I haven’t posted in a while, and that’s due to the fact I’m working on two big faction articles simultaneously, while also messing around with reverse engineering a magick system and a couple other things. But sitting in the backlog was this mechanic, so I thought it should be presented in the meanwhile.
First and foremost, this procedure is not a replacement for roleplay (duh), but to be specific, I don’t care for mechanics that trivialize social interactions or make it a “button to speak good.
A nice thing about designing a game and owning a blog is you don’t really run out of things to write on and discuss. The game design and thinking on solutions feeds nicely into article concepts, and vice versa. Thinking about what I want to write about on my blog often feeds into ideas and considerations for my larger project.
This is an easy article as I’ve had these rules implemented at my table for some time with good results.
Introduction I’m not good with introductions, so I’ll get to the point. If you don’t understand the concept of Monsters of /X/, go read my first article here. If you haven’t read my first article and don’t plan on reading it, the basic conceit is that I’m making monster write-ups based on creatures from 4chan’s /X/ board, which is their paranormal and conspiracy board.
Pretty simple—but not as simple as you might think.
“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles."
Paul Atreides Much like Firearms, psionics in D&D have this stigma around them, a very vocal group of people who think they don’t belong. My typical retort to those people is to tell them to browse Appendix N of any old D&D edition, and you’ll find psionics was quite a big part of the pulp fantasy that would inspire D&D.
Of all the classes, Thief receives probably the brunt of criticism regarding D&D’s early class design. I’ve even met some OD&D grognards who view the class as borderline heretical and excise the class entirely from their games, viewing it as a “forced niche.”
The point of this article is not to debate the merits of the thief class, which I believe it has - even if not mechanically, certainly archetypically - but that is a bit beyond the scope of this article.
