A New Sand Giant Culture

Bring a new, unpredictable branch of desert-dwelling giant-kind into your games

You know we love some giants, and maybe you do too. Maybe even your whole table does too! If you want to mix it up and use something that no one has seen, and lives somewhere no giant would live, please meet the desert giant! We created this new culture of giants using our culture creator, which is a great tool to create whatever giants that you want to bring to the game as well.

It's very possible to bring giants into your game that feel like a living part of the world. Join us as we test this theory with the Sand Giant! In Kinship Camp, we dig into creating all the details you need to use them in a game and roleplay any NPC from their community. We create their values, their beliefs, their signature tool and weapon, and the subtle ways they interact with the world. Then we descend to Lamashtu's Breeding Pit to fully bring them into D&D, with a stat block that includes senses and abilities that differentiate them from the existing giants. May we say, we think they kick ass.

Find the stat block here (coming soon), and the culture creator here.

 
 

Roleplay Giants with Culture Creation

Immerse your table with these towering titans

Have you ever struggled to flesh out a society in your games? Or multiple cultures at once? If you're working off of lore, it can be a lot to absorb and figure out how to use. If you are starting from scratch it can feel like becoming a novelist just to run a game. Well, we've wrestled this beast more than a few times, and we've got a system that makes it all much more manageable. In this episode, we're using it to simplify a creature in D&D with some of the oldest and richest lore, with subcultures and innate magic galore.

Giants are some of the biggest, baddest, and most awe-inspiring creatures to include in your games. They've always struck us as having so much potential, but too many times a lack of consideration just ends up with them as big folks with big clubs. In this episode we head over to Kinship Camp to explore how to build a culture for Giants that is simple, yet makes each group feel unique, connected, imposing, and realistic. We start by establishing the core Giant values of intuition, art, cleverness, tradition, bravery, and community. From there, we can just switch out one value for storm, cloud, fire, frost, stone, and hill giants to create six subcultures with a powerful origin and substantial differences. Once we've done that the rest of the details you need come easy, and it's incredibly simple to add a new subculture if you need it. Then we head over to Milly's Shop of Wonders to prove that any creature, even a giant, can drop fun items for any party member to add to their awe-inspiring collections.

Download our culture creator and create your own, but make sure to tell us about it in our Discord!

No Escape from the Shambling Mound

The shambling mound is true terror incarnate if we can avoid botching the delivery.

The lumbering hulk of rotting plant matter known as a Shambling Mound can be so very misused. Usually, it is simply used as a large block of hit-points to chip away at, at worst, it is a TPK waiting to happen. So how do we avoid this?

We take some inspiration from real-life plants like the Sundew, the Corpse Flower, and the Venus Flytrap to make our Shambling Mound something of true natural horror. Mucus, the stink of death and people-eating plants lying in wait all present us opportunities to really envelop our characters, literally!

Making D&D Dragons Immersive III

Learn a system for creating the most epic dragon fights tailored to your party.

Dragons deserve the dramatic and complex fights that keep parties talking about the time they barely escaped alive. How would you go about writing such an encounter? Sounds like art. Could amazing encounters be systematize? Also, the Unbreakable Anthology is awesome... that is all.

Ok, fine... that's not all. It's worth noting that the three steps to creating reliably interesting and dynamic fights all come down to a few major steps.
Know your villain
A villain can easily become a pool of HP to slowly whittle down if you aren’t considering who that villain is. What do they want? What would a dragon do to settle into a place they call home? How do their wants and needs directly conflict with the players?
Build to suit the players and the villain
Building elements into a fight that allows each of the players to play a key pivotal role in the combat helps to not only increase the dynamism of the encounter but also to make your players feel heroic and necessary.
Build encounter stages and triggers
A big dragon combat should have various stages. Like in video games, where the boss changes their difficulty and behavior halfway through a fight. This treats the enemy like they are a living breathing creature that is every bit as smart as the players.

Remember to grab the Unbreakable Anthology here

For Ethan Yen’s Adventures

Making D&D Dragons Immersive II

Figuring out the personality and traits of a dragon needed for amazing role-play.

Dragons are fearsome, dragons are big, but that doesn't inform how they behave. Preparing and knowing the personality traits of your dragon will inform their portrayal and ultimately ensures your grand reveal doesn't fall flat.Taking a look into some of the core traits exhibited by dragons in fiction and breaking down those common behaviors allows us to study how they might behave.

So we look at three traits;

  • greed

  • pride

  • and narcissism

These contribute to a better picture of how a good or evil dragon might show those traits off. Making a more believable dragon, and one easier to role-play, is surprisingly easy when you use our Character Creation tool found in the resources on our website here.

Similar to any player character or NPC, fleshing out their five core traits is all it takes. Even when using you combine these three relatively negative traits, you can still build a good or evil dragon or anything in between. Also in this episode, we dive into more real-world dragon lore by examining the real-world story of Tiamat, the dragon queen!

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Making D&D Dragons Immersive I

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Inject your dragons behavior with the true nature of terrifying creatures.

Dragons have an incredibly vast history, mindbogglingly big. But if we look at the fact that dragons are pretty much an amalgam of all the real animals that have scared humans forever, then we've got something to work with, and draw ever more details from.

The most legendary of the legendary, dragons deserve an incredible moment at the table. In this first episode focusing on these beasts we want to look at their physical behaviors. Let's add some details will let you build tension and suspense, then immerse your table completely in their reveal. In Archives of the Ancients we pull inspiration from three categories of animals that have been a predator to humans throughout our evolution, and could be considered to largely inspire the dragon.

Merciless big cats

Scary ass birds of prey

F***-off nope reptiles

Then in Grandma B's Schoolhouse we look at one of the oldest versions of dragons, the Ouroboros, and discuss its many representations in different cultures like Jörmungandr of Norse Mythology. If you don't have something for your next dragon by the end of this episode, we'll mail you a real dragons tooth.

Fear the Umber Hulk

Don't let this most terrifying foe go undersold. Parties should be horrified!

The Umber Hulk is far more than just a stat block. This humble entry in the massive tome that is the Monster Manual is easy to underestimate. An encounter with this beastie should feel like going mano a mano with the most fearsome people gnasher around and it all comes down to setting the tone and mood.

For far too long the Umber Hulk has been used to whittle down an adventuring parties health... to soften them up for the big bad. This could be the big bad! In the Archives of the Ancients we take inspiration from the horrible methods of creatures from our world, then we put it all through "The Trajectory of Fear" by Ash Law. With this preparation you can slowly and methodically build the tension of an unknown terror stalking the party. We made an encounter with this creature last 3 full D&D sessions, with the party on edge in its hunting grounds.

However if you really want to kick up trouble with an Umber Hulk, always check out The Monsters Know What They're Doing for great combat tactics. https://www.themonstersknow.com/umber-hulk-tactics/


And find "The Trajectory of Fear" by Ash Law here. https://img.fireden.net/tg/image/1453/84/1453840962349.pdf

Then we jump over to Grandma B's Schoolhouse to take inspiration from a stunning piece of ancient history.

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Build Villains to Thrill

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Inspire an Obsession with Defeating Your Big Bads

Presenting an antagonist that your players care about can be maddening. To release your brainchild of a baddie complete with haunting eyes and a tragic tale to your group feels fantastic! Right up until a player asks "Who's this? Are we supposed to kill them? Will this level us up?" Well, we've been there, and that's why we spent time figuring out what we were missing. This episode takes you through our process.

1. Know your heroes

2. Choose your villain archetype

3. Build the Character of your villain

4. Build up to your villain


Take a look at our Patreon for the free resources mentioned in this episode.

Villain Archetypes

Shifty Doppelgangers

Avoid Simple Reveals of These Dynamic Beings

The most satisfying part of using a Doppelganger is that glorious moment where they shapeshift to their true form and everyone at the table gasps, Gary is screaming "Oh, Pelor, Why!?" and Susan slams her first through the table. Well, this only happens when you plant the proper seeds of mystery and intrigue. Join us, and run your next Doppelganger with vigor.

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The Bones of Horror III

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Horrify your Hotshot Heroes

Wanna play a more human hero when terror strikes? We provide concepts for playing out a fear while you are facing down nasty beasts and twisted foes. It’s tricky to decide on a fear sometimes too, so we talk about how to derive them from character values and ideals. There’s also a simple mechanic for deciding when those fears actually influence a characters mind in the episode. All this and more, because everybody gets the goosebumps sometimes.

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The Bones of Horror I

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Simplify your Scary Stories

We take a page from Ash Law, who laid out how to structure horror stories in "The Trajectory of Fear". Build some pressure! Unleash some beasts! The result is a simple table that can help lay out a story in a way that keeps ramping up the tension until the blood in your ears is boiling hot and full of goosebumps, then releases it in a wave of icy spews. You get it. It’s all about the bones… the bones of horror.

Check out our Horror Writing Guide at our Patreon.

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Good Metagaming ft. The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

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Incredible tactical approaches to playing any character or creature.

Our wonderful guest Keith Ammann takes a break from harnessing the true power of monsters to help us. He gives us great ways to consider our own tactics that keep games engaging. It frees up my mental faculties from asking myself "what spell should I use?" to now considering important questions like "how do I best insult this stinky little gob?

Check out Keith's blog The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, then his book Live to Tell the Tale, and his twitter.

Tendrils From Eons Past

Here's a tip: If you walk through any kind of slimy or wet terrain, there's probably an immortal evil Aboleth nearby, and you may as well just lay down and wait for the sweet embrace of mind control, because there's no escape. Good luck!

Out of the slimy depths comes a cruel aberration that cares not for petty mortals and their yearly birth celebrations. The brothers talk about what inspired the mighty Aboleth, and what can further inspire it in your games. They create a tool to help generate creepy hallucinations as it slithers through your brain, and discuss what the big lazy squid would really be like as you approach and wind your way through their sickening lair.

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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.