Kids these days who think that being a bard is just about swinging swords and playing lutes disgust me. Where’s the pizzazz? The showmanship? The seduction??
you ain’t a real bard until you seduce your way out of at least 19 situations that would normally end in combat
You’re not a real bard until you make your DM cry because you seduced the Big Bad that they’ve built up to for 10 sessions
Once a bard friend rolled a 1 for a seduction and ended up killing a girl and tried to hide the body. He was caught, rolled low on deception and they all thought he was fucking her corpse. He then tried seducing the guards and rolled low again so all the guards had boners while arresting him and the DM had to sideline the entire game and make up a dungeon for the rest of us to get our stupid bard out of. But we didn’t. So for like 3 nights the DM essentially ran 2 different games, one of us questing without ol’ corpsefucker and then the adventures of corpsefucker: escape from boner castle.
Essential components of any fantasy rolepaying group:
The player who brings exactly the same swishy elf character to every table; 50% chance of wizard, 50% chance of bard, 100% chance of banging a dragon before the campaign is done.
The player who favours dwarves because they’re uncomfortable with speaking in character and dwarves aren’t expected to have personalities.
The player who thinks they’re cleverly subverting expectations by playing their halfling as a bloodthirsty, sexually promiscuous drug fiend, unaware that – thanks to players like them – literally 80% of all halfling player characters are like that.
The player who designs their character purely for novelty value – like, this time they’re a giant telepathic praying mantis, or whatever – yet inexplicably manages to have the deepest character arc out of anyone.
The player whose character’s stats honestly don’t matter because their real contribution to the party is being the only adult in the room.
More:
The perennial orc player who you’re pretty sure is using the game as a group therapy session to work through some sort of identity issue.
The player whose rogue’s complicated backstory and sinister secret
agenda never actually end up being relevant in play because they also
kept it a secret from the GM.
The player with a penchant for Lawful Goodish warrior types who thinks they’re the adult in the room, but really they just have a talent for making irresponsibly dangerous plans sound reasonable – even to themselves.
The player who insists on taking the most complicated race/class combo
the GM will allow, then later discovers that the reason they can’t hit
for shit is because they’re been rolling their attacks on a d12 all
night.
The player who rolls druids because they are a straight up furry.
• The player that plays as a dragonborn purely because they’re a scallie
• the player that plays as a dragonborn purely because they’re a scallie
^Haiku^bot^0.4. Sometimes I do stupid things (but I have improved with syllables!). Beep-boop!
My favorite thing about Dungeons & Dragons is how fucking quickly people become ride-or-die bitches with each other
no lie i had a campaign where I tried playing a really chaotic neutral “leave me alone” rouge and ended up attached at the hip to our monk who couldn’t roll higher than a natural 10 to literally save his life bc in our first encounter he called my character “a nice lass” and that was all it took
Robes are stupid. My sorcerer dresses like Petyr Baelish.
To expand: if you are a mage, dress like a noble. Do not dress like a wizard. Pointy conical hat and sky-blue robes is medieval semaphore for “kill first and with extreme prejudice.” Tailored black silk over cloth-of-gold and studded with rubies says “Harmless, but valuable; ransom if possible or kill last.”
If you dress like a noble, they’re not going to pay attention as you take a turn or two to back away from the melee and prepare yourself. The ruse is only broken when you reveal yourself, at which point 8d6 fire damage is screaming toward them at Mach Fuck anyway, so no big.
counterpoint: if you don’t get to dress like someone ran a magical thrift shop through a rototiller and frankensteined the pieces back together what’s the god-damned point of being a wizard
not to get mad nerdy but I just discovered tabletopaudio.com and I’m fuckin losing it
this person (people?) goes about making 10 minute long loopable ambient noise tracks for every imaginable setting (docks, taverns, forests, airships, spaceships, office buildings, sewers, EVERYTHING) and has over a hundred tracks to offer, and on top of that if none of them suit you there’s a huge feature called soundpad where you can mix and match from their set of hundreds of individual sound effects and music clips to make your own ambient background track
holy shit dudes
I did a little further reading on his about and the guy running this is just a dad with two kids who like playing tabletops with him and he had the composition and musical training to start making soundtracks for his games then decided to spread that to the world for absolutely free, he even welcomes you to use his tracks in your works (podcasts, videos etc) and is open to being hired for custom tracks
Game Concept: You the player are some terrible god-like force and you pick an NPC at random to possess as the Player Character. All NPCs in-game react accordingly to the sudden possession depending on who you pick. You can pick any character with each fresh play through.
Example: You possess the mayor’s son and his family is grateful and humbled to have one of their bloodline chosen as Hero of the Land. If you pick the farmer’s daughter as the PC, her dad will be a game-long companion and come with you trying futilely to help/save his possessed daughter. You pick the town new comer and literally no one will try to help you at all except the farmer’s daughter who, in the play through, is not possessed and is very kind to you.
You still go on and fight the big bad as normal, but 99% of the drama is based around the interpersonal fall out of this small town tolerating you as a a weird spirit thing possessing someone they know in order to save the kingdom.
sparksoffandommagic 