General Discussion

The1True

8, 8, I forget what is for
They were dirt cheap for the longest time, but started going up in price after Covid.

I've hit that collecting point where all the old TSR stuff is either crap that I don't want (shovelware adventures) or it's $700 (goddamned Planescape box sets). Don't suppose I'm going to find a minty Planes of Chaos in some old granny's garage sale, eh.

Speaking of which, I could really use some comfort shopping, but it's been a dogs age since someone's put out some exciting, super deluxe, The Best megadungeon. He's been getting tepid reviews, but I can usually count on old Greg Gillespie to slap together some great maps and summon the illustrators of yore for something big. Anyway; taking recommendations...
 

The Heretic

Should be playing D&D instead
I've hit that collecting point where all the old TSR stuff is either crap that I don't want (shovelware adventures) or it's $700 (goddamned Planescape box sets). Don't suppose I'm going to find a minty Planes of Chaos in some old granny's garage sale, eh.
Agreed! Speaking of which, I was considering look at B5 Horror on the Hill for some inspiration for my wizard lair/steamy city. What did you guys think of B5?


The Heretic
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
Agreed! Speaking of which, I was considering look at B5 Horror on the Hill for some inspiration for my wizard lair/steamy city. What did you guys think of B5?


The Heretic
Isn't B5 kind of rural? Or am I misremembering. I have read it, but I've never run it.
 

Malrex

So ... slow work day? Every day?
I actually enjoyed B5...I was a player...and it was a long time ago when I was in middle school I think. I havent read it though. All I remember was rolling a 20 against the dragon with Baftar the Barbarian...
 

The Heretic

Should be playing D&D instead
Isn't B5 kind of rural? Or am I misremembering. I have read it, but I've never run it.
A big part of it is the dungeon on the hill. IIRC parts of it were volcanic, which could be retrofited to steam.

I think I have a rough draft of what I want the lair to look like. Much of it will be an underground wizard's lair, but part of it, the steamy parts, will be a weird temple to the lost evil fire god. That's one of the reason's the wizard chose the site as a lair. The main entrance will be hidden out in the 'orc city' (with the possibility of finding the location by interrogating the orcs), while a secondary entrance will be located in the steam domes/saunas, which are like that picture that @Malrex posted earlier.

Originally I was going to use the Tower of the Stargazer for this adventure (and have the main wizard baddie be the wizard trapped in the summoning circle), but I decided that I could use fewer wizard towers in my world.


The Heretic
 

The1True

8, 8, I forget what is for
Agreed! Speaking of which, I was considering look at B5 Horror on the Hill for some inspiration for my wizard lair/steamy city. What did you guys think of B5?
I've run B5 about 10-20 times. It's my goto introductory adventure! The wilderness portion and first level of the dungeon are possibly the platonic ideal of basic adventuring. PC's will almost always get nailed by the trap shoot leading to level 2, since it's undetectable on the way in and they won't be checking for traps on the way out. Kind of dirty. And therein lies the problem, because there's a dragon down there on the 3rd level, and no way to go back to town to train the characters up a couple of levels even if they have collected all the gold and XP.

There's a forested hill with paths and clearings that act like a kind of dungeon with porous walls. There's a ruined monastery. There's a heavily militarized Hobgoblin dungeon. And, there's two levels of labyrinthine caves. With re your steam theme, there's a bit of steam coming out of the hill and some nasty tropical birds in steam caves (steam weavils? piranha birds?) and more steam cave stuff on the third level with bigass lava lizards and the aforementioned red dragon. For all that, I wouldn't say the steam dressing is strong enough for what you're doing, though.

The closest it comes to your mad wizard is a pair of weird old witches in a little cottage (that's a huge mansion inside). No maps or real conflict there, however. There's an evil cleric supporting the hobgob king on level 1 that you could maybe substitute, but it would probably be weak. Definitely if you want an "Oh shit, the forces of chaos are secretly massing for an attack on civilization and only we can stop it!" scenario, this is it though!
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
@Malrex, I was looking at Bryce's latest public masochism, and I was about to write that these days, "Creation Method Not Chosen By Publisher" should be a red flag that AI was involved, because I assumed that was the reason the category of "creation method" was added.

But I though that might cast the net a bit broadly, so I looked at what I think is your latest, The Coming of Winter, and saw that it said the same thing. I gather CoW was published back in April, were they asking for that category then? And if so, what options were you given? Because I would def want to answer "Made by humans with no AI assistance" to that question.
 

DangerousPuhson

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
Ah, the Beoric "Artifical Intelligence" (quotations emphasized) witchunt continues. You're like a bloodhound with this stuff, eh?

"Ok, nice art, good colors and shading.... WAIT A MINUTE THAT'S A SIXTH FINGER! KILL THE HERETIC!"
 

The1True

8, 8, I forget what is for
Okay but...I was out trolling for scrapyard battlemaps yesterday, and what actually is this?

1732264853611.png

I mean, initially it looks neat from a distance, but when you really look at it and start thinking about dropping a grid on it, you realize it looks like a useable map, but it very much isn't...
 

DangerousPuhson

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
Yeah, it's no good at making dungeon maps (yet). However I bet if you added a grid and some thick black lines over the parts you deem to be walls, the players might not even notice. VTT maps always have these blurry half-details that most people assume are just "map greebles" and "texture", rather than interactable objects.
 

DangerousPuhson

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
HEY! What did I do?


The Heretic
Oh you know, just some light heresy... a little blasphemy here, a little dissent there... typical iconoclastic stuff.

Also if you DO have six fingers - I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die.
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
Okay but...I was out trolling for scrapyard battlemaps yesterday, and what actually is this?

I mean, initially it looks neat from a distance, but when you really look at it and start thinking about dropping a grid on it, you realize it looks like a useable map, but it very much isn't...
I think I could make that work in a VTT. MapTools' "Hill" VBL, and the separation of the VBL and MBL, might help with some of this. The Hill VBL/MBL is still kind of temperamental, though.
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
Here's how you make it work (about 15 mins of effort) - just assume anything that isn't grass is considered "difficult terrain", and you're golden:

View attachment 1428
Yeah, I would put Hill VBLs on the large black sections, and sprinkle around a lot of difficult and very difficult terrain tokens (because I can't count on all of my players to "remember" to count difficult terrain).

Hey, who around here uses VTTs a lot? I'm curious about comparing features. I've been using MapTool for a long time, but it's very DYI, and I'm wondering it the current version of other products have the features I want.
 

Malrex

So ... slow work day? Every day?
@Malrex, I was looking at Bryce's latest public masochism, and I was about to write that these days, "Creation Method Not Chosen By Publisher" should be a red flag that AI was involved, because I assumed that was the reason the category of "creation method" was added.

But I though that might cast the net a bit broadly, so I looked at what I think is your latest, The Coming of Winter, and saw that it said the same thing. I gather CoW was published back in April, were they asking for that category then? And if so, what options were you given? Because I would def want to answer "Made by humans with no AI assistance" to that question.
TLDR: It's unfair to say that...most publishers may not realize this box is new from DrivethruRPG and an option. MM products are all handcrafted EXCEPT for Slyth Hive to my knowledge and possibly NAP (AI Art). I'm also taking Squeen and DP off ignore.

WOW Beoric!!!...thanks for pointing this out.
I had trouble following what you were talking about, so I went into the Publisher Tools for Coming of Winter.
DrivethruRPG recently changed a bunch of stuff on their website. I don't recall them mentioning this new box to click, but I could of missed an email.

Publishers get a series of boxes to check when putting up their product for sale. There are a lot of options--from rulesets (OSR, Savage Frontiers, Traveller--there is like 16 options that are then broken down even more...Osric, OSE, Labyrinth Lord, etc.). Lot's of choices!
Then there is Product Type, Genre, Format, Languages....all broken down quite a bit more. And I think you get a limited amount of choices to choose from (10 maybe?) but seems like hundreds of options...

This is the age-old argument where customers get pissed when some publishers click everything--- OSRIC, OSE, Shadowdark, etc. to try and sell their product and get more eyes on things...(I don't do that or try not too).

ANYWAYS---yes, it looks like they added a box under Format that has Creation Method, which has 2 choices: Handcrafted and AI-Generated content. I actually just noticed that this is plastered on the publisher tools:

"AI-Generated Content
We have recently deployed two browsing options on our new DriveThruRPG marketplace and DriveThruComics PHNX Preview. Customers can now choose to filter out AI-Generated content in their Account Settings, and titles are now clearly labeled as Handcrafted or AI-Generated if the publisher has selected one of those options."


Looks like I will need to update all of the Merciless Merchants products (oh joy). All of the Merciless Merchant products use either stock art (which to my knowledge is not AI as I actually have stopped most purchases of stock art back in 2020 before AI became a big deal) or commissioned art from human artists EXCEPT for Slyth Hive by Prince and maybe NAP stuff which I don't have as much control of as its various authors (and free). The Coming of Winter is definitely hand crafted--this is the main reason we even do Kickstarters for our adventures--to commission kickass art done by humans to cover the costs.

The only time I personally have used AI for D&D is to generate NPC's real quick before I'm DMing that night because I ran out of time (and its still rough and I have to change things), never for something published.

..............................
As far as ignoring Squeen and DP, I think the timing of the election was raw and maybe things have settled down, so taking them off ignore because I value their input, discussion, and art on D&D topics and I truly don't want to bolster support for 'cancel culture', but at the same time, I don't want to discuss/support discussion of politics here. May we all roll 20's.
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
TLDR: It's unfair to say that...most publishers may not realize this box is new from DrivethruRPG and an option.
Yeah, that's what I figured when I saw it on your products.

As far as ignoring Squeen and DP, I think the timing of the election was raw and maybe things have settled down, so taking them off ignore because I value their input, discussion, and art on D&D topics and I truly don't want to bolster support for 'cancel culture', but at the same time, I don't want to discuss/support discussion of politics here. May we all roll 20's.
Fair enough, I will give it a go.
 

The1True

8, 8, I forget what is for
Hey, who around here uses VTTs a lot?
I have no choice but to play exclusively on a VTT. My group is stuck on Roll20. No one wants to learn a new interface. I think there's a lot better out there at this point.
The one thing I would add is, I hate hybridizing with Discord. If I have to have a little Discord window open over on the side, taking up valuable screen realestate, or on my phone so I can have video or chat features, that's a deal breaker.
 

The1True

8, 8, I forget what is for
Here's how you make it work
Cool. But still, all of those bits of greeble are basically nothing. The more you zoom in, the more nothing they become. This might actually help in a way since I do have players who insist on interacting with the background even when it is very obviously something I snatched off a last minute Google Image search for a random encounter...
 
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