Livestream Tonight!

Live Streaming tonight at 9pm est! I decided to ditch map making, which I'm not very good at, and instead work on preparing a small adventure in Syl! Then at 10pm I'm going to turn Baldur's Gate on and die. Over and over and over again!

Join me here!

https://twitch.tv/mutebanshee

Oh, and, uh, here's a token I made for the Blue Dragon Fera I posted about yesterday. Her art is from a Magic the Gathering card.

Tame Your Dragon

My Paladin learned Find Steed, and because she worships Tiamat, I was all like that steed should probably be a dragon. So, in the name over over balanced decisions being okay, I put this adorable thing together.

In other news, catch my stream tomorrow at 9pm est. For the first hour I'm going to be doing productive Dungeon Mastering stuff, either some map making or adventure development. Then, for the second hour, I'm going to turn Baldur's Gate on for the first time in almost fifteen years. I'm going to crank the difficulty up to the hardest, and see how terrible it goes.

Sunday May 3rd Twitch Stream

So... Baldur's Gate is a thing I guess.

This is actually my official stream announcement for Sunday! I'll be starting at 9pm est. First I'll be doing an hour or so of productive Dungeon Master Stuff. I'm thinking about doing some map making for the world I'm developing. Let's find out what outside forces are intruding on The City of Steam!

But after the stream I'm going to take a jump into this gem. Full disclosure, I haven't played Baldur's Gate since I was maybe fourteen. I didn't like it then, and I don't really expect to like it now.

In fact, I think I might hate it. But I'm going to make the stupid game as hard as humanly possible, and torture myself with it.

And who knows, maybe I'll end up having a blast. I know most people do.

So, until then, I'll see you at my twitch channel!

Bahumat and Tiamat: The Siblings of Destruction

One of my characters in Curse of Strahd is a Paladin who worships Tiamat. But the Dragon Queen has only ever revealed herself to the paladin as a woman clad in holy light, preaching love and peace. It's a trick of course, but the Paladin is still coming to terms with the reality of who she worships.

When she asked an NPC if Tiamat was evil, she was given this story.

I'm rather proud of it.

"The way the dragons tell it, before there was anything, there was Io. He contained all the dragons of existence within himself. But like all creatures who are alone, Io was also filled with loneliness. He yearned for companions, and in that yearning everything was turned to ruination."

This was before time existed. So Io felt that yearning for eternities on end, and for no time at all.

But at some point, the tragedy of a solitary existence consumed him. And in that moment, Io burst into a thousand, thousand dragons.

Most of those dragons were weak when considered on a cosmic scale. They fell to the material worlds like stars, crashing into sea and mountain, carving valleys, lakes, and craters with their impact. But there were eleven dragons who did not fall, but instead rose to great prominence.

Now is not the time for nine of their stories. We shall consider only two, for it is they who have shaped the history of existence the most. They are brother and sister, at once the same and different, and their story is dreaded among mortals of all worlds.
These are the dragons Bahumat and Tiamat.

Both of the dragons consider themselves to the among the most powerful and most wise of all the beings numbered in the books of fate. Both believe that they should be the ones to rule, and through that ruling, bring perfection to the cosmos.

But what does perfection look like? 

It is different for both of them, as it is different in many of our own views as well.
Bahumat believes in the strengths of wisdom and justice. He believes that all actions should be considered carefully, all words measured before spoken. His word is law, and because he is the wisest and most just of all the dragons, all should listen to his law.

Bahumat has a deep love for those that follow him.

But woe to those who betray him.

Tiamat on the other hand...

Well, Tiamat believes that power is a thing to be taken. A world guided by pure law never changes, it never grows, it stops being alive. Why should a being who would bring the end to all things rule the cosmos?

No. It should be the strongest and most powerful who rules.

And that happens to be Tiamat herself.

Tiamat encourages her followers to take what they want. If power is within their grasp, they should cling to it. Even if it means stepping over the bodies and souls of their loved ones. Because the moment power is relinquished is the moment weakness disproves the right to rule.

These philosophies... well, we all believe in different things. For most of us, those beliefs don't have cosmic consequences. But for Tiamat and Bahumat...

Well, their influence spans world. Their followers are often fanatical. And both of them crave to see the other destroyed, and through that destruction prove that their view of the cosmos is the right one.

Most dragons on the material planes swore themselves to one or the other. And as they did, the first dragons scales turned to a single color. For Io contained all dragons inside himself, and until this great split, all dragons had scales like the rainbow.
But now they were divided. Blue and red, gold and silver, colors of all the rainbow.
And in that division came great wars. Wars that destroyed cities, civilizations, even worlds.

The NPC looked at my Paladin and said, "so you tell me, Cyrus of Tiamat. What is good and what is evil in all the destruction?"

Confused World: Syl, The City of Steam

Yesterday I had my first even livestream, where I spent some time going over the brainstorming steps of a brand new world. You can find a link to the recording below, but I also wanted to share a more finished product with everyone.

Here is a link to the story and description of Syl, The City of Steam. It's almost ready to be dropped into any campaign, all it really needs is a good improv sheet!

Live Stream Tonight 9pm est!!!

So this is a thing I do now! Apparently. Join me for my first ever live stream event tonight at 9 pm est! I'm going to start building an entirely new world so people can see my process and hopefully learn a thing or two while watching. I'll also be monitoring the chat (when I remember), and taking suggestions. So it might be a bit of a loose collaboration as well.

This is my first ever live stream... so be kind. Now, here's a pitch to lure you in.

Imagine a world where magic isn't just a force to be manipulated. Spells are another race, as real as humans and dwarves. However, spells can be bound in books of magic, their power available to any who can speak the words. Or instead, they can be bound to a single mage, providing that mage immense power.

How does that work out? What are the moral ramifications of being a wizard in such a world? Where do the spells come from in the first place? All that and more tonight at 9!

The Hiatus

Sorry for the long hiatus everyone. Probably no one super cares. But the reason is that I've been thinking a lot about this whole blog thing.

When I started this whole blog project with Sam, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I spammed my blog with posts about everything. I knew that when I look at my DMing style, the thing I'm most proud of is my ability to improv.

But this project got... bigger than I ever thought it would. Not in the sense of having more followers, but in the scope of what I want to do with it. I started a podcast with Sam. I started looking into self publishing, and reading blogs that don't just talk about stories, but also provide real content, and I sort of think that if I'm really going to do this blog thing long term, I would really like to provide useful content. Like, concrete things that a person can take away from my blog and use in their next game.

I'm still not sure what shape that takes though. I can come up with unique monster statistics so DMs can use them in their own material. I can come up with simple drop in settings, or lists of quirky NPCs. And those things are fun, but they don't really add to the concept of the blog.

I wanted this to be a platform to teach better improv as a dungeon master. But I'm not sure what concrete tools look like. The only real idea I have is putting together short dungeons with an improv presentation - something I think that most modules would really benefit from.

I also think that I might start live streaming at some point. I have this idea that I could live stream some world building... show people my approach to developing completely new settings, and what falls out of that. And that might be fun... but again, I don't know that it's entirely useful.

For now, I just want to say that this blog isn't forgotten. I'm just in flux while I try to figure out what to do with it. In the meantime, you should totally check out my Podcast, Banshee and Skullboy. You can find a link to the sidebar on the right.

Confused Monsters: The Death Clown

The Death Clown, a being of hideous evil, driven mad by the mix of torture and Stockholm Syndrome, part Joker and part Freddy... and they are the secret police in the hopeful town of Vallaki.

You see, in Vallaki, the only thing that keeps Strahd's forces at bay is the happiness in the commoner's hearts. And the Baron has embraced that, magnifying it to degrees which bear little resemblance to a form of sane leadership. There are festivals every week, people are required to smile in public at all times, fighting in the streets is prohibited. Those that do not - or cannot - keep to these laws are branded Subversive Depressents, and executed during festivals.

On almost every corner in Vallaki, a mime performs all day and all night. The mimes act as spies and informers. Their eyes see everything, and common people slip them notes when the suspect friends, families, or enemies might be Depressents. But the mimes are mostly harmless, at least in a physical confrontation. They aren't trained in the martial arts, they aren't going to stand against a team of adventurers set on overthrowing the twisted government.

No, that honor goes to the Death Clowns. They are only seen just before an arrest. They suddenly appear out of thick crowds as their iconic music plays in the background - summoned with a snap of the finger. Commoners flee at the sound of the song, and tales of Death Clown sightings are spoken in hushed whispers, but only in the safety of home and hearth.

And although the Death Clowns do have some powerful martial abilities, their true power comes from the ability to force status conditions on their enemies, paralyzing them with spasms of panicked laughter that cannot be contained.

The Advantage of Friends

I do a lot of game preparation. It's not usually about finding maps, and coming up with monster statistics. It's not usually about trying to predict my player's every move and plan carefully detailed plots. Most of the time I'm thinking about character motivations and interactions, feeling out how my players interactions have changed the web formed by conflicting NPCs that want different things.

Most of the time it's preparing to improv.

However, every once in awhile I come to a place that I know needs a specific scene. The Trials of Mind, Might, and Heart was a scene like that. Preparing a dungeon when you know your players are about to come across it is like that. And my next session is like that too. A lot of things have been building in the background, and tonight it's all coming to a head.

I wanted to be ready, to have a set of iconic scenes prepared and ready to go.

But I was struggling. Like, really struggling. I had a vague idea of how the scenes might play out, but every time I tried to grab hold of one, the idea floated out of reach.

So I called a friend. And she helped me prepare, and now I am feeling super prepared.

Which is the advantage of having a friend that isn't in your game to talk to. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation that just isn't clicking in your head for some reason. You know that there's something good beneath the surface, but when you try to dig it out of the sand, all you find is more sand.

Having a friend to bounce ideas off of can help you find the sweet pearl of player despair under all the dirt.

Your friend doesn't even have to be a dungeon master, although I do find that other DMs can have some very clever insights about things going on in a game. But all you really need is someone that is willing to listen to your ideas, someone to help you brainstorm, and someone who will help shape the urge you feel as a dungeon master to complicate character's lives.

So find a friend and try it some time. I highly recommend it.