How do you feel about campaigns wherein the PCs are railroaded/tricked into unsealing some great evil, making them obligated to clean up their own mess? Sometimes, the PCs unleash this great evil near the beginning; other times, the PCs collect some artifacts, only for the relics to be the keys necessary to release some ancient malice.

I have seen this roughly a dozen times by now, mostly from relatively inexperienced GMs. I have seen it even in published adventures, including one highly acclaimed, 13-part Eberron adventure series that revolves around "gather these artifacts" and culminates in "oops, they were the key to unleashing calamity."

I have never liked this in the slightest. To me, it always comes across like the PCs have done more harm than good for the world; the whole setting would have been better-off if the PCs had never existed. It does not help that these GMs tend to reiterate that "It is your fault, so you should go fix your own mess," whether via NPC dialogue or as out-of-character commentary.

I have seen GMs and adventure authors defend this type of plotline with the logic of "It is about the journey, not the destination," but that makes the entire adventure feel zero-sum: the PCs are forced into bungling up tremendously, just so that they can fix what they broke.

I have also seen logic along the lines of, "It is actually a good thing that the PCs were the ones to screw up, because someone was going to accidentally release the ancient evil sooner or later, and it might as well be the PCs so that they can seal it right back." Sure, but the PCs are still forevermore branded as the idiots who caused the crisis in the first place.

All in all, it seems like a clumsy attempt at shoehorning some vague sense of obligation into the PCs, rather than having the players devise their own individual reasons for their characters being invested in the plot at hand. But that is just my opinion. What do you personally think of this type of storyline?

In a pick-up game I am playing in right now, our PCs are the finest agents of a nation that worships the god(dess) of war. Our kingdom has been at war with another country for ~300 years. Our mission was to retrieve some ancient artifact and bring it to the priest-king, who could conduct a ritual upon it that would instantly end the war. We did just that. Unfortunately, the priest-king's ritual deliberately ended "the" war, while engulfing the entire world with savage bloodlust, resulting in endless little wars. The priest-king then killed himself to be with his god(dess).

The very first thing that an NPC said to us after the reveal was "You should have known what [that guy] wanted."

Additionally, my character had absolutely jacked-out social perception skills, but I suppose the guy simply had too good a poker face.

I am trying to set up a one-on-one game of Tailfeathers/Kazzam. It is a grid-based, tactical combat RPG wherein the PCs are students at a magic school who play wizardly combat sports.

However, I am not a fan of magic school premises. I have elected to run the game in an entirely different setting, namely, sci-fi space opera with high psionics/magic.

I have my doubts, however, that this is a sufficiently plausible justification for running sports-like tactical combat. I still want to run a sci-fi space opera story about a deposed monarch reclaiming their throne; is there a more reasonable justification for the sports combat, given the kind of setting described in the Google Document?

So I am writing up a campaign which is going to take players into hell. I am not sticking specifically to any rules or lore but I am using the idea of the DnD 9 hells as a stencil for my version.

I like the idea of lemures and have read that they are used as slave labor for higher ranking devils but can't find any information on what they actually do? what would a devil need a lemure for? Imps and spiganons can act as scouts and messengers. They can use bigger monsters as body guards.

Would they use them to clean up and bring them food? Run infernal machines? Entertainment? I'm struggling to come up with ideas.

When the concepts of good and evil were first conceived, the multiverse spawned rakshasas to theatrically impress upon all mortal minds the concept of heinous evils. While rakshasas enjoy their role, in the same way that an actor feels accomplished for giving a good performance, their sensibilities and consciences are not necessarily evil, and they chafe at having been assigned to play the "bad guy" just to inculcate all mortal minds.

Rakshasas are primordial, divine beings who serve as incarnations of all that is foul within creation, born the moment that the concepts of good and evil were first conceived. It is their divine purpose to exemplify the profane—by murdering their own kin, eating the flesh of sapient beings, and performing thousands of other atrocities, they define these acts as obscene and taboo, so that mortals know these acts to be crimes in the eyes of the holy. It is a role they must play, in the same way that a stage play must have an actor to serve as the villain, a role that damned all rakshasas from the moment of their genesis.

Most rakshasas enjoy their role, in the same way an actor enjoys delivering a masterful performance, yet there is an element of tragedy to their existence. They are fated to serve solely as foils to others, to corrupt the unworthy and fall to the heroic, never free to forge their own path. They are condemned to perform the most heinous of deeds, even if it rankles their sensibilities and conscience. To do otherwise is to defy their nature and their purpose: the greatest sin a rakshasa can perform.

RAKSHASAS IN SOCIETY

Most rakshasas live in urban areas where humanoids congregate, supplying them with a variety of mortals to prey upon and to find wanting, as well as all the luxuries that often leads humanoid societies into corruption.

Raja-Krodha

The most iconic rakshasas, raja-krodhas are tiger-headed hunters of mortalkind. They are incarnations of all the malice people try to deny within themselves and instead wrongly ascribe to deadly predators of the wild. Their power and skill inspire fear, but also awe, and it is not unknown for some peoples to treat such a rakshasa as a guardian, if one to be treated with extreme caution.

Despite their nature as brutal flesh-eaters, rajas are extremely eloquent and philosophical when they choose to be. This is simply another form of camouflage, one that allows them to blend into cities, much as their stripes allow them to fade into jungles, and it often lulls scholars and intellectuals into a false sense of security. While it is not in the nature of a raja-krodha to be a social schemer or a mastermind, it pleases them when others delude themselves into thinking they are.

Your typical D&D-descended brand of high fantasy is a parody of myriad European cultures and mythologies, mashed together from multiple time periods and mixed with the works of various 20th century novelists. This is where you have chivalrous paladins of the gods of light, druids who evoke the powers nature, wizards flinging around fireballs, elven rangers sniping with bows, and dwarves swinging around hammers and axes.

People from Japan have their own fantasy works, too. Sometimes, these are set in a fantastical version of historical Japan, like Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Nioh, Sekiro, or Demon Slayer. Here, you see romanticized versions of samurai, ninja, and Shinto- and Onmyōdō-related mystics fighting yōkai, oni, and each other.

Meanwhile, China offers the entirety of the wuxia and xianxia genres. Romanticized youxia wander the jianghu and wield larger-than-life martial arts in the name of justice. Cultivators engage in all kinds of bizarre (and, at times, morally dubious) schemes to attain magical power with which to obliterate armies, nations, worlds, and universes.

Sometimes, people from Japan depict a fantastical version of China (e.g. Dynasty Warriors). Sometimes, people from China create a fantasy land based on Japan (e.g. Genshin Impact's Inazuma), with all the usual trappings: samurai, ninja, miko, yōkai, etc.

I was born and raised in Southeast Asia. It is not quite East Asia. If I am running a high fantasy RPG, and I want to place a nation based on China or Japan right next to the Europe-inspired "starting zone" region (incidentally, this is exactly what Genshin Impact does), with pagodas and paper talismans and spirit-sealing gourds, what actually constitutes orientalism in worldbuilding? If I mix and match Chinese and Japanese cultural elements, like what Pathfinder does in some areas of Tian Xia, is that bad?

Mummies (Egyptian), dragon turtles (Chinese), oni mages (Japanese), ghouls and genies (Islamic), golems (Jewish), rakshasas (Hindu), Lovecraftian aberrations (American pulp fiction), a great host of Greek monsters.

The Monster Manual alone paints a rather multicultural picture, for good or for ill.

For an upcoming high fantasy game, I am considering a contrivance wherein one nation has developed a highly specialized form of telekinetic magic (or it could be psionics, really) called "Separation." By spending at least half a minute concentrating upon a given subject within several feet, or a collection of smaller subjects, the caster can telekinetically loosen, levitate, and slowly move an envisioned physical component.

This can separate impurities from raw materials, contaminants from water, bones from cooked chicken, meat from cooked crustaceans, gristle from steaks, calculus from teeth, acne from pores, hair from skin, or phlegm from the throat. Threshing grain becomes significantly easier. Gold can be lifted from sediment. Salt can be taken from seawater. Moisture can be separated from food to help preserve it.

Large-scale applications and delicate applications require specialized training; it takes significant medical knowledge and practice to Separate pathogens or tumors from the body, or atheromas from arteries. Magical researchers are trying to trim down the half-minute-long casting time, which would allow the combat usage of Separation (e.g. removing eyeballs from the head), but only minor results have been produced thus far.

What other societal applications could you see coming from this "Separation" magic? Assuming that rapid/combat applications remain nascent, what adventuring applications could Separation bring to the metaphorical table?

Across D&D's editions, Sigil has been consistent: the great crossroads city of the multiverse, a colossal center of trade and travel, boasting portals to every corner of the cosmos.

The original Planescape boxed set in 1994 specifically mentions wizards from Krynn, preservers and defilers from Athas, and the sale of bronzewood from Oerth and fire wine from Toril in Sigil. Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms have regularly referenced the City of Doors and vice versa. Birthright has its own subchapter in 2e On Hallowed Ground, and paragraphs in the 2e Guide to the Ethereal Plane and the 2e Planewalker's Handbook. Mystara likewise has a paragraph in the 2e Planewalker's Handbook, and there is an explicitly Mystaran NPC in 5e Turn of Fortune's Wheel. This is to say nothing of Sigil's myriad portals to planes other than the Prime Material.

A subject I have seldom seen explored, however, is: how do Sigilian portals influence the development of a Prime Material world? The Lady of Pain does not exactly impose a Prime (no pun intended) Directive, and Sigilian portals have existed and arisen since time immemorial. For how long have the aforementioned campaign settings had Sigilian portals? Are the similarities between D&D worlds, in part, due to Sigil's influence?

What happens when a Sigilian portal opens up in a major city, like Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, the Free City of Greyhawk, or the Imperial City of Anuire? Are any of these cities already home to Sigilian portals?

From an out-of-universe perspective, these campaign settings were never written with Sigil in mind, and thus, the impact of Sigilian portals has never been explored. If we were to conjecture what the actual impact would be, though, what influence would the Cage have had on the many mortal worlds it has linked up with? What does it mean when anyone with the right portal key can waltz straight into the crossroads of the multiverse and all the goods and services it has to offer?

One antagonist group I find fascinating is the League of Due Hierarchy, from the 4e Dungeon Master's Guide 2, p. 167, and its alleged sister movement, the Weeping Rose Heresy, from 4e Dungeon issue #177, pp. 73-74. For context, these were written for 4e's default setting, the world of the Nentir Vale, in which the great human empire of Nerath began to crumble a century ago, leaving civilization as little more than city-states ("points of light") in a dangerous, monster-infested wilderness.

https://rentry.org/duehierarchy

I am interested in using them as antagonists in a game set in the world of the Nentir Vale. There are several questions that I have been mulling over:

• How is it possible for the League of Due Hierarchy to become "widespread," with branch offices "in numerous national capitals," in a world that has been reduced to "points of light"? How does such a movement even organize itself? Presumably, magical telecommunication is available; "the scholar-queen Fusane" could very well be a wizard. However, magical telecommunication tends to be rather limited.

• How does this collection of nobles go from "Well, our globe-unifying empire began to collapse roughly a century ago, reducing civilization to points of light" to "Obviously, the solution is slavery"? What problem are they attempting to solve?

• Although Nerath was a human empire, the League seems to be multiracial/multispecies, judging from the mention of "ruled by tyrants or dominated by evil races." Only the noble-blooded are allowed membership, much to the chagrin of middle-class slavers. In this case, what does the League use as their metric for "the lowly"?

• Do they practice chattel slavery, or a relatively lighter form?

• Assuming that the Weeping Rose Heresy was created by the League, how did the slavers start up a religion that convinces slaves to willingly toil endlessly? It is a large paradigm shift.

How would you personally configure the League as antagonists?

In a since-deleted blog post, and in the Chronicles of Eberron book, Keith Baker posits that one reason why Eberron never developed firearms was because D&D's crossbows are literal representations of how they work in-universe. The people of Eberron have figured out how to cheaply manufacture nonmagical crossbows that can be fired at least once per six seconds, and require no physical brawn whatsoever from the user. This is superior to many firearms of the early 19th century, as Keith himself has pointed out.

How about we export this away from Eberron specifically, and apply it to both bows and crossbows in both D&D 4e and D&D 5e? Bows and crossbows alike can be fired at least once per six seconds, and demand no physical strength whatsoever from the user. Lighter two-handed versions are simple weapons, letting anyone use them; not everyone can fling spells, but aiming and firing such a weapon is trivial.

Let us imagine that these systems' focused fire metagame is also an in-universe phenomenon. Anyone on the battlefield without the proper protections can be pincushioned by a mass of mooks landing lucky shots. Obtaining protections against this is crucial.

How does this change self-defense and warfare? Do people carry around bows and crossbows as self-defense in rough cities and while on the road? Does warfare revolve around units armed with bows and crossbows first and foremost, loosely spread out so as to avoid the occasional AoE spell from whatever mage is brave enough to risk being focus-fired upon?

Ring, uncommon (requires attunement)

While wearing this ring, you are immune to magic that allows other creatures to read your thoughts, determine whether you are lying, know your alignment, or know your creature type. Creatures can telepathically communicate with you only if you allow it.

You can use an action to cause the ring to become invisible until you use another action to make it visible, until you remove the ring, or until you die.

If you die while wearing the ring, your soul enters it, unless it already houses a soul. You can remain in the ring or depart for the afterlife. As long as your soul is in the ring, you can telepathically communicate with any creature wearing it. A wearer can't prevent this telepathic communication.

In Eberron, the existence of traditional-D&D-style deities is uncertain, the short-term afterlife is horrifying, and the long-term afterlife is unknown and unknowable. Thus, the Aereni elves preserve their best and brightest through a number of methods. One of them is the "spirit idol," the preservation of a soul inside of an object, such that the subject can continue to dispense knowledge and wisdom: a brain in a jar, essentially. Of course, a D&D 5e ring of mind shielding is even better in some ways.

Stripped down to its barest basics, and completely extirpating all of the alternate timeline tomfoolery, I think that the Marvel Multiverse RPG's premade campaign, Cataclysm of Kang, is a solid story that could be adapted to virtually any high-powered RPG and setting. I could see it coming straight from a JRPG like Final Fantasy or a Tales of game.

!The PCs start off as investigators in a big city. After tangling with a major crime family, they discover that the mobsters have struck a deal with people from another world, and have built a portal in a restaurant's basement. They arrive just in time to shut down the portal and prevent some almighty superweapon-entity from coming through. The PCs learn that this dimensional rift was merely the spearhead of a much wider, interplanetary invasion effort.!<

!Another rift opens up in the metropolis. It disgorges a vanguard force of scouts and saboteurs, who infiltrate the populace. The PCs rescue civilians, restore infrastructure, locate and neutralize these scouts and saboteurs, and then find and close the portal.!<

!The other world's almighty superweapon-entity may have been barred off, and the vanguard force might have failed to significantly destabilize the city, but the invasion must resume regardless. The other world opens up the rest of its portals all over the metropolis, sending in full-fledged armies and war machines. The PCs engage in myriad missions all over the city, from rallying the troops to dismantling morale-crushing enemy monuments, to drive back the invaders.!<

!It becomes clear to the PCs that the other world is preparing for a second invasion. They bravely stride into one of the portals and arrive in the other world. They infiltrate the totalitarian, global government's headquarters and beat its leaders into submission, including the almighty superweapon-entity from back in the beginning.!<

!The PCs learn that the only reason why this world was invading their own world was to flee the predation of some great, cosmic planet-eater. The totalitarian government has been beaten into submission, but the world is still home to billions of innocents. So the PCs commandeer the world's resources, add in their own world's, and successfully repel the planet-eater.!<

!All is well and dandy for a while, but the planet-eater returns with a vengeance. They have evolved into a time-eater, capable of devouring an entire universe and all its timeline. After, once again, striking up an uneasy alliance with major villains, the PCs journey to both the end of time (just before the death of the universe) and the start of time (just after its creation) to vanquish the time-eater!< and end the cosmic threat once and for all.

I think this makes for a rather decent campaign framework. As long as the PCs are at least somewhat heroic, there should be few issues with character motivations. What do you think?

Just to provide a definition so you know what I'm referring to, surplus value is the extra monetary value created by workers that don't go back to the worker through wages. This post will be exploring the situation of employed crafters and their employer's pocketed surplus value.

The main assumption for this post will be that there is some situation where crafters are employed by someone or that there is someone who "owns" the labor of the worker, and will therefor supply them with pay and keep the difference in wages and created value. Two additional assumptions I'll be making are that the startup costs associated with business are covered and the cost of maintenance are ignored. These assumptions are made for the purpose of exploring a best case scenario. For the specific wages of the crafters, I'll be using the 2gp/day minimum allotted to skilled hirelings.

How the crafting rules work in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, all mundane crafting spends (weekly/worker) 25gp on raw materials and 10gp on wages. The end result is a product that sells for 50gp per workweek spent. Leading to a net gain of 15gp/week/worker (50-25-10=15). This would obviously be collected by whoever’s employing the crafter.

With this surplus value, it would only take 5 workers create enough coin to support an aristocratic lifestyle (10+gp/day for 7 days based on a 5 day workweek) with 5gp/week extra. It would only take 25 workers to afford plate armor after a single month of saving (1,500gp / (15gp/worker * 4 weeks) = 25 workers). Each worker would create 780gp/year. In the spell description for Teleportation Circle, it's stated that guilds will often have a permanent teleportation circle, which costs 18,250gp in material components (50gp/day * 365 days). Its possible that the guild a crafter is a part of will pocket the surplus value. If so, it would only take 24 workers to support this project (18,250gp / 780gp = 23.4).

Gilded Age D&D

The homebrew setting I'm working on includes themes of economic/power inequality. To accomplish this, I pull heavily from the Gilded Age of the United States. The setting includes the use of 6 day workweeks and 12 hour workdays in certain parts of the world.

Assumptions: Wages do not increase due to this increased work hours (because that would be missing the point, that the system is exploitative), but productivity does increase (because they're literally working more).

This would lead to a per-worker gross of 90gp/week minus 12gp/week and 45gp/week for wages and materials, giving a net of 33gp/week/worker. I found this using derived values using the usual 8-hour workday of Xanathar's. Math* below.

I use this equation to figure spellcasting service costs: (lvl^2)*10+2cmc+0.1umc = Price in gp

lvl= Spell Level

cmc= Price of Consumed Material Components in gp

umc= Price of Unconsumed Material Components in gp

Using this, an employer with only 10 employees will afford Lesser Restoration after 11 hours, Raise Dead after a bit under 1 month, and Clone after a bit over 2 months. Because of this out-sized economic power, rich people in my setting never stay sick for long, never stay dead for long, and usually never die of old age. Exotic methods are required to truly keep people dead or "out of the picture."

*Math

Gross: 10gp/day / 8hr/day = 1.25gp/hr * 12hr/day * 6days/week = 90gp/week

Wage: 2gp/day * 6days/week = 12gp/week

Materials: 5gp/day / 8hr/day = 0.625gp/hr * 12hr/day * 6days/week = 45gp/week

Net: 90gp/week - 12gp/week - 45gp/week = 33gp/week

http://gm.mapgears.com/birthright-map/

This is a map of Cerilia, the main continent of Birthright. It is extremely balkanized, with not a single big, unified country. There are a total of nine elven nations: Lluabraight, Rhuobhe (the tiny little spot in the southwest, fed by the Elfwash River), Tuarhievel, the Sielwode, Coullabhie, Innishiere, Cwmb Bheinn, Rhuannach, and Tuar Annwn. Each of these is surrounded by non-elven nations of entirely different cultures, eight out of nine are in forests, and eight out of nine are landlocked. The elves of eld might have had a consolidated empire, but the arrival and spread of humanity (illustrated in in the top middle of the map) broke them apart.

But not all is lost for the elves. In this map, you will notice two numbers for each province: X/Y. X is a rough measure of population, agriculture, industry, and overall prosperity. Y is the land's magic, an important resource for large-scale rituals. Y ranges from 5 to 9 by default, with 9 being appropriate for ancient forests and tall mountains. This default value is reduced by X, because as civilization grows, the land's magic withers away; however, this does not apply to elves, who are more in tune with the magic that courses through the land. Consequently, elves can hold out against their enemies by weaving powerful, large-scale rituals.

What do you think of storytelling by way of map geography?

Back in the 1980s, Hans Moravec and friends posited that contrary to traditional assumptions (e.g. the vast majority of sci-fi with robots in it), reasoning requires very little computation, but sensorimotor and perception skills require enormous computational resources. In other words, artificial intelligence will reach a point wherein it is far better at intellectual tasks and working within a purely virtual space, such as generating images and videos, than it is at moving physical objects around. As of the release of Sora, this is rapidly proving to be the case.

Cyberpunk tends to be an extrapolation of our fears of the future. What could a cyberpunk setting based on the above look like? Do you see human corporations still being in charge of these "god in a bottle"-type AIs, or do you think the world would be dominated by AI overlords, who require humans to perform all those pesky chores in physical space? Do you see AI image and video detection being sufficient to distinguish the natural and the artificially generated, or do you envision an awkward scenario wherein virtually no images or videos can be verified, forcing people to view things in physical space if they wish for any assurance of authenticity?

(If the names Ohkwari, Solare, Galadin, Ruby, and Medek mean anything to you, please stop reading!)

My game is focused around a magical substance called Carnite, which has taken root in the world and has caught the attention of local villains and ne'er-do-wells. Here are a few background facts about it:

1. It was developed as a weapon by the dark fae in their war against the native fae, many millennia ago, and was seeded into the material plane to keep it beneath their notice.
2. It takes the form of a deep red mineral ore, though high concentrations of it can be found as a viscous liquid as well.
3. Carnite has many(?) fantastical properties, but contact with it degrades the body and introduces horrible mutations. It is also incredibly addictive, inducing the victim to seek out and use more of it.

So what is it actually used for? That's where I'm struggling a little. So far I have:

1. It can be smelted into an alloy with steel to make a metal that is incredibly hard but also unusually easy to work at a forge.
2. It can be dissolved into potions, which is what the local goblins have done. These potions impart their imbiber with incredible strength, like a barbarian's rage in a bottle, but are also terribly poisonous.
3. I imagine it can also be used as a foundation in potions for other effects as well.

I was heavily inspired by tiberium and phazon, from the Command and Conquer series and the Metroid Prime series respectively. However, in those settings, those substances are also sought out as energy sources, which feels a lot harder to implement for a D&D-esque fantasy setting. What other properties could it have in this kind of setting?

Under the context of a mostly Western European fantasy setting, would you find it off-putting or unacceptable for "otherworldly" creatures (e.g. fey, certain depictions of elves) to be inspired by entirely different, non-European cultures?

For example, suppose the party is questing for the legendary "Fruits of Immortality," cultivated by a fairy queen in the Feywild; she lives atop a mystical mountain, surrounded by chariots drawn by flying unicorns and bicorns. The party travels to the mortal world's version of the mountain, arduously ascends to the peak, presents a meticulously prepared offering for the fairy queen, and pleads their case.

The party transitions to the Feywild version of the mountain, but they are not looking at some Shakespearean or Victorian image of a fairy court. Rather, they are looking at misty Mount Kunlun, qilin-drawn chariots, and the hanfu-clad and leopard-tailed Xiwangmu, Queen Mother of the West. Maybe the GM makes this crystal-clear with reference images, or perhaps the GM dances around the subject by alluding to how these fey dress very differently from what the PCs are accustomed to. (There may or may not be a gold dragon in the background, flying without wings and decidedly more serpentine in morphology than the usual variety.)

Would you find such a presentation distasteful or otherwise unnecessary? I have done this several times in a variety of fantasy RPGs, and once, in the Dresden Files RPG. The players did not openly object to it, but for all I know, they found the presentation to be expectation-breaking in a bad way.

What are some interesting ways you have used the north and south poles in your campaigns and worldbuilding? In real life, they demarcate the axis of an invisible energy field that shelters the planet and guides travelers; this sounds straight from a fantasy setting, so what could be done with the poles in an actual fantasy world?

In the video game Tales of the Abyss, all elemental and magical energies is produced by the world's core. These energies emerge from the "Radiation Gate," the south pole, and eventually return to the "Absorption Gate," the north pole. Naturally, these two gates are prime targets for anyone trying to manipulate massive quantities of elemental and magical energies, which is exactly what happens in the game. I think that this is a cool concept that could easily be slotted into just about any fantasy world that places a heavy emphasis on elemental and/or magical energies.

As another idea, perhaps the souls of the newborn emerge from one pole, while the spirits of the deceased enter the opposite pole. A malefactor like Ashardalon of D&D 3.0 fame could attempt to disrupt or gorge upon this flow of souls.