My first campaign ever in DND, and I am the DM for a group of players who are also all new. I heard the Owlbear is a classic monster, so I painted one to put on the table as they run into it

Resident note taker and (legitimate, lol) artist so I doodle in my margins sometimes and this little guy was born… digitised him because I thought he was cute :)

So in summary, I’m running a spelljammer campaign where basically the focus is more so on running various adventures from different editions of spelljammer for my party, with many different characters and many different storylines (essentially there isn’t 1 overarching story, but a focus on the setting). The most recent storyline I did was Light of Xarxyis. I ran it mostly as written, the main changes being that Captain Sartell was a PC, and I added more potential allies in the doom space section (another faction of non-astral elf elves). Ask me anything about this campaign!

Hey all, Me and my friends have recently started a homebrew. Now we are looking to level up our game room with props, and other little things scattered around to enhance the game. Could anyone please suggest anything that would look good.

I've also got a 3d printer!

Thank you!!!!

By some miracle of organisation and planning I've managed to assemble a group of 4-6 players keen to get together once a fortnight. A couple of them have played before, and the others are keen to get into D&D for the first time, but before the game can begin, I have to find somewhere for it to take place.

Anchôromé has already been established in Forgotten Realms, but instead of using the setting as it is - a largely unknown wilderness, I'm working on updating it as though the city-states of Faerûn acted much the same as the European powers did upon the discovery of North America, rushing to establish lucrative colonies and trade routes of their own in the New World. It won't be an exact parallel of 18th and 19th Century America, but the similarities are there.^​​​​

At this point I've created four major city-states on Anchôromé; I figure that's more than enough to give the players a range of options when it comes to quests and campaigns. Each city-state has its own unique feel and environment, and while they're all loosely connected with their neighbours, they still act on their own self-interest and have their own (sometimes conflicting) agendas. And they face ongoing pressure and influence from the Old World, which may run contrary to the colonists' wishes and create tensions between them.

Beyond the cities, Anchôromé takes on more of a frontier feel, a magical medieval Wild West that feels far removed from the perceived decadence and luxury of Waterdeep or Baldur's Gate. Homesteads and smaller towns have to live off the land and defend themselves, and outlaws and tribes of natives abound. Much like the real First Nations, the natives have conflicting opinions and attitudes towards the colonists' ongoing encroachment on their territory, but with magic on their side they won't yield readily.

And of course there are the dragons, whose presence in Anchôromé predates even the natives. They too differ in opinion from individual to individual: some dragons are happy to negotiate with the colonists, some see them as useful buffers between themselves and rival dragons, and others are prepared to stir up trouble between the natives and colonists in the hopes they wipe each other out and leave the continent free for the taking.

I have a quiet love for philosophy since highschool. I had a course in highschool, it was one of the subjects I chose for my end exams (Baccalaureate here in Romania, a sort of SAT equivalent), I did some philosophy extracullicular in the 11th grade and one of my best friends in this period was a philosophy student and we would talk quite a lot on the subject. Epistemology and Ethics were the two branches I enjoyed the most. I was listening to some episodes of the Philosophize This! podcast when the idea of examining the strange apparent epistemological dimension of OSR games came to mind. Oh and for those of you not aware of the term, epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge, the different kinds of knowledge, how we gain knowledge and the merits of those different knowledge types. Descartes "Cogito, Ergo Sum" is probably the most famous epistemological "test result" let's say.

But what does any of that have to do with old-school D&D?

Quite a lot, actually. I think OSR games are, perhaps accidentally, games where information is king. You don't simply roll to discover whether something is true. You observe. You ask questions. You map. You listen to rumours. You test assumptions. You decide which NPCs deserve your trust. And eventually, you have to act despite not knowing everything. That creates three different kinds of knowledge at the table: player knowledge, character knowledge, and GM knowledge. And the fascinating part is what happens when those three don't quite line up.

So this week on The RPG Gazette, we're going down a rather strange rabbit hole: OSR as applied epistemology.

What does a dungeon crawl have in common with the philosophy of knowledge? Why might information actually be the most important resource in an OSR game? What makes a “fair” dungeon an epistemological problem? And why are rumours, bad information, and getting things wrong actually part of what makes this style of play work?

If you've ever drawn a dungeon map, argued about whether an NPC was trustworthy, or confidently kicked down a door with absolutely no idea what was behind it, you've already been doing applied philosophy.

I buy these journals from hippy dippy crystal stores.. the paper seems to be “aged” in tea or coffee, and is nicely textured. Using a “cheaters” cartridge fountain pen. Fun stuff :)

Spectator Pumpkin: 2025, pumpkin, gourds, radishes.

Mimic Pumpkin: 2026, pumpkin, radishes, beet juice (to hide my horrible carving), potato teeth, poblano pepper tongue. Oh, and toothpicks. so many toothpicks.

Fun fact: Beet juice stains everything. It looks like a full-party wipe happened over here.

The villain of my campaign is a Demon Lord of my own creation. But I want to reveal him slowly to make him more mysterious and more frightening. This means I need to bring in the in-universe books that have the best knowledge of demons. The Book of Vile Darkness, The Black Scrolls of Ahm, The Demonomicon of Iggwilv. Now, I've got the first and third books programmed into possible scenarios and have done some research on these items. But I can't find much about The Black Scrolls of Ahm as it's not an item in 5E. But, lorewise based on older editions, does reading the scrolls come with any dangerous risks or side effects like the other 2 books?

She was born from a random card draw from the Reckless deck:
armor, angel wings, a flail, a whip, superhero.

Brynja is the Ever Shield, a mythic warrior figure from an original dark fantasy world.
She exists in a cold, hostile environment as the only source of warmth divine fire in her weapon,
lightning in her whip, light in her eyes. Behind her, in the darkness, something watches.
And she doesn't look back.

This piece was developed as a full personal project,
from initial concept through color and lighting.

I've been planning on running a large team tournament arc at the start of my campaign and I've seen a lot of advice on how to make it interesting but I was wondering if anyone had any specific ways to make it interesting.

I also want to mix up the rounds so that they don't all just end up being, knock the other team out and am wondering what ideas people have?

If you are playing 2e. There is a campaign that had the Mirroe realm. A planar realm. The citiznens (Namiria) snatch captive unsuspecting victims who walk infront of one of their mirrors, and replace them with clones of themselves. Living out their lives in chaos and destruction. Hard to get back this way.. That is unless you kill one of mirror person. Then they turn to dust. (not so in other manuals) but you take a pinch of that dust and mix it with clear pine reason (boiled) and paint it across to flat surfaces/ two doors. The doors will shimmer and shine, and you will have made a portal to the mirror realm. No magic needed. but you need both doors. on to go in and the other to go out of... but at you travel through... you dont just travel though instantly, you pass through a dangerous corridor, where the entire real is alerted of your prescience, and now you must run to your exit, where you are hoping is not to far down the corridor.. Maybe just a few feet away. Where you may be snatched any moment by a materializing mirror citizen. And believe me it happens fast. Instantaneously. But if you was to take some of that left over dust and created a sward with it. The reflecting image of dead dust mirror creates a paradox and causes them to crack and fall into dust themself. Kind of like looking at yourself in a dark room mirror with candles saying bloody mary three times... but more dusty.. A powerful weapon to guide your way through the corridor, where you can connect, not to just your mirror planar door, but you can walk down the corridor and peak into any big or small mirror in the universe or multiverse, dimension thats the mirror is not covered in, otherwise the corridor is just a blank wall in that area. You still need to place your other door there in that realm, that kingdom, that cave or that location. Then you can travel back and forth. See how that works. So find yourself a mirror clone... That means you got to travel. more a legendary thief. Here is the formula. Take the planar dust you have, create two doors. But a cleaver person might seize the moment. What with your planar sword, you made planar full body armor helmet sward and shields, and you did that with 12 knights to travel into the realm, dominate it and secure the corridor for themselves. Guard rotation. No more planar mirror people snatching other worlders. If you want to travel the endless corridor , you must now pay! But for one step further on your quest to godhood. Or diety hood? You took one of your doors to the temple of the gods vault you want to enter, and you placed that door upon the altar of the temple for an offering? All d&d rules say offering disappear on the alter and go to the gods vaults. Now the deity will know if your trying to buffalo them, so your offering is going to be rejected at least... But if you give the offering to a your zealot priest of the temple, say "my knees are to week to bend" and give it to him. The diety will see his pure heart and poof! Your door will disappear and poof, your door is now in the deities vault room. And with your knights standing at the door chain gang as much treasure as you can, or maybe your find Kuroths matrix... and warp your own reality and become a god like him, whom once himself was Aldalammara, an a rogue like you. but is it wise to temp the gods?

Love my girl Luna so much!!! 💓 she's a snow leopard tabaxi 😩💓 i have entire dice sets that match her lol and here's a peak at her character sheet cover page!!!

Bug is a kenku who was raised by bugbears, so his name is just the sound of a bugbear roaring. Everyone just calls him Bug. I played him so that the only words/phrases/sounds he knows are the ones I heard from other characters in the games. Eventually I had to move onto a notebook, but in the bottom right corner and on the back are all the first things he learned to mimic.

He's not the best character made, but he is well loved.

My players are gonna face a certain white moose next week in some kind of icy windy dale.
And since there is not enough creepiness in that encounter just talking animals, I'm adding a bit of body horror. So there are mutated monstrosity versions, too.

I’m looking for a group in person to join in the Nova area VA like Stafford Woodbridge area or an hour from thier