These ideas suck

I'm depressed.

It's hard to say that, even after what has happened.

Two times I was hospitalized because I took too many pills. There wasn't a reason. Not a good one. The first time I was staring down the barrell of this college I hated, wracked with social anxiety, eating myself into oblivion. I gained 50 pounds in 18 weeks.

I was a fucking wreck.

The second time was last year. I was getting on this strong medicine for some medical issue and the doctor asked, "do you have serious dealings with depression?"

That's a weird question to ask. So I said no. I think it would have made sense to say, "one of the side effects of this pill is suicidal thoughts". But no. And I was dumb. I am dumb.

I'm saying all of this because it can be hard to know when something is disposable or not, when it comes to my own ideas/art. I feel in a slump right now and I canned three of my own projects.

Shark Island
Buckner's Place
Buckner's Dream

I'm going to tell you about them and see what I want to keep from each, if anything.

By Artem Chebokha

Shark Island

Kirska, the giant, fled from the world and made this place. She had a piece of Atom and locked it away, chaining herself to the door so it could never escape. Her brother (Gone) was beheaded and has been slowly dying for several thousand years. She keeps the head on the island but can never go see it, because of the door.

Gone's brain bleeds mermaids (half woman, half shark). (this is something I didn't know until now) And they spill out of the wound on his scalp and into the Sea around the island. When other people come, these mermaids turn into sharks and hunt them. It's said that each person on the island has a shark...and if you kill it, you will find something you've lost inside of its gut.

So the idea is that you ONLY come here if you have lost something and need to get it back.

Let's see if there's still something here--

• Kirska's Sharks - "He has his sharks. Kirska has us."
• There are these barbarians that give the players a map and tell them each challenge so the players know what they're getting into. They must complete 3 to get Kirska's Boon. 
• There's a skull that you can draw on, and it will answer your drawing with another. So pictionary, kinda. 
• There's a rock that you must write your name on. You then experience the deaths of all of your ancestors. Roll a dice to see if you get past this vision. If you fail you gain a gnarled scar. Either way, it's up to the player to describe what they see. They then get tattooed by Kirska's Sharks.

• There's a rock with 3 colored mushrooms on it. Past, present, future. Each one has a roll table. So a skill check leads you to having to do another thing and gaining a possible benefit. Example:

BLUE - FUTURE
You are brought face to face with the future version of you, from an indeterminate number of years ahead. Roll a flat d20 and consult the chart.
1-8 - You see your corpse in a shallow grave, in flood plain. The water is coming. You can say one thing before it collapses on you. Awaken coughing up water and soaked. 
9-10 - It’s your funeral. There’s some people there. The other party members. You can ask one of them a single question. The coffin is a closed casket. 
11-13 - You’re on your dying breath. You can ask yourself one question, but they can only answer in three written words. 
14-16 - You’re so close to your goal. There’s some hope in your eyes. You can ask yourself 1 question.
17-19 - You’ve been able to retire but are poor and live in squalor. You can ask yourself 2 questions.
20 - You’ve fulfilled your goal and can ask yourself 3 questions.

• Then Atom's Eye is a beholder. If you defeat it you get to put his eye in your socket. 

AFTER ALL OF THAT - I like the story of the giants, but everything else is kinda useless. The pictionary skull would be fun.

By Jon Juarez

BUCKNER'S PLACE & BUCKNER'S DREAM

So the idea for these places is that one is the multi-dimensional house of a giant and the other is the everlasting dream of that giant within the house.

• I was inspired by Howl's Moving Castle for Buckner's Place, but it's nowhere near as interesting as that. You can hang paintings on the walls and go into them, and these paintings would be unlocked after meeting requirements (Super Mario 64). 
• There's a bedroom with a bed for each person who has ever been in Buckner's Place. It says MIA, KIA, or LIVING over each one. There are 6 people missing when you enter and they would be sprinkled throughout the paintings.
• There's an infirmary where injured people would show up occassionaly to give plot hooks. 
• A garden locked by a petrified statue (DS2), a library to let people research, a tower with a dragon guarding it, a dark room for artists, and the Soul Shaper. Basically it brings you back to life. Each time you come back you roll on this table, and the counter clicks up by 1. When the counter reaches certain numbers, it triggers certain events. When it reaches 10, someone comes to take one of you away permanently and add another KIA to the bedroom. 
• I don't even like all of the entries on the resurrection table. 
• I don't like any of it. The idea of a hubworld is really cool and interesting to me. But this is not it. It's scrapped. Forever.

BUCKNER'S DREAM

I don't like any of it.

Except Trauma--

An elongated, monster mask with twisting antelope horns. If you put it on, you take on a beast form.

Beast Form

• You can only take damage from attacks that are suitably large: powerful spells, explosives, large groups of attackers
• Your attacks are suitably large: can damage structures with ease, roll d20’s for damage against individual targets
• You have 6 arms for grabbing and climbing and crushing. 
• After 10 minutes, or when you run out of health, you revert back to your normal form and you gain a Trauma. A Trauma is personal to you, or what you’ve done in your beast form. Erase one of your personality traits and replace it with a Trauma.
• When you have 3 Trauma, you become a beast for good.

Everything else can go.

Okay, so, looking at it now, I feel good that I scrapped these ideas. They aren't going to help me. They're all just other people's ideas.

Toonworld

I made this cleric domain because I couldn't stop thinking about it. 

Toonworld Domain for Clerics

Cleric Spells
1 - Unseen Servant, Feather Fall
3 - Tiny Hut, Spirit Guardians
5 - Telepathic Bond, Arcane Hand
7 - Reverse Gravity, Simulacrum
9 - Gate, Time Stop

Toon Legacy
At first level you gain proficiency in the persuasion skill, and you gain the arcane cantrips Mage Hand and Message.

Mage Hand - acts as a cartoonish white glove that floats off of your hand and can go invisible.
Message - acts as a word bubble that appears above your head.

Channel Divinity: buh-bye
Starting at 2nd level, as an action, you become 2-D. You can't attack (cause you're flat), but attacks against you have disadvantage, and you're flat...there's a lot you can do with that.

6th Level Ability
An anvil falls from the sky aimed at a target within 30ft of you. This counts as ranged spell attack and deals 1d8 force damage + your wis mod. If the target takes max damage, little birds fly around their head and they are stunned for one round.

8th Level Ability
You have a portable hole that you can throw down 1/day per point of wis mod.

17th Level Ability
1/day per point of wis mod you can draw something of medium size or smaller and it will become real.

Spell Flavor
Unseen Servant - it's your shadow
Feather Fall - umbrella
Tiny Hut - just a normal looking door with nothing behind it
Spirit Guardians - tiny little cartoon version of you and your friends
Telepathic Bond - word bubbles
Arcane Hand - the gloved mage hand grows HUGE
Reverse Gravity - You just jump onto the roof
Simulacrum - you pull the outline off of someone and color it in
Gate - BIG DOOR that you pull out of your pocket
Time Stop - wrist watch that you stop

Horses are Paladins

The reason all knights have horses are two-fold:

1. Horses make travel easier

2. Horses are paladins

A good aligned horse can sniff out evil, and laying a hand on its nose will heal you, cure you of disease. 

An evil aligned horse can judge the just, and harm those who try to tame it. 

A strong horse projects an aura of courage to those around it, giving them the ability to face the most terrifying of foes. 

The divining eyes of a horse can guide a lost soul to safety, or a brave man to the mouth of the dragon's lair. 

All animals are strange and powerful In the Giant's Eye. Creatures from a place before time. Before the sun. 

Horses were always guides and protectors, allying with dogs against the wolves of the waste. Never trusting the cats and their assassin smiles. When the elves came from the woods, it was horses that trusted them first. Some believe this is why most Half-Elves are paladins.

When the humans came from the vents in the ocean, horses stayed away and it wasn't until the dogs bonded with the humans that horses allowed riders and tamers and all that has come since that time. 

There are special horses too. Ones that are hidden and must be found. Ones that require drastic means to tame. But even these are paladins at their core...just ones with varying abilities and powers. 

Additional contributions from u/RexiconJesse , u/famoushippopotamus [+9], u/DwizKhalifa

The Nox Equorum - They can only appear at night, and must be summoned. When riding, you are hidden by magical Darkness. Any Light-based spell cast at least 5th level will force the Nox Equis to be returned to the Plane of Shadow. To find Nox Equorum, you must remain in a lightless place until it appears and you can see its eyes among the black.

Platinumare - A statuesque horse made of reflective silver metal. It has no head, only a gaping, snapping neck. To dream of it brings misfortune in the form of dire financial depletion. Its true form can devour any object it can pull into its gaping neck. To tame it, you must lose a great fortune, making it irretrievable. Only then will Platinumare escape the dream world and enter reality.

Aqua Dementia - This horse is made entirely of water and acts like water. Blades pass through, arrows do nothing. It cannot be saddled or ridden by normal means. Aqua Dementia can only be tamed by striking it with lightning.

Liquid Light - was created as the sun first shown on a pool of water. This horse moves like lightning and warps and bends like water through the tightest spaces. It grants this to its rider as well. This horse is burning hot to the touch but if you climb inside it, it heals you. The only way to catch it is to look into the sun until blind, then your hands will be able to grasp it.

Night Hag - Like Ichabod Crane's nemesis, this horse terrorizes villages, riding the roads and snatching up children and other innocents. To tame Night Hag, you must offer it a gift as precious to you as your own child.

Ageless – A Pegasus that makes you 10 years old when you ride it. To catch and tame Ageless, you must catch it in the past, during the year you were 10

Xuxh'itra - A steed made of pure madness. It is taken, physically, from the mind of a creature dreaming nightmares of the deep. The steed exists as long as the dreamer remains locked asleep in its nightmare. Riding Xuxh'itra can take the rider through the dreamscape, and an attack from its hooves can knock its target into the dreamer's realm of madness. To catch and tame Xuxh’itra, you must venture into the mind of a person in the thralls of a nightmare. There, among the chaos and unknowable abominations, you can attempt to lure Xuxh’itra back to the waking world with you.

Ghost - An ethereal horse that you must be dead to ride. But riding it allows you to interact with the material world. To tame and ride Ghost, you must be dead, but not just undead, you have to be a ghost.

Smoke– A whispy horse of pale-grey. It's mane is tangible smoke. Breathing it in grants you fire eyes, which allow you to see through any fire in a 5 mile radius. You must be burning alive to be able to tame Smoke.

Frenzy – Frenzy is the steed of Lilith, Goddess of night and lust, corruption and darkness. Wild and crazy, frothing at the mouth, Frenzy is only tamable by climbing onto the wild horse and drinking in the billowing smoke of its mane, getting lost in its dark fire. A ride atop Frenzy is at once both ecstatic and destructive.

Trap Dimension of Zygot the Unwise

This is my beginning design notes for a new dimension comprised of (hopefully) 8, session-level traps/encounters/tricks. The goal is to present problems that the party will need to think about and mess with for a while to figure out. Let me know how you would solve some of these problems--

---

This dimension is a series of 9 rooms and nothing more.

What is in this text is all that remains.

Good luck, don’t die.

Invisible Path

The entire dimension is made of invisible paths, walls, and the like. As the DM you can make a map of this place, but that is of little importance. What is important is how your party is going to navigate this? These paths and rooms hover over a limbo-existence. One false step and you fall from the path.

Goblins hide behind invisible panels to shoot at people when they can (so basically, if the party starts crawling and not being clever, they get poked).

Room Setup

The Rooms are set up as follows:

Door - all doors are locked, some of them in interesting ways

Trick - things that can be interacted with, typically with weird effects

Trap - things that can be activated and are typically dangerous

Encounter - things that can be fought or spoken too, NPCs or monsters

Room 1

Door - Unlocked by dispensing a spell-slot into it

Trick - None

Trap - There’s a sigil in the middle of it, indiscernible until you enter the room. Anyone with arcana can make a check to read it. This is a Death Sigil, and after you see it, you will die if you leave sight of it.

Encounter - None

Room 2

Door - everyone must say their "last words" to one another.

Trick - A room of silence where the Players (not the characters) can only communicate through the written word.

Trap -

Encounter - A word puzzle unlocks the path forward. “Spell mississippi with one I (eye).” - they just have to write it with one eye closed. Or all but one eye closed. Or they have to give up an eye.

Room 3

Door - not locked

Trick - Room affects you based on your highest stat.

• STR shrink to half-size
• DEX turn into a BIG BOWLING BALL
• CON become a skeleton
• INT become a huge ogre
• WIS become a child
• CHA become a medusa

Trap - none

Encounter - Must fight YOUR ORIGINAL SELF

Room 4

Door - None.

Trick - None.

Trap - Portcullis splits the party. The walls close in slowly on one side while the other side is ambushed. If the walls are stopped, the other chamber begins to flood.

Encounter - Portcullis side is ambushed by 2d12 goblins

Room 5

Door - Unlocked

Trick - Room is only 30x30', but for every foot you move, you shrink by 50%.

Trap - none

Encounter - none

Room 6

Door - A door will only open if you get it to look away from you

Trick - none

Trap - the floor is 300’ long and made of lava

Encounter - none

Room 7

Door - can only be opened if you give up something you love. Can be a word or a thing. Just ask your players “what do you give up?” This thing is taken to Room 9.

Trick - the room is magically dark. A compliment will light the room up for the next person’s turn.

Trap - none

Encounter - 4 tentacles per party member of inky blackness

Room 8

Door - expend a spell slot to open it

Trick - none

Trap - none

Encounter - Invisible Monster stalks the room. It is indestructible, can walk on walls, and is silent. Door will only unlock if you get the key off the Invisible Monster.

Room 9

The big treasure room! Put the big plot hook here.

In my campaign, the demon ring of Vanity is here. When worn, you can influence people into acting on their vanity. They must roll a charisma check, trying to roll above your charisma score.

---

Here's my blogspot. There's a backlog of some older stuff. I've mainly used it as a place to store some ideas. But that's soon going to change.

If you want to support me, buy Hauntedand tell me if it was useful or not. In the meantime--

Good luck, don't die.

Megadungeon Generators

We're called Dungeon Masters because each one of us is supposed to have a dungeon. This is my attempt at putting together a list of all the generators I plan on employing in mine.

Character Creation
Roll 3d6 in order for stats (until the second level is cleared, then you can roll 3d6 and assign).
Roll d100 for race 
Roll d100 for trinket - Old Guard Gaming
Roll d100 for oddity (for first character only) - Chris
Death and Dismemberment - Zak

While in Town
If the party rests in town (or they're spending too much time there) - Zak
Carousing Rules - Jeff
Where the Hell Have You Been, Flake? - Zak

Not much here because the adventure is in the dungeon. Nothing *too* crazy will happen in town. Rivalries may start here, but they'll end in the dungeon.

Shop Items (start to appear after level 2 is cleared)
All basic items are always available
All animals are available, but most will need to be ordered
Strange Animals - Zak
Generate Hirelings each week of play time
Ophelia Sells 3 potions a week - Arnold
Roll for special war dogs - Zak
Find Familiar - Middenmurk

In the Dungeon
Random Treasure Table - Zak
Hidden NPC Traits - Zak
This'll be a fun NPC - Zak
D1000 Corpses - Zak
Pants Pockets - Jeff
Frostbitten Autogenerators - Zak
Random Treasure Table - Zak
100 Occult Books - Zak


I will be adding to this list as I find more generators to use, these were just the ones I already used but wanted to keep organized.

I'll update below with play reports and other things about the Cathedral.

We're All Goblins

Humans are interesting. WAY more interesting than elves, or dwarves, or whatever whacky ancestry has made its way into your DnD campaign. But the reason doesn't lie in the player's handbook. It lies in the fact that we (as humans) are utterly disgusting.

We. Are. Goblins.

You know when you're feeling hangry and you just go savage on a burger? Goblin.
You know when you don't clean your room for a while and the clothes just pile up to the point that you aren't sure if what you're putting on is clean or dirty? Goblin.
You know when you haven't gotten out of bed all day and your hair isn't cut short so it's greasy and it makes you feel all gross? Goblin.

We all have goblins inside of us and if we slip away from our humanity, the things about us that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, we become goblins.

Little green and blue and yellow cretins with chipped claws and dagger teeth. Emotional beasts weighed down by stress, bills, aging...and student debt.

When you look at someone and think, "how the hell do they have their life so well put together?" You are a goblin looking upon a human.

Some of those humans might tell you to be careful. To watch out for those thoughts and feelings...

But being a goblin isn't so bad.

In fact, it's quite fun.

What does this mean for D&D?

All humans have a goblin form that they have no control over. It can come about in times of great stress, or continued moments of unluck. Here are a few things that might lead to the presence of your goblin form:
Roll three natural 1's in a row
Get downed in every combat for three sessions
Take on a crushing debt for several sessions
Be cursed into your goblin form
Live in squalor for like a week straight
Be in a dungeon for more than two sessions without proper rest/food/water
Slowly lose the will to take care of yourself

What happens?

If you become a goblin mid-session, or between sessions, then the DM controls your character in a very similar sense to Lycanthropy. You awaken in some kind of den, or a darkened room, surrounded by your own primal debauchery. The goblin form is only temporary and seeks to fulfill those urges and desires that are not permitted within society.

Goblin Characters

If you give in to being a goblin, then you will become a goblin. What this means for your character is that you:
change your name
reroll your stats
start at level one
choose a new class
and adventure as "normal"

These same rules apply to those looking to just start off as a goblin. You had a previous life that may come back to haunt you or help you. But it exists back there, somewhere in your new subconscious brain.

Goblin names tend to be actions, noises, smells, or feelings. A goblin might be named Lunge, or Fuck, or Stress, or Cripple. These words often relate to the source of their goblinism.

Fae steal children to turn them into goblins and raise them as their own. While new goblins, like dragons, have a strange fascination with fae. If a goblin meets a fae, it's like the "love at first sight" effect that is shown in movies. The goblin is struck with this otherworldly presence. These sort of bonds are powerful and can also lead to a goblin reverting to their human form or gaining enlightenment, which essentially makes them fae.

With all of this in mind, the current roll-chart for determining your race in my home game is as follows:
1-45 - Human
46-70 - goblin
71-95 - tiefling
96-100 - other

Rival Adventuring Party #1

Interesting Ideas from Machine Learning

So there was This Post that I saw on another dnd subreddit, about this girl who used a bot to create character backstories. And I decided to write down the cool bits and bobbles from all that. Here they are:

• The Crew of the Constant
• she came upon her pouch of sorts of most githzerai
• he was a wizard, and explained that he was in a small town of stars.
• the grandfather was a good wizard and the daughter of the road and defended the city of the underdark
• and his mother had been a rat in the darkness
• order of the exiled in the valley with the gods
• there was the prince of the sun. he was raised by the arcane arts and accepted him to become a fire work
• her parents realized that the sea is a noble elf animal
• he was an important machine and close to the surface
• the wings are a family of death
• violent predator rabbit demons

This sounds like a rival adventuring party. So let's go ahead and meet--

---

The Wings, the crew of the Constant

Individual adventurers made into a family through death and left to man the Sea Machine, known as the Constant. It's an Elf Noble that was chained and restrained into the hull of a ship. They must keep it fed and breathing to stay alive. That is why the ship is known as the Constant, because they must stay in constant motion and maintain constant vigilance.

She Who Has No Name

Has no special abilities, but has a pouch of Gith magic and sorcery. When the pouch is opened, it immediately casts invisibility, shield, and mage hand. She can not control this.

He Who Lost His Name to Time

Born in the astral plane, among many stars. He can harness their power. He is an archer and, at will, can fire an arrow up into the sun to "turn it off". This is magical darkness. The only way he is able to see through it himself is because of his 5 sun-arrows (act as a lightning bolt spell).

Oldman

Defender of the Underdark, daughter of the road. A wizard of unmatched power. He can turn himself into 3 Svirfneblin (use MM statblock). When they drop to 0hp he returns to his normal form.

Mother

A rat, just a normal rat. She can see in magical darkness and her bite is poisoned.

Prince of the Sun

A living fireball spell. He can cast himself, reforming the next round. He can do this 1/day. Other wise he is a knight (use the MM statblock).

Crew

The rest of the ship is run by violent, predator, rabbit demons. They are white furred and red-eyed and can turn into normal bunnies at will. But usually they are a strange human/rabbit/demon hybrid that have 120' movement, immunity to fire, and 3 vicious bite attacks a turn.

---

Where Are They?

The Constant is found on the sea at all times, always moving. The Wings are often out and about, trying to find ways to rid themselves of the burden of their ship. So, how it works is, the party runs into one of the Wings, has an encounter, then will run into two of them together, then three, and this weird "family" keeps building out and revealing all their weird abilities and quirks.

So roll here to see who you run into:

D6	Crew
1.	She
2.	He
3.	Oldman
4.	Mother
5.	Prince of the Sun
6.	Violent Predator Rabbit Demons

---

And here's how they all feel about each other.

LINK TO RELATIONSHIP CHART

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So it's a new year and I've got a lot planned. Firstly is to try and blog every day. To do that, I can't always post on BTS because there are some things this place is not suited for. So if you want to follow those blogs, here's my blogspot. There's a backlog of some older stuff. I've mainly used it as a place to store some ideas. But that's soon going to change.

I reached 300 followers on reddit! Which feels like something. Though I'm not sure what.

I've sold a few books. Self-publishing is still a bitch. Learning how to formate a PDF to print specifications is taking longer than I thought. But I should have TWO books ready to go in a few weeks. That's right. I wrote TWO books. Haunted and Inside the Giant's Eye. Both of them are adventures, both are completely drawn and laid out by me.

If you want to support me, buy Haunted and tell me if it was useful or not. In the meantime--

Good luck, don't die.