Creating Conflicting Cultures

Draw the party in by designing an original world they want to be in

Want to work up a corner of your world that feels rich with history, friendships, rivalries, and details that all kinda make sense? Something that makes the party curious, and allows you the space to improv more at the table, while keeping it all connected? That's what we're talking about today, with the help of our culture creator.

It took a while for us to come up with this approach. We've tried using factions and cultures from books as written, but that's a gamble. Either a player picks up the thread, or that whole group fades into the background fast, and you have to scramble to find something they engage with. We've tried creating our own from absolute scratch, which leads to quick and dirty stand-ins for real-world cultures that bring retrospective shame, or endless rabbit holes to try to figure out a thousand details that will never come up.

In The Archives of the Ancients, we look at a few points of historical inspiration, based on some ideas that came up in our first episode of this season, "Session Zero to Story Driven Dungeon Crawl". The conversation covers the grandeur of the baths of Caracalla, the hurried mess that was The Banff Springs Hotel, and the unusual medical history of snails.

In Founders Square, we build out two cultures that occupy the same geographical location using our culture creator. First, we consider the party values. Then we create two sets of opposing values for the two cultures. After peppering in our inspirations, they quickly take on a life of their own.

Culture Creator: Culture Creation Guide

Nudibranch (magic color slug) Image: Nudibranch

Previous Episodes that feature the Culture Creation Guide:

Secrets of the Firbolg

The Modron Mathematical Mayhem

The Modron Metaphysical Motivation

Creating Holidays for Your Homebrew

A Meditation on Elves

Menacing Mind Flayer Culture

Building a Curious Tabaxi Culture

Create Gods and Religions with Ease

As always, huge thanks to our patrons for making this episode a reality.

Inigo the Brave, David P., Adam F., Alex R., Steve A., Sigma, Kuraidoscope, Skyler E., Deadman, Ninja Duckie, PseuArt, Blackthorne, First Law, Peacockdreams, DM Thunderbum, Marley R., Timewarp, Dangerous Marmalade, Zach G., NoMaam, Michelle T., Adlerious, Chris F., The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., DM Natske, Heavyarms, Leprecan, and Will H-P.

Secrets of the Firbolg

Adventure deep into the heart of Firbolg territory, and come out with ideas that will make them more intriguing, surprising, and above all, useful for your games.

The Firbolg represents an archetype that's been around a long time, and is a blast to play—the gentle, nature-loving giant. Like most player options, however, there's a few traps to fall in if we don't consider their potential. Firbolgs are more than just the cultural equivalent of druids. And they can offer so much more than cliches about hippies or becoming the "shaggy" of the group.

We start in Kinship Camp, where we build a culture based on the basics of Firbolgs that we like; they're a selfless offshoot of giant culture. We give them some values and beliefs to build off of then get into the details that will make them useful for our games. We come out with an elusive, territorial community that truly works with the life that surrounds them in creative ways, from multi-purpose fruits to symbiotic relationships. They hold secrets that a group of adventurers might one day seek. In exchange for said secrets, the Firbolg do not seek material trade, only for you to prove that you deserve them.

Then we head to Grandma B's Schoolhouse to learn about the real-world history of the Firbolg people. They were the third group to settle Ireland, according to The Book of Invasions, and had to put up with a lot in order to get their piece of the Ireland pie. We focus on Sreng, a Firbolg champion with some pretty epic lines of legend that could very well inspire your next hero. Who else has slain 150 warriors on his way to fight his enemy's king?

Special thanks to those who joined in our monthly patron discord hangout about this episode, lending their great ideas: Dangerous Marmelade, Leprecan, Mycofish, and No Ma’am

And as always, huge thanks to the support of all of our patrons for making this episode a reality.

NinjaDuckie, Pseu Art, Blackthorne, Firstlaw, Peacockdreams, DM Thunderbum, Marley R., Garr the Pirate, Timewarp, Dangerous Marmalade, Zach G., NoMaam, Michelle T., Adlerious, Chris F., The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W, DM Natske, Heavyarms, Aldrost, Leprecan, and Will H-P.

Metal soundtrack provided by TeknoAXE

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The Modron Mathematical Mayhem

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Run Modron combat that challenges and delights.

So we've got dimension-surfing cyborgs with cultural values, motivations, and personalities. Now we have to plan for inevitability that some frantic adventurer is gonna wanna throw down. But as they're currently presented, we're a little underwhelmed by their combat dynamism. Advanced beings from a plane of law, and they're throwing javelins at us? In this episode, we aim to create encounters with Modrons that engage, confound, and allow for triumphant victories.

In Kinship Camp we start with a recap of what Modrons are currently capable of. Then we discuss all the elements we want to consider before we get to fighting. We talk about their motivation to fight, we reflavor and add abilities to better capture the themes they represent, talk about methodical tactics they might use, and even how their home plane, Mechanus, might offer useful elements for a dynamic fight. Then we put it all together in three stages of an encounter designed to be creatively and logically solved, not beaten over the head with a hammer.

Speaking of logic puzzles, here's a link we promised in the episode to give an idea for how Modrons might test a creatures capacity for law and order. Game: Tchuka Ruma – Do It And How

Thank you to the patrons that joined us on our monthly episode writing hangout that helped with the content in this episode:

DangerousMarmalade, Lyla G., and Leprecan.

And as always, huge thanks to the support of all of our patrons for making this episode a reality.

FirstLaw, Blackthorne, Victoria O., PeacockDreams, DM Thunderbum, Marley R., Garr the Pirate, Timewarp, DangerousMarmalade, Zach G., NoMaam, Michelle T., Alan E., Felix R., Chris F., The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., Ty N., Heavyarms, Erik R., Aldrost, Leprecan, Will H-P.

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The Modron Metaphysical Motivation

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Roleplay Modrons that make more sense.

Modrons capture attention and imagination—bio-mechanical beings from an alien plane, with reality-bending inspirations. But when we start unpacking the lore, we can't figure out how or why to use them, how to roleplay a modron, how they behave, or what they really want. So in this episode, we answer these questions by tweaking the concept while staying true to its roots.

In Kinship Camp we go over the inspiration for these bizarre creatures while adding a bit of our own. This includes Flatland, a short story about god, and ants. Y'know, arguably the strangest creature in our reality. Then we start loading ideas into our culture creator, available here. By the end, we've got a creature with motivations, goals, quirks, how their language could work, and even what they might say.

The Modron voice tool we used can be found here: https://voicegenerator.io/

The online tone generator can be found here: https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/

Thank you to the patrons that joined us on our monthly episode writing hangout that helped with the content in this episode:

DangerousMarmalade, Lyla G., and Leprecan.

And as always, huge thanks to the support of all of our patrons for making this episode a reality.

FirstLaw, Blackthorne, Victoria O., PeacockDreams, DM Thunderbum, Marley R., Garr the Pirate, Timewarp, DangerousMarmalade, Zach G., NoMaam, Michelle T., Alan E., Felix R., Chris F., The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., Ty N., Heavyarms, Erik R., Aldrost, Leprecan, Will H-P.

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Creating Holidays for your Homebrew

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Celebrate holidays in your games for the same reason we celebrate them in real life: when you just need a break from all the action.

Special celebrations can be a great addition to your games. You can use them to flesh out and ground your cultures. You can use them to add to the backstory of a character. You can use them to insert some truly bizarre events that wouldn't otherwise fit. Weirdly, you can even create traditions in your games that your players are excited to come back to! The possibilities are many, and this is why we wanted to cover how to create great holidays quickly.

In The Strategy Stateroom we cover four steps that lead to consistently good holidays:

1. Know the Culture

We've gone into depth on how to create a culture, and every meaningful holiday is deeply rooted in the culture that created it. You can download our one-page culture creator and start from there, but at the very least, think of a couple of values that define the culture you've got in your game to work from.

2. Create the Origin Story

Every holiday has the legend of how it began. It's hard to talk about them without their origin stories.

3. Create a Behavioral Shift

In what way does the entire attitude of those within the culture change leading up to the holiday? In most of Canada, we encourage goodwill leading up to Christmas, and spookiness leading up to Halloween.

4. Create Interactive Traditions

This is what the party can actually do. We cover all kinds of real-world inspirations in the episode, but this is a great opportunity to play through some fun competitions with unique prizes.

Then, in The Temple of Inspired Hands we talk about what we've done with this podcast, and what you can expect in the near future. We're super grateful to be a part of the discord community that has formed around this podcast, and it's a blast to see the ideas that come up in that group. We are taking December off, partly to plan for the next year of this podcast, partly to do real-world holiday stuff, but in the meantime patrons can find a bonus episode of all of our screw-ups over the last year on our Patreon. An outtakes episode. And barring any bad news, we'll be planning to attend Winter Fantasy in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, so if you find yourselves there, come by and say hi!

As always, huge thanks to the support of our patrons for making this episode a reality.

Zach G., Greg Greg, Michelle T., Hentenius, Alan E., Matthew T., Felix R., Chris F., The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., Tyler G., Ty N., Heavyarms, Erik R, Aldrost, Leprecan, and Will H-P.


A Meditation on Elves

Let the traits of an experienced mind come forth in your next elven character.

This episode gets real specific, then real broad. We started with the fact that meditation is unique to elves in the D&D world. and the most we've seen on the subject in our games has been "cool, I have four hours to kill every night while my party sleeps." Well, we wanted to get into what makes the minds of people in the real world that spend a lot of their time meditating unique, and apply that to elves. So we did just that!

In the Kinship Camp, we take inspiration from the book Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body by Daniel Coleman and Richard J. Davidson. In it, they detail out the traits that stem from a regular, long term practice of meditation. In the segment, we get into the traits of interconnectedness, emotional regulation, compassion and focus, and discuss how we can best apply these to the roleplay of our elves, and some details to pepper into their communities. Then, from that core elven concept, we explore how the subcultures of high elf, wood elf and drow can benefit from meditation as well.

As always, huge thanks to the support for making this episode a reality.

Matthew T., Felix R., Chris F., ISeeSpidersWhereThereAreNone, The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., Tyler G., Ty N., Heavyarms, Erik R, Aldrost, Leprecan, and Will H-P.

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Martial Arts and Culture ft. James Mendez Hodes

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Give your worlds and characters combat more depth than ever before by thinking about the stories behind their martial arts.

When creating your character, when was the last time you considered how they learned to fight with any real weight? If you've ever done it, congrats! You got us beat. That's why we've got an incredible guest on today to share how to add an onion's worth of layers to our characters fighting styles. James Mendez Hodes has written, designed, and culturally consulted for a ton of different games, and also has deep personal experience with martial arts and world history. This leaves him super equipped to guide us down the rabbit hole of martial culture in a way nobody else can. Also, he's a senior developer on Avatar: The Last Airbender Roleplaying Game, currently in the middle of a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign.

In The Strategy Stateroom, James Mendez Hodes shares some enlightening points about integrating martial arts more meaningfully. First, getting away from thinking about Monks as the only martial artists. Anyone who fights learned to fight somewhere, and anyone who learned to fight is a martial artist. Then we can dive into a real world martial arts style, whether it be Brazilian capoeira or French canne de combat, and learn about the culture that surrounds it. There's the philosophies that define it, the legendary fighters within it, or how it came to be, all of which can enrich your characters.

Then, in The Heroes Stage we get to know James Mendez Hodes a little better, and get into what he's working on now, Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game. Here's just a sampling of what it brings to the table. The game does an incredible job of guiding players through the character creation process, allowing full creative control over their bending style and even giving the framework for a super quick party history allowing you to jump right in. It also focuses on the emotional weight of conflict in a way that totally respects how the shows handled it, allowing you to emulate the stakes and energy that we're familiar with. There's so much good stuff here, you've got to check it out for yourself.

Follow James Mendez Hodes and his works:

Website and Blog: jamesmendezhodes.com

Twitter: @lulavampiro

Facebook: lula.vampiro

Patreon: patreon.com/mndz

Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game Quickstart Guide

Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game Kickstarter: Ending Sept. 02 2021

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Menacing Mind Flayer Culture

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Give Mind Flayers their true power by investigating how they really think.

These creatures have so much potential as villainous foes. Almost too much! Evil entities from alien realms, hyper intelligent and terrifying in every way. All the detail and lore is great but it can be challenging to portray at the table, and the biggest crime would be to throw these brain suckers at the party like any other stat block. So we're looking at the things we like the most, and considering how we can use that to inform our portrayal of Mind Flayers in our games. This episode will focus more on the culture that defines Mind Flayers as a whole, then our next episode will focus in on how to make them as horrifying as possible.

In Kinship Camp, we start with what we love about Mind Flayers, and a couple general concepts for how we think about their mindset. We get into what their values could be and create some cultural details in the attempt to portray them better.

Then, in Lamashtu's Breeding Pit, we take a look at a creature that they use as an extension of their nefarious schemes, and make it fit our concepts of Mind Flayers a little better. The Intellect Devourer is a really neat minion for Mind Flayers, we just think there's a couple elements that don't make a ton of sense for us. We introduce some ideas that make the Devourer a creepier monster, and have real use for the Mind Flayer.

As always, huge thanks to the support these folks give us on our Patreon.

Felix R., Chris F., ISeeSpidersWhereThereAreNone, The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., Tyler G., Ty N., Heavyarms, Erik R, Aldrost, Leprecan, and Will H-P.

Wonderful Warforged Struggles

Play the most rich and unique character at your table by figuring out what the Warforged offer.

Warforged have some serious potential for incredible storytelling. If we're worried about anything, it's that we won't do them justice. But there's a lot of angles you can take to play a compelling character with solid goals and a satisfying arc if you start with the Warforged, without reading a dozen novels and sourcebooks about Eberron. In this episode, we're going to dive into as many as we can.

In Kinship Camp, we look at all of our favorite aspects of the Warforged, and dissect how that can help us roleplay traits, goals, character arcs, and even interparty dynamics. We draw a lot from classic tropes that are classic for a reason, like "I am not a gun" and "Last of a dying race" to get the most out of them. One of our favorite things to consider is how their sentience works, which leads us to discuss some options we would bring to the table.

Then we head to the Extra Dimensional Gateway where we introduce a very useful Warforged magic item supplement from Walrock Homebrew called Warforged Components. It's a collection of magic items that work really well as things a Warforged incorporates into themselves. We then each choose a couple of our favorite Warforged from movies and TV, giving a quick rundown on what we think their class and magic item would be. We get a little help on Data of Star Trek from our friend The GMTim, who has Star Trek Online and the actual play Star Trek Voyages adventures you can check out at Norse Foundry's Twitch.

As always, huge thanks to the support these folks give us on our Patreon. ISeeSpidersWhereThereAreNone, Sean J., The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., Ty N., Heavyarms, Erik R, Aldrost, Leprecan, and Will H-P.

Building a Curious Tabaxi Culture

Add depth to these agile adventurers.

Give a little thought to where your Tabaxi character hails from, and avoid falling prey to playing a walking cat joke. We've wanted to explore this culture for a while, since it's one that hasn't been deeply explored in the lore. So in this episode, we take inspiration from what does exist, and dive into it a little more.

In Kinship Camp we take Tabaxi through our culture creator, mixing together inspiration from cat behavior, Mesoamerican culture, and a sprinkling of pirate. By the end it feels like a living place filled with Tabaxi willing to hear your tales, enjoy your company, and challenge you to a fantastic game.

Then we head to Griffon Street Market, where we talk about a new tool that makes your life as a DM much easier! Do you have more campaign ideas than prep time? Of course you do! Does your party have a peculiar knack for going that one place you’d least expect? Of course they do! Want over 1400 box texts, from places, monsters, items and spells to drop into your games? dScryb has seasoned writers creating this for your table. One of our favorite bits is that dScryb is a proud community partner of Safer Spaces, a 2S-LGBTQ+ Workplace Training & Inclusion organization. Safer Spaces played a foundational role in forming dScryb’s writing policy.

Check it out at dscryb.com and use the coupon code "hook" to save 10%.

We end up in the Temple of Inspired Hands, where we break share some amazing Kickstarter campaigns that break our normal rules of random tables and talking dice.

First we've got Roll & Play, the Fantasy Character Kit. It's a 168 page book broken up into chapters by character class. It's full of random tables and content generators that can help you if you're a GM or a player to craft detailed characters pretty darn quick and easy. You've got until March 25th, 2021 to get in on the Kickstarter.

Then we've got Pixels Electronic Dice, which hasn't even launched their Kickstarter quite yet, so you've got time. They are great looking dice with customizable LED's inside, that let the numbers light up! Rolling a crit just got a lot more exciting. They're even gonna be compatible with the major online platforms like dndbeyond and roll20, so you can roll real dice and play online!

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Create Gods and Religions with Ease

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All you need for rich religions without the lore spiral.

So you want your world to feel real, and it's time to scheme up some godly goodness. There's two ways we know to screw this up real good. The first is to just forget to do it, and all the sudden you've got a fantasy ripoff of whatever religion you know best in real life. The second is to go way too deep. Reading a 350 page tome cover to cover that goes into a wild fantasy pantheon, then realizing your table did NOT do their homework, and this is gonna take a lot of exposition. Well, following the system in this episode will give you just enough for some incredible roleplay.

It's a lot of fun to create gods and religions for your games, and the process is pretty easy to get you playing. We first hunker down in the Strategy Stateroom where we talk about building a deity, then a religion to go with it. The deity requires a backstory, traits, and a goal, similar to any NPC. Building a solid religion takes figuring out some values, a goal of the followers, the path to get there, allies and opposition. That's it! This gives your characters and your game master so much to work with.

Then we head over to the Extradimensional Gateway to pull some of our favorite people into D&D, turning them into our pantheon of extraordinary deities.

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Thieves' Cant - or Can They?

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Speaking thieves' cant without the language degree.

Ever get tempted by one of the coolest flavor abilities of rogues only to be disappointed when you realize how challenging it is to use at the table? Yes of course, we're talking about thieves' cant.. but where there is a will, there's a way. You can find the supporting content for episode for free on our Patreon.

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Outcast Society I

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Tieflings need some love!

What is life like for Tiefling folks? Some characters aren't as welcome as others, sometimes they need to go underground. In part 1 of the series on Tiefling Government or lack thereof, we look at the structure of how people stay hidden.

How do you build a complex secret organization in your D&D games? Turns out it’s not quite as simple as a big bad and all of their underlings.

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Rules for Rebellious Half-Orcs

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Create some societies of passionate, tough people that can headbutt Dwarves and sucker punch Elves.

Sure, Half-Orcs are outcasts of society, but they are so much more. We take inspiration from some tough groups from the real world to flesh out their views and personalities, theorize the government and laws that groups of Half-Orcs would have to help them survive in a fantasy world, and create a tool that helps out with the physical characteristics of a Half-Orc character.

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Fantasy Folk - Dwarven Government

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There’s no safer place than a Dwarven Stronghold

We all know how good a dwarf is at charging into the fray, but wouldn’t they be good at running the show back home too? The brothers take inspiration from one of the oldest governments in the world, and dive deep into some concepts to bring more depth to these sturdy settlements.

Supporting Content:

Make a proper name for any dwarf with the Dwarven Name Generating Table

Get some epic metal dice from dieharddice.com