Recent content by zakael19

I generally dont really care about the backdrop of gods in a setting apart from what is relevant to the characters, and any themes that might help with using their agents or goals within play. Having a fairly concise pantheon that's got a reason to be somewhat distant is Good for Play imo. The...

"Through the ashen skies of Creation Primordial, the gods came from beyond the ether, new and formless. Looking on this roiling realm, they saw potential for great beauty, great strength, and the chance to learn their own place in creation."

To respond to OP in a wider scale, again as somebody who has watched/listened to (0) CR episodes: Explorer's Guide to Wildemont specifically as one of the few published WOTC campaign settings for 5e does the following I really like: It's "new." The only pre-existing lore is what you see from...

My personal gold standard for Factional play is of course Blades in the Dark. When I've been building setting type stuff for any other games, I find myself trying to actively mirror that format. In a more traditional format, the way that the 4e Neverwinter Campaign Setting operationalizes a...

Right! That's the city in Call of the Netherdeep that had a gazetteer and hooks that were more interesting than the actual campaign plot, lol.

Yup, gold standard IMO.

4e Neverwinter Campaign Setting. A really great focused and actionable book with inherent player goals, really cool ideas, and a bunch of FR’s best villains in one area.

We've got a couple pieces of art from a water color artist who pumps out incredible sketches into filled art (smaller scale) in an absurdly short time. Professional artists really are on a whole 'nother level. _______________ D&D art has been trending towards mostly "high heroic fantasy"...

I ran my first one last Sunday and we kinda eased into it but got the hang going pretty quickly. I did have to double/triple read some of the stuff in the full chapter and still missed a little! A couple things I did: Reminded the players they can just ask what somebody wants and if it's not...

Having HP, armor, and Stress to levy as a consequence on rolls & combat actions has been so satisfying on the GM side especially designing environments and adversaries. I’m sure it’s even more so when putting an entire domain / class together.

The only reason I have any attachment to FR is because of my childhood nostalgia for BG 1 & 2, and the 4e Neverwinter Campaign Setting is one of the most actionable "run a campaign" books I've seen. Without that and WOTC pushing it in our faces thanks to decades of similar nostalgia, I wouldn't...

Poking around in my mind at the idea of hacking Daggerheart into a WH40k thing (no I'm not playing Rogue Trader right this moment why do you ask). This would be a much bigger job then the Frames+ things I've been doing so far, which have just a bit of mechanics layered over the base game but...

The city gazetted in there is excellent. We set the campaign aside (it’s “get and complete a faction hook and then have 7 days to do???” Was silly) to do a player-led adventure off themes in there and it worked really well. Wildmount is a really good setting book within 5.2014’s pub period, as...

Yeah, like if the only criteria is "I don't want to have to deal with combat as my character" vs "no combat in the system" then like, a Blades in the Dark Spider or such would work. For the latter, The One Ring as hobbits? The system includes combat rules and assumptions, but you could easily...

Any forged in the dark game. Combat isn’t its own “thing,” but you can escalate to violence (or have violence as a consequence of your actions) that often resolves in a fictional framing and single dice roll. Wanderhome is a game that explicitly contains no violence, apart from one of the most...