I want to read a story about a wizard whose only spell is “fix this”, but the specially-crafted magic takes their intent into account. "Fix this" can mean repairing the wheel on the adventurers’ cart or healing a broken arm or “fixing” a lock so that it’s in what the wizard considers the “correct” (unlocked) position. Imagine the other mages getting increasingly frustrated as the wizard stubbornly refuses to learn any other spells.
Wizard: *points at a canyon* Fix this
Other casters: That’s not really how spells –
Wizard: Oh look, one of our blankets is now a magic carpet. Guess we don’t need a bridge.
Casters: How –
Wizard: *points at logs that won’t catch fire* Fix this
Other casters: There’s been too much rain, it won’t –
Wizard: I fixed it so that it’s in the same state it was yesterday. Someone here knows how to start a fire, right?
Casters: What –
Wizard: *points at charging dragon*: Fix this
Other casters: THAT’S NOT HOW MAGIC WORKS YOU IDIOT WE’RE GOING TO DIE
Dragon: *coughs* Did you just… cure my intestinal problems? I’ve been trying to stop breathing fire for weeks, but it just kept spilling out, and every time I tried to ask for help, I burned everything down. I won’t forget this kindness.
KNOWING a language is VERY different from being a native speaker of that language
If you have a player who knows languages other than their native tongue, consider adding in occasional intelligence or linguistics checks when they try to communicate with other native speakers.
If the roll is successful, they understand- no problem. If they fail the save, they misunderstand, something they said is misunderstood, etc. and hilarity ensues.
Whenever travel happens in D&D, there’s rarely any NPCs to talk to and most encounters you fight in are random. Nevertheless, it’s a great time to develop your character and interact with the other players’ characters. At least once during travel, perhaps after a combat session or when passing a landmark, try to have your character do something meaningful. A GM can’t tell your character how to think and act (charm spells aside) so it’s up to you to have meaningful feelings and actions between other players.
Here are some things you can do on the road during downtime:
Adventuring Essentials
Scout the area. Perhaps you will find dangers before they find the party. Be sure to bring a buddy!
Hunt or gather food. Rations can be costly and heavy to carry on long trips, so this will help ease those burdens. Plus, it’s a great way to get XP if you happen upon dangerous game.
Help set up camp. You could build a shelter for the party in case of rain or treacherous terrain or temperatures. You could gather wood and build a fire, set out bedrolls, cook food, tie up and feed the mounts.
Do maintenance: Sharpen your weapons or make minor repairs to your gear. Something most people don’t think about is how much maintenance goes into all those blades, boots, straps, bags, clothes, and pouches during the eternal hiking trip that is adventuring.
Converse
About the adventure. Solidify what your plans are for the future once you get where you’re going. Remind yourselves why you’re questing.
About the past. Ask your allies about their past, especially those who haven’t opened up yet. If they aren’t ready to talk that’s fine, but at least you tried. You can also tell your allies a story about your own past, even if it’s just a silly anecdote or throwaway line. “This is like that time when I stopped that giant octopus harassing the docks!”
About motivations. Ask allies why they decided to become adventurers, or explain why you became one yourself.
About friends and family. Confide in a party member about your loved ones and where they are now. Maybe this is essential to your character, maybe not.
About fears. Confide in a party member about your worries and regrets. You can also ask a party member how they’re doing, especially if they just experienced something extreme.
About pastimes. Talk about what you do for fun or ask others what they like to do.
Work and Play
Learn a new spell. If you’re a spellcaster, start experimenting with new spells you intend to learn at your next level. A wizard would need to do research and plenty of experiments. A sorcerer might try to push the limits of their innate power. A warlock might need to implore their patron for new spells. A bard might have to write a new song. Divine casters might seek stronger miracles.
Practice religion. If you are a very spiritual or religious character/class, observe that. Pray to your deity for guidance. Perform a ceremony or ritual to protect you and your allies on the road.
Learn new skills. Show off a new trick you learned from a recent level-up, or train for something you will learn at your next level. If your sneak attack dice improve, maybe you learn some new takedown. If you’re about to get an extra attack, you could spar with your allies to get faster.
Try out new items. Unless you have a dedicated caster with Identify prepared, you may need to figure out what unknown magic items do by just flat-out using them. Just be careful about targeting your allies. On the other hand, if you already know what an item does you might want to just test it out.
Play music. Sing or play a song using your proficiency in a musical instrument. Unless you’re a bard, when else will you have the chance to play? Perhaps it will lift everyone’s morale.
Play games. Use your proficiency with a gaming set to play with other party members. Perhaps you can gamble some of your hard-earned loot with them as well.
Practice your trade. Work on projects with your artisan’s tools. Maybe you can make repairs to the party’s carriage using carpenter’s tools, or make a small landmark using mason’s tools, or repair armor using a large rock as an anvil with smith’s tools. Even if the result doesn’t have a mechanical benefit, it still has merit for roleplaying. Besides, you don’t want your adventures to dull your skills!
The Scorpion Sword: an elegant longsword with a blade shaped like a jagged stinger. This weapon deals 0 damage to anything that isn’t a scorpion, but does double damage against any of the aforementioned arachnids.
The Gloves of Fishing: upon donning these gloves, the user can shove their arms into any natural body of water and make a dexterity check. On a roll of 15 or higher, the user catches something. Whether that something is an object, or a fish, or a very angry creature, is entirely up to the DM.
Prayer for Dummies: from the authors behind the famous fantasy franchise comes Prayer for Dummies! Once a day, this tome allows any non-cleric to cast the 1st level spell, Guiding Bolt.
The Four-Leaf-Clover: a little sprig of luck for those in need. Once per long rest, this item allows the holder to re-roll a single failed check or save.
The Ring of Ringing: a small silver ring. When flicked, it produces a soft, faint and soothing melody.
The Trousers of Sturdy Build: a pair of trousers made of some indeterminate but strong and blue material. When worn, the user gains +2 to AC, but -3 to all dexterity checks.
The Sun-hat: this wide-brimmed straw hat keeps you cool and stylish. It also absorbs sunlight while worn, and for every hour it spends under the sun during the day, at night it will emit, for a corresponding number of hours, a bright light that clearly illuminates everything within a 20-ft radius.
So I’ve been doing lots of D&D world-building lately and I’ve kind of been putting together lists of words to help inspire new fantasy place names. I figured I’d share. These are helpful for naming towns, regions, landforms, roads, shops, and they’re also probably useful for coming up with surnames. This is LONG. There’s plenty more under the cut including a huge list of “fantasy sounding” word-parts. Enjoy!
Towns & Kingdoms
town, borough, city, hamlet, parish, township, village, villa, domain
kingdom, empire, nation, country, county, city-state, state,
province, dominion
Island,
isle, peninsula, isthmus, bight, headland, promontory, cape, pointe,
cape
More under the cut including: Color words, Animal/Monster related words, Rocks/Metals/Gems list, Foliage, People groups/types, Weather/Environment/ Elemental words, Man-made Items, Body Parts, Mechanical sounding words, a huge list of both pleasant and unpleasant Atmospheric Descriptors, and a huge list of Fantasy Word-parts.
So that whole interview made me super emotional but I particularly relate to Travis’ initial feelings about D&D, like, a lot. Pretty much all I knew about role playing games until college I learned from that one episode of Lizzie McGuire where Gordo gets addicted to it and Lizzie and Miranda have to stage an intervention. It’s made out to be weird, kinda cult-ish and just not portrayed in a very positive light.
Fast forward to college: I’m a theatre major and a group of my very closest friends were like “Hey, we’re gonna start a D&D campaign, do you want to join?” And my answer was a super resounding “NOPE.” Even as someone who adores reading and movies and different ways to tell stories, I was genuinely put off by the medium at first. So my friends were like “That’s okay, you can always come watch if you want!” (Matt Mercer, you were right about “no one watches D&D,” we’ll get there in a second) And again I said “Yeah probably not, kinda weirds me out! Thanks but no thanks.”
And then. And then it happened.
The majority of my close friends were involved in this campaign, so I was facing a day of hanging out alone when the invite was offered again: “Hey, just come watch! If you’re bored or you hate it you can leave.” So I went.
I have no clue if the DM was doing a home brew or a guide based campaign or what. I sat down on the floor and I was a little skeptical, I was listening to everyone plan stuff out and trying to figure out the character sheets and what all the dice were for, I was just so lost. And then they sailed to an island where the people had velociraptors as pets. And someone in the campaign said “I’m gonna try to pet one.” He rolled for it, didn’t do so hot, and the DM said “She hisses at you.” And without even thinking, I just kinda hissed under my breath to my friend on the left thinking we’d just have a laugh.
IMMEDIATELY, the guy that just tried to pet the velociraptor looks at me and dangles his hand out with an imaginary fish and said “Okay, I’m gonna try to feed her then!” And held out a fish. To me. And I sat there thinking “Ok dude running the show, you can jump in any time now and take over!” until I realized he was looking at me, too. He had given me total control over that dinosaur and was waiting to see what I was gonna do.
And I GOT IT.
In that moment, playing a dumb dinosaur in a narrative I didn’t even half understand, I got it.
tfw ur taking notes during what seems like a chill session of D&D and predicting what your character is gonna do next until ur DM whips out one of the big boys
Verliese Und Drachen 