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Finished a first draft of cultural Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws for Dwarves, Elves, Halflings and Humans for D&D 5e. Part of a broad hack of Inspiration and Experience, to make the character traits on the sheet a more active and effective part of play.

Welcome feedback, questions and criticism. Guidelines for feedback included. Comments open in the Doc. Gnomes and Dragonborn are up next.

Thanks in advance for any help!

You can turn off the news and sign off social media for a bit. It's okay.

I wrote a thing on google plus about power level incoherency, Ravenloft, and what makes D&Ds before third edition very enjoyable for me:


I just tallied up my list of ongoing 5e hacks.

1. Skills and Tool Proficiencies
2. Character Traits, Backgrounds, Inspiration, Experience
3. Lifestyle Expenses
4. Downtime

Throw in class and damage and I’m basically rewriting the entire SRD? Hey why not.

Latest version of my 5e for Lifestyle and Social Circles. Trying to turn a useless upkeep rule into an engaging and plot-driving part of play.

I think these are done for now, pending playtesting. Comments are enabled if you’d like to leave feedback (I appreciate it!).

Wait, new version of Tootle can’t display apostrophes? It just shows a “9” instead... That’s crazy.

@mathayles I think it's with the players. The game is the thing you're consenting to. You can't consent with a nonliving thing. It neither deserves nor is capable of participating in the process. At the most, you might consent with just yourself in a single player game. You might also make some arguments about consent with the author, as you do when you give a game that first shot before changing the rules.

@DarkLavenderVoid @mathayles Yeah. The process is basically whenever someone comes up with a rule idea, we implement it immediately—without discussion of it's merit. Everyone at the table understood the expectation was to follow the game wherever it led. Afterward we could make our assessment about what was and wasn't worth keeping. (Which isn't to say you don't throw out rules that aren't working while playstorming, just that you don't worry about whether they work out not. It'll be obvious.)

DMs: please make a habit out of congratulating your players for good rp. I just did a scene where my character discussed her (strained) relationship with her daughter and my DM was blown away by its emotional depth. Now I'm excited to have another scene and give it my all. It makes a difference

@mathayles It's interesting you use the language "call for a roll", because much of the rolling in RPGs isn't the GM doing that: Either it's the GM rolling themselves, or the players lobbying for dice to engage the scene. If I as GM am calling for a roll, it's either because the player is slow on the uptake (I'm prompting them!) or because I want to use the roll as divination to help me set the scene. GMs being stingy with letting players have rolls that effect the world are super annoying.

@mathayles you call for a roll or coin flip or any mechanic where the outcome determined by the mechanic is more fun than an outcome determined by you and the group conversing.

This is a nutritious question! Show more

@mathayles When you want to defray responsibility for a decision. I used to not really understand the need for random encounter rolls in D&D. Now I love them because they solve the problem of, "Does the party taking extra time/lingering here cost them any thing?" Roll. Either nope! or oh no! Encounter!

Harassment in Indie Games: Part 2 - What

Content warning: sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual violence, threats, online harassment, threats of violence, harassment and assaul...

Hey Dice Campers, I have a very simple question for a sleepy Sunday.

When do you call for a roll? Answer in a system agnostic way if possible.

My answer:
- When success is possible, and
- failure is interesting.
- I think that’s it?

I know I'm being a pain in the ass in RPG discussions right now but I'm feeling Very Strongly like a lot of discussion is leaving out important stuff or labeling things very subjectively while using objective language.

Learn to use "I think" or "I feel" when talking about your subjective feelings on RPGs, or understand that you might be wrong or coming at it from a perspective that doesn't consider others.

This resource gathering and management mini-game I wrote/illustrated called 'Do Not Let Us Die In The Dark Night Of This Cold Winter' is today's DTRPG Deal Of The Day! Grab the PDF for less than 3 bucks, and help save a lonely village from the shittiest winter of all time:

Good morning, dice.campers!

What are you struggling with, RPG-wise, right now? What problems are you facing? Maybe we can help!

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