The Dripping Tap

The blogger MadGod created a great Rabbi class . I liked it, but it left me wanting . In that void of wanting I created my own take on the ttrpg Rabbi class suitable for the Goblin Laws.   The real question: what's kinder to "gaming", the Goblin Laws or halakha? To the wise, a hint is sufficient. Rabbi Akiva in a classic GigaChad philosopher pose Rebbe " the honor of your student should be as dear to you as your own " Starting equipment : traditional Jewish clothing, glorious sidelocks and beard, knowledge of tanakh and talmud relevant for any situation you come across. Damage Die : D4  [This is for my hack which replaces weapon dice with template-specific damage dice] Starting skills : linguistics, argumentation A: Mentor, Parsha B: Get C: Masorah D: Chevraya OR Tzadik Mentor : If you assist someone with a task (skilled in that task or not) they add +2 to that roll (or -2 DV). If they succeed because of your help, they regain 1 HP and the impact of thei...

The Road A vaguely Middle East + Central Asia inspired setting, evoking the historical Silk Road in themes and setup for adventure. When a traveler speaks of the entire region, they call it  The Road of Dead Buddhas . Upon its breadth not a soul can forget the wisdom of the sages: " If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him ." As people travel these lands for gold and glory, certainty and conviction are as picked-over by vultures as the many corpses that litter its trails. There Are Barbarians at the Gate Han era Chinese statue depicting a Xiongnu man being trampled So-called civilization has declared you Other, and the hooves of war have stamped out your way of life. Being marked as a wretched thing by imperial agents from faraway cities, you have embraced the lifestyle they inflict upon you. You have been trampled, but not defeated. You will become the wretched thing they make you out to be, for the honor and memory of those who couldn't get back up. Special prerequis...

Creating fictional languages for my GLoG hack and its setting (The Road of Dead Buddhas) and trying to tackle the following: Include the diversity and variety of real linguistics Interesting (flavorful) dialect choices Giving players meaningful choices… …while also trying not to overwhelm them (or the GM) with complexity All of this is also in the context of creating a setting that encourages far-afield exploration and campaigns with yearlong voyages, in the vein of Ibn Battuta or Frodo (and his boyfriend Samwise). I want something more intricate or complex than free form languages in Errant or Vain the Sword 2E, but complexity for the sake of interesting choices unlike The Dragon Game’s shitty languages. “ Does anyone speak Orc? No? Crusading it is, then… ” My solution : to allow players to learn language families (almost akin to alignment languages or knowing a script or alphabet), as well as specific dialects . The more overlap a language family has with the local dialec...

These testaments are player options for the Zealot class for KillJester's ttrpg Errant . They come from the playtest of my Jewish mythology megadungeon MYR REGATH , now cancelled for logistics reasons and has entered a hiatus. Now that it's on pause I can look at things more critically, and am even more excited to run it again at my FLGS. Agrat bat Mahlat אגרת בת מחלת Acid-etched carving of Agrat bat Mahlat by my friend Yotzeret Sheydim The succubus Agrat - daughter of the Demon Queen Mahlat - has found suffering in her success. Competing with her sisters to seduce the righteous and holy, she snuck behind the divine curtain and laid with The Venom Angel . Now further up the line of succession for her merits, she cannot take The Demonic Throne while corrupted by the divine essence taken into her body. Cursed by divine contamination, she works to find and punish sinful mortals in a quest to exorcize the angelic corruption spreading throughout her body. She rides nightly on a ch...

  I’m going to be trying Yora’s challenge Lore24 , a kind of spiritual successor to Dungeon23 . It’s focused on writing rather than strictly designing, pretty laid back, and open enough that if you were to sufficiently finish a project (a world, a fantasy system, etc) you could start a new one while maintaining the creative momentum and pressure. Check out the full post at Spriggan's Den ! I like it! I detect a sentiment that Lore24 is going to be easier to maintain than Dungeon23, however as someone who managed to stick around with D23 (for the most part, see my coming analysis on the project!) I think they’re just different beasts. It’s essentially a writing marathon rather than a design/drawing marathon and its format is more abstract; some people can take that and run with it, while others (like my neuro-divergent self) might find that the scariest thing is a blank page. Er - more like a blank prompt, I mean. That’s just sophistry, though! What are my plans? I’ve done the D23 ...

  "Who is this king of glory? Shogach, strong and mighty, Shogach, mighty in battle!" Psalms of The Storm WADI SHOGACH A dry river-valley forgotten in the outskirts of a fallen desert kingdom. Scholars and mystics find mention of it in obscure scriptures, the supposed site of a shrine to The God of that land. Shogach was his name - he was their Elohim, called The Rider Upon the Clouds - the locals call the dry river basin by a similar name: Wadi Shogach .  Tracing forgotten secrets and implications of ancient spoils, many travel far and wide to the remote desert region that is home to the Wadi. Locals shake their head, say they cannot give them passage to the site. " We do not trespass there. It is an angry place, not for you nor I. You will drown in His anger, if you were to make the journey ." Still, the promise of gold is enough to lure many a robber. The locals of Elesh do not intervene: the place will handle them all the same. Elesh is a small town of <200 p...