Damanor’s Lair: a Gaming Blog

 It looks like I’m going to be GMing a D&D 5e miniseries that may turn into a campaign (depending on how well it goes). I’m thinking they’ll have a series of jobs, sort of like Shadowrun where they’re hired to complete a mission. At the same time, they’re trying to fight against a corrupt system and institutionalized discrimination. The team may or may not be part of a formal thieves’ guild or other guild. Major inspirations: the Gentlemen Bastards series by Scott Lynch (especially The Lies of Locke Lamora), Ebonclad, Fritz Lieber’s Lankhmar stories (very picaresque), Shadowrun (RPG), the Thief series of video games, Night Reign (RPG), Cryptomancer (RPG), Terry Pratchett, Vornheim. Sources of adventures: the Mr Porter series of adventures, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. The Silence from Doctor Who, Remember Me from Star Trek TNG.

(Yes, some classes have access to more than one of these. Just go with it.) Wizard’s Knock Spell: Knock (Available at Level 3) - Open the door or chest with arcane magic. Rogue’s Knock Spell: Thieves’ Tools (Available at Level 1) - No simple lock will keep you out. Artificer’s Knock Spell: Tinker’s Tools (Available at Level 1) - Take the lock apart and remove the hinges from the door. Cleric’s Knock Spell: Thaumaturgy (Available at Level 1) - You instantly cause an unlocked door or window to open, regardless of whether it’s stuck or there’s something behind it. Druid's Knock Spell: Mold Earth (Available at Level 1) - Dig a tunnel underneath the door. Fighter’s Knock Spell: Fists (Available at Level 1) - Just knock the door down. Barbarian’s Knock Spell: Rage (Available at Level 1) - Shatter the door in its frame. Ranger’s Knock Spell: Conjure Animals (Available at Level 9) - Summon a rhinoceros to smash through the door. Paladin’s Knock Spell: Indomitable Moral Rectitude (Available

Just watched a brief video about fake buildings . Now I’m familiar with the giant ventilation structure for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which became the outside of the  Men in Black  headquarters in the movies. It put me in mind of an idea presented by Keith Baker in  The Complete Guide to Doppelgängers  that the life cycles of doppelgängers and mimics are connected and the end of development is a “doppelstadt,” an entire building or grove or, eventually, a large partof a city or forest that is telepathically aware and controls a shape-changing hive mind. Kind of an interesting idea; it reminds me of the changeling species in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, only with even more connections between beings. Other interesting ideas about the ecology of doppelgängers are found in  on Reddit  (see also the post on mimics by the same author). There’s also rolling to seduce the monstrosity found at a few  places   on the   web . It’s fun to pretend to be someone else. It’s also fun to pretend to be

 I really like the idea of playing a shape-changer in Dungeons and Dragons, but I’ve sometimes wondered if I could pull it off and make it fun for myself and the others at the table. Doppelgängers, changelings, mimics, trappers, lurkers above, piercers, rugs of smothering - I like the concepts but have often wondered if I could pull it off. I finally broke down and am giving it a try. https://damanor.blogspot.com/2022/10/rime-of-frostmaiden-keth-hand.html?m=1 Obviously I’m not keeping it a secret. Here are some of my thoughts. I’ve read two big bits of advice for secrets in social-focused RPGs like Houses of the Blooded or Vampire LARPs: 1. Keep all your secrets to yourself and nobody can betray you. 2. Play with open secrets and let any player who wants to know about it in on the secret so it’s more fun for everyone. Obviously, these two pieces of advice are in conflict. In my mind, each piece of advice comes from a completely different goal in playing the game. People who follow guid

[I thought about it and decided that having someone with all the benefits of a half-elf PLUS all the benefits of casting Detect Thoughts and shape changing from the Doppelgänger Secret is OP, especially since no other characters have Secrets. Edited with some modifications. The character is still able to do all the things he did previously.] AKA Robert Swan, Kellen Ambrose, Lady Margus [Deleted: Half-Elf (doppelgänger) criminal clockwork soul sorcerer/order cleric] Changeling (doppelgänger) criminal Shadow Sorcerer/Hexblade Warlock Keth’s mother Elspeth and his grandfather Aleric Hand are free carters, traveling the same sales route every year and trying to make ends meet with a one sack share. (They are hired to drive a cart full of other people’s goods from town to town and are allowed to carry one sack of their own goods as a “one-sack share” to sell on the side.) Keth learned to value and sell anything, but his favorite times were when he wintered with Ambrose, a wandering friend o

Chaotic neutral* outlander lizardfolk druid A lot of this is inspired by a great post on Goblin Punch. https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/7-myths-everyone-believes-about-druids.html?m=1 As a reptile in cold weather, Hangul is out of its** element. Hangul comes from a naturally forested area, where they learned from the druid Nataalsha. Nataalsha’s views on non-druids were very extreme, and she often opposed local lords and elf leaders about the right way to live with nature. After a time, Nataalsha sent Hangul away to a desert, where they learned about plants and animals that survived with minimal resources and how to live independently+. After nearly two years, Hangul returned to the forest, only to see that local human lords and elven leaders had driven the dangerous forest animals away, cut back the more invasive plants, and generally turned the wild forest into a tended game preserve where the nobles and rulers could hunt at their leisure¥. Hangul found Nataalsha in one of th