When asked for comment, Hasbro Executives report that while they do gamble, what they're doing is a normal part of their job.

"Listen, everyone in our industry and economy deals with growth, and the risks of growth. We need to make investments to attempt to grow or our stock prices will fall as investors chasing profits will put their money elsewhere. So when we spend billions of dollars in 2020 and 2021 to attempt to grow our brand, we do so with the sobering knowledge that this isn't a sure thing, but calculated risks need to be made."

"But we manage those risks sufficiently, because we have other peoples' jobs as collateral. I mean, just imagine how we could possibly make these financial risks if we had to shoulder the responsibility for underperformance ourselves!"

Unprompted by questions, the executives continued. "And don't you dare try to put this in a negative light. This is just how our civilization conducts its artistic output. What, do you want people to make fun things just for the joy of it? You sound like a stuttering gap-toothed simpleton. You need to grow up kid!" The Executives took this moment to pull out two Cigarettes, lighting them simultaneously before taking a series of quick drags. "WAKE UP!" They added before going eerily quiet to stare into the middle distance.

At time of printing, Hasbro Executives have entered into negotiations with eldritch powers to obliterate all cultural knowledge of Dave Arneson to improve their next Financial Quarter's figures by half of a percentage. They are additionally hoping to leverage other cultural history of the hobby for tax breaks, stating "You know, like how streaming services destroy art. Can we do that?"

cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/464263

There are devils who scheme and wheedle souls. There are beings of ancient wills and unknowable intent. One may even have entreated elemental forces from the primal dawn of the world, or Genies who have within them a stunning variety of desires, wants, and whims. Alongside Archfey who encompass a dizzying variety of the beliefs and motivations. What unites them all?

They all think Eldritch Blast is a pretty cool spell.

There are devils who scheme and wheedle souls. There are beings of ancient wills and unknowable intent. One may even have entreated elemental forces from the primal dawn of the world, or Genies who have within them a stunning variety of desires, wants, and whims. Alongside Archfey who encompass a dizzying variety of the beliefs and motivations. What unites them all?

They all think Eldritch Blast is a pretty cool spell.

A source at Wizards of the Coast has said that Shkipin’s use of AI art was not something that the team was aware of. Further, they state that no text in the book was AI generated. Wizards has said that they will update their guidelines to more explicitly prevent these sorts of incidents from happening in the future.

io9 has reached out to Ilya Shkipin for clarification and comment. Shkipin has further stated on social media today in light of his confirmation and the deletion of his prior posts that “the future of today[s] illustrations is being discussed.”

I'm less interested in the contents of the linked free adventure, and the below design notes on the adventure.

Design Note

If you have Glory of the Giants, you can follow along with the process we used to create this adventure. The basic adventure seed—“a fire giant captures a renowned Humanoid smith”—comes from the Fire Giant Skill table (chapter 2), with additional inspiration from the “Magnum Opus” adventure idea connected to the Star Forge (chapter 4). The name of the giant villain comes from the Giant Names table (chapter 2), and the encounters within the Star Forge are inspired by the Fire Giant Encounters table (chapter 3) and the Elemental Fire Encounters table (chapter 3). The map of the Star Forge is in chapter 4. The giant wrestlers of Fireside Monastery are firbolgs (chapter 6), and several other monsters in the adventure come from the bestiary in chapter 6 (cinder hulk; fire giant forgecaller; fire giant of Evil Fire). Information about fire giant bags (chapter 5) fills out the treasure characters might acquire along the way.

WotC is demonstrating how to use this book to make your own adventures.

They should have done the same for Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, then maybe people would have understood that it was tip-to-stern the best DM toolkit they released yet.

As always, I have posted this link to /r/dndnext, please feel free to upvote it there to raise visibility.

I have been DMing for a while, but I have recently come across a method of worldbuilding that has transformed how I create campaigns. This method also allows me to make shorter campaigns that have a end-point trajectory, rather than one that is open ended, and helps me to create satisfying stories. Additionally, this helps to reduce the amount of effort that needs to be performed from session-to-session, by frontloading the most important parts of the campaign preparation before the start of the game.

In short, the process has 3 phases

Phase 1

You get the idea for the kind of world the adventure will take place in. The general story themes and concepts you would like to play around with as well. Write a 1 page treatment for what the world is like and what the broad locations in the world appear to be, and send it to your players. 1 page is important, because it forces you to distill down what is unique and interesting about this world.

For example, in my most recent campaign prep I made a treatment of what the factions in the world are, the virtues of the different areas of the world, and a statement of what is common historical knowledge versus what are secrets that are not commonly known. I ended with a statement of what the themes are going to be for this world as well. NOTE: You should not know what the plot of the actual game is at this stage.

Phase 2

After the players have read your brief 1 page treatment of the world, ask them what kinds of characters they want to play. Work with them on their backstories to make sure they bookend with eachother for a matter of convenience, and ask them to provide information about their families and what aspirations and goals their characters have, or what kinds of stories they want for their characters.

This allows players to either lean into, or purposefully away from the elements of your world. As long as they do one or the other, this process has worked, as they can be part of the established culture of the world, or part of the counter-culture. Either way, you have material and character motivation to work with. The only way this does not work, is if they clearly did not actually engage with the world in some fashion during their character creation. If you notice that, try to gently encourage it with additional requests for information from them.

Phase 3

Use all the information your players gave you to worldbuild and plot out your campaign. Did you have a player who wrote a lot? GREAT! The NPCs will become major plot NPCs, the events depicted will become common knowledge, with some hidden truths that player didn’t know. But before you know what your players want to do, you can't know what kind of plot will engage them. This is where the actual plot for your campaign is written.

This makes your players into collaborators for your story, which will make them invested in the goings on. Additionally, if you know exactly who their characters are and what they want, then you simply need to place obstacles within the plot between them and their desires. Or better yet, present them with interesting decisions or bespoke antagonists that challenge their sense of self. This allows you to be INCREDIBLY detailed and plan out plot beats ahead of time because you are essentially building a railroad to exactly where the players want to go.

Railroading is bad because it usually doesn’t honor the choices of the players. This is railroading, but it honors the players’ decisions.

Finally, I should credit where this idea came from, as this is the method that Brennan Lee Mulligan of Dimension 20 fame has described in multiple instances. My latest games have actually been the easiest to prep from session to session, because I have done a lot of the hardest work prior to the start of the campaign.

And as for the game-to-game prep, I have to credit Slyfourish. His 'Lazy DM Guide' series also keeps my 'procrastinating' work down to a minimum as I focus on what is the most important for the game sessions.

As with many of my other posts, I have crossposted this to the /r/dndnext subreddit. Feel free to upvote it there for higher visibility.

Youtube playlist of an Archeologist's exploration of ancient Archeological sites in Turkey

It looks like this will also follow the template of the Spelljammer books, with some player options, setting information, and DM facing content (adventure & creature statblocks).

A breakdown and debunking of an ancient aliens Netflix 'archeology' series

This is a tiny YouTube channel of an old hand in this hobby who typically has an even kneeled and optimistic outlook on the new releases. His enthusiasm for this subject matter always feels sincere, I hope you guys enjoy!

This is an old topic, but I'm curious what a more recent assessment for the ultimate support build would be in D&D5e.

Previously, Treantmonk has pushed the idea of the 'God Wizard' who is built around spells that shut down enemies and empowers allies. Area control, vision control, area denial, and the odd buff to assist allies.

However since his build was popularlized, there have been a number of fascinating subclasses that are built around support, specifically between bards and druids. With that in mind, what are the best support builds? These are builds that help win the fight without dealing any damage, preferably