Damanor’s Lair: a Gaming Blog

 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 ...

[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...

 I recently joined a new D&D 5e campaign. It looks like it’s going to be a ton of fun. I made a druid that set a polar bear loose on a group of goblins. Good times. The MeetUp.com announcement https://www.meetup.com/wasatch-rpgamers/events/289237936/ The campaign Facebook page https://m.facebook.com/groups/1561088737668003/ I’m going to post a few things on this blog just for fun. This is not official content, it’s just character backstory I’ve come up with.