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The Caucasus Mountains have caught my attention recently, and I’m incorporating what I learn about the region into “the Ariak” (name subject to change) in my setting.

This came from a long conversation, so can’t exactly give the prompt in a way that’s useful.

I think about it as three questions: 1) What needs doing in this setting? People organize to solve (perceived) problems. 2) What are the channels through which they can organize? They can’t tackle the problem if they don’t have a way to pool their resources. 3) How badly can they screw it up...

As obviously game-y as it might be, the best answer that comes to my head is that different power ranges congregate in different regions. Maybe the higher level beings have an agreement to keep lower-level beings in undisturbed “nature preserves”, and anyone who breaks that agreement will soon...

Another twig blight fan here. I also used The Wretched/Wretched Sorrowsworn a fair bit. While I haven’t done this in any game I’ve run yet, I could use manes as well, there’s nothings stopping them from being a staple of a level 1 quest. Lemures, on the other hand, seem a little too weak even...

How does he define an “NPC”? The skeleton who gets smashed to pieces in the first turn it appears is still technically an non player character.

I don’t have a clear line between gods and the Outsider spirits like celestials, fiends, modrons, and so on. In general, most outsiders need a “body” of some sort to act in the mortal world, be it a magically created one, a creature or object they possess, or a least an ethereal locus of power...

Along with all the reasons already given, it helps keep the setting from feeling too nihilistic.

The designs of the extraplanar outsiders is too naturalistic. Why does a being made out the the good-evil-lawful-chaotic energy built up in a person’s soul look like it can be (by D&D mortal species standards) my cousin? (Actually with tieflings and aasimar running around they could be).

This list gives a good rundown: Wikipedia: List of D&D Rulebooks.

I can go either way depending on the moods. That said, even in a comedic game I at prefer it at least the main villain is legitimately threatening.

I picked monstrosities, and by monstrosities I mean sorrowsworn, because Wizards didn’t want to make a Shadowfell entity category for some reason. I think sorrowsworn are well suited for having a lot of customization options. As embodiments of abject misery, there’s a lot more than five forms...

Pyromancers Blessed of Parakaros, the Eyes in the Flame, pyromancers have the fire of the phoenixes flowing through their veins. A flame both destructive and restorative, the use of phoenix fire has one caveat: everything that is burned up must one day be remade. The smoke and ash of anything...

Arcane is magic that’s a “brute fact” or “accident”, or at least can be treated as such easily enough. It doesn’t have an obvious telos, as in a purpose or goal for its existence. Wizards might get philosophical about the arcane and try to discover if there is a purpose for it, but they don’t...

I’ve kind of soured on big species lists, so my latest setting is very humanocentric. The species are as follows: Humans. Cavernborn, humans who are adapted to the Underdark equivalent. Elarin, natives to the same, they’re like a mix of dark elf and grey alien. Aetherials, basically like planar...

FAITH: The Unholy Trilogy Avernum and Spiderweb games in general A few Clark Ashton Smith stories I’m sure there’s more.

Maybe…? In my latest campaign one of the first encounters my players ran into was a shadow. I had implemented some house rules for conditions where ghostly creatures lose their resistance/immunity to mundane weapons (such as being in light for the shadow), but even then killing ghosts hardly...

One of my players’ character was a GOO warlock, but no body caught on. Even if they did, they situation was dire enough that the people he was interacting with would probably give him a pass as long as he was helping them. That’s the state of my setting really. In more peaceful times people...