i’d like to add that the shadow color isnt necessarily dictated entirely by the primary light source, but the bounce light! so for the example of a sunny environment, the reason the shadows are blue are because of the light from the blue sky reflects across the environment; but, if the character were to be under tree cover, the bounce light would be coming from the leaves and thus the shadow would look greener.
Yee yee!!! You got it right on the nose!
Bounce light is something I didn’t cover but I adore it!
Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book
This is…. An interesting thing to say… on this post in particular….
I think a lot of people reblogging this from @probablybadrpgideas are interpreting this as “this would be such a funny wacky way to make the table soooo complicated” but I mean this as a complaint about the way that so many tabletop players seem to just. completely lack an understanding of ethics. what it actually means to behave ethically and treat others ethically. and i dont mean this as “why do people want to be mean and play as villains? :(” i mean “why are there so many tabletop players that sympathize with outright fascist factions to the point of wondering why theyre listed as ‘Lawful Evil’ in the book”
can you talk me through why this was a particularly bad or challenging thing for your party to have done
Goblins were in fact, for me, a turning point on this concept. I had a player who wanted to be a goblin, and I forgot about this fact up to the point that the party got a quest to kill goblins. As soon as I was announcing the quest I realized it would be a problem, though I didn’t have anything else ready so I went with it. And it was! The players immediately questioned why the mayor was paying mercenaries to kill goblins, and then further questioned his justifications, at which point I realized it would be a better story if the goblins were a scapegoat and not an actual villain.
This turned into a terse interrogation where the mayor threatened to put them in jail once their questions got pointed enough that he would have to either field accusations or lie; they then went CSI on the situation and drilled through his political cabinet to get answers. I had to improv pretty much all of it and I don’t remember the actual ending (I know they sided with the goblins and the mayor was guilty), but this helped me realize that the Gary Gygax writing style of “certain races are just BAD and that’s why they hang out in dungeons” was very short-sighted.
D&D writing, by and large, encourages a lack of questions. The surface runs deep. “Go into a cave and chop up goblins.” Why are we doing this? “Goblins are bad.” All goblins? “Yes.”
I think the question of “why are there players comfortable siding with fascist factions and wondering why they’re called 'lawful evil’” is pretty easily answered with… because D&D itself is inherently kind of fascist. And it’s the most insidious kind of fascist, too- its villains are fascists, so how could you point fingers at the book?
Fire Giants are dwarf slavers. Drow are a megalomaniacal theocracy who hate men. Orcs are violent tribes of marauding killers. Illithids want to destroy all life and keep an entire civilization to scrub their floors. But these narratives still push the idea that “evil” is a racial trait. The players are not only justified in their campaign to destroy these cultures, they’re encouraged to do it.
They let the cat out of the bag by making these playable races; because now, they’re not cut-and-dry villanous societies. They’re people. There are Drow accountants whose lives are about balancing taxes, not worshipping Lolth. There are Yuan-Ti who don’t sacrifice babies on altars, and much prefer playing the lute or sewing blankets. Yet we’re still expected to read “Chaotic Evil” under the Monster Manual entry for a bugbear and take it seriously.
Reblogging again to add a quick take: as a DM introducing ethics makes your game so much better.
I had an intro to my campaign that involved a mad scientist kidnapping someone and turning them into a wererat. I didn’t think much of it and I spent way more time fleshing out the other NPCs, I just wanted to use that wererat as a boss fight.
Once the party encountered him though they immediately saw what I totally missed: the guy who became the wererat was absolutely the victim of this story. I did my best at thinking on my feet and made the wererat this defeated guy who only followed the mad scientist because he felt like his life was ruined. So they, through good rolls, convinced him to help them fight the mad scientist and it made for such a better story.
The moral I’m trying to convey is that you need to treat every NPC in your game as a world within themselves. And I mean EVERY NPC. Why are the wolves attacking people? Are they desperately hungry? Mind controlled? Territorial due to poachers? Why are the goblins working for the wizard? Extortion? Promise of riches? If the bandits see that everyone is in armor, why wouldn’t they just let the party pass and wait for easier prey? If one of the bandits die, why wouldn’t the rest of them run for the hills?
here’s a couple of articles on the history of racism + xenophobia in tolkien & how that influenced dnd
anyone interested in the subject should definitely also check out the whole Three Black Halflings podcast, which talks about being black in nerdy spaces. a lot of times they’ll have on guests talking about their intersections and experiences in nerdy spaces. they have an episode with the author of the articles above.
they’ve also played a ttrpg based on african mythologies rather than mostly european ones like most mainstream fantasy.
I could probably go on and on and on about hands, but here are some key points I compiled! I LOVE drawing hands, and I never hesitate to use my own as a reference
I was curious about this, not because I was surprised the cat was “neither male nor female” but because I was surprised this is a “first”. I mean, intersex cats exist. Any time an apparently male cat is tortie/calico, for example, that’s an intersex animal, probably XXY.
Turns out, though, that this kitty is very rare - they have no external genitals, and vets can find no evidence of internal reproductive organs either. So yeah, fair enough, I’ve literally never heard of an animal being born like that! Isn’t nature something?
The face of a creature who fought the gods to be born without the burden of reproduction and won
fuuuuck i just realized that the future idealized version of myself cant exist without current me being the catalyst for change and doing hard things. has anybody heard about this
fuuuuck i just realized that the future idealized version of myself cant exist without current me being the catalyst for change and doing hard things. has anybody heard about this
“Medieval peasants couldn’t handle my Spotify playlist” but could YOU handle a medieval bard relaying the epic of Beowulf over the course of an hour? Humble yourself.
today I used the phrase “breasting boobily” in casual real life conversation and everyone was shocked asking how I came up with that and I had to explain it. ive been at the devil’s sacrament so long that I forgot he wasn’t god
“I’ve been at the devil’s sacrament so long I forgot he wasn’t god” is getting added to the tumblr line book
