1s and a feat M...

 I am going to be evaluating "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" for incorporation into my own games. I figured I would go ahead and record this analysis on my blog here so other folks can follow along and glean some useful information from the time I spent. I tried to find an in-depth analysis elsewhere, but at this time none so detailed as this seems to be available. You will not find any of the text in its entirety in this blog. I will be referencing the first printing of the book, so please refer to that as you read along. There are no released errata for the book at the time of writing, although there are errata from other books that affect some of this content. There are 21 spells in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. This includes Booming Blade, Green-Flame Blade, Lightning Lure, and Sword Burst cantrips that were originally published in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. There are 9 spells that allow you to summon creatures of various types. Three spells are notabl...

 Tonight I started a segment in a small village with a straightforward plot. A seer, that the party needs to get a prophesy from, is having terrible nightmares. Since the nightmares block his prophetic dreams, they have to figure out how to get rid of them. Seeing how the party is all monster hunters, they suspect a monster. I improvised a lot. The rich local who ran the caravan stop, trading post, and stables, with a walled compound is not to be trusted -- the local healer told them so. It was clear she hated him.  When talking to the old man, he spoke to them through a small window in his front gate and quickly sent them away. They sent in their little invisible mascot, a mischievous sprite named Freelay with a penchant for apples, into the compound to check things out. When he didn't return, they sent his mount, a Tibetan mastiff named pip to track him and found he was still inside. They talked to the man again and gained entry after some good social skill usage. He was obv...

Dungeons set so much of the tone for D&D and similar games. Everyone has their story of that great dungeon crawl where something amazing, crazy, or stupid resulted in one of those epic gaming memories.  We all love a good dungeon crawl. But what makes a dungeon crawl good and how does the GM design that perfect dungeon? Dungeon design is often about balance between realism and attain a dramatic story effect. If you are rolling up a random dungeon, you are not designing. Put away the dice, cards, and random map generators, and let's do some thinking. Only you know what you are looking for in your game for your plot. It depends on what your players want. It depends on where the story is headed. Before you get started on dungeon design, have your goals in mind. In fact, if you can, design a few rough encounters you might like to see. Leave the details for later. A dungeon was originally built for a reason. Answer the questions: Who built this dungeon? What was it part ...

Jeremy Crawford has recently rules that passive skills are 10 + mods and that a skill that is rolled can't be lower than that. Let's ignore that and see what makes sense. Consider that passive skills are a tool for the GM to save time and avoid rolls giving away things going on. In addition, keep in mind that class features like the rogue's reliable talent, already give a minimum value of a roll of 10 on skill checks, and we don't want to overshadow that. First, passive skills are not the same as the active versions. In 3.5, this was quite clear in the way we split up skills. Spot, listen, and search were all different skills. Now, all three of those are combined in Perception. Passive skills cover the more spot and listen aspects for scenarios when the PCs aren't specifically focusing on looking and listening. Active skills cover the cases where the PCs take actions to do those things and do things like search. The DCs to see something between active and passive ...

Seikung was not the warm welcome they had expected. The city, as they had heard, was under quarantine. Othinn, however, was lucky to find Commander Yan Xi, an old acquaitance of his in command of the Wu Jen in charge of maintaining the force bubble that cut of Seikung from the rest of the world. The stories were bad. A wave of bad luck had spread over the city. These weren't stubbed toes and rotten vegetables. The city had fallen into chaos and people were dying. The Imperial Wu Jen and Imperial guard were brought in to quarantine the city. Even a few of them, too near the city, were affected by the bad luck magics. Whistler was too motivated, after having made the trek from Tulpa to stop now. There was word his wife was here. Well, maybe his wife, but surely her body, taken from him by some fiendish creature. The party had, under direction of Commander Yan Xi, been given the orders to enter the city and investigate. Amelia, being from the city, lead them through. The results...

I am done with twitter; maybe I am done with the gaming community. The twitter gaming community seems to condone the "Dear Men / White Men / White People" messages being put out in the community. I am a middle-aged overweight cis white male, and according to these people that makes me the problem. I have been called out, as part of this larger group by people preaching hate. My actions are not considered. There was immediate backlash when I tried to call this out as unfair. I am truly deeply hurt. I think less of myself. I think less of my contributions to the community. When I needed a positive message or just a helping hand, there were none, not from strangers, not from people I admire. My daughter came and hugged me when she saw I was leaving twitter. It made me cry. She knows how much I put into this. I don't like to quit, not as an example to her. I just can't be healthy in this environment, this community anymore. I can't be an ally and a voice for divers...