D&D General Let's Share Our Alternate Lore

[Lanefan]

@GnomeWorks - that's a cool document!

The only thing I found confusing is that under "character alignment" on page 1 it states you have advantage on saves (among other benefits) vs your beam's opposites, but there's no clear diagram or list* that shows which beams are opposed to which. The coloured list to the left also doesn't specify which beams oppose which.

There's some guidance in the "Other Beams" section of each write-up, but even there it only says which beams are friendly to the one being written up and doesn't state whether those not mentioned are neutral to that beam or opposed to it.

* - or if there is a list it's buried deep enough in the text that I didn't see it.

 

[GnomeWorks]

The only thing I found confusing is that under "character alignment" on page 1 it states you have advantage on saves (among other benefits) vs your beam's opposites, but there's no clear diagram or list* that shows which beams are opposed to which. The coloured list to the left also doesn't specify which beams oppose which.

That... is a suprisingly good point. I'm not sure how I managed to write out all that and not mention how and which beams oppose one another.

I'll address that in the next editing pass, thanks.

 

[VelvetViolet]

I like to take inspiration from pre-D&D and non-D&D sources when reimagining monsters. Sometimes I like to mix stuff together from a variety of sources.

For example, I decided to reinvent the illithid-githyanki war using other monsters instead. The illithids I replaced with a combination of inspirations from Slavelords of Cydonia, Dreamscarred Press’ psionics, Call of Cthulhu, Frictional Games’ SOMA, etc. These became the Cult of Cthulhu, a generic mix of seafood monsters, brain parasites, fish people cultists, and hybrids thereof. The githyanki I replaced with dark elves, who I syncretized with inspirations including Everquest, Raging Heroes, Glorantha, WarCraft, Warhammer 40k, Monte Cook, Tolkien, etc. The dark elves were originally normal elves, who are a dryad-like race that shares their soul across animal and plant symbiotes. Then a fire war devastated their race, and the mutilated survivors became the dark elves by using a combination of migrating to the shadowfell, hunting/eating demons, developing psionics, chaositech/biotech, generally mutating, pacting a Tiamat/Ungoliant-expy, etc. Their travels brought them into contact with the Cthulhoids, who they naturally started a war with in order to steal Cthulhoid chaositech/biotech and resist enslavement. Oh, and the dark elves ride dragon-spiders into battle.

The idea is very embryonic right now, but someday I’d like to write short stories or something.

 

[Fenris-77]

Then a fire war devastated their race, and the mutilated survivors became the dark elves by using a combination of migrating to the shadowfell, hunting/eating demons, developing psionics, chaositech/biotech, generally mutating, pacting a Tiamat/Ungoliant-expy, etc. Their travels brought them into contact with the Cthulhoids, who they naturally started a war with in order to steal Cthulhoid chaositech/biotech and resist enslavement. Oh, and the dark elves ride dragon-spiders into battle.

That's ... quite a combination. Just wearing black and going a little emo for a while wasn't going to cut it, eh?

 

[VelvetViolet]

That's ... quite a combination. Just wearing black and going a little emo for a while wasn't going to cut it, eh?

I guess not.

 

[Bohandas]

My favoritte homebrew entities are what I call the "Nowheres." The hang out in the temporal realm (in this campaign every thing has a temporal strand, similar to its soul, that can be perceived and manipulate from the temporal realm, one can imagine that you can see everyones silver chord from this realm and some creatures, the Nowheres, manipulate these strands which directly affects which objects interact with which....

If two objects temporal stands cross or intersect that JUST MEANS that thos eobjects causally interacted with one another in a substantive way (what counts as substantive is for the philosophers of the world to figure out, but one can imagine that these temporal strands are quite literally bunched together in intricate ways and its the Nowheres task to move these strands around... They seem to be singularlyl and mindlessly and endlessly moving these strands about in some seeminlgy random way..

They are the size of galaxies, nay universes themselves... being somewhat of an inverse to the Astral plane, the temporal plane is a 'space of no spaces' where spatial dimensions seem to be altogether and essentially different than any other plane of existences..... The Nowheres resemble beholders in the sense that their body just is a massive 360-degree-seeing eye encased in a transparent diamond like skin/flesh with untold numbers of transparent arms stretched out constantly moving objects temporal strands about....

Noweheres have no temp[oral strand, i.e. soul... They only stop from their mission to destroy anyone or anything that succeeds or even merly forms an intention to change in any way any temporal strand (that is if that ebing actually succeeds at entering the temporal plane whreby their consiousness necessarily and inevitabl;y becomes apparent to the Nowheres (no tricking these things if you goto the temporal plane with even an intention to change time you will be attacked by one of the most dominant beings in existence..... Some say they are gods of fate or scions of fate..

They sound a bit like the sidereal exalted from Exalted but with a bit of the Monitors from DC Comics and the Kelvans from Star Trek thrown in

 

[Dormammu]

My favorite personal conceit is that magic enchantment only works a single way: an item can be enchanted with qualities but not any great deal of power. The power of the item grows over time. There are no exceptions to this rule in my metaphysics.

Thus, magic items become valued antiques and artifacts. A +3 weapon is hundreds of years old and can be identified by its style in much the same way real world antiques are appraised. All magic items have runes, so finding a runed item immediately sets the hopeful mind racing: did I find a magical relic or a simple forgery?

I like it as a unique setting element, but I also like that it prevents many elements of magic items I don’t like: players can’t really make anything more powerful than a potion or scroll, items aren’t bought and sold as simple commodities but instead become prized and irreplaceable items. A lord’s power might rest on the fact that their personal guard have magical items.

Seeking them out as treasure hunters suddenly makes more sense, as lost items out in the world could be the gateway to wealth and power. It makes so much of RPG magic item interaction more interesting and plausible (for me).

 

[Coroc]

It is fairly common for us GMs in the process of our adventure creation and world building to incorporate alternate lore for existing D&D elements -- creatures, races, classes, items, spells and on and on.

What cool alternate lore do you have for things in your campaign? Why? How did it come about? Is it just for one setting or basically any time you run D&D? Is creating alternate lore common for you, or rare?

For my part, I like to mess with the origins of monsters. Ogres, for example, are usually the bastard children of hags and noblemen who traded their seed to the hag for some boon or spell or whatever. Sometimes the ogre comes for his inheritance when the nobleman dies. Sometimes the nobleman decides to hunt down the monster (using the PCs) and the PCs find themselves in a weird moral position. I am sure I read it in some novel, myth or other game at some point and did not create it myself, but I just like the way it gives inherent backstory to a standard dumb monster.

If some player wanted to play a tiefling in my greyhawk campaign (no one actually did chose to) it would have been mandatory that he is of devlish (lawful) origin, because that would give him additional reason to oppose Iuz (who is a demon/chaotic).

Also I do not use the elven or dwarven, gnomish or Halfling pantheon, elves usually worship Ellonah dwarves and gnomes worship Ulaa. That simplifies things.
Orcs worship Iuz, although they once worshipped Gruumsh.

 

[Coroc]

Elves are formless things of mist and emphemera who seek to drain the mortal ‘substance’ from humanoid victims and form it in to new physical bodies which they are able to infuse themselves into.

Goblins are all amphibians, originally semi aquatic swamp dwellers they have adapted to thrive in urban sewers

Trolls are male Hags.

Gnomes have clans of around 101 in which there will be one breeding female Matriarch and 1 - 4 senior males. The other gnomes in the clan are all the children of the breeding Matriarch. They also have no definite gender and can remain in this juvenile state until maturity is triggered by the death of the Matriarch And which point a new female will develop and part of the clan will break off and take her to find a new burrow (and new mates). Gnomes also have a habit of using woad to dye their skins blue

Does the matriarch have a beard, like most dwarven women?

 

[VelvetViolet]

Here are some more lores from my mind palace:

I watched Tensei Slime and got inspired to have monsters "evolve" into other monsters like Pokemon. For example: rot grub > carrion crawler > carrion moth > carrion dragon, or tenebrous worm > gloomwing > shadow dragon.

I like to expand on the aboleth with numerous variants including parasites, hybrids, and slave races.