Eldritch Mlems

Dice are pretty much synonymous with RPGs, but there are a few rare systems that forego them altogether, like Castle Falkenstein.

What are some other systems that don't use dice? Are there any that completely remove luck/random chance on "important player actions"?

This is a pretty common occurrence, he loves to lay on my arm this way.

trailcam;

what am i doing on caturday? scrolling cats; https://mastodon.world/tags/Cat

Howdy. So I’ve been running a 5e D&D game live at a table and another one on foundry. Both groups kind of collapsed over the holidays and that’s fine. I want to try a super hero RPG. I’ve been looking at Masks but it seems kind of teen focused which I’m not into. Does anyone know if this system is more adaptable than I’m giving it credit or if there is a better system they could recommend?

Here I am, sitting at home, living my life as usual, more or less. Yet, something changed.

I'm looking at memes and I'm actually laughing. I'm watching the same old shows I always watch on the side, and the same old jokes make laugh. Not just a chuckle here or there as I'm used to, but real, genuine laughter. It's not like this was completely foreign to me before, but very unusual.

I've been struggling with my mental state for most of my life. I still am, and probably will keep doing so. 20 years of unhealthy coping strategies leave their mark. There's been therapy, there's been ideas of what might be wrong, though, never a real diagnosis. Nothing excluded as well - "real" diagnosis just didn't happen.

But now it feels... different. I feel different. For most of my life I've been rather disconnected from my emotions. For the last week I've been closer to myself than ever before - maybe besides some drug-induced states. I'm almost crying typing this, the good kind of crying, the cathartic one.

And all it took was the realisation that I am no man?

Zee feeling a little better today after yesterday's chemo. He and Mishka love getting evening snuggles! 😊

I'm making a character and want some advice on if it's reasonable and if my ideas for how to build it will be effective.

The idea is a dwarven fighter with the battlemaster subclass. The primary role would be as the party's tank but I also want it to be able to do some controlling. My thought is to build the character to grapple and then use chains to bind enemies. It would use heavy armor and a shield. I'm thinking that a topple weapon would be good but the weapon is secondary or for characters too big to grapple. My plan for combat is to rush to the most dangerous melee enemy, grapple and bind them and then move to the next enemy grapple and bind.

I'm looking at feats more geared toward tanking like heavy armor master, shield master, and sentinel. I'm also considering speedy to get to the stronger enemies quicker.

I know that you can grapple with one empty hand and being able to sheath or unsheath a weapon for free each attack makes it easy to switch between weapons and unarmed attacks when I need to. Can I use the chain to bind the enemy while using a shield? Should I look more at the grapple feat or tavern brawler? I don't currently plan to take either. Is there a better way to achieve the build's goals or better combat tactics that I should use? Is this kind of build even reasonable in the first place?

Edit: The system is D&D 2024

I just took this picture in my kitchen while making food and, TBH, I love it.

Fantasy RPG settings have almost always drawn inspirations from real world cultures, including real world folklore and mythology. This also includes fantastic creatures, which are a staple of monster manualy since the earliest days of D&D.

And in recent years, there have been more and more efforts to draw TTRPG inspiration from non-European sources - a trend I approve of, since we can always use more diverse sources of inspiration.

However, I am curious how you all use creatures from different cultures in your fantasy campaigns and worldbuilding. I could see a few different approaches:

Do you assume "counterpart fantasy cultures" for your world? I.e. is there a Not!Europe, Not!Asia, Not!Africa, Not!Mesoamerica etc., each of which has "culturally appropriate" supernatural creatures? In such a situation, supernatural creatures would largely stick to their "home region", and occasional "guest stars" in other regions would be noteworthy. This works well, but it does mean you are usually limiting yourself to a "culturally appropriate" subset of the creatures in the books.

Alternately, you could try to integrate these creatures into whatever cultural region your campaign focuses on. In my view, this would require some rewriting in how these creatures are portrayed and/or named - if your region has a culturally English or Germanic slant, then having creatures that are called "Sramana", "Betobeto-san", or "Tzitzimitl" (to pick three examples from the recent Monster Core 2 for Pathfinder) will seem strange.

I feel there is no "right" or "wrong" approach to this, but I am curious how you are tackling this issue.