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runs in the family

Thinking about dragonborn for an upcoming 5e game I’ll be running/playing in. This is designed to be laid atop dragonborn as they are in the book, so there aren’t any additional or different mechanics at the moment.

Dragonborn are not a distinct people; they are lucky or unfortunate inheritors of dragon nature, and can be found among humans, elves, or anyone who consorts with dragons.

Some families are familiar with their inheritance, each generation instructing the next in the pursuit of dragonhood. There are even communities of dragonborn, or polities led by a dragon-natured line. Other families learn of their ancestry when their newborn’s first screaming breath is accompanied with a plume of smoke.

Dragon nature is fierce but fitful, and what marks a dragonborn depends on both random chance and how wholeheartedly their embrace dragonhood; those who embrace it metamorphose slowly to become more dragonlike. Pick some or all of the following signs at character creation. You may choose additional signs each time you gain a level.

Signs of the Dragon

  1. Horns
  2. Sharp eye teeth
  3. Fingers terminating in claws
  4. A scaled tail
  5. A thick mane growing from the scalp and neck, sometimes extending a distance down the spine
  6. Dragon facial features (somewhere between a crocodile and a cat), sometimes sparing the mandible
  7. Scales, usually densest on the back, back of the neck, and back of the arms
  8. Digitigrade, clawed feet
  9. Reptilian eyes
from Monster Child by Sang-Yoon Lee

Dragonborn in the world

Dragonborn families and communities are complicated.

  • Those who wholeheartedly embrace their nature may shed their human senescence and mortality before dying, allowing them to pursue metamorphosis without end. 
  • Rarely, a member of a dragonborn family will give birth to a wriggling wyrmling–a miraculous portent, for such wyrm-get will grow up to be wise and immense, dragons in truth.
  • Conversely, an elder dragonborn may occasionally find a human infant working themselves free from their clutch.

The path to dragonhood is long and uncertain, and dragonborn may find themselves wandering from it. Ancient dragonborn can undergo exploratory metamorphoses or make a mistake in their embrace of dragon nature, splitting or duplicating appendages, growing human limbs at dragon scale, exposing muscle or organs through gaps in integument, losing some or all of their scales to reveal glabrous flesh, sprouting gills or filmy insect wings, fungal hyphae, fleshy cerata, mineral growths, roots, and so on. Most ancient dragonborn bear signs of this error or experimentation, but a few are lost to it. They shed aspects of their human nature without attaining the dragon equivalent (morality, memory, ability to dream or sleep), causing them to become erratic or even mindless.

Dark Souls 3 concept art

Dragonborn Communities and Factions

Dragon Lepers. Those who nurse the memorial plague of the Green Dragon. It brings longevity along with mutation, slowly bending the afflicted towards the dead dragon’s shape across centuries. Limbs stretch and bones twist, the disease knitting torn skin back together with keratinized integument and shredded muscle with pulpy hyphae. Dragon Lepers share their dreams, always on the edge of a bottomless mire into which the Green Dragon’s vast corpse sinks.

Golden Dragon Alchemists. Students of the Golden Dragon who accentuate their inheritance with ritual medicine. They pierce themselves with needles forged from the gold of its body and drink elixirs distilled from its crumbling bones, gaining extended life, but also something of the old dragon’s greed. They are marked by their golden eyes and golden canines, and sometimes the horns that push through their temples. Most are hermits or pursue their craft in isolated schools, but every few generations a royal line or noble house turn to dragon alchemy to improve their family’s grasp on power.

Derelict Dwellers. The bearers of the blessing of the Blue Dragon. Its body is the foundation of a vast atoll and flourishing coral reef; every generation, some number of the atoll’s dwellers are born with coral horns or faints sparks on their breath. Derelict dwellers who embrace their fate live forever, but become slower and more brittle with age, eventually becoming as sessile as the coral that made  them. Some choose to settle in the shallows around the atoll as immortal additions to the crackling reef that forms their home; others travel to distant seas to form the basis of a wholly new storm reef.

High House of Sigurd. Descended from a storied dragonhunter who drank up the lifeblood of the Red Dragon in an inspired violation of the great taboo. Inheriting his cursed and stolen strength, they have established themselves as a member of the aristocracy, a privilege they defend with weapons forged in their elders’ dragonfire. Their cannoneers and brass-clad dragoons are especially hated.

Others: The Crystal Dragon Rite – dragonborn collective that conducts dialogues with celestial bodies from icy mountaintops; Gravetenders – inheritors of the Black Dragon who cultivate the worms that feast on its body and brew artificial souls to do their bidding.

from Claymore
from Claymore
Dark Souls 3 concept art
Sekiro Concept Art
Dark Souls 1 Concept art

hex culture Uncategorized

My Most Influential RPGs

People have been sharing the 10 RPGs that most influenced them. Here’s a handful of mine–they aren’t the ones that I like the most or played the most, but have certainly had the biggest impact on how I think about table top games and gaming.

If You Knew Now the Fullness of Your Coming Regret, by Constance Hughs

The entirety of the game consists of the names and brief biographies of 100 characters in Plangence, a small South Dakota town. Its first and only print run was taken from shelves when the remains of 24 of the people named in the book were found in the author’s South Dakota home.

Chrysanthemums, by Anonymous

A simulationist take on Heian-era romance distributed in the early 90s by floppy disk. Its complex flower-based resolution system was derided by critics as inaccessible and expensive, but it accumulated a cult following.

Cradled in the Holy Hollows of His Hands, by Josiah Jameson

A diceless system based around accurate recollection of Bible verses. Its author claimed playing the game was an act of worship, drawing censure from a variety of Christian spiritual leaders. Publication rights have lapsed since its distribution in the 80s, and the author’s estate disavows knowledge of the game.

Supplement V, by M.M. Batiste

An unsanctioned fifth supplement to Original Dungeons & Dragons featuring extensive rules for what the author describes as games in the “Grand Guignol style”. An expansively cruel and gruesomely scatalogical tract claiming inspiration from 100 Days of Sodom, L’histoire de l’œil, and of course the shows of Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, its appendices included “rules modules” well ahead of the booklet’s time, describing options for ascending armor class and damage on a miss.

The Whole of the Law, by Anonymous

A series of allegedly false documents that loosely outline a modern fantasy horror setting in which a revanchist neopagan splinter sect stages a successful coup in the United States in the late 1990s. Sold loose-leaf in a shrink-wrapped manila folder, it was pulled from shelves in the early 2000s, perhaps the real string of arrests in West Virginia towns in which must of the metaplot’s action takes place.

hex culture Uncategorized

the earth does not want you II

Working on a low level 5e pathcrawl of sorts for a haunted stretch of Floridian wilderness.

palmetto scrub with intermittent pine trees

Terrain

  • Palmetto Scrub. fronds just taller than your average person. You can shimmy up the periodic pine tree to see into adjacent hexes. Going off the trail through scrub counts as difficult terrain and requires you to make a DC 14 Dex save or take 1d4 damage per turn as you get cut up by vegetation and bit up by insects.
  • Pine Forest. Dark, cool, weirdly quiet, with close-set trees. The mist doesn’t entirely burn off in the mornings here. Going off the trail counts as difficult terrain.
  • Wetland. Mostly waist-deep muddy black water, dotted with soft-soiled islands that support sparse palm trees. Counts as difficult terrain, and hurrying requires a DC 14 Dex save or falling into a sump in the river bottom that you didn’t notice because you were in such a dang hurry. Swimming creatures get advantage on stealth checks here.

Pine Forest Encounters (1d6 by day, 1d8 by night)

  1. 2d8 bandits (pg 343 MM). Disadvantage on morale checks–they are actually teenagers and kids, and very hungry. You might get 1d4 of them to tag along if you talk them down and offer them food.
  2. 1d3 outlaws (pg 349 MM, see Scout). Will ambush if they can. The outlaw last in initiative order can cast produce flame cantrip at will and the hex warlock spell 1/long rest, but does not have a bow.
  3. 1d2 brown bears (pg 319 MM). Not interested in fighting. If the players win initiative and make noise without attacking, they make a Morale check with disadvantage or bolt. You can get good money for their pelts and teeth, though.
  4. cougar (pg 339 MM, see Tiger). Stealth check vs lead player’s Passive Perception or else it falls on top of them and starts mauling. If the players notice it, it will track them semi-obviously until it has a good opening for attack. Flees if attacked, but always returns.
  5. 1d3 false raccoons (pg 318 MM, see Baboon). Can cast minor illusion at will and suggestion 1/day. Their heads don’t seen to join up with their bodies quite right, and their teeth are a little too human, and they can talk. They claim to be from a place ruled by November, where everything is wild and barren and twisted sideways. They like it here, though. They think they are going to stay.
  6. Kehkerekhek, Mockingbird God. (pg 324 MM, see Giant Eagle). Can cast minor illusion, thaumaturgy, disguise self, and silent image at will. Phantasmal force and suggestion 1/day each. If he hasn’t taken damage on a turn, he can do a rude dance as an action, triggering an encounter check. Hates all False Beasts.
  7. Knightingale (pg 350 MM, see Veteran). Vampire weaknesses. Can polymorph into a nightingale as an action. Armed with a saber and carbine made of red-tinted mercury glass.
  8. Moonbeast (pg 347, see Mage). Can fly. Will ignore players until next encounter in return for a human life, the location of many victims, or the name of a member of the party. Otherwise, just wants to taste as much blood as possible. As pale and indistinct as a fish seen in deep water, looks something like a deer skeleton settled on its haunches when it comes to a rest.

Palmetto Encounters (1d6 by day, 1d8 by night)bleached and branchless dead tree sticking up over palmettos

  1. 2d8 bandits (pg 343 MM). Disadvantage on morale checks–they are actually teenagers and kids, and very hungry. You might get 1d4 of them to tag along if you talk them down and offer them food.
  2. 2d4 coyotes (pg 341 MM, see wolf). Will ambush if they can. Try to separate the enemy and chase them off into the scrub. Can be distracted by food.
  3. 1d2 giant spiders (pg 328 MM). If they get a surprise attack in, each will try to grab a PC and pull them into the scrub. They ignore the scrub as difficult terrain. Flee if it looks like they will lose, but will track PCs, waiting for an opportunity to attack by surprise again.
  4. 2d4 boars (pg 319 MM). Don’t ever roll Morale, won’t stop chasing. Their meat and guts are filled with vermin, but their pelts are still good.
  5. 1d4 false coyotes (pg 341 MM, see worg). Big coyotes, each with three tails and too many eyes scattered across their faces. They come from a place ruled by November, and they want this place for themselves. Each can cast tasha’s hideous laughter 1/day.
  6. Grass House Dweller (pg 346, see druid). Palmetto scrub does not count as difficult terrain. Keeps the souls of those they kills in calabashes on their belt. If they start losing a fight, they reach right into the ground and pull out an enormous centipede like a person yanking a root out of the earth to distract their attackers as they run away. Will implacably seek revenge afterwards, though.
  7. Knightingale (pg 350 MM, see Veteran). Vampire weaknesses. Can polymorph into a nightingale as an action. Armed with a saber and carbine made of red-tinted mercury glass.
  8. Divine Carrion (pg 228 MM, see Mummy). A carcass of indeterminate provenance, bone visible, thin slices of rich red flesh peeking between mangled fur and too many limp limbs. Can move, but begins all encounters with a supernatural appeal to take a bite of it, which requires a DC 12 Cha save to resist. Those who succumb cannot regain hit points in any way, and rise as ghouls when they die unless the curse-disease is lifted. Hates all False Beasts.

Wetlands Encounters (1d6 by day, 1d8 by night)

  1. 2d4 bandits (pg 343 MM). Paddling along on rafts and coracles. Disadvantage on morale checks–they are actually teenagers and kids, and very hungry. You might get 1d4 of them to tag along if you talk them down and offer them food.
  2. 1d4 crocodiles (pg 320 MM). Likes to surprise attack and pull people into the dark water.
  3. Horseshoe Crab (pg 324 see Giant Crab). Like to swarm and grapple a single target, dragging them underwater.
  4. Elder Amphiuma (pg 324 MM, see Giant Constrictor Snake). Can also breathe water. Can cast thaumaturgy and guidance as cantrips at will; 1st level spell slot to cast command and animal friendship, 2nd level spell slot to cast augury. Friendly, if obscure and erratic. Hates False Beasts.
  5. False Crocodile (pg 324, see giant crocodile). Walks on/swims with long human fingers, has wet and friendly eyes. Can cast command (recharges on a 5-6). Wants the pearl under the Elder Amphiuma’s tongue.
  6. River House Dweller (pg 346, see druid). Has swim speed, can hold their breath for an hour. Keeps the souls of those they kills in reeds on their belt. If they start losing a fight, they stir up the waters, turning it into a seething mass of snakes. Will implacably seek revenge afterwards, though.
  7. Knightingale (pg 350 MM, see Veteran). Vampire weaknesses. Can polymorph into a nightingale as an action. Armed with a saber and carbine made of red-tinted mercury glass.
  8. Drowned Merchant (pg 24 MM, see basilisk). It wants for its waters to swallow more lives and goods, to learn dangerous secrets, for the crocodiles in its waters to be well fed. It will sell anything that has fallen into its home river, lake, or pond at considerable markup; reveal a secret know to someone who drowned in its waters

wetlands on a cloudy day out to the horizon, a lone dead tree in the distance