Gods of Argaenothruzil: DALL-E

AI is getting more and more impressive, and it is downright astounding to see things that have been in my own head come to life with fewer and fewer uncanny issues! This week I got into using the DALL-E AI image generator at bing.com/create, which is free and very impressive! (in short, the only thing I'll ever use Bing for). With its impressive grasp of descriptions, I was able to breathe new life into the gods of my fantasy settings once again.

Worldbuilding More Interesting Deities in 5e

The gods in DM Quest (watch episodes here!) play a big part in the narrative of our campaign. Jasper is a divine soul of the Treefather, Dakren found solace from his demonic pact in the goddess Tonna, Shaz is a war champion of Tual'dir, and Hargus the bard has a... complicated past with Bancotha, the goddess of death. We use the rules for piety as found in Mythic Odysseys of Theros, and the extra abilities we've gotten from our relationships with the gods have created some of the most memorable roleplaying experiences in all of my time playing D&D.

However, there have been some moments I thought detracted from our gameplay experience—mostly involving non-cleric players saying a prayer to a god and getting amazing boons for very little work, or multiplying the number of days of downtime by the number of times the character could cast commune to basically divine the answer to absolutely any puzzle in the game.

Just as Superman is the least interesting superhero because he has all the powers and only one easily-avoidable weakness, gods who know everything and are always waiting on their followers' every need to give them whatever they ask are boring. Interesting stories come from interesting choices and from creatively dealing with constraints and challenges, and it doesn't make sense that a being with as high of an existence as a god would play such an intimate part in mortals' quests and questions.

Instead of making gods all-encompassing in their influence over mortal affairs, consider juggling the following godly attributes for each deity: omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-caring). Only picking one of them will make for a much more interesting god for your religious player characters to interact with.

Better 5e Bastion Facility Boons

As discussed in my last post, the new Bastion system is inspiring, but its reward system (and a few fundamental systems) lacks a clear motivation for players to utilize it: Harvesting ten floral bouquets worth 5 gp each? Recruiting guild members to make fifty barrels of ale worth 10 gp each? Crafting some sovereign glue for 100,000 gp?!

I'm confident that the roleplaying and story-focused aspects of Bastions will be taken care of automatically by the players themselves. What players and DMs need in an established system are facilities that provide useful, mechanical rewards they can award players with. Each benefit should be be temporary, consumable, or incremental, and should have a cost of some kind. I put a special emphasis on spending gold. Players get treasure all the time and never have anything to spend it on but magic items! Why not buildings that give them lasting benefits on their future adventures?

Improving the Bastion / Stronghold System in D&D 5e

The most recent Unearthed Arcana about Bastions is very intriguing. Imperfect, but very inspiring and full of potential. Since my fellow players and I have been enjoying our own keep in our DM Quest campaign for the past couple of years, I definitely think that D&D 5e could use a more robust stronghold system than it currently does. Having a place for the adventurers to call home, gain benefits from over time, and most importantly, invest gold in, is a great way to make players feel more bonded and invested in the world and campaign as a whole.

Dubbing Differences: The Jungle Book

I found the following notable changes in the Brazilian Portuguese dub of Disney's The Jungle Book:

Dubbing Differences: Peter Pan

I found the following notable changes in the Brazilian Portuguese dub of Disney's Peter Pan:

D&D Subclass: Earth Domain Cleric

I'm kind of surprised that 5e doesn't have this as a domain, at least as a supplemental subclass. Here's my take on an Earth domain cleric. This fits well with my own deities like Deepwarden, Moeki, and Jord from my friends' DM Quest series. It can also fit with a god of stone giants, or of the Underworld without being too focused on death.