Somewhere where nothing happens. Ever.
Wizard of the Coasts have released the core rules for the latest edition of Dungeons and Dragons under a Creative Commons license. It’s great starting point for those looking to get into Dungeons and Dragons or RPGs more generally.
The actual SRD documents, for both 5.1 (2014 D&D) and 5.2 (2024 D&D) can be obtained from the following link: Dungeon and Dragons SRDs.
I’ve seen this post resurface from time to time over the years, it captures the nostalgia of old Dungeons and Dragons.
The post is from August 15, 1999 and references the soon to be released Third edition.
Source: https://prismatictsunami.com/archives/1325OK. I’ve been reading all this balderdash and hooey about you people not “not likin’ this” and “not wantin’ that.” Well, you guys today got it made! If it weren’t for us “old-timers” you guys wouldn’t know a Dungeon Masters Guide if it broke into your house and stole all your Rush albums! Here’s what it was like back in my day:
We didn’t have FANCY, SPECKLEY, SWIRLY DICE back in the old days. Our dice were PLAIN and they were BLUE! If you threw the 12-sider too hard, IT EXPLODED! Then you had to buy another Expert Level Set to get another one! And we COULDN’T EVEN READ THE NUMBERS on our dice! We had to COLOR them with a CRAYON for crying out loud! We had Cruddy, Blue, Exploding, Crayon-Coated
Dice – AND WE LIKED IT!!!Our MONSTER MANUAL was BLACK & WHITE for Pete’s sakes! We had to COLOR in all those pictures! And we didn’t know what color things were back then – we HAD TO USE OUR IMAGINATIONS! God forbid if we used all our Red Crayon on our dice! Then all of our monsters had Orange Eyes! And what kind of crazy ecosystem was represented on the cover of that thing anyhow? They had every monster in the food chain living together in perfect harmony! We had Colorless Monsters that lived together peacefully – AND WE LIKED IT!!!
Then there was that DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE! It had that SCARY BIG DEMON LOOKING THING on the cover! And everytime your Mom saw it SCARED THE BEJEEZUS out of her and she would RIP IT UP or THROW IT AWAY or sell it to your best friend at a garage sale for $1.25! We had to buy the same book over and over again cause our Moms threw it out – AND WE LIKED IT!!!
And, don’t get me started about SOURCE MATERIAL! We didn’t have “Complete This” and “Player’s Option” that! We didn’t have any Core Rules for the Computer-thing-a-ma-jig! All we had was some CRAPPY INTELLIVISION GAME. All of our dungeons were drawn on graph paper! All of our rooms were 10′ x 10′. But (and this is where we got you young fellers BEAT) ALL of our dungeon rooms were FILLED WITH TREASURE! Heck, all you had to do back then was BREAK DOWN THE DOOR, KILL THE MONSTER, and TAKE THE TREASURE! We didn’t have PLOT LINES or CAMPAIGN WORLDS or STORYLINES to bog us down! There was MOUNTAINS of TREASURE! Heaps of it!!! You know why you don’t find treasure in every room in your silly dungeons and modules anymore? CAUSE WE TOOK IT ALL! HA! AND YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! We had plotless, storyless, 10 foot by 10 foot dungeon rooms FILLED WITH TREASURE, AND WE LIKED IT!!!
Now you all are complaining about the quality of a “Dungeons and Dragons” movie! Oh My Stars and Garters! Count your sheep lucky that you get a MOVING PICTURE! We had a cartoon with a Unicorn that shot a laser beam from his horn, and an 8-year-old barbarian…AND WE LIKED IT!!!
Finally, you guys with your “LEAD FREE” miniatures! I had to get a new puppy every month because of the things I grew up painting! Heck, now I feed my dog Vrock entire Warhammer Armies cause they’re nothing but 28 millimeters of cheap scrap metal and plastic! We had lethal, cancer-causing miniatures that killed our pets, AND WE LIKED IT!!!
Maybe this post will knock some sense into your ungrateful noggins, and you’ll stop your whining about petty things like TURNING THE ARMOR CLASSES BACKWARDS! You’re gonna BUY Third Edition and you’re gonna PLAY Third Edition and you’re gonna LIKE Third Edition. And if you wanna scrap with me about it – I’LL TAKE ALL OF YOU ON! You go ahead and keep playing those older editions that I grew up with, and I’ll convert my character to Third Edition – then we will see whose Armor Class is better! Besides, it will take an army of you whippersnappers to get my treasure!!
I guess I should really post here from time to time.
So here’s two simple encounter maps I knocked up for a recent game where the party where making their way through a forest.
I’ve become a fan of the simplistic nature of the maps created using Dungeon Draft.
Less is more, is my thinking these days when it comes to VTT’s.
Leaving the players imaginations to fill in the details rather than having overly detailed maps to set the scene.
If you’re looking for an affordable map-making tool for RPGs suitable for use with a VTT a good contender is DungeonDraft which comes for an affordable $19.99 which weighs in around €20.
While it doesn’t offer the same rich variety in terms of assets out of the box as say for example Inkarnate. There are many free assets available for it on CartographyAssets which closes the asset gap quite quickly.
The fact that it’s a once off payment rather than an ongoing subscription means it quickly pays for itself. Can recommend enough if you’re looking to create quick maps for VTT sessions. Added to which there is nice integration with Foundry VTT if that’s your thing.
Here’s two examples of maps I’ve recently used in RPG game made only using the default installed assets.
The Blacksmiths Shop
A section of a village the party recently visited showing the local Blacksmiths store and accommodation. The store having a open stall window at the front with the smithy to side and family quarters behind.
The Old Watchtower
A point of interest the adventures had to explore was a recently abandoned watchtower and the mysterious cavern linked to it below. Where the recent disappearances of villagers connected in some way to its sudden abandonment? Probably not.
One of the things I like about AI Art is the surreal images it can generate which make for great wallpapers and general backgrounds.
Here’s a selection of fantasy themed images I’ve used for wallpapers or visual aids for use in roleplaying games.
I’ve been dabbling with Vaesen by Free League Publishing for a bit now.
It’s nice investigative driven RPG set in an alternative Nordic 19th century, along with an expansion which covers Ireland and Britain during the same time period.
So as a forever DM, I was pleased to see a set of rules for solo play has been released.
It utilities a series of random tables to drive the story and encounters, making use of both dice and standard playing cards.
It was the later, the playing cards which I found rather cumbersome in use, so to that end I knocked up a simple web-page to simplify that part of the process.
You’ll still need the solo-rules, but image below (showing a sample card) takes you to web-page.
Pressing “Deal Card” will deal a new card from the deck of 52, creating and shuffling a new card deck as required.
Pressing “NPC State” will deal two cards, which are used to determine an NPC state to the players.
AI Art is such a godsend when it comes to generating images/art for role-playing game sessions. I’m using it constantly now to generate pictures for player characters and tokens.
The results are getting exponentially better as time goes on.
Here are a few I did a while back using Midjourney while not free, does have the edge out of the box over Stable Diffusion. That said Stable Diffusion is more than capable of generating useable images and tokens, added to which it is free.
Now this was an unexpected announcement, Wizards have walked back their talk of revoking the OGL 1.0a and even gone further than anyone imagined by putting the SRD 5.1 into the Creative Commons.
Things are moving apace in the RPG space, with multiple publishing companies announcing moves away from the Wizards owned OGL.
But the most significant development so far is the announcement today by Paizo of a new open license by them for use by the wider RPG community. The contents of the announcement is below.
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v?Paizo-Announces-SystemNeutral-Open-RPG-License
Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ll have to be aware of the turmoil within role-playing games community over Hazbo/Wizards of the Coast attempting to revoke the OGL 1.0a license which has been used for 20 or so years.
And replace it with one which is closed (in spite of the name) and also performs a serious land-grab of third-party IP at the same time as looking to milk everyone they can.
Naturally this hasn’t gone down to well 🙂
The following video gives a good run-down on the situation along with providing a link to the revised license.