Make sure the system you use matches the kind of players you have, for an optimal experience
Admin Note: This is part of the ongoing series called “D&D isn’t the only TTRPG if you don’t want fantasy play another goddamn game!”
I already reblogged this once but this is important:
Like I run a D&D blog. I understand that D&D is the most well-known and popular RPG in the world. But a lot of the time I see people going like “Hey I want to run a D&D campaign and throw out all the D&Disms and here’s all the notes I have for running a campaign about courtly romance and chivalry in a historical setting” and I’m just like STOP YOU DON’T NEED TO RUN THIS USING D&D
There’s a sort of a mistaken assumption that because D&D is the biggest game on the market and that it’s fantasy that it should be the go-to fantasy game but look it’s not D&D isn’t a generic fantasy game it’s a very specific kind of fantasy all of its own, one that steals liberally from swords & sorcery and high fantasy and adds fucking extradimensional cube robots for good measure
So next time you’re thinking about a fantasy campaign in a decidedly non-D&Dish setting consider instead of jamming the square peg that is D&D into a round hole trying to find a system that actually supports what you’re trying to do
And this is not to say that you shouldn’t play D&D: D&D is hella fun. But there’s a lot of genres and styles that D&D does a piss-poor job of doing, and because of that it’s so good we’ve got other games
*cracks knuckles*
All right then. I’ve been meaning to dust off my own D&D sideblog for a while, so here we go with providing some examples. I’m limiting this specifically to other types of fantasy outside of the standard high fantasy and sword & sorcery millieu.
Courtly Romance and Chivalry
There are a number of options for this, and they range from standard secondary world fantasy to more historical and mythological settings. My list here shouldn’t be treated as fully extensive.
Blue Rose - based on the romantic fantasy subgenre, specifically as seen in the works of Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey. A lot of courtly drama and intrigue and swashbuckling, based in a fictional world.
Pendragon - naturally based off of Arthurian mythology, and having a lot of stuff given over to the court of Camelot and the chivalric adventures of the various knights. The same company also has a kickstarter for a spin-off called Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne that might be worth checking out.
Historical Fantasy
This one’s a bit more prominent as historical settings serve as an inspiration for a variety of fantasy worlds and games, and this of course invariably extends to settings that actually use historical settings with a degree of fantasy elements thrown in. Note that I’m going to emphasise Europe here simply due to greater familiarity with games in that millieu, and as a European myself I’m ill-equipped to judge how accurate or respectful games using other settings actually are.
Because of this, feel free to add other examples in reblogs
Chivalry & Sorcery - one of the early tabletop games inspired by D&D, taking a more pseudo-historical approach.
It’s based on 12th century France and strives for a degree of historical accuracy and medieval politics.
World of Darkness, Dark Ages (including Vampire and Mage) - while the World of Darkness has earned some negative attention lately (and for good reason), the dark ages RPGs are still an old favourite of mine. Also worth checking out is Mage: The Sorcerer’s Crusade, set during the Renaissance. The Mage stuff has a really cool open-ended magic system worth checking out.
Ars Magica - this exists along very similar lines to the dark age material above, based around mages and magic-users in a ‘Mythic Europe’ setting. It also has a really cool open-ended magic system, and one of my personal favourites.
Awwww shit heck yes I might want to add to this list but this is a really good starting point
i had a tought that might be better than PWYW. Instead I’m going to be doing $5 30 minutes commissions. For just $5 I’ll do as much as i can in 30 minutes. its also gonna be a great way for me to get some practice
what are your thoughts on twinrova. did they know about the curse of demise or did the curse push them towards being evil tutors for ganondorf?
What Ganon once had wasn’t a curse, it was a possession. He was the literal vessel for Demise, at least he was in my headcanon, but I’m trying to decide on whether or not Demise possessed him all on his own… or if he had devote followers who found the vessel for him.
If the latter, then Twinrova sisters could very well be the two who took Ganondorf away and forcibly made him to be Demise’s vessel as baby all those timelines ago. I can imagine a cult devoted to Demise with Twinrova as their leader, with a foothold in many places in Hyrule, including the political world.
But that had been timelines ago: the same cult is scattered and thought to have been dissolved for the most part in the current timeline, but with the way things will eventually take a turn, that belief will be proven wrong. o3o
So apparently Tumblr ate my original post about this but:
A couple weeks ago I’m going to get lunch and as I open the fridge, my mother attempts to communicate to me that any chicken currently in the fridge is ok for people to eat, because the chicken that was intended for the dog to eat has been used up.
What she actually says is, “That’s human chicken.”
After taking a minute to process all horrible implications of the phrase “human chicken”, I decide to go a different route and hold the tupperware of chicken out to my sister, saying, “Behold, a man!”
This was evidently the wrong choice, as it meant I had to explain to my parents who Diogenes was, thereby cementing the incident in their minds and leading to me, just now, opening the fridge to see the following incredibly cursed image:
This is the funniest post I have ever read on Tumblr for so many…many reasons.
~rEjEcTiOn sENsiTiVE dYsPHoRia~~ more like ADHD and its symptoms come with a level of stigma that is so traumatizing and psychologically damaging it results in its own secondary symptoms but we’re gonna pretend that your non-mood disorder for some reason just happens to have an intrinsic mood component that just happens to be identical to the psychological effects of what just happens to be a type of trauma that people with your disability are incredibly likely to experience lmao!!!
lets rate the undead triforce members
Spirit Zelda; Spirit Tracks
a ghost. Died by having her soul ripped from her body. adorable. Helps out a fuck ton by possessing the phantom knights. granddaughter of the objectively best zelda. 9/10
Resurrected Zelda: Twilight Princess
Technically a zombie. Gave her life to save midna. Was resurrected in full by ganon to steal her triforce which should have been in midna since that was the whole point of her giving up her life. shes basically alive and thats boring. 2/10
Heroes Shade: Twilight Princess
A revenant. Killed during the war that broke out in hyrule after he traveled from the future to warn of the dangers of ganondorf. Died as a knight but not a hero and thus cannot pass on until he makes sure his next incarnation doesnt make the mistakes he did. A boney boy who is pure and i love him. 999/10
Link: BOTW
A twink killed before finishing a job. Technically a zombie who spent a century resurrecting. Docking points because hes basically alive but that doesnt change the fact that hes a little gremlin doing his best. 7/10
Ganondorf: BOTW 2
a shrinkwrapped buff boy. get this man some moisturizer. Presumably died fighting a link at some point and buried under some place until the curse forced him to resurrect. absolutely amazing. 420/10
Mindless Ganon: OoA/OoS
Mindless zombie due to botched resurrection. Pure destructive force but no way to control it. Basically a pig on a rampage. a big boy but ultimately unsatisfying. 4/10
Yuganon: LBW
Thats not ganon, thats just a ganon fanboy who merged with ganons corpse. -1986/10
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
Anonymous
