Ever wonder how #characteranimation works? Dive behind the scenes with us and uncover the art of bringing characters to life!From the detailed rigging and sk...

0:00 Introduction1:00 Gameplay Review2:31 Combat and Dungeon4:40 VerdictJoin me as I delve into the hauntingly beautiful world of ‘Astra: Knights of Veda,’ a...

In RPG and fantasy, we are often faced with a situation where the existence of gods is an empirically confirmed fact, rather than a matter of belief. Two extremes can be distinguished in the representation of these entities (note – I do not claim that all creation adopts one of these two extreme points of view). On the one hand – the trend adapted by e.g. most of the settings for D&D – gods are personification of certain values professed by people, not infrequently they are even „born” from the faith of mortals or at least derive power from it/are shaped by it – gods described as „good” are simply good in the conventional sense of the word, they sincerely care about their followers and you know what to expect from them. On the other side, we have motifs that can be considered taken from Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology – the gods are incomprehensible, distant beings, completely unconcerned with human worldviews and so-called „good and evil”, mostly indifferent to humanity (and if by chance their paths intersect with humanit’s ones, humanity is screwed) – at the same time, it is not uncommon for most mortals to be unaware of their existence, instead worshipping imaginary, more anthropomorphic deities tailored to their emotional needs.

In this article, I wanted to present deities standing somewhere in the middle – entities whose goals, yes, are not fully understood by mortals, but nevertheless close enough to human morality that worshippers can find some commonality (real or imaginary) with their patrons. These gods are usually directly interested in some way in the lives of their worshipers – although not necessarily in the way those worshipers would like. At the same time, I wanted each description to contain a hook, an important point where the devotees’ understanding of the deity diverges from its real nature – and whose discovery could be a significant twist.

Rest of the book is avalaible for free, here: https://adeptus7.itch.io/twisted-gods . I invite You to read and discuss. And if You have Your own "twisted gods" I invite to share.

Did you know there is an online forum for tabletop role-playing games that has been around since the early 80s, and which still is active and operating? Admittedly in a much diminished state than a…

Can this magazine be used to look for roleplayers for games that happen in chat-environments?

Oh Gods, am I going all Buzzfeed? I’m not sure myself. But I wanted to share some tabletop roleplaying podcasts I enjoy listening to, and ten makes such a nice round number. And there definit…

The last few weeks I started getting interested in using VTTs for my next few games. I seem to have slept through the rise of those for the last few years, mostly because my kids were not at an age…

This was kind of a hard question if I thought too long about it. There are many games I am fond of. But ultimately it comes down to the Vortex System over all. I find the system to be quite elegant…

Issue #5 of Polyhedron (April 1982)

I'm on vacation this week, so this roundup may be a little shorter than normal, but let's go ahead and dive into it, shall we?

I have one of the planet’s most specific pet peeves: Displays of information which rely on two independent axes bother me greatly.

tl:dr; a neat, curated set of modular hex-crawl rules for a more faction-oriented game with a focus on securing resources.

I backed the zine 'Home - A light in the Darkness' which is billed as a sandbox toolkit for TTRPGs. Given the mileage I've gotten out of the d30 Sandbox Companion I thought this was worth a look.

In my most recent foray into the AD&D DMG , I found myself a bit frustrated with the combat mechanics.

A really underrated RPG is the OneDice system from Cakebread & Walton. It's a ultra-light system, ideal for running one-shots. They are various versions of it available - Space, Fantasy, WWII, etc. Each one is a complete game. They're all quite cheap and easy to run.

It's called OneDice because you only need to roll one D6 to resolve anything.

I just used a OneDice book called B-Movies to run an adventure called Beatniks from Planet X. Some 1950s high school kids had to stop a mysterious meteor from turning their classmates into filthy beatniks.

To prepare for the game, I made some custom character sheets and pregens:
https://polyhedralnonsense.com/2023/08/10/onedice-b-movies-character-sheets-pregens/

Last year I also made a custom character sheet for OneDice Pulp:
https://polyhedralnonsense.com/2022/07/15/onedice-pulp-mini-review-and-custom-character-sheet-for-a-pulp-adventure-rpg/

We can start exploring the many fantastical moons that our adventurers can visit.

Joshua, a [Patreon of Sly Flourish] asks:

I'm having trouble squaring the Six Truths about a world with not providing spoilers to the players. What if one or more of the truths are entirely unknown to the characters? What if one of the Truths is also one of the Secrets/Clues within the campaign? I don't see how a DM should share that in a session zero without "giving away too much."

It was a campaign we'd made from one of those 'Roll 4 commoners' tables, where we took our little party and the sole survivor we adopted as our hero going forward.

The sole survivor I had was a whitesmith, a smith who works with silver, copper, and other precious metals. So, with the DM's agreement, I decided he was going to be a Whitesmith Wizard. I engraved my spells on acid-etched metal tablets, which levitated in the air before my palm before dissolving with each spell (yes, they were expensive). I was a (very proud) member of a whitesmith's guild, and I was seeking my fortunes in the wider world to advance from a journeyman to a master in the guild, spreading my reputation for my art further to merit such a privilege. I had a halberd because I was part of the city militia, as a PROUD GUILDSMAN even though as a wizard specced for casting I was dogshit with it.

I played up the arrogant burgher angle as much as I could, talking down to 'the peasants' and the nobility (when I thought I could get away with it). I expounded at great length about the virtues of city life, such as how the guilds ELECT their lord-mayor, and it's of course totally a coincidence that they always happen to elect the previous lord-mayor's son; or how guilds are TOTALLY fair economic structures that keep law and order and the occasional war between them was definitely not a sign that they were glorified monopolistic street gangs run by artisans. The other player (3 person group - DM and 2 players, me being one of them) was a half-orc(? memory is fuzzy) barbarian, but rather than being disdainful of civilization, he wanted to become civilized, so we made a really good pair, with me 'teaching' all the wonderful benefits of civilization and praising him as a good protégé who would become a exemplar townsman, and the barbarian wholeheartedly and fully embracing everything I said to its absurd conclusion (which I also always supported). We tried to create our own guild in the nearby town and muscle out the competition at one point, lmao.

We came across a village of halflings and, after learning that there were no major merchants or landowners in their town, I lamented their primitive state and the things we must do for 'these people' (said in the most patronizing paternalist imperialist way imaginable) who don't even have the concept of private property! They were preyed upon by a basilisk, and we eventually stole one of the better-looking halfling statues to try to sell back in town. Sadly, it didn't go much further than that. We got back to town, I debated with the (frustrated and confused) lord over the 'privileges of the town' and 'free trade' (he confiscated the statue from me), and we gambled for a bit. Did a few really small sessions, gambling, fights, etc, after that, but it fizzled out due to personal issues preventing us from getting together.

Here's the unbalanced arcane tradition I made for my wizard - my DM was very permissive

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MWCOtLsFvV6KQkJiGJQ

Playing or running an RPG this weekend? Spending time on world building, prep, painting minis, or writing something? Let's hear it.

I'll start:

The Mothership game I'm running has had it's second session postponed due to scheduling issues. I wanted to keep it fairly loose in scheduling, similar to West Marches but it's not working out so well, so I've switched to using whenisgood.net to nail down times.

The long-running 5e campaign set in Greyhawk, though, is on for this Sunday with it's 119th session. The party has a few new members and are currently winding their way through the "UnderOearth" to get to the drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu (awkward name).

It seems that just about this time every year, as I gain some personal time away from work, my mind turns once again to the question of which kind of fantastic roleplaying world I would like to exp…

It seems like over the last year or so, Amazon has made the calculation that they can save 10 cents on not packing things properly, and only 0.1% of customers will be bothered enough to return the item*.

For many basic consumer goods, like a new spatula or something, it doesn't matter. But when I'm spending $40, $60, $70 on a nice hobby RPG book or a board game, it sucks to have it arrive with all the corners smashed in.

So I finally ordered my most recent core rulebook from a random FLGS in another state. And... it arrived beautifully packed and without damage!

This may not be an earth-shattering revelation for many people; however, it sure felt good to me to take a small stand. :-D

Incidentally, I spent ~$7 more overall on the purchase. But for me it was totally worth it.

* made-up numbers; I don't know the actual ones