Love when Tumblr recommends me a post based on my likes and the post is just a picture of a cardboard box filled with water
“I’ll tell you something for nothing” said the old wizard, leaning back in her well worn reading chair. “ The power of our station is gained through the acquisition of knowledge and cultivated through understanding. Archmage Jovenal never understood the later, and it led him and the dozens of fool apprentices that chased his horde to the same sad fate. Trapped like a begger in a golden tomb: surrounded by all they could ever want, but with no way to use it.”
Setup: Rumors among knowledge seekers and bibliophiles speak of an infinite library, A scriptographic cornucopia somewhere in the astral plane that contains every though ever consigned to page. Those venturing across planer barriers in search of a multi-dimensional archive invariably return disapointed, having found what amounts to the back room of an ill-managed bookshop, distorted in scale until it reached the size of a city, complete with districts, castles, slums and canals all full of muchabused volumes. The place is a maestrom of loose pages and flying volumes, constantly being piled and repiled in different configurations.
Said to contain coppies of every text to have ever existed, the Viivliokasm contains no accurate maps, guides, or filing systems, with volumes tossed about randomly, buried beneith mountians of other mismatched texts, or used as some architectural flourish in the city’s ever changing layout. Most astral explorers know that finding a useful tome, let alone a singular instance of a DESIRED tome is impossible and leave the search to the immortal and foolishly overambitious.
Adventure Hooks:
Working for a loremaster, the party seeks a book of prophecies that can help them to evade a great disaster. Entering into the most dangerous dungeon they’ve ever delved, their sacrifices and trials come to naught as the tome in question has rotted away into barely legible scraps. Knowing that there is one last “hail Ioun” option, the loremaster equips them with a tracking spell and sets them on a path towards a portal to the Vivlioklasm
A lich and an angel have taken up residence in neighboring boroughs of the book-made city, intent on bringing order to the chaos. The two rivals send minions to steal volumes to one anotehr as they work on increasingly elaborate ( and non-compatible) filing systems. Can the players break the stalemate, or perhaps even negotiate a peace between the two? it may be only a drop in the bucket, but in a few millennia their organization may turn the Vivlioklasm into a usable resource.
By Chance, the party comes into possession of an absolute rarity, a magically enhanced map that charts the location of a series of valuable books and the shifting hallways that hide them. Sadly, these hallways lay in “the burning stacks”, which is where the arcane servitors that maintain the Vivlioklasm place those books that invariably catch fire in the sprawling chaos of the libric-city. As the books themselves are astral constructs, they don’t completely burn away, instead piling atop one another as kindling in an everburning cathedral reminiscent of something out of hell. Coincidentally, the party acquires the map from a group of demonic cultists. could they have competition in retrieving these rare volumes?
Keep reading
Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:
With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.
With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:
Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)
Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion
Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent
And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!
It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.
This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.
These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.
So, what can we do?
Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing.
Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it.
And maybe consider other TTRPG systems for the time being, Pathfinder’s Paizo has been much nicer to the community, their workers are unionized and are far more healthy overall
Hey you know what sucks is predatory companies that make you enter your email address so that they can harass and advertise to you to access resources you might need to keep track of expenses after a disaster. So, uh, fuck them.
If you need to track the cost of things like hotel stays, pet kenneling, medical care, etc. after a disaster you can use this worksheet.
If you need to create an inventory of your home for an insurance claim (and if you'd like to do this to keep someplace safe before a disaster) you can use this worksheet (two pages, instructions on the first page, worksheet on the second).
And here's a FEMA document with numbers for disaster relief groups and a checklist of documents that you may need to have replaced as well as a description of what to do if you had cash in your home that was destroyed and can possibly be replaced.
Here is a free pdf of the players handbook
Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything
Here is a free pdf to monsters manual
Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything
Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide
Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters
Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes
For all your dnd purposes
somehow knowing that tumblr is being kept around mostly as a testing ground for advertisers and corporations doesn’t even make me feel that exploited, because every social media site is exploitive. but being basically lab rats to test shit on before it’s refined for use in polite society is by far the funniest possible way to be exploited.
"oh please everyone has gay thoughts sometimes" so what i'm hearing is that heteronormativity is so ingrained that a significant percentage of the population regularly experiences bisexual attraction? but dismisses it as something that all straight people experience? this is so concerning are you guys okay
"I hated Harrow so much at the beginning" could NOT be me. She has flair, she has panache. She stays up all night scrabbling in the dirt burying bone fragments just for the drama of the reveal. She stabs herself in the cheek so she can sign in blood. She is a control freak who puppets her dead parents around and bullies Gideon into a vow of silence. She is a singleminded swot who maps out all the doors in a massive decaying mansion the very first night. She makes herself a bone cocoon before passing out. She leaves bread in a drawer. You don't see a grimy little freak and want to put them in a blender??