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I'm currently reading 'At the Mountains of Madness' and I'm confused by Lovecrafts description of the Elder Thing fossils Lake discovers. Lovecraft keeps describing colours and wing membranes and cillia and stuff like this:

"At the end of each tube is a spherical expansion where a yellowish membrane rolls back on handling to reveal glassy, red-irised globe, evidently an eye."

So this thing is blinking at this paleobiologist and he's just thinking "Yup - that's a fossil alright!"??

I can understand a sci-fi author handwaving some science to make the fiction work but these goey flexible monsters that Lake is playing around with are nothing like fossils and nobody would think they were.

I was thinking about the pros and cons of backstories for PC's when the following thought popped into my head.

What if you write a few sentences outlining the tragic, mediocre, dismal etc trajectory that your character is trying to avoid by adventuring?

E.g. If your rogue stays picking pockets on the streets of 'insert fantasy city here' they'll keep falling into greater debt with the local crime bosses, get their thumbs cut off and likely die of starvation and disease. So why not stay on the move, ahead of the debt collectors and possibly get in on a treasure hall that might help them write a different ending to that story?

Or

If your wizard stays in the safety of the mage's college her

I just ran a session of Grant Howitt's one pager 'The Beast' in which players take on the roles of 'low rent' monster hunters trying to defeat a randomly generated beast in 1700's eastern europe.

It's a fun game that delivers a lot of instant flavour but I wasn't able to turn up much advice online for what works when running a session. I knew I didn't have a lot of time to prep a story/session flow so I came up with a simple mechanic to help give the session momentum.

I got a bag and placed in 6 poker chips - 3 green, 2 black, 1 red. The idea is that whenever the hunters change location/scene or spend a long time in the same location they draw from the sack. Green means nothing untoward h

Hi all,

It's hard for me to sum up the issue I'm experiencing. In essence I'm struggling with certain styles of play in various systems and (possibly consequently) my capacity to maintain focus over long sessions.

It feels to me like there's a high propensity, in a variety of systems, for relatively banal situations to become a sort of narrative quicksand where the progress of time gets divided into smaller and smaller increments whilst the real world play time spent on them gets longer and longer.

For example:

The gm presents the players with a set of stairs down into darkness.

The players ask what's visible in the gloom.

The gm asks who's at the front.

Everyone takes time figuring

So many times I've watched my ship blow up and thought that, if this was a real scenario, my boarders on the enemy ship might've successfuly comandeered it.

Of course that'd mean making a playable version of every ship in the game and really break the whole balance but I just feel it would be fun.

First Sector, third jump - Shields taken down by 'advanced hacking', then they hack my piloting system and their heavy lazer's first shot starts two fires in my weapons. This game... sometimes...

https://preview.redd.it/0atgweebc04a1.jpg?width=2712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=418c76f8d67912155523104578fc8178547ed0a4

What if Batman's Joker was a powerful fey whose particular quirk was finding unpredictable violence and chaos hilarious?

This thought popped into my head just now and it's got me thinking about other characters or popular personas that might form a good base for memorable NPCs and villains.

So here's a short list from the top of my head

Any of David Bowie's personas - There's Jareth The Goblin King of course where the works been done for us but Ziggy Stardust and Aladin Sane have potential too. Then there's his character in The Man Who Fell to earth which offers an interesting case of an alien being seeking to experience life with mortals but whose every effort to engage produces madnes

Like the title says - I want to know what small shifts in the ways you prepare for, run or even think about your game have had positive results?

I really want to hear from the community on this but for myself my picks are

1. Focussing on planning sessions over long arcs.

2. Giving players in game downtime to explore and make stuff up.

I could unpack those a bit but I'd rather hear from other DM/GM's about what's made their games better.

Hi folks,

I'm looking for some feedback on this item I'm designing for an adventure. Would be keen to know peoples thoughts on whether or not this feels appropriately balanced? I can imagine one of the biggest exploits of this would be to force concentration checks from enemy casters... I'm also open to alternate name suggestions?

Mask of The Magic Eater
(three charges)
When a creature you can see within 60ft  casts a a spell, you can use your reaction and one charge to force them to make a constitution save against your spell save DC. On a failure they take necrotic damage equal to 1d4 + the level of spell cast and you regain hit points up to the same amount.

*(requ