Ley Strider By WillOBrien

Art by Tiffany "arty" Boother This month, truth compels me to write four subclasses. Every single one of them are completely new, and I'm polishing up the final one as we speak. This first subclass, the Spelleater (gmbinder doc here) takes a theme that is notoriously hard to execute (good at beating up wizards) and does as much as it can to actualise that idea: its benefits still completely deck most spellcasters, but they also work reasonably well against pretty much any foe there is. Antimagic Vigor is essentially the opposite of a barbarian rage (or rune knight's hill rune), and gives you a combat's worth of survival and ultra high saving throws vs magic. Spell Drain is my favorite part of it. You cause a bunch of creatures to succeed on a save against a spell being cast - but the spell can be from either friend or foe! Now you can work in tandem with other spellcasters to shape your allies' spells safely round the party, Or, you can just completely screw a lich over. Either way, you get to absorb the magic into your sword, and then unleash it the next time you attack. It's a really nice feature that makes them fantastic against spellcasters while still being handy elsewhere!

Dungeon: The Howling Mine

Adventure hooks: 

Deep beneath the earth, Miners seeking to find a new vein of ore in an old mine instead open a fissure and release a howling wind that seems as if it came from the very heart of winter. Our heroes overhear such a rumor while traveling, and should they investigate, they will find the mine has been evacuated as the chill has sealed off many of the tunnels with ice and threatened to freeze the miners where they stood. 

If the party neglects the call to adventure, they will later on hear tell that the whole region around the mine has been blanketed with unseasonable snow and that the town elders are looking for folk with wits in their heads and courage in their hearts to suss out the source of this catastrophe. 

Lore: What the miners actually discovered was infact the long buried tomb of a frost giant warcheif. Though the giants were long driven out of these lands, the tomb remained, buried by the slow settling of the mountains but still sturdy with the blessings of departed giant sages. Within the innermost halls of this tomb is a massive rune carved horn taken from the skull of a white dragon and capped with electrum, sitting upon an altar heaped with plunder.   This horn was crafted by the warcheif as tribute to her ancestors, and it is their magic which blows through it to this day, summoning the ghost of the north wind to echo through the tomb for all time. 

Challenges: 

Though the party may have some experience delving abandoned tunnels and other such dungeons, the howling mine bares the added threats of a journey through the very worst of winter terrain: The constant wind muffles conversation and snuffs exposed flame, ice and snowdrifts block passages and obscure threats, and the creeping chill threatens to sap the life from the party’s bones should they attempt to rest without first finding shelter. 

The cold has caused many subterranean threats to go berserk, forcing burrowing monsters and cavedwelling life into the party’s path. Likewise, the unchecked elemental magic of the horn has manifested several merphits and other monsters of ice into the tombhalls themselves, to say nothing of the traps and wards that they might encounter there. 

A party that decides to brave the tomb, rather than just sealing it off will eventually discover the warcheif’s body, interred in a casket of ice along with her glittering raiment, weapons, and choicest plunder. Should the party desecrate her resting place they will slowly come to learn that the ice giants had little sympathy for grave robbers, seeing them as cowards taking unearned plunder. A curse will follow them forever after, bringing with it miserable weather, tireless and daunting foes, and a lingering chill that strikes at the very worst of opportunities. The only way to break this curse is to enlist the aid of a powerful caster, perhaps even seeking out a frost giant shaman. 

Adventure: The Star gone Astray

The road has led your party to Etelva, a backwater barony who’s small capital hugs the banks of an icy lake and trade river. Happy to have the town’s walls as shelter against the early winter chill, you find the citizens of Etelva in a state of confusion and disorder: Strange signs have been seen in the sky weeks past, followed by tales of monsters and disappearances in outlaying settlements. Best take tonight to warm yourselves by the hearth, because tomorrow there’s hero’s work to be done.

Adventure Hooks:

Looking around for work, the party are eventually pointed towards a dwarven monster hunter by the name of Red Jess. Well seasoned in tracking and trapping all sorts of beast, Jess will (after some convincing) invite the party along on a scouting expedition to the snowy hillsides. Rumours have been circulating that folk have seen a dragon, but Jess is experienced enough to know that rumours don’t pay for lodging and the next resupply. Better to head out, get the lay of the land, and determine is there’s truth to any of this hearsay. Worst case there’s no quarry to be had and the hunters come back with a few beast pelts to sell for their troubles, best case scenario they can come back with proof of something and get the baroness or the crown itself to lay a bounty on the creature. A Few days travelling on with Jess and the party do indeed spy a dragon swooping low over hinterlands, not marauding as the rumours said, but obviously searching for something. Taking care not to be seen, the party realize that someone is riding the dragon, both mount and rider surveying the landscape, though for what they cannot be sure. 

Having lost important cargo to bandits and up to his ears in debt because of it, an over the hill merchant by the name of Ravell has been pushed over the edge by the paranoid air in Etelva and has begun a series of arson attacks focused first on the property of those he owes money to, and now starting on his own. Confused at first for accidents, these fires are spurred on by a demon that’s latched onto Ravell’s shoulder, feeding his latent desire to “Burn it all and walk away” , a demon that will be quite hostile should the party try and cut its fun short.

After some time in town the party are approached by Ryldyr, a diviner and minor soothsayer who seeks the party’s protection as he beleives someone or something is after him. Ryldyr is only so so when it comes to predicting the future, mainly offering his agrarian neighbours insight on upcoming weather events that might affect their crops. His runes never lie though, and speak of some looming danger that will affect him in particular if he doesn’t keep moving.   Just as he’s given the party a few cryptic hints about their future in order to get them to beleive him, the door is kicked in, and several of the Baroness’s guards pour in to take the addled scryer into custody.

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What are some ttrpg's on your game wish list? Ones that you'd want to play or plan to play (or maybe don't have time to). also as a side note your love for ttrpg's fills me with a lot of joy and reminds me why they're so special! : )

Inevitable: COWBOY KNIGHTS TRAGEDY this is number one i wanna play this so bad with a crew who will watch a few anti-westerns and arthurian films beforehand and fully commit to the tragedy aspect (big bold decisions if you know it ends in tragedy!) oh my god this specific flavor of game appeals to me a little too specifically

some kind of horror game. VTM, Curse of Strahd, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Call of Cthulhu, whatever lends itself to horror well. the horror genre is one of my favorites and i would so be down to play some good horror!!

MASKS as a PC!

and always more dnd.

uhhh I'm sure there would be other things but I don't know many ttrpgs off the top of my head. quite like ttrpgs. would very much like to play more. especially with a group of artists who will post dodoles and songs that remind them of characters and talk about them throughout the week and do psychological deep dives and theorize about the story and themes and and and

As war grips the land, a group of warriors band together to protect a population of displaced peasants and towsnfolk as they winter in an ancient mountain fortress.  

Led by the veteran warleader Voadicia, the warriors have amassed a sizeable force of skilled fighters and eager recruits to their cause. Little interested in the goings on of the wider war, their group of holdouts has none the less attracted the attention of the embattled monarchs of the region, who see this rogue warband as a needless complication in their plans of conquest. 

Quest hooks: 

The party is made up of the initiate members of the warband, tossed together from deserters and aspiring peasants who wish to put themselves between the innocents in their charge and the horrors of the war. Their tasks are endless, scouting, exploring the reaches of the ruins, searching for more supplies. Should they cultivate a reputation as trustworthy and capable warriors, they will be brought into Voadicia’s councils about how best to defend their crumbling fortress, and what to do AFTER the war has passed. 

Allied with one faction in the war, the party is sent to negotiate with Voadicia’s warriors after several raids are made on their patron’s supply train. With careful persuasion the warband could be turned from a liability into a powerful ally, if only the party can mind their manners against a disillusioned band of brigands, or get past the fact that their patron is Voadicia’s former leige lord, who would more than happily see her in irons or with her head on a pike as an ally. 

Though the ruins the warband has taken as their home are said to have belonged to a line of forgotten kings, they are infact the last edifices of an ancient empire that spanned the continent and far eclipsed the development of the barbaric present. Vast treasures still remain undiscovered within its vaults, as do powerful artifacts of a forgotten age. Should they be discovered and put to use, it might just be enough to turn the enclave of warriors and refugees into a kingdom of their own, and Voadicia into a reluctant queen. 

Fantasy Names Bank

These are just regular human-ish girl and boy names but a bunch of them could be unisex. The lists came pre-alphabetized and girl-boy sorted from my old writing blog so that’s how they got copy/pasted here. There are about 50 names for each.

Also, I didn’t even come up with all of these. I got some from other places that I can’t remember, doctored some from names I read in book, and had my friends and family help with others (back when I was neck deep in a high fantasy world-building extravaganza)

Tell me if you use one so I can feel like 17 year-old me didn’t waste my time (I totally did) and also have new stories to follow!

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Writing Realistic Characters - part 2

- Journal from their perspective. It can be hard to write compelling, realistic motivation for characters if you don’t understand them yourself. By journalling from their perspective, even if the content of the journal isn’t included in your story, you’ll essentially be thinking as the character. This should help you understand who they are and how they make choices and react to things, like a real person would.

- Answer “character questions”, but be careful when using lists found online. The internet is full of lists of questions for writers to answer when building characters, but not all of them are actually that important or useful. The fact is, it really doesn’t matter what a character’s favourite colour, animal or day of the week is (unless it’s relevant to your story… but it usually isn’t). When looking for question lists online, or making your own, focus on questions that have to do with your character’s personality, such as how they’d react to a situation or which values matter more to them.

- Make character charts! I can’t stress this enough — character charts are incredibly useful tools for writers and I don’t know what I’d do without them. They’re a great way to keep track of important information about your characters in an organized way that’s easy to access when you need to quickly check a detail. I’d also strongly recommend making your own charts, not using templates online (I find it a lot easier to stay organized when I’m using my own organizational system). If you need a place to start, though, I normally create charts with 4 categories: role (protagonist, antagonist, etc.), name, identities (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.), and description (just a brief few sentences about them). You can also make personality charts with things like their greatest flaw, greatest strength, story goals, etc.

- Come up with a few detailed memories/anecdotes from their past. Think of them as mini-stories you can drop into your main story to build a more realistic life around the character. These don’t have to be crucial to the plot, and should be brought up in a natural way, such as in conversation with another character or in the main character’s thoughts. For example, your MC’s best friend might compliment her necklace, and she tells them how her sister gave it to her as a birthday present before moving away. You can also use these anecdotes to drop in important information in a non-obvious way. Continuing the example above, the MC could mention that her sister has the same design necklace, but in green. Later, this becomes a clue, when she finds the green necklace outside the villain’s lair.

- Keep a record of their backstory. This one doesn’t really need much explaining… Just keep notes of your character’s backstory as you come up with it so you don’t risk inconsistencies, which tend to break down realism. 

- Remember that the reader can’t see what’s in your head. Your characters may be fully developed, realistic people in your head, but that makes it easy to forget that your readers don’t automatically understand them the way you do — they only know what’s on the page. Asking other people to read your work can help you understand how your characters come through to an audience, but if you don’t want to do that, just re-reading it yourself is also helpful. If you do the latter, though, go through an entire chapter at a time, the way a reader would, not small sections.

Adventure:  Rebels in the Rimebough 

No matter how cold the north wind blows, the pain of old injustice burns hotter. 

Setup: The Frontier kingdom of Volskolt sits on the edge of a vast wilderness, the last bastion of so called civilization against the vast territories where no sovereign save winter can rule. Given that the kingdom was only established and its populace converted to the dominant faith less than two centuries ago most on the continent regard the Volskoltans to be little more than backwater heathens, feigning piety in polite company while practicing barbaric rituals while at home. This attitude is reflected by the urban Volskoltan population towards their rural neighbors, and by those rural neighbors towards the migratory tribes that live in the hinterlands. 

It is this tension that sits at the heart of the kigndom’s current troubles, as the elders among their people remember that their now sedate nobles came to their land as militant holy orders seeking to crusade against their heathen neighbors, burning what villages they did not take for their own and building stout stone walls as a sign of their dominance. While the elites now consider themselves one people with the “common Volskoltan”, few who keep to the old ways have forgiven them for the bloodshed, or the merciless suppression of their ancestral rites in favor of the continental faith. 

And so we come to the crossroads of fate, nearly two hundred years of injustice and resentment reaching a boiling point during the coldest winter in generations. Rebels gather their power, giants stir in the mountains, and the destiny of a kingdom may hinge on a single life. 

Adventure Hooks: 

After rescuing a waylaid caravan of holyfolk out in the hinterlands, the party arrives in a village just in time to interupt a group of villagers being burned alive in their home by a priest and his mob. Though there is no secular law against worshiping other gods in the kingdom, the church takes folk worshiping both the new and ancesteral ways as the greatest affront. Now the party must decide between preserving their in with the church and doing the right thing and saving the townsfolk from a mob that could just as easily turn on them.  

The party is called together by noble allies who have become aware of a grim secret. The young heir to the throne of Volskolt has been kidnapped while hunting near the Rimebough forest. Some ready themselves for ransom, while others cultists are behind the dead, others are worried that political dissidents are behind these actions and expect him to be used against the royal family some time soon. All that matters now is that the boy be returned home unharmed, a deed that will require the party to brave the harshest wilderness, but will see them royally rewarded. 

While everything else is happening, a normally sedate clan of giants have decided to start marauding down into civilized lands.  Is this mere chance? A plot by a faction of the Rimebough rebels? or do these giants answer the call of something even more ancient? 

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Cursed Jewelry! Remember, canonically Identify doesn’t pick up curses, so have fun tricking your players into getting cursed. <3