Category: Game Material

This is for game material people can use in their own games.

Setting Project: Redefining Humanity for Ballad.

Setting Project: Redefining Humanity for Ballad.

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on January 16, 2020

This is my second article exploring the world Ballad. I am going to dig into the thing that started me thinking about the setting in the first place. I started with the notion of a setting where humans were rare and treated with distrust. This would not be unlike how Drow or Tieflings were treated in other settings. What would that kind of setting look like? A thread started by my friend Rabbit over on Twitter certainly contributed to that line of thought.

Before I dig too far in, let me address the history here.

Setting Project: The world of Ballad

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on January 8, 2020

So, I have had a stressful life of late. I distracted myself by coming up with a new campaign world. Some people drink, I apparently come up with fictional worlds.

Ballad is a high fantasy setting. It is leaning into a lot of mysterious magic rather than the notion of magic like technology that you find in Eberron or Ravnica for instance. I also started with the premise that humans were rare. The assumption in most settings is that humans are the “us” stand-in and not innately magical. They are the neutral default and all other races are alterations on the human base. This is problematic and should be discussed, but I will save that for a different post.

I started thinking about a world where that was not the case. Where all the sentient races were actually magical and the humans were the distrusted rare species. Sort of like how Tieflings and Drow are presented in several other settings.

Once I had that decided, I chose to go ahead and write some world rules. This would help me come up with a vision of what the world would look like. I had a vague notion but I need to define the edges of it.

Removing Monks 2 The Paladin option

Removing Monks 2 The Paladin option

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on October 24, 2019

So, I am trying this again. Another part of my series of blog posts explaining how you might remove the Monk from D&D and keep some of the playstyle intact. The last post caused a good deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who objected to even the suggestion that there might be a problem with Monks, on a cultural level. I will leave that aside for the moment. I can recognize there are issues with Monks and still love them. I have played them and I have written subclasses for them. I will do so again.

I will instead focus on the purpose of these blog posts. It is a mental exercise. “How do I do a thing?” is reason enough to take on a writing project. In this case, how do I make a version of D&D without Monks, but keeping some of the cooler aspects of monks?

As an additional benefit, all of the subclasses I am writing for this project and other things I am coming up with work just fine in ordinary 5e. Here is my latest entry. Enjoy!

Edit: I am updating the class based on som solid feedback I have received.

Removing Monks

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on October 8, 2019

I have written previously about the problems embedded with Monks in D&D. I say that as a guy who has always loved the class. Despite my love, there are some deeply problematic cultural stereotyping embedded in the class. The fact is, they default fiction of the class is a western misunderstanding of East Asian cultures and deeply lacking knowledge of the rich tapestry of martial arts that are found in the world.

I don’t think those original designs, or designers, were coming from a place of hate, maliciousness, or even knowing it was a problem. I think they even meant well. Awareness over the years has improved and now we can recognize the issues. 5th edition D&D did a lot of work to bring a lot of the classic D&D feel into it and the Monk class came along.

So, how do you fix it? Well..you could try and rework the theming and naming to make the class a little more culturally neutral. Another option, and one I am going to explore, is just removing the class altogether.

Warlock Patron: Animal Spirits

Warlock Patron: Animal Spirits

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on September 21, 2019

Warlocks are not evil. This is something that should be said up front. It is tempting to think of them, if not evil, as shady. They make deals. They have pacts which provide them with power. Their patrons are dangerous. Infernal beings are either dangerously chaotic or just trying to gain power at the cost of your soul. Elder horrors from time and space bring only destruction and madness when they enter the world. The Fairy lords are unpredictable and alien enough to think little of the discomfort of mortals.

It is understandable to think that only evil comes from such deals, but recent additions have helped expand our definitions a bit. Are there some dark elements implied by the naming and themes? Yes. But they are not required to be.

I only write that as preamble because people may question the patron I am presenting today. The Animal Spirits are not friendly spirits, of course. They are the spirits of wild things and care very little for people, but they have no implied moral qualities. When writing this up I was thinking about the stories where witches cut deals where they can become different animals. I was also thinking of Shamans in Shadowrun who often chanel animal spirits to define their magic. It was a soup of ideas that this was born from. I hope you will find it useful.

I should also put a John Maynard Keynes joke here…

Warlock Patron: Animal Spirits

Other Than Gods

Other Than Gods

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on May 11, 2019

This post was inspired by a question I asked on Twitter. How do you explain clerics in D&D in a world with no gods? There were some excellent responses. I decided it was worth expounding on.

The cleric is one of the older ideas in Dungeons and Dragons. The idea of the cleric was originally a bit more like the priestly monster hunters from Hammer Horror films crossed with a crusader era European priests. The original cleric write-ups made almost no mention of individual gods. They were just nebulously holy in some manner and could cast spells as a result.

Oath of the Grave Paladins

Oath of the Grave Paladins

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on March 24, 2019

I have a long affection for gravediggers. I played a gravedigger in a larp for around a decade, and I have been a fan of them ever since. I have written D&D stuff around them before. I am also a fan of Death as being seen as a good thing. Too often we treat death like a villain and that is not a healthy way to look at things. I am not saying we should all go out and embrace our inner goth, but anyone who has cared for terminal patients or a large number of other medical condition can tell you that sometimes death is a mercy.

With that in mind, I give you the Grave Knights, those paladins who follow the Oath of the Grave.

The many names of spells and how to change them.

The many names of spells and how to change them.

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on November 7, 2018

In D&D, spells have names. This is based on some fiction and some legendary sources so it didn’t start with D&D. The notion of names having power is actually pretty old. The concept appears in ancient Egypt and Greece by various terms. By naming the spell, they describe its power.

Most of the spell names in D&D are relatively innocuous if descriptive of their effect. A Fireball spell creates a big ball of fire. Simple and easy. Then there are some spells that have little more story to them. They not only describe the effect, but carry the name of the wizard who created it.

This has been a part of D&D since the earliest days. It is evocative tells you something of the world. If you know that there is a Tenser’s Floating disk, then you know that Tenser is an important figure in the world your playing in. He made a spell that is important enough that you learned it without meeting him. You might have questions about this Tenser person? or Bigby? or Melf?

So, what do you do if your world has no Melf? No Bigby? Do you just leave them the same or do you change the names to reflect your world? This will depend on your world.

The Machine for Modern Age

The Machine for Modern Age

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on August 13, 2018

Let me tell you about my love for Persons of Interest. The show was on the air between 2011 and 2016 and dealt with a range of complex notions in the framework of the shows premise, which is described in the opening narration.

You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people, people like you. Crimes the government considered irrelevant. They wouldn’t act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You’ll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number’s up…we’ll find you.

The Way of the Grasping Hand: a Midgard “monastic” Tradition

Published by Jeremiah McCoy on June 23, 2018

I am writing this for use in the Midgard setting, but I should state upfront that this can be used for just about any setting. A grappling style Monk would fit in just about any setting that allows monks. I recently wrote a blog post about the weird misconceptions held about martial arts and how they shape their presentation in D&D. One of the reasons I wrote that was because I could see some specific archetypes for Monks in Midgard I wanted to make.