Shawn Tomkin’s Ironsworn series. Delve I regularly use for setting up point crawls. Ironsworn/Starforged/Sundered Isles have great collections of random tables, I use the book thematically most fitting for the situation at hand. The core tables of Action, Theme, Descriptor and Focus all get heavy use.

Kevin Crawford’s [SOMETHING] Without Number series have awesome tables as well. These however get more use when I need more detail. Prep stuff. Again most thematic book is picked first but I do have used Cites (cyberpunk) for fantasy cities.

When I want to create background for “medieval fantasy” characters I pick up Burning Wheel and burn something up. Through that I get a good selection of relevant skills to sue (for flavor)

Anything related to cosmos and mythology I say HELLO! to my growing collection of Glorantha material. From cult books to magic tomes and Atlases.

26+6=1

Another Himedere checking in. I love setting up situations where the players and/or the characters squirm in anguish about what to do.

My favorite so far was an estranged princess living as a man and hostel owner. He had turned his back on the throne and wanted little to do with it. As a bonus he was the only child of the king’s only remaining child. Fast forward a bit and he needed a (legal) favor from the king. Went to court and met with his grandfather. The king would do it, no strings attached if a) he returned to court and resumed his duties as prince and b) sired an heir.

There were a good thirty minutes of the players anguishing if he should accept while going deep into character motivations and the setting. During that game I don’t think I did as much concrete worldbuildning as during those thirty minutes. I loved it, the players loved it. Great time.

Issue in that case I rather see as why is it allowed to enter into legally binding agreements when you aren’t sober. Why there isn’t a (forced) period to review the papers.

Marriage is a legally binding agreement. Let’s treat it as such.

As long as the Russian bear is around to scare the west and occupy our mibds the Chinese dragon is at much more liberty to do whatever they want.

Love the addition of “again”.

I mean if you don’t want your yacht sunk then don’t sail it where orcas sink yachts. Sorry but actually not sorry for the casual victimblaming.

How easy it for those speaking the different languages to understand eachother?

So many. And the answer to all “why nots?”. Time. It’s time. So off the top of my head

Eat the Reich - “The year is 1943. You are a team of crack vampire commandos with one mission: drink all of Hitler’s blood”

Conan 2d20

Legend of the Five rings (5e)

Stoneburner - Deep Rock Galactic the TTRPG

Vaesen - Call of Cthulhu but rooted in nordic mythology

Heart the City Beneath - an award-winning complete tabletop roleplaying game about delving into a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process.

In a game a while ago there was a FtM prince turned hosteller. Left court and royal duties due to disillusioned and wanting to do actual good. But then they were a PC and quickly needed some help from granddaddy the king. I wondered what the king wanted in exchange. And it was clear - the royal line continued. In other words get an heir.

I checked with the player that this was an OK path comfort and safety wise. Afterall one way to solve it was for the prince to get pregnant, force upon themselves a gender they did not want etc. We talked about it and had regular checkins.

The moment that made this an awesome world building moment was when I realized magic impregnation wasn’t an impossibility. Nor pregnancies without the biological bits. Because Magic!

Unfortunately we never to to that part before scheduling did its thing.

Cat is grumpy because someone stole its humans

The more abstract the map is the more of a support for TotM it becomes. I selfom do a map, rather a flowchart. Quicker, easier and knocks out the last desire to measure things.

This brings us back to zones, a good middle ground. Draw rough map, or great map, and on it mark intresting combat zones. Some are separated with emptiness, others by obstacles.

For example a tavern brawl. Zones could be the Bar, Kitchen, Common Room, Balconies, Private Rooms, Out Front and Out Back.

Fighting on the Balconies could be tight, only one in width and with the risk of being thrown off it into the Commonroom. In the Kitchen there would be fire hazards, improvized weapons, knifes and the Stew. Not to forget other ways to spice things up in there. Around the Bar there would be some cover fighting someone on the other side, bottles to be broken and combatants to glide alond the bar for maximum mental damage.

And so on. Make each zone memorable and with special features. Did I mention drawing it out really helps?

No grid only effect templates. Freeform battlemapping y’all!

And rulers.

Depends on the system. Classical fantasy adventuring? Most if not all sessions. Adventure and Sword&Sorcery? Sometimes, half perhaps. Character drama? Very seldom.

I look at how the system spends its page budget and use that as a guideline. If there is a chapter for combat, one for harm and recovery and one for combat magic then the system wants me to focus on those parts. Also I look at how the players/characters are rewarded and try to have each session hit several of those criteria. So if the only (reliable, non gm-fiat) way to earn rewards if through combat then you bet your sweet ass there will combats each session.

Hello Future Me is awesome

Or why not simply have degrees of success on EVERYTHING? But as you say it would be a lot of work. Folks have done it, just look at yhe various dicepool system or even Pathfinder 2e.

On a sidenote I find saves boring. I enjoy actively rolling skills much more engaging. And all spells being “attack rolls”.

The way DnD is built does require the counter dance. Big abilities are part of its features. So there need to be ways to counter those abilities. That is the (modern?) DnD way.

Very sparse with such abilities and those that exist generally don’t apply to Monsters. Some only apply up to human sized targets. No hypnotic patterns, hold monsters etc.

Dragonbane leans a bit into OSR aporoaches here in that you will have to work with the GM and the fiction to get things capable of trivialising encounters. But then the encounter vs the Monster wasn’t fought in battle but in strategizing and preparation.

It would silence as many screams as hands you are loosing pulling items from it. Which is zero.

The mythology of my world is an interpretation of Glorantha. Pretty much near eastern bronze age. So there are Gods abound, with their respective cults. Most/all cults have rites and mysteries for those deeply devoted. None have came up in play so they are secrets even for me.

A set of secrets/mysteries that I’ve started working on are the Nysalorian secrets. According to Gloranthan lore when Nysalor was born/created Time stopped to allow the birth. So yeah Nysalor is a big deal. The Nysalorian secrets I’m divining are about the nature of Godhood. I don’t know how deep I want to go with them, I could make them the very blueprints of Creation. Perhaps I should tie them to my meta-loredump mystic society/cult Followers of the Blind Idiot God.