The New DMs Guide to: Building a Homebrew World

Every creature, class and caricature can be found for free on the internet, with almost no digging. Dungeons and Dragons has never been easier to play. These are the resources I used to build the beginning of my campaign. This one isn’t for building story, this one is for building world. (Story Masterpost coming soon)

What I Use

The Obvious: dndbeyond.com - Character Builders, Rule Guides, Guides to Monsters, Tips, Tricks and everything in between. Does require a little money to access the full scope of the site, but the free version is superb as well.

Create your own world map: Inkarnate.com - awesome map creator with free and Pro versions (at very reasonable prices). Example:

The Best of the Dungeon Builders: http://www.dungeonographer.com (free and paid versions. I use the free one) - dungeon builder, but you can make anything! The best dungeon maker I’ve found, with sheer simplicity of use balanced with scope of opportunity. Example:

How deep do you want to go? Donjon’s Generators - https://donjon.bin.sh Calendars? Loot? Dungeons? Demographics? Inns? Towns? Magic Shops?

Cities are big. Someone else can build it. fantasycities.watabou.ru (free) - City Map Generator. Great for creating big cities or tiny towns, and so much easier than building every single major city of your world, if you want to have those maps.

There are plenty of places to download and print tokens for combat play (if you want to use a map at all) online, but I bought mine from: SidequestTTM

Watch and Learn

The Bare Basics of D&D - Handbook Helper. New too Dungeons and Dragons? The team behind Critical Role have a whole (and continuing) series on the basic rules of D&D 

Matthew Mercer and Satine Phoenix’s GM Tips - Some of the best Game Masters in the world share their tips for Mastering the Game. I’ve watched the whole thing twice and always learn more.

Matt Colville’s Running the Game - An incredible video resource that goes from building the very start of a campaign to how to navigate tough spots, how to plant story hooks and some of the best advice I’ve ever seen.

Other Great Resources

Extras

This is all pretty handy…

👏🏾Education 👏🏾is 👏🏾a 👏🏾right,👏🏾 not👏🏾 a👏🏾 service 👏🏾

Pass along and use the shit out of them

Can we all just appreciate that Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls, was prank calling Republican voter fraud hotlines on November 6, 2020?

He framed an article talking about this and keeps it with his other accolades.

When I tell you I snorted!

legolas:

gimli:

aragorn:

gandalf:

BLEASE

Gollum

Eomer:

Boromir:

Elrond:

This post is like getting pelted with marshmallows shot out of a tennis ball launcher

The inevitable reboot better go for these looks.

Frodo’s bizarre adventure

Art of Secret of Mana - Hirō Isono

@pablophonic​

Satanic Abortions cut through unconstitutional abortion laws

States across the US have enacted cruel, unconstitutional abortion laws that require doctors to sexually assault women seeking abortions and lie to them about the health impacts of abortion. Some laws require funerals for foetal remains. These laws were pushed by ALEC, the corporate-backed “legislative exchange” that pushes “model legislation” through a network of slick lobbyists in state-houses across the country. ALEC purports to be in favor of “liberty” and “small government.” Enter the Satanic Temple, a federally recognized religion whose members do not believe in Satan or supernatural phenomena. They believe “that religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition.” The Temple has a fantastic schtick. They go to places where christofascists have gotten laws passed that shove their weird, apostate version of “Christianity” down everyone else’s throats and point out that the First Amendment requires nondiscrimination among faiths. Wanna put a giant stone Ten Commandments in front of your courthouse? Sure. But they’re gonna put a giant statue of Baphomet right next to it. The court challenges they mount aren’t cheap, but they’re slam dunks. The US Constitution is pretty clear on this. Now, in 1993, Chuck Schumer sponsored the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” which lets Americans sue governments over laws that “substantially burdens a person’s exercise of religion.” https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/1308 Religious maniacs LOVE the RFRA and its progeny, like SCOTUS’s Hobby Lobby decision, which broadened the RFRA’s provisions and allowed corporations to claim exemptions from Rendering Unto Caesar where that interfered with the owners’ faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,_Inc. Guess what you get when you combine the RFRA, ALEC’s restrictive abortion laws, and the Satanic Temple? That’s right…SATANIC ABORTIONS. https://announcement.thesatanictemple.com/rrr-campaign41280784 A Satanic Abortion is a religious ritual that is totally indistinguishable from a normal, medical abortion, except that the participant says a few self-affirming words about her bodily autonomy. Oh, also: the ritual absolutely forbids, as a bedrock matter of religous conviction, any waiting periods, the withholding of medically necessary advice, mandatory counseling, required readings, and unnecessary sonograms. Also forbidden: mandatory fetal heartbeat listening sessions and compulsory fetal burials. If you want an abortion and the doctor tries this bullshit, hand them one of these exemption letters explaining how the law doesn’t apply thanks to the RFRA. https://www.dropbox.com/s/mup4nee1n9wkvqb/Religious%20Abortion%20Exemption%20Letter.pdf Now, the religious right could fight this. But if they win…they overturn the RFRA, and Hobby Lobby has to provide its employees with contraception and all the other theocratic exemptions go poof, too. The Temple is pretty amazing. Here’s some highlights of their previous campaigns: “Publicly confronted hate groups, fought for the abolition of corporal punishment in public schools, applied for equal representation when religious installations are placed on public property, provided religious exemption and legal protection against laws that unscientifically restrict women’s reproductive autonomy, exposed harmful pseudo-scientific practitioners in mental health care, organized clubs alongside other religious after-school clubs in schools besieged by proselytizing organizations, and engaged in other advocacy in accordance with our tenets.”

Read this again.

Read this to others.

Force the idiots, read it to them

Here’s a fun tale from your local Target employee:

I was pushing truck for OTC today which is the pharmacy area. I was pushing cases of hand sanitizer because we got the “good stuff” in today (purell) and it goes quick even with the the product limit put in place. People were literally taking it from my hand before I could put it on the shelf, but that’s not the point.

As I was putting the goods on the shelf, this woman comes up to the stand and she’s very excited. “Yes! You guys have it! How many can I take, is there a limit?” I say yes, 3 per person per transaction per day. She nods, accepting, and grabs her three. “Sorry, that was weird. I’m a teacher, I’m trying to stock up. I promise I’m not a hoarder.” I smile and nod and say it’s fine. She starts to walk away but stops and turns back.

“Do you have any Clorox wipes in stock by any chance?”

Heart sinking, I shake my head and say no, sorry, and we don’t know for sure when we’ll get more. (We get them maybe once every two weeks, but the product limit for those is one per person per transaction per day and they usually sell out within hours of going on the shelf.)

Her face dropped and she kinda looked down at her hand sanitizer and said “that’s okay, with the product limit I wouldn’t be able to get enough before school starts anyway. It’s only 4 weeks away.” She laughed a little but I could hear the frustration in her voice and see the tension in her face. She sounded defeated. The most I could offer her was one of the small bottles of pure bleach. I honestly wanted to cry. For a second there I thought she would. I had no clue what to say as she turned and walked away.

This is what teachers are dealing with. Even in years when there’s not a pandemic they have to rely on donations from parents or their own money to be able to buy hand sanitizer, wipes, tissues, etc. for their classrooms. Now they’re being forced to return to school with no extra funding, no extra supplies, no support from the government; they’re STILL expected to provide for and protect these kids *on their own.* All while, now, risking their own lives and their own health because the government doesn’t want to admit that they fucked up handling this pandemic.

Every time I hear someone say “kids don’t die from it, it’ll be fine,” I realize that person does not give a flying fuck about teachers. Sure, *maybe* the kids will be fine. But the teachers are not children. They are adults with underlying conditions, adults living with elderly family, adults who are over 50 and are at more risk. Adults with at risk family at home. Adults who are at risk themselves. But they are STILL trying their hardest to protect your children in the classroom.

It’s honestly fucked up that we live in a country where police departments get millions or even billions of dollars in state funding, yet teachers have to buy their own cleaning supplies and doctors have to reuse PPE in hospitals. Police get tens of thousands of dollars worth of riot armor to wear and terrorize peaceful protesters, while the Navajo Nation get sent body bags instead of medical supplies.

Honestly I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I’m tired y’all. I’m tired and frustrated because leadership in this country doesn’t care enough to prioritize human life. Idk, it was a small moment in the grand scheme of things but it really was a slap in the face reminder of how this country treats it’s own people. I feel like we’ve all been getting those lately.

Kids don't die from it except when they DO, and teachers CARE and when they can't prevent it and they know that their kids are dying and hospitalized and irreparably harmed and they couldn't stop it, you're setting a lot of people up for a LOT of trauma, on top of everything else too.

So much of managing your mental health is just…learning to parent yourself like you’re a toddler

Like, “Honey, it’s 10 pm and you’ve been up since four in the morning, no wonder you’re emotional. Plus all you’ve had to eat today was three chocolate truffles and a half a protein drink. Make yourself some scrambled eggs and peas, you can even put them in separate bowls so they don’t touch. Then go to bed. You can do more fun things tomorrow, but first you need to sleep. Okay?”

.

In the old days we didn’t call this managing mental health, we called this managing being an adult.

.

Interesting, that.

See, I’m five years into adulthood. I have a college degree (a few in fact), a car, insurance payments, a job, yada yada. I ostensibly joined the Grown Up Club a few years back.

But, having grown up with a number of undiagnosed disorders and mental illnesses, I never learned a healthy style of self-talk.

If I’m honest, between depression and anxiety, the way I grew up talking to myself was abusive. I’m not kidding; if the things I thought to and about myself were said aloud to someone else, it would be considered verbal and emotional abuse.

So this idea of treating myself like a small child? With the same loving firmness and compassion?

This is a radical idea for me.

This is me learning to stop those abusive thought patterns, and talk to myself in a kinder, healthier way.

And it doesn’t have much to do with adulthood. I know adults who have treated themselves unkindly this way for many years. A healthy relationship with yourself doesn’t just sprout once you’re an adult; you have to develop it.

Those are my thoughts anyway. I hope they make sense.

put this in the MOMA

I'm not even joking What was with courage the cowardly dogs soundtrack being god tier

Who sat down and just went "I'm going to put the most atmospheric music ever made in ctcd?"

I’m glad anyone’s saying this because the music was one of the first things that impressed me about Courage, and especially the fact that almost every unique character and creature had their own signature soundtrack, which isn't something ANY cartoon to my knowledge had done at the time. At most, you had cartoons who might give every main, recurring character their own music, and a basic set of tracks for different moods that they would recycle again and again. Courage was the first time I personally saw a show come up with brand new music for literally every single new story and new villain of the week, and that astonished me at the time. It might be easier for some people to overlook that because it’s pretty normal for video games, with all the different boss themes, but in a cartoon it’s damn near unheard of.

All I hear is future D&D soundtracks

mutuals do this

I am dead serious: If you are a Walmart employee, at any level and in any store — like if you are a high school kid with a part time job stocking shelves — message me any question you have about unions. Like ask me "What's a union" if you want. I will explain it to you. I am a grievance chair for a white collar union whose workplace only unionized within the last five years and whose management fought as every step of the way, but in the end we fucking won. It can be done, and I can tell you how.

Rb to kill wal mart

Unionizing is our wet dream I promise you.

I like how it’s described as a union could “cripple American Capitalism” when more precisely it’s just that a union would be so powerful as to force WalMart (or any other company) to pay their workers like human beings. That’s not going to break Walmart. They’ll barely notice.

They’ve successfully convinced us that the unions are the greedy monsters. For so many years, the companies have painted unions as “we want you to pay janitors three million dollars a year and if you don’t we’ll set your stores on fire”. 

But it’s more like “We want you to take an almost imperceptible fraction of your bountiful profits and use it to make your employees’ live marginally better, and maybe give them medical benefits, y’know, so they don’t die”.

Big companies did not stop hiring ten year olds to work in coal mines because they just woke up one day and said “my god, we’re monsters”. They did it because their workers stood together and said “really, enough of this crap”.

Companies are not going to give people raises unless it’s economically necessary that they do so. Anything they can do to lower their expenses, and raise their profits, they are going to do. And no one person can stop them.

But thousands of people, millions of people? Better chances.

I really hate this song, but … 

Size comparison of Y’gathok, the Ceaseless Hunger and Bjorn, our level 20 Goliath Barbarian.

Hey quick question: why the FUCK do you have that

Imagine, from out of nowhere, your dm casually slapping this thing down on the table like any other encounter.

“Yeah, the fight will start in a sec, uh…I’ll give inspiration to whomever helps me get this fucking box out of my car.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/7asxci/oc_ygathok_the_ceaseless_hunger_final_boss_of_our/ This is the reveal of this ridiculousness during their game

Please watch this reveal video it’s kickass

FUCK ME  the reveal video

“CHRIS??????”

“Um, I don’t think our plan is gonna work.”

Always reblog Y'gathok

DM:*Pulls out Y’gothok* *Turns on “Open Your Heart” by Crush 40*

Wow that DM really goes above and beyond

Reblogging Ygathok because it’s been one year since we fought him!!!! It just popped up on my timeline today!

Happy one year anniversary, our precious Old God boi!!!

One year ago today, this boy was revealed.

And for you guys, I have great news: I have the stats of Y’gathok complete and a general design for “how to use him” done. However, an adventure guide is incoming to teach you how to integrate him into any of your worlds!

@pablophonic

This is forever one of the coolest things.

Mystery Science Theater 3000, “Space Mutiny”

@pablophonic a treasure trove of character names, if you will.