The Unforgivable Sin

In a lot of Pathfinder books, Hags are said to be creatures who used to be women, women who performed some profane ritual that stained their soul and turned them into wicked, nigh-immortal monsters. This ritual is said to be so vile that only the most depraved would ever consider it, the depth to which the woman undertaking it sinks rendering her soul permanently irrevocable to the forces of Good. It warps her from a person into a hideous thing, a mockery of humanity: a Hag.

And yet it cannot truly be that difficult to perform, given how low CR Hags are, nor could it be as expensive and expansive as, say, the transformation into a Lich… so I posit the below being the transformation ritual; the Unforgivable Sin, a singular and powerful act that twists those who undertake it into inhuman Hags.

BIG TW for cannibalism and child death

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Updated for the cool Hags in 2nd Edition!

Game idea: Don't Call Cthulhu. You are all cultists, but none of you REALLY want to summon the Great Old Ones to destroy and recreate the world in their own fearsome image; however, you dare not appear reluctant, lest you get used as a sacrifice by more fanatical cultists.

Game mechanics revolve around coming up with reasonable-sounding objections to starting the ritual now, arguing against those objections so you don't look like you're giving in easily, and finding ways to uphold any objections while still making it seem like progress has been made towards starting the ritual.

Eg, "we don't have any chalk to draw the diagram", "we can just get some chalk", "we need the highest-quality chalk possible in order to do this perfectly, which we'll need to special order".

…never thought I'd have an idea for a game that uses PLAYING CARDS, given how much I like dice, but here I am. It started last night when I already had another idea, but I was trying to come up with three different ideas all total, then I realized "you know this has some potential", and then I was lost. I still intend to come up with some other gaming things based on this idea! It's just that I need to do THIS one FIRST, because I already have it.

Materials required: deck of playing cards, possibly some way of writing things down (depending on whatever I work out for end conditions)

Slightly different from the stuff above, as the in-game goal here is to drag out the discussion as long as possible, but also to conclude it with "we can't make any progress on summoning the Great Old Ones at the moment".

At the start, everyone picks a suit of cards. Try to distribute them as evenly as possible; if there are four or fewer players, don't have any repeats. The suit you've chosen represents your accepted knowledge or expertise within the cultists: spades for Forbidden Lore, hearts for Connections, diamonds for Money, and clubs for [something thematic I need to figure out still].

Clubs could be Toil- the physical work required to make the ritual happen. Whether it's kidnapping the sacrifice or lugging around the candles and book, someone has to do the heavy work around here.

As for scoring, I think each card played should you give you a point, increasing by 1 each round. So first round is 0, second round 1 point and so on. Playing a card of your chosen suit means the argument was extra persuasive due to your expertise, and you get an extra point. I think playing the face card of your suit should also give more points. It could be 11 points are needed to win the current argument and a face card gives five points. Obviously this means a lot of situations would have extra points. Maybe this could go into a "trust pool" and when you reach a certain number, you can add an extra point to your argument. An argument ending too early with no cards of your suit erodes trust and you lose 1 point, because you clearly don't know what you're saying. That could also be a way to lose the game.

I was expecting anything but not Bard

Not surprising, I love learning a lot so wizard feels natural. I have a pretty strong moral compass so warlock being weak makes sense but if someone has a common goal I would be willing to compromise a bit. Second is paladin because again, moral compass. Honestly bit surprised druid wasn't higher because I literally work in sustainability.

In this dispatch of Jackalope Mail, I'm talking about some fun and weird folklore elements and how you can use them in your TTRPGs! Including trees fueled by blood and the ultimate dark academia setting! Check it out!

Thanks to @maniculum for the posts about Perlesvaus, I loved the idea so much I linked to it here!

Visualizing @haveyouplayedthisttrpg's data

A while ago, I posted this over on the Indie RPG Newsletter but forgot to also put it here. If you haven't heard of Have You Played This, the blog runs polls about various RPGs and people can reply if they've played, read, just heard of it, or not even that.

Here's the highlights:

On average, these polls get 470 votes.

For the majority of these polls, more than 50% of respondents said they’d never heard of the game.

Out of 81 games that have been polled, only 33 games had even reached the eyes and ears of more than 50% of the respondents. Most people haven’t heard of most of the games!

And here's the image:

The image is a bit compressed. So if you’d like to read it comfortably, you can head to my google sheet and see it at full scale.

While this far from definitive (there’s also a huge variance in the number of votes for each game), it’s interesting to get a sense of what games are relatively popular. For example, Thirsty Sword Lesbians seems to be about as well-known as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay on tumblr. Would you have guessed that? Actually, maybe, you could’ve. But would you have expected to see that Mouse Guard and Mausritter are roughly as popular – maybe tumblr just loves mice equally.

Also bless everyone who said they’d never heard of Pathfinder.

Have you played KNIGHT RPG ?

By Antre Monde / Simon Gabillaud & Coline Pignat

Knight: An Avalon RPG is an epic horror game in a dystopian future full of challenging monsters, impenetrable darkness and Knights equipped with meta-armours granting them superhuman capabilities!

In the 2030s, darkness has invaded Earth and with it came the horrors. The world became greyer, art started to fade. The obscurity is filled with monsters, of meat, of beasts, of steel, of frost. And they may not be the only ones. You are humanity's last hope

Arthur meet Mecha (and each armour is named after a dnd classes)

Completed with an Epic ( not a campaign, an Epic, it's 2 big books and 1 book to help navigate them)

A personnal Favorite of the poll runner

Currently Crowdfunding an English translation on Backerkit (quickstart already available on dtrpg)

Here's the link

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/all-about-games-consulting/knight-rpg

The game has gotten 100% and almost 100 backers in less than 2 hours.

Alright ya big nerds! I decided to get both mousepads!

I have placed orders for the Owlbear Cubs and Strahd The Mysterious Vampire Count.

You can pre-order them HERE!

Preordering helps me a LOT as it allows me to prepare for shipping large amounts of orders in a short amount of time!

GUESS WHO JUST PLACED ANOTHER ORDER???

Pre-orders for Owlbear Cubs and Strahd mousepads are OPEN!

Mousepads should arrive sometime in April 2024!

Last time I had basically sold out of all Owlbears and Strahds before they'd even arrived, so if you wanted one last time and weren't able to get one, I highly recommend pre-ordering ASAP!

They're here, friends!!! Come and get em!

A group of friends and I did a one shot recently in 5e. The catch is that they play something called “Dude Squad” where the only play “dudes” (not exclusively male people, just dude mentality) and they hate all magic and magic users. They think true strength is muscles and only muscles, and have in the past encountered magic users who they then convince to give up magic.

We got told to build a level 17 character for this one shot, most of the other folks had previous Dude Squad characters to resurrect. But I didn’t really want to play a straight martial class. In my heart, spellcasters are my true class, and I didn’t really have a strong idea of what kind of character to make.

So I approached the DM and said, “Hey, I have this idea to play a character that pretends to be a martial class but is actually a magic caster?” My girlfriends character is an aasimar who thinks he’s Thor and my backstory was that after meeting him and falling for him she decided to invest heavily in deceptive magic so as not to alienate him.

And my DM. Loved it. So he helped me build an extremely custom character. Two levels in Hexblade warlock gave her a good weapon and the ability to cast disguise self pretty much nonstop to appear buffer than she actually was.

Then there was four levels in Stone sorcerer in order to get 4 sorcery points, the ability to use those points to cast using Subtle Spell and no one could tell she’s casting, and to buff her AC.

Finally there was 11 Bladesong wizard levels in order to get some attack bonuses, even more AC, extra attacks, and the ability to burn spells to take less damage.

So the whole time I was burning spell slots to recharge my sorcery points every time I cast things like Haste and Spider Climb and use my Bladesong powers. We busted through walls and smashed our way through puzzles. We lied and said my character was a Barbarian/Monk so they didn’t bat and eye when she ran on walls with spider climb, but no one noticed when even after dashing she “held onto the stone wall” without any kind of check.

The final battle: the goblin wizard boss we were fighting had cast invulnerability on himself and had our friend mind controlled. So I’m trying to cover for not attacking as I try to dispel his invulnerability. I can no longer run on walls, or make the jumps my party is making on floating platforms over a spike pit so I try to use my actions on other helpful things like tying ropes for friends in the pit. I manage to dispel the magic on our friend but I burned almost all my spells trying to secretly dispel the boss’ spell and finally we just ended up grappling and suffocating him then pummeling him to death.

But at the last moment as we’re running out of this horrible goblin mansion I’m running down a wall and my friends are climbing down. The building says there’s 6 seconds left and my very injured love interest is not gonna make it so my character shouted “Fuckfuckfuck!” Ran over and cast dimension door to bring them both to safety. (Two people got left in the blast but both survived cause Dude Power). Then I critically failed my deception about how I had used magic and came clean and everyone lost their shit when they heard what we’d done. Her final confession, after dropping her buff disguise self, was, “When I met Kathor I really liked him and he freakin’ hates magic so I just kinda figured out how to hide that I was castin’ magic cause I though we might go to pound town.”

Kathor then declared, “I’ve never had someone try so hard to get in my pants!” And swept her up and they messily made out. It was deeply satisfying the wonders that DnD can create, like making a whole class based on the lie that you’re not spellcasting.

why are all the star trek games based on war and ship command and galactic fighting and war. i want diplomat simulator. i want skyrim for star trek. i wanna talk to a bunch of aliens about their farming rivalry and then go to the planet where everyones an italian mobster. i dont give a shit about upgrading the torpedoes on my battle cruiser to level up and destroy other ships in the New Online MMORPG. i want my entire ship to malfunction because an alien laid an egg in the nacelles and then i want to fix it by raising the alien as my own and then tossing it into space. what’s so hard to understand.

i want to play the equivalent of papa's pizzeria/overcooked but set in quark's bar

our man bashir dating sim

I know this is for like, video games but

Serious Answer: if you like TTRPGs, Modiphius has an officially licensed Star Trek game called Star Trek Adventures, and you can discuss before hand what type of game you want, I ran a Clue game using it where Q took a bunch of ppl and threw them into a Clue Board game but Star Trek Themed... I've also played a lower decks themed one where I got to wrestle a Klingon and then ask him on a date, played a Romulan commander during the dominion war, and I was recently in a game, that I had to drop due to not having the time for it, and played a Vulcan Navigator who had to take command and used that position to make a fellow (NPC) lieutenant, who was trying to bully my pilot and my communication officer, recite an entire shift report so he couldnt follow them onto the lift and continue to bully them...

That said I would also like a Star Trek Adventures Video Game ala Baldurs Gate 3

Ad | Humble Bundle April 2024

Hi folks, here's a few bundles that some of you might be interested in this month.

For the inspiring programmers - the Code like a Pro bundle supports Girls Who Code.

If you lean more towards 3D modelling and design then Blender Core Skills bundle has loads of resources on Mesh modelling, rigging, shading and lighting. It also raises money for One Tree Planted.

I know a bunch of you love a good TTRPG, there's a solid Pathfinder Second Edition - Guns of Alkenstar Bundle available. A portion of the money goes towards Endometriosis UK - a charity very close to my heart.

Have you played NIGHT ?

By Guillaume Jentey

A game without a book, without a pdf, only Audio to be played in complete darkness.

In a world where the light has disappeared 20 years ago, you play the Guides who work for the survival of their community.

M*A*S*H | 1.15 - "Tuttle"

Deity: The Sea of Teeth

(Pic source: God I wish I knew. I can only find reposts and stolen versions of this pic; my attempts to locate the original haven’t turned up anything)

Chaotic Evil God of Endless Hunger

Domains: Chaos, Death, Destruction, Evil, War Subdomains: Demon, Entropy, Catastrophe, Cannibalism, Blood Favored Weapons: Bite Symbol: Fangs surrounding bones, stars, and/or planets. Sacred Animals: All gluttonous animals. Sacred Colors: N/a

The Abyss is deeper than any being could possibly comprehend, stretching an unknowable distance into the chaos beyond what sane beings consider the relative safety of their reality. Whether it has an end or a bottom is a mystery none have yet solved, as the deeper one goes, the more they must grapple with the knowledge that the hundreds of layers occupied by the foulest sorts of demons are merely the surface level of the Abyss, the safest environs a mortal of this cosmos can exist in. To venture into the Abyss is taxing enough, but to delve deep into the Outer Rifts, where the primordial qlippoth and beasts even stranger roam, is something few can withstand for longer than fleeting moments. It is easy, though not entirely accurate, to compare the demon-occupied Abyss as something akin to the levels of the ocean where the sun still reaches. It is dangerous, laden with hazards and predators which may end the life of an explorer… But the Rifts? If one were still comparing the Abyss to the ocean, the Outer Rifts are depths where sunlight cannot reach, where the pressure is so intense that even steel buckles and crumbles, where the cold is so penetrating that nothing can defend against it, and where life as we know it simply cannot survive.

But like the ocean’s darkest depths, there is still life to be found, alien and strange. Predating even the eldest of the gods, the qlippoth crawl and slither and skitter in endless varieties and maddening shapes. From tiny insects to the great, demigod-level Qlippoth Primordials, qlippoth span across every branch of existence, forming grotesque and twisted mirrors to the biospheres found all over creation, all living and eating and dying and transforming. It is a great, eldritch ecosystem, where even worlds must feed.

And with the imprisonment of Rovagug, it has lost its apex predator.

Ask any zoologist what happens to any ecosystem in which an important predatory force is removed and you will receive a similar answer; the prey gorges itself until it starves, reproduces until there is no more room, and the cycle of life comes to an abrupt and terrible halt as the links in the chain give way one by one. In extreme cases, the entire environment is destroyed by the unbalance. While it’s true that the Abyss has no shortage of predatory creatures all willing and able to consume one another, none of them work on the scale that Rovagug did, devouring and destroying entire landscapes and worlds at once to keep the growth of the Abyss itself from becoming too dangerously rampant. 

But now that he is gone, the balance is upset, and the invasive species that is demonkind has done more harm than good as the natives of the Rifts experience an apocalyptic collapse. Unfortunately for the cosmos as a whole, from the deepest depths of the Outer Rifts a new apex predator has risen to fill the vacuum.

Keep reading

I was thinking about scribbling ideas for Typhus's camp tent but in doing research I found out Astarion sleeps like that NOT because he's a creepy vampire, but because he's an ELF? And he's technically not sleeping, he's "meditating"? That's so obnoxious of them

Today Colin asked me if Astarion shaves his balls and I explained that I found out through researching the sleeping thing that elves also don’t grow beards. Then I remembered that I literally saw his dick in the forest. That thing was like an ivory tusk

I know you’re not supposed to think about it, but what did we actually do in that forest. Did. Did we. In what DnD year was the first home enema developed.

Looking this up made me CLAP MY HAND OVER MY MOUTH

Something I love about The Far Roofs is how much of a swerve its premise is if you're coming to it uninitiated.

Okay, so there's these talking rats with a culture of swashbuckling heroism – basic Redwall/Reepicheep stuff.

Also, there's a magical realm called the Far Roofs which exists above every human community, and that's where the rats go adventuring; a little weird, but you can see the precedents in popular fiction. It's like wainscot fantasy taken to its logical-yet-absurd conclusion.

By default, the game wants you to play as a fictionalised version of your (presumably human!) self and go up onto the Far Roofs to have adventures with the rats. All right, now it's coming together: it's like isekai fantasy meets The Muppet Show, with you as the obligatory human character, right?

Then we get to the nature of those adventures: the rats have this whole culture built around questing against beings they call "the Mysteries" – beasties with names like Harpy and Goblin and Unicorn. So basically it's a bunch of muppety rats on the roofs fighting Dungeons & Dragons monsters, and you go up and help them do it. Great.

And then you get to what the Mysteries are actually like, and... well, I'm going to let the following excerpt carry the weight here. (This particular bit of text also appears in a previously published work by the same author, so I'm not giving anything away that's still under wraps.)

These are gods. You're going up there to kill God.

Like, it's still silly wainscot fantasy with funny talking rats, but there's that tension. It's like if Fraggle Rock occasionally took a hard turn to serious cosmic horror – Lord Dunsany by way of Jim Henson – and that tonal juxtaposition was treated as something unremarkable.

Basically what I'm saying is go back The Far Roofs.

At the time of this posting, the crowdfunding campaign is down to the final 72 hours and is presently sitting at approximately 250% funded, if you were planning on waiting to see how it goes.

(If it gets all the way to 400%, everybody who backed also gets free e-books of several of the creator's novels, which is fun. I particularly recommend checking out The Night-Bird's Feather!)