Why It's Better to Make Something Bad and Original than Good and Copied

This is not a screed against plagiarism from a former teacher who got a lot of essays written by ChatGPT. Okay, there will be one brief paragraph about that sort of thing, but only because of the principle within it. The title says it all, so let's get into it. 

In tabletop game culture, there isn't really such a thing as plagiarism in the way we think of other uses of the word. We are not just allowed but encouraged to use modules, to mimic the styles of GMs we like, to take inspiration from the things we enjoy--and that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a rule that says you can't borrow. I think some players would be disappointed to find that something a GM is directly claiming is original is in fact just something else written by another person, but I don't think that's really a big issue with tabletop games. What I mean basically comes down to a matter of choices. 

In tabletop games, as in life, everything is a choice. What you as the GM say happens is a choice that has obvious effects (and some non-obvious effects, usually). So is what NPCs say--it's a choice you're making as the GM. But then, so is everything you bring to the table. Every detail you include in GMing, from planning to the session to reviewing it for next session, is a choice. 

When GMs make the choice to include something original, they are likely to perceive themselves as taking a chance. In a way, it's true. Classic things are classic for a reason, and something original might fail to live up to that standard. That's the thought, anyway. But I would contest it. Every time I've played with a GM who's done something original, be it small or large, I've been impressed. I've been gaming for a long time and have seen a lot of campaigns, some which were modules and some which were entirely homebrew and some somewhere in between. The moments that we the players and the GM themselves were most happy during was original. And yes, that means that entirely homebrew campaigns tend to be more enjoyable than modules.

But what is meant by "enjoyable"? Science has demonstrated that our brains crave novelty. Simply put, big market modules are not going to introduce much novelty--they are incentivized to provide reliable, safe fun using the ideas that have worked before. There are some more unique modules out there, such as those on this site (ranging from movie one-shots to time loop adventures)--but even these are someone else's creativity, and what will get the most novelty and enjoyment is something that feels natural to you, the GM, and that means creating something of your own. (Have you ever tried to run something as a GM that didn't suit you? It's not fun, and it usually ends in disaster.)

So we come back to the fear: what if my players don't like the stuff I come up with? This is, as many fears are, totally irrational. Our ability as humans to create interesting things is not some binary--it's not either you're creative or you're not. We all have the capacity to come up with story ideas and character designs and interesting worldbuilding. What varies the most is our faith in making our own content. 

Let me present a thought experiment: two different campaigns, designed and run differently. Campaign 1 is run from a module by a GM who is uncertain of their ability to homebrew and chooses to do so as little as possible; Campaign 2 is run by a GM who is doing their best to implement some original ideas. Campaign 1 will include dungeons, monsters, combat, and some backstory, and Campaign 2 could be anything--literally anything. I've DMed a civil war, a scrape with a god, a campaign based on the National Treasure movie series, a massive sandbox, a mystery, and a game with so much importance to my world I have to set my next campaign a century later, and that's just in D&D. If those sound radically different from each other, they were! So over the course of three campaigns, the player of Campaign 1 is going to get three slightly varied dungeons, and the player of Campaign 2 will have seen a multi-storyline campaign designed in part by the players, an intensive investigation for a grisly and senseless murder, and literally becoming dragons, the most powerful people in the setting--and I have two players who have experienced exactly that. Which one sounds more fun? 

Why should we be afraid to create our own stories and characters and places? I'm personally afraid of using a module--I know I won't enjoy it, and it will hold back my creativity, which is a big part of why I play, so I won't have any passion in delivering the module. A dungeon presented by someone with no stakes in the game will always be moderate fun at most. But if you make something that ends up being even a little cool or surprising or funny or dramatic or epic, that is a gaming memory that the players will carry with them. They'll think, "Oh, I remember when my DM did this crazy twist where the goofy comic relief character turned out to be the villain and almost party wiped us," not "My DM made this weird thing--I dunno, it was kinda lame." If you actually do have someone with that attitude, are they really a good party member or even friend? Tabletop games are about coming together and sharing something special--creating your own material is exactly that. 

"But the title of the article says bad and original is better than copied and good!" you might be saying. "You haven't talked about if it's actually bad." Okay, reader, I concede that you're right. Let's talk about if it's bad. Again, I'll use an example. Years ago, I had a DM who ran a pretty nasty table. There were politics and social games and lots of discourteous behavior. It was hard to be a part of, but I was kind of hooked on the worldbuilding. Everything about classic D&D was tweaked. It was weird and silly a lot of the time. Story-wise, it was almost incoherent. Something about a threat against reality from an evil force--I don't recall much since it lacked sense and actual focus in the game. But as flawed as it was, I was really fixated. I kept coming back to face the nasty dynamics and directionlessness so I could enjoy this specific thing that the DM was doing, which was create an open world with lots of relationships and surprises. 

On the other hand, I had a DM who was terrified of trying to be creative. Their fear of trying their hand at creating even a storyline or an original NPC meant that we would play directly from a famous D&D module. Folks, it was a lot of dungeons and other fights. It was presented pretty much exactly as it is in the book. I hated it. There was nothing exciting or surprising to attach to. So yes, bad and original (an inconsistent and somewhat unpleasant campaign that had a lot of interesting ideas) is better than good and copied (using a module without changing anything). 

And yes, I am going to state for the record that using a module is basically copying. You're copying what the writer told you to do and copying thousands of other GMs in running that, and I say that as someone whose first bloc on this website is modules. Since the potential for what you could make up for your players is literally everything, opting to create nothing amounts to copying another experience for lack of trying. Now it's time for that teacher rant:

When I taught English classes that required essays, I would go in with familiarity of the students' writing styles. It's obvious when someone's diction and sentence fluency suddenly improve to college level skills, so I would run those essays through multiple AI detectors. Every time I was suspicious, I would get multiple hits for stuff like ChatGPT. I would go to the students who turned in these essays and ask them to define elevated words used in their essay. They could not. Because I was a forgiving and kind teacher, I would allow these students to try again using their own work. The resulting essays were generally better than the AI-generated ones because generative AI is, in general, utter garbage that doesn't understand higher thought, but also because those students were entirely capable of writing a good essay but were too afraid to try. 

Your GMing career might be like that. You don't know what you're capable of until you try. I've used some examples that make me look good--now let's look at my mistakes. As an early GM, I planned storylines because I thought it was creative to do so--now I know to use creativity to respond to players guiding the story. As an early GM, I was prone to treating player characters I didn't like antagonistically--now I know to be fair to all player characters since I don't always know what their player has in store. As an early GM, I tried to keep the game at the table and never discuss the game outside of referring to in-jokes from the campaign--now I know to be proactive and talk to players when I see potential issues developing. We learn through experimentation and making mistakes, and you can't do that if you're not trying.

One last point about modules. Imagine playing a module you've heard about or read, and the GM is following it to the letter. In one possibility, they end the module the way it's written. In another possibility, they end the module in a new way that takes all the players by surprise. Which is more fun? The one with the homebrew ending is only different in one way, and yet it becomes the focal point of the whole module. The players remember their surprise at the homebrew ending. This is success. And it can be taken further.

At the end of the day, maybe it's a matter of investing in yourself. Running a module might help you learn a few small lessons about GMing, but long-term, you can only go so far with modules. If you want to really get the most you can out of tabletop games, you have to commit to the perceived risk and trust that it's worth it. And I promise you: something original will always be better than something unoriginal, so make the effort to try. I talk a lot on this site about how homebrew is its own reward and about how learning to be a better GM and player is our constant mission, but more than that, I am always telling you to try your hand at homebrewing something. I've taken homebrew to an extreme, but I don't think that's necessary. I'm not saying to drop everything and make a world and a campaign to go in it right now. What matters is that you do something of your own, even on a smaller scale. 

There are two types of readers I'm imagining right now. Well, three. Type 1: Avid gamers who homebrew themselves and want new ideas about how to game even better. Type 2: Mystery visitors from all over the world who seem to visit this silly little site in droves, whose motives I cannot speculate about. Type 3: People who are module-runners who are looking to pick this argument apart. To Type 1, I say, hey, thanks for being here, and I hope you find something useful. To Type 2, I say, I don't know what all these supposed visits from the Netherlands and Brazil are about, but thanks for making me feel better. And to Type 3, I say, hey, you've read this far, so give me one last chance to change your mind.

We all know the thrill of making a tabletop game character. Imagining their personality, appearance, name, backstory, goals--it's a high unlike any other. All that creativity gets channeled into making something, and now your character is special to you. This is a nearly universal experience for tabletop games as far as I'm aware. Hold that feeling in your mind, the way it reaches you on a deep level, the way it drives you to be with that character or make a new one. Now imagine that anything in a gameworld could give you that feeling. Every NPC can give you that feeling if you try. Every detail about the homebrew world can fill you with joy. Every moment in the story can bring you the elation of creativity shared with others.

Let's put the fear to bed. Tabletop games are often and always should be safe spaces. We're all coming together to have fun, and that's a vulnerable place to be. If you're playing with friends, they are not going to be rude to you about trying to do something interesting. If it helps you, tell them in advance or right afterward that something is homebrew, and that will help them to understand that you've made something for them, and the expectation is that they treat you graciously for it. And some of you might be saying, but what if I don't like what I make? Then remake it, or scrap it and start over, or borrow inspiration to change it in a fun way. You don't have to use stuff you don't like. You can just make some things you enjoy, create an idea for a story around it, and let the players do their magic with it. It's not too good to be true--that's how all the campaigns I've run have worked, and they've been rewarding and successful. Dismiss the fear. It isn't real. Just try. 

I'm a creative person. This is the 258th article on this site. I've written and published a four-novel series about my favorite D&D character. I wrote a free book about Tarot interpretation. I've crocheted 50 stuffed animals, many of my own design. All of that happened in the last five years, while I also ran two incredible campaigns and played in another. I know from experience that making something is scary at first--I didn't try actually writing things seriously until I had almost finished my first degree in English. But what I learned quickly was that once you start, it becomes much easier. Creativity is intuitive, and tapping into it comes quickly for many of us. We all imagine and create differently, but all of us express ourselves somehow. The trick is just finding your voice. 

Finding your voice as a person--not just a GM, but a person--is deep, even spiritual work. I don't have an article for something as personal as that. But I can tell you that listening to yourself and knowing yourself are tools we can all benefit from. I use this in my creativity. If I am feeling an emotion, I can write about or in that emotion. If an idea is stuck in my head, I can find a way to work it into whatever I'm working on. (I once, in a fit of writer's block, wrote an article about tattoo art because I just just gotten a new tattoo I was really excited about.) Accept that your first few tries at creativity will be rough and unsatisfying--it's the returning to it that matters. But as you refine your voice, creativity becomes easier and more expansive--being imaginative is a skill that improves with use. If you want to be able to homebrew a campaign in a homebrew whole world, you have to start by imagining one guy or sketching a map or having a cool idea for a campaign. It comes slowly, but surely. 

So, Type 3. You're still here. The promise of improved gaming for the simple price of making an effort to try homebrewing something has kept you. I'm glad. Here's where we'll leave this, and this is for everyone, but especially my Type 3 friends out there: 

Your approach to gaming is valid and worth time and consideration. I've written modules here because I acknowledge they are a real and present part of gaming. I'm not saying you are wrong about anything. But I also know the reputation homebrew has and the way players talk to me with respect because of my world and stories. I know people have a glow in their voice when they talk about the things that the module didn't write, the exciting moments that happened because of the party's choices. I know the way my players get excited when they come to me with wild ideas about customizing their characters. We all see the ways that creativity makes gaming more exciting. I'm saying that DMing should cater to that. Keep your module but use it to structure your own story--that's still creativity. That still heightens the game. That still has you making something special for your players, which always matters. 

So don't fear trying to be creative. Make something bad and original, throw it away, and make something less bad and more original. Keep going until you have something good and original. Trust your players to play it in good faith and make it even more special. You only stand to gain by trying and will gain nothing by not trying. Tactically, that's a clear choice. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: friendship in my homebrew setting, symbols of power by culture, and a guide to natural resources in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

Visual Arts by Culture in My Homebrew Setting

Some details of my homebrew setting are things I've thought about plenty and never put down until I wrote the guide; others are things I've thought fleetingly of and expanded; some don't exist until I sit down to make them. This guide to the visual arts of Evanoch is of the last sort. I enjoy visual arts, but I'm not very informed in them like I am with literature, so I have to confess that I sorta imagined Evanine art galleries as having paintings and sculptures and stuff, but I never really considered what any of it would look like. I think it's times like these that we all benefit from remembering that there are endless things to write about in terms of worldbuilding, and not getting around to something obvious well into your GMing career isn't a bad thing--it all comes in time. So in that spirit, 60 articles about my homebrew setting down, this one before us now, and as many more to go as we like. (And remember: you don't need to write 60 articles about your world to know it well or be able to DM well.) Let's take a look at the visual arts of Evanoch, guided by culture. 

Healing by Culture in My Homebrew Setting

In D&D and other tabletop games, healing is a big part of the game. This is for a number of reasons. Primarily, combat happens in tabletop games, and combat means injuries, and injuries necessitate healing. Secondarily, magic is considered a staple of D&D, and an extension of that means that healing magic would exist. And thirdly, since the beginning of D&D, healing has been a major part of the game. But medical care is more than a "Cure Wounds" spell, and I thought it would be interesting and valuable to investigate what healing is like between cultures in my homebrew setting. I know this idea is a little out there in terms of what I write for this site, but trust me--this guide will help to add some great details to healing in the game. So without further ado, let's get started by looking at the cultures in my homebrew setting and how they handle healing and medical care. 

The Value of an Epilogue

I've had this conversation with all the players in my Of Gods and Dragons campaign: tabletop game campaigns tend to end just after the finale, which is usually a resolution of whatever the "main quest" of the storyline is. There's a big fight or a dramatic reveal, and suddenly, the campaign is over. The player characters stop being played in many cases just as they truly accomplish something and are at the height of their power. Sure, you could play the same character in another campaign, but that's a relatively rare thing in my experience--typically, people roll up new characters for new campaigns. I know that the handful of times I've gotten to a player in tabletop games, it's rare that a campaign ends properly in the first place, so getting to the end of that long road and basically losing the character is very disappointing. Not to mention, the player characters now have renown and more power and probably compelling loot--they're at the best they've ever been, and they would surely do more incredible things given the chance, but that chance doesn't come. It's a problem in my view, and I have a solution. 

The epilogue is a literary idea. In novels, particularly older or more abstract work often has an epilogue, a brief way to explain what happens after the story is over, usually showing how the characters and the world changes after the events of the story. Perhaps it's because I come from a Literature background, but as I started DMing seriously, I started instituting game epilogues. My first serious campaign took place in Talon Gorge, and because the player characters divided into factions and fought a civil war, the effects on the city were massive. I recognized this and closed out our finale session by providing some details about what would happen to the city and some very brief notes about what I thought each player character might get up to in the future. It was a little gesture, and it was entirely my input, but it got me thinking about epilogues. 

My second serious campaign was Listen Check, a live broadcast and podcasted actual play D&D show. We played 60 sessions (a lengthy campaign by most standards), and I dedicated a final show to providing epilogue for the characters and world as well as answering behind-the-scenes questions about the campaign. It still wasn't very organized, but epilogues had become a regular part of my campaigns. I would later run the Eastweald campaign and the mystery campaign, both of which added new details to the epilogue format: the Eastweald was the first time I sat down and actually wrote out a detailed version of events that followed the campaign, and the mystery campaign was the first time I reached out to players to ask them what their characters would try to do after the campaign. Asking the players about character goals was a really big deal for me--I should have thought to do it sooner, but I'm glad I realized it at all. Check out the notes for the finale of the mystery campaign--it's long, it's detailed, and the player characters all got to have their own wishes for their characters honored. At this point, I felt like I had cracked it. 

Enter the Of Gods and Dragons campaign. The problem I described up top--the player characters are at the height of their power and have agendas, so what do they do?--is triply true in Of Gods and Dragons. They completed their quest (dealing with the rift in the barrier between the mundane and gods' realms), they all became dragons, they're all at or above level 20 now, and they all have clear ideas about what they mean to do with their power. If I had simply said, "Okay, campaign's over; it's been fun!" then it would have ignored the herd of elephants in the room--Brokk, Aurora, and Lethanin are all major players in my world, and they obviously have plans which they have the power to execute. To end the campaign at that point would be insane, irresponsible, and insensitive to the players. I needed something bigger. 

This cues another problem. In my world, dragons are functionally immortal unless slain. Logically, killing a dragon would be only easy for a god or a dragon, and the party saw to it that the gods are safely in their realm, while all remaining dragons are good-aligned. From my position as DM, there is no reason to hinder their actions, and further, immortality really complicates an epilogue--is there a true ending to their story in sight? I didn't think so, so I developed a new take on epilogues just for this campaign: a continuing solo roleplaying session in which each player independently guides their character through a full 100 years of epilogue before a final send-off session. 

That's right, no typo--we're playing out a full century of epilogue for this campaign. I use the present tense because I'm still in the process of playing all this game time out. Brokk and Aurora's players will end up taking four full sessions (three hours each) to cover 100 years of, and Lethanin will end up with two longer sessions (over four hours). If you're doing the math, yes, that means 12+12+8=32 hours on epilogue alone. That's a radical thing, and I'm not arguing that every campaign needs this much attention to the epilogue. But the principle of it is clear, and I want to do a little thought experiment to explain why this fringe case of massive epilogue proportions teaches us all something. 

Imagine you are to have your skin cut. Obviously, a small cut on a surface that won't hurt much is preferable, and a massive cut on a sensitive area could kill. But do all kinds of cuts hurt? Absolutely. Someone who's had a nasty papercut can attest that even though it's far from deadly and ultimately will just sting for a while and heal without a thought, it does still hurt enough to want to avoid. What I'm driving at is this: Of Gods and Dragons is like the big, deadly cut, and an average combat-focused campaign is like a little papercut. They don't need the same medical treatment (the amount of epilogue given), but both do hurt (they both still benefit from an epilogue in the first place). This is an imperfect metaphor, but the point is simply that just because you don't need 100 years of epilogue doesn't mean you don't need an epilogue at all. 

I've spoken about my DMing career in terms of epilogues--I imagine most readers of this article are DMs, and I've made the case for a DM's perspective. Let me now switch to the perspective of a player. In my life as a D&D player, I've had two characters who truly satisfied me as a player: Amund Zigor (Zig to his friends), a morally troubled guard and cleric of St. Cuthbert, and Daisy Bloom (or Heather, Delia, Penelope, Gilbert, or Asp, depending on how you knew her), a reformed con artist and cleric of Idunna (a homebrew deity of spring my best friend developed for his setting). Let's talk about how epilogues impacted my experience of these characters. 

Zig I played for a few years. He began as a hard alcoholic who was a corrupt guard using his power to torture and murder people. The party hated him. He was mostly just good at combat. As the campaign progressed, he opened up more and more to the restorative justice model of St. Cuthbert, becoming a gentler, more moral, and better person. By the time I had to leave the campaign due to a cross-country move, Zig was the party leader, beloved by all, and had become the moral heart of the campaign. Because the campaign carried on, Zig didn't get a proper epilogue per se, but my DM went way out of their way to produce a fairly long audio clip of my character being divinely exonerated and empowered, and that was basically my last session with the group. It was a send-off of sorts, and it meant a lot (and still does--it was very personal and impressive). 

Then I played Daisy, who began as Asp, the con artist. I wrote her backstory extensively (it makes up the first two novels in the series I wrote about her), and playing her was the most dreamlike, amazing experience. Unfortunately, like many campaigns, this one was cut just short of finishing due to scheduling issues, and so the DM decided to tell the rest of the story via epilogue, which included carrying out characters up to several years after the campaign. It was through this epilogue that Daisy ended up in Capital City, where she's made her home in the final book in the series (book three is the campaign itself). I was perhaps a bit miffed by not getting to decide where Daisy went next, but looking back, getting the epilogue gave me direction in writing what did happen next. 

I bring these examples up because I have a dozen other characters who never really got an epilogue at all. I played a character in Don't Rest Your Head for for over two years, and the campaign just kinda fell apart. My beloved character was then a source of wild stories about tabletop games, but Stig, my character, was just gone. The same happened with other characters, too--games fall apart regularly, and often, there is very little to be done about it. In cases like this, an epilogue can salvage an unsatisfying experience, at least in part. But also, my two very favorite characters I've ever gotten to play, separated by hundreds of miles and over a decade in terms of my experience, both got epilogues of sorts. I don't think that's a coincidence--I think it's cause and effect. In a long career of tabletop gaming, the characters that stand out are indeed the ones I put the most effort into and made the most personal, but I do that a lot--the epilogue seems to be a decisive factor here. 

So perhaps you agree--epilogues are a good thing. But how do you go about making one? I follow a few steps to make mine, and part of it involves taking good notes--start there. When a campaign wraps up, I go back over my notes and pick out any names of characters worth writing about--obviously the player characters, but also major NPCs, NPCs who served an important role in the plot (even if only briefly), and beloved minor NPCs. Once you have a list that feels pretty complete, it's time to start writing, and what we're going for is something that will be satisfying. Let's use the mystery campaign epilogue as an example:

The epilogue begins with the player characters: Beor, Ais, and Montana. You'll note each one gets a full paragraph. It's worth noting that I took what the players wanted (Montana wanted to return home and be a changed man), and then added something (Montana's wife deciding to join him on the road). Each one has just a touch of struggle to show that everything isn't just magically perfect after the campaign (Beor continuing to fight the battle for the city), but also gave a sweet touch to each one so that the happiness of the epilogue is clear (Ais' actions making the city better in unexpected ways). The goal is to make your players feel that their character continues living, but in a way that honors them and their actions (a happy ending for characters who fight for good, a fitting end for villainous characters, or whatever would be satisfying to the player). I want to add that satisfying does not mean that the player gets everything they could ever want--that's actually a pretty unsatisfying ending, which I can say as someone who's gotten it. Continuing on as a better version of themselves with real effects from their actions is the best possible outcome. 

Then we move to major NPCs, like in this case, Riviel Jasimir (the villain of the campaign), Lyssbetonk Cogswagon (an inventor central to the mystery), and Tajana (the assassin the group was chasing). It's worth noting that I added a couple more minor positive NPCs first in the list to preserve the positive momentum of the party before getting into the just desserts of the villains and the second life of the would-be victim. With villains, a punishment that would embarrass them is my favorite (Jasimir dying as an unknown random person, Tajana taken by random chance as was her style of violence); with close allies, you want to leave them greatly improved (kind of a turning point moment given by the party), hence Cogswagon's turn to humanitarian inventing rather than purely theoretical. The goal is to make the NPCs feel the actions of the player characters, so Jasimir and Tajana, who the party hated, needed to meet bad ends, while Cogswagon, who the party loved, needed to get a happier ending. 

Then we get into minor NPCs. Some of these are just people who helped out in a session or two (Baldwin Weams, Dulk Sart, Quarsa Fielt) or more humorous characters who the party latched onto (Derek the Dandelion, Carl Sjunior, Nyrill Genellon). But they were crucial parts of the campaign, either as sources of evidence of critical help, and bringing them up in the epilogue makes every player go, "Oh yeah! The talking dandelion who told us about the murder suspect! I'm glad he got such a nice ending." It allows your players to reminisce about good times in the campaign, remembering things that had been basically lost to your session notes. 

And that's another strength of the epilogue--it lets your party reflect on everything. The mystery campaign epilogue is pretty long, and that's in part because the party did so much. They met loads of people and did incredible things, and we all know from experience that details get forgotten quickly in tabletop games. There's just too many details to keep in mind all at once. So the epilogue (from those good notes you've kept) will let you go back, fondly recall them yourself, and then make something that will allow your party to reminisce and get some closure on the campaign. 

Closure, at the end of the day, might be the most important thing. We make these characters, inhabit their minds, speak and act through them, share an emotionally vulnerable space at the table with them, and in some ways, truly live as them. When our time with a character ends, we need closure to be able to leave that massive emotional experience behind. I know that saying goodbye to Zig and Daisy was very hard, even with the epilogues given to them, and it was even harder to lose characters without it. It was like losing a piece of myself. I needed closure. 

You can give your players that closure, and it's especially necessary if your campaign ends early. Creating an epilogue takes me about as long as preparing for a normal session, so it's really not a huge undertaking to add to a campaign. Distributing it to your players is easy and can be fun--an in-person or online session can be a great place to go over the epilogue together and share thoughts and memories from the campaign. Typing up your epilogue can also allow you to distribute your epilogue digitally--my DM who let me run Daisy sent out a long document on Discord to all of us players. There's really no more to the process--the art is crafting satisfying endings. I must say again--ask your players for a direction to take their epilogue in. They're likely to give you a few ideas that you can work broadly with. I promise it's a more satisfying way for the process to go, and players are always delighted to discover how their intention translates into an effect in the gameworld. 

My final word: epilogues evolved naturally for me. They felt necessary in the Talon Gorge campaign, and I went with it. I kept at it, refining and expanding. Today, I'm looking forward to the final three sessions of my century-long epilogue for Of Gods and Dragons, and I have to say--I'm very satisfied so far. I don't want to spoil too much before the epilogues drop here on Over the DM's Shoulder, but I will say that there are some massive surprises already in place with surely more to come. To return to the first thought in this article, why stop when your player characters are at the top of their game? Why send your players away without closure, with lost opportunity to enjoy the campaign together one more time, with no say in what the rest of their character's life will be like? You don't have to. Try making an epilogue. The worst that will happen is that it won't be what you hoped, and you can either abandon it or try again with new understanding. But as a longtime GM, I promise you that you can make an epilogue work, and the results will be more than worth it. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: contributions to healing in my homebrew setting, the visual arts in my homebrew setting, and why it's better to make something unique and bad than copied and good. Until next time, happy gaming!

Education by Culture in My Homebrew Setting

For most of my adult life, I have been a teacher. I've taught elementary school, middle school, high school, and at universities--the whole range, for those unfamiliar with United States education. And yet I've never really thought about what education looks like in my world. I think that on some level, I just imagined everybody doing slightly different versions of what I'm used to--classroom teaching. But of course, my homebrew world is more complicated than that. With fidelity to my homebrew versions of D&D groups, this guide will explore how education happens, who is allowed to teach and learn, what sorts of things are taught, what the purpose of education is, and how the group feels about education. 

Flags of the Cities of Evanoch

So many details of everyday life are taken for granted in tabletop games. Until recently, I never took the time to plot out what the solar system that contains my homebrew setting is like. Until recently, I did not think too hard about the social expectations that cultural groups carry with them. And likewise, it took me years and years of writing about my homebrew setting and inspiration from my best friend to start working out who the powerful and renowned people are in my homebrew setting. These are big things. But small things slip by too--until very recently, I hadn't really thought about flags in my setting at all. It made sense that they would exist, but I never really imagined what they would be. And I'm very pleased to say that putting together these flags--one for each of the ten major cities in my homebrew setting--to the point that there was some real glee in designing them. So without further ado, here are the flags, what they are supposed to represent, and how they are produced. 

An edit of the map I recently made with the flags added. 

The Core Values of Each Cultural Group in My Homebrew Setting

I recently did a series of guides to clans in my homebrew setting. It began as an effort to emulate the interesting details and complicated dynamics of a campaign I got to play in--my clans would have ideological perspectives and traditions, like my DM's groups. But as I wrote, I realized that in order to pick groups of people who would stand out amongst many in a rich culture, I needed to pick based on what the most central values of those groups were. By the end of that series, it turned out that the halfling guide was actually just a list of social movements (since halflings don't do formal organization), and that was basically just an expression of cultural values. I've spent years writing dozens of profiles on my homebrew societies, always driving at showing their core values, but never just directly saying it. It's time to rectify that. I honestly think that any DM should try to avoid my mistake--get to defining the cultural values of your homebrew groups early in your design so that you can use it as a framework to build on, and if you're a veteran DM who hasn't explicitly named at least a few values for each group, now is the time to start. With that spirit in mind, let's address the five most intently-held values of each culture in my homebrew setting, from most important to less important. 

How D&D Ended Up in My Master's Thesis

From 2018-2020, I attended graduate school at Portland State University to get a Master's degree in literature. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I made incredible friends who shared my passions, I got to explore one of my favorite things in the world--literature--and I got to become a true expert in my field, plus being qualified to teach, which was something that brought me to grad school in the first place. Portland State had an interesting program for the thesis. Students who wanted to show their expertise with a traditional thesis could choose that option, but we also had the option to build a college course of our own design and justify it as legitimate and informed material worth considering. As a future educator, I opted for building a class. The requirements largely just required that I choose 16 texts, one for each week of the class. That's when options paralysis set in. 

I had been handed a blank check, and I didn't know what to do with it. I talked to friends, classmates, professors, family, anyone I could think of to find a good idea. I went for a while with "experimental literature," but I ran into too much resistance from defining "experimental" to get started. Eventually, a revelation struck me. I love video games. I love tabletop games. I love weird art, especially stuff that allows you to be a part of it. I love choose your own adventure stories. The common thread was a piece of media in which the audience actually participated in the art. I called these kinds of art "choice-driven texts" to honor the role of audience choice, and I set off running. 

By the time deadlines began to loom, I had meticulously searched and researched for my 16 texts. We were invited to compare work in a class meant to help with the thesis project, and I was mortified. My classmates had collections of Old English poetry and French cinema and nihilist philosophy, and I had a motley collection of weird art. But as I talked about my work, everyone seemed to feel the flip side of the coin--they all had conventional collections of proven art, and I was blazing a trail somewhere else entirely. My "Choice Theory" solidified in my mind, and I knew I was onto something. 

I organized my 16 texts into a spectrum. At one end would be the least interactive (though still interactive), and the other end would represent maximal interactivity. The least interactive was John Cage's 4'3", in which the real performance is the audience making quiet sounds while a pianist doesn't play. The most interactive was the fascinating tabletop game Don't Rest Your Head by Fred Hicks, in which very few rules and highly creative character powers designed by the player allow for massive freedom. Along the way were podcasts, movies, video games, poetry books, graphic novels, performance art pieces, and "experimental" novels--and D&D 5E. I chose the module Lost Mine of Phandelver by Rich Baker and Chris Perkins for several reasons. 

Firstly, Lost Mine was the big push for modules at the beginning of 5E's time. It was described by many as the unofficial starting point for 5E players, a sort of low-level module where you could learn the new rules with a classic D&D story. Even actual play D&D podcasts latched onto the module as a way to ease into the new edition. Lost Mine was something where I could point to different recordings of people playing the module and show how different player choices were and the effect that had. It was a truly vital piece of evidence in my reasoning, and Lost Mine accomplished it perfectly. 

Secondly, Lost Mine was about as straightforward D&D as you can get. There's a captured ally, some nasty foes, a few traps and puzzles, leveled loot at the end--it's incredibly D&D. By using Lost Mine, I could use a module that captured what modern D&D is about and how it references its roots. That meant I could call in all of D&D as a related example, and since D&D is the beginning of tabletop games, I could at a stretch talk about tabletop games. And that meant I could justify Don't Rest Your Head even though I had no documented playthroughs of it (I would get this one later on with my wife). So Lost Mine being very classic D&D allowed me to take some liberties in talking about broader TTRPGs. 

Lastly, Lost Mine established something very important: just because you give the audience the power to make any choice like D&D does does not mean you automatically become the most interactive media ever. Not only did Don't Rest Your Head since the game is radically freer about player abilities (not to mention the manual explicitly states it's an "expert game" meant to facilitate storytelling, not combat), but a performance art piece came in as more interactive than Lost Mine: Rhythm 0, a performance by Marina Abramović in which she laid out over 70 objects (a feather, blue paint, a revolver and bullet, a razor, etc) and invited the audience to use the objects on her--she was the object. Things got out of hand, and Abramović suffered injuries, sexual assault, and an attempt on her life. I reasoned that this was more radically interactive than Lost Mine for reasons I hope are clear. In any case, freedom to choose is complicated, and Lost Mine helped me to illustrate that. 

So D&D played an important role in my Master's thesis in several ways, and I don't think that it really could have played out any other way. Readers who have checked the publication dates of the articles here on this site may have noticed that there were a handful of articles before grad school, none during grad school, and then large amounts whenever I wasn't teaching--this is in part because working with my choice-driven texts including two tabletop games really helped me to understand them better, because I had learned to be a better writer, and because I had realized more fully just how much these games meant to me. And it turned out that was a lot, as the four and a half years that followed turned out to contain hundreds of new ideas and interpretations. In a lot of ways, grad school and my Master's thesis turned out to be what made this site what it is. 

My thesis ideas didn't go away after graduation. In a podcast I do with the player of Ell, Ais, and Lethanin, we've spent out second season digging into my thesis for half of our content (while my cohost spends half our time on their own sprawling topic). That has had a terrific advantage in addressing my work--whereas my professors knew either nothing about my texts or knew vaguely of the idea behind the texts (what choose your own adventure means, the general concept of roleplaying games, the gist of what I was arguing), my cohost is a longtime gamer and fan of experimental, weird art. You can see where we would be friends given the shared experience and interest. We've gotten to tease out some interesting and dazzling conclusions and ideas in the podcast, and it's been a blast to really refine what I worked on in grad school. 

And of course, working with TTRPGs in a deep academic capacity made me think differently about the games and how they're played. That helped me grow as a GM--I had had to explain what a tabletop roleplaying game is about five dozen times while working on my thesis, and that meant that I had to understand how to communicate big ideas about the games very clearly, and that helped me to explain game ideas to my players more effectively. Another benefit was learning how to think in greater depth about things I had already formed ideas about--I turned this attitude towards my writing here on the site, and I ended up able to create detailed guides on all manner of subjects that had never occurred to me before. After all, this site came to have articles on tattoo styles among my homebrew groups, a one-shot based on the movie Napoleon Dynamite, and four novels written about my last D&D character. Taking D&D on academically helped me to think new things, and that really unlocked a lot of possible avenues to explore here. 

When I reflect on my thesis, I am often left fairly baffled. I recall the months of trying to convince university professors that choose your own adventure books written for kids and violent video games and a book where all the pages are split into strips so that you can rearrange the lines in the poems was worth academic study on the same level as Shakespeare. It was exhausting work that rarely had a satisfying conclusion. It was really only once the whole thing was assembled that I could explain what I was doing--I needed a sequence of escalating examples to illustrate what my very abstract idea actually was. It helped me communicate better, and ultimately, I think I still went into my thesis defense very nervous. I'd felt confidently on my written exams, which had been tailored to my thesis (at least, kind of--even my advisor didn't know my texts well enough to write questions I could work with, including one question that was unanswerable because it specified text genres that I didn't have represented in my work). But orally describing what I'd spent two years building, with the consequence that I didn't graduate and would have to abandon grad school altogether for financial reasons, was still a lot to contend with. I sat down for my defense and hoped for the best. 

My panel was my advisor, a professor I'd had in my first class in grad school, and a comics studies professor I had never met aside from begging her to be in my panel since she would at least understand the graphic novel I had chosen. Together, the three of them knew two texts and the general thrust of my arguments. I had an hour to convince them that my pop culture smorgasbord mattered. They asked for explanations, expansions, and clarifications of things I had written in my oral exam. They poked at relevant details, probing for content and meaning. They took in explanations of things that were not represented on my written exams, like texts that hadn't come up. (They were especially intrigued by Rhythm 0, which was to them the most convincing evidence of what I had to say.) I answered to my best ability, trying always to both add new ideas that would complete my overall vision and bring things back to the overall point I was trying to make: we need a new field of study, a new language, a new conceptual framework to understand these choice-driven texts. I created that vocabulary for the thesis and proposed that any text that offers choice to the audience be granted a different status, one that recognizes the role of the audience. 

In the end, I was sent out of the room for my panel to deliberate. I waited anxiously, reviewing my words to see if what I had said would be enough. I knew that I had taken a huge risk by compiling an atypical project. For other students, their selections represented a decision making process guided by what was most literarily valuable within a genre, what interesting takes could be gleaned from a particular combination of art. But for me, my selections had to justify a new field of study; they had to define the concept I was describing and give a foundation to my work. I hadn't just built a class--I had built a theoretical framework, and as I waited, I wondered if my panel thought it was a worthwhile effort to have committed to. 

I was called back in. I was told by three smiling professors that I had been granted my Master's degree, and I was commended on my work. My advisor said that seeing the project from start to finish had been an exciting pleasure. The comics studies professor expressed shock, having had little concept of how sprawling my work would be beyond my chosen graphic novel, Batman: A Death in the Family. The professor I had had for my first class was the biggest surprise. He was normally a reserved man, and quiet, but in this moment, he spoke effusively, saying that I really had discovered a new field of study, that it seemed worth exploring, and that he wished me luck making a career of it. The panel agreed that my work was the most interesting and creative they'd ever seen. I felt a wave of relief that lasted for days. I had done it. I hadn't just gotten a Master's degree, but I had gotten it with the respect of my heroes, the people I wanted to be like. 

When I reflect on the fact that I spent two years building a Master's thesis that included a smattering of weird art, I'm not surprised. That's who I am. I'm not going to contest that. But for Lost Mine of Phandelver and Don't Rest Your Head to be included in a project that was uniformly deemed valuable, interesting, and creative--that is really special to me. When I learned to play D&D and was introduced to the world of TTRPGs, D&D was not cool yet. D&D was something people barely understood if they did at all. It was a pasttime exclusively practiced by the nerdy, and it was considered a fairly niche interest. That's all changed now. D&D has a huge, successful movie (and likely a franchise); Stranger Things raised the profile of D&D; 5E has brought many new players into the fold--it's a different world than I started playing in. But that old world still lives in my heart, and to bring the lowly, nerdy, strange D&D representation to a Master's thesis felt rebellious and fun. I hadn't just won my panel's approval--I had put my favorite things on the line, made myself vulnerable, and asked for judgment only to be approved of and lauded. I felt like D&D was vindicated and that it had vindicated me. 

So maybe's it's no surprise that when I graduated my program and had lots of free time before I could start working as a teacher, I turned to D&D. In February of 2021, two months after completing my Master's degree, I turned back to this site. I posted this brief summary of a campaign I had stopped taking notes on long before and a little note that I would be trying to post more often. And before the three other days of February had passed, I had posted four new articles. Regular readers of this era of Over the DM's Shoulder know that my productivity comes in bursts--several weeks or months of frequent updates, and months of few updates. But 2021 was where the foundation for this site came from. I wrote 121 articles that year, nearly half of the total content on this site as of this writing. I really do believe that writing about and working with D&D in my Master's thesis was the thing that enabled all of that output, and I'm proud to have used what I learned in grad school to be able to better write for this site. 

Final thoughts: few things have touched me in this life like TTRPGs have. The hundreds of guides here attest to that, as do the novels I wrote about a D&D character, as does the inclusion of Lost Mine in my Master's thesis. And I'd like to share something about my writing for this site that I've never said elsewhere. I like to think that people can benefit from the advice, worldbuilding, original games, and whatever else they may connect to that I've made here. I see lots of visits on my site, but I don't know how many of them are legitimately interested readers. What keeps me writing, nearly 250 articles and almost 10 years after starting this site, is that it makes me happy. Every guide to my homebrew world helps me know my world better. Every how-to helps me decide what actions I want to try to take. Every session notes recap helps me connect to my own campaigns better. Every original game makes me stretch my creative abilities. I benefit from all of this, which is why I've taken to urging you, the reader, to do the same in your work. So yes, I hope there are gamers out there reading all of this and learning from it. And yes, I like seeing the article count get higher and the visit count spike--it feels nice. But ultimately, D&D just makes me happy, and I write here because it allows me to enjoy that happiness. And since D&D makes me happy, Lost Mine showing up in my Master's thesis was probably inevitable--it's just part of who I am at this point. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: the core values of each group in my homebrew setting and how they pursue them, the flags of each major city in my homebrew setting, and education in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

Rules of Communication in My Homebrew Setting

In life, we all have our challenges. One of mine, as an autistic person, is communication. Don't get me wrong--I have a Master's in English Literature, I write constantly, and I know how to understand and be understood. But there are certain social cues that are not obvious to someone like me, and I've grown fascinated by the unspoken rules of communication that seemingly everyone else knows and I don't. That fascination is going to be expressed here, in this guide, and it will explore the different expectations people have for communicating, what is considered polite and rude, and the consequences of communicating in a way that other people find strange. As regular readers know, this will entail examining all eight of the cultural groups in my homebrew setting; this will add a fun dimension to roleplay where different cultures have different tendencies and preferences. So let's get started with the rules of communication in Evanoch:

Profiles on the Warlock Pact Patrons in My Homebrew Setting

Until Of Gods and Dragons, the many campaigns I have run in my homebrew setting have never included a Warlock. This is in part because I ran 3.5, which does not have the class Warlock, for much of my DMing career before switching to 5E. And even then, I worked with small parties, and it just happened that no one ever selected Warlock. At the same time, I've only ever played D&D as a player once in 5E, and I played a rogue-cleric, so I also didn't have experience as a Warlock. As a result, I never thought much about Warlocks and especially not about the elder forces that empower them. But when the character Brokk appeared in my world, a monk-warlock cross-class character, I suddenly was faced with the question of the Warlock patrons. Brokk's player said he wanted Magoth to be Brokk's patron, a king of the underworld who had had a part in creating the war machine that birthed Brokk. I'll admit it: I had reservations about carving out a space for the literal devil in my homebrew setting. It felt tonally off. But Brokk's player was passionate about the idea, an adaptation of something in his own homebrew setting, so I ran with it. At the time of this writing, Brokk is beginning plans to confront Magoth, which will have sweeping consequences regardless of how it plays out, and I've realized that I badly need to explore the Warlock patrons in my world. 

I want to note that the Player's Handbook offers a few options here. I'm going to keep those and adapt them slightly to fit what's canon in my world, and I'm also going to create a few from scratch that would exist in my world. Specifically, the Player's Handbook names three "otherworldly patrons," namely The Archfey, The Fiend, and The Great Old One. I'll tackle these adaptations of what's in the Player's Handbook first, and then get into the patrons that I've created. These descriptions are for lore and worldbuilding purposes, but I am also going to include class abilities for each patron in case any of these get used in the future. So let's get started--here are the Warlock patrons of my homebrew setting.

The Archfae

In my world, the Faewyld is a confusing and haunting space where multiple dimensions exist at once. It takes mortals months or even years of time in the Faewyld to adjust to the disorientation. The Fae and other creatures who live in the Faewyld are typically extremely chaotic, but they generally tend toward good actions in the end. Extremely powerful Fae have a strong enough grasp of magic that they are able to grant power to those who are willing to serve them. Fae of this sort are typically elevated in some way in Fae society, be it through political leadership or achievement in magic, but sheer power is enough to grant a Fae access to being a patron. 

To become a Warlock with the Archfae, one must strike a deal. Fae are famous for negotiating and striking bargains, the conditions of which are not always clear upon making the deal. In Of Gods and Dragons, Aurora gained her access to her custom class by striking a deal with a Fae (perhaps an Archfae in secret?), and Aurora would not know until session twelve that the price of her powers was destroying the city she came from. It is not uncommon for an Archfae to select a humanoid to accomplish one large task and then leave them alone, seeking a new and specially qualified humanoid for their next big goal, but still supporting the old humanoid so long as they serve the Archfae's interests. 

Class Abilities:

Fae Bearing

Starting at 1st level, your character is inherently more charming like the Fae. All Persuasion checks made with a +2 modifier and can roll one Persuasion check with advantage per long rest. 

Dimension Step

Starting at 6th level, your character is able to step across dimensions as though in the Faewyld. You are able to disappear and then reappear within 100 feet as a free action, used once per long rest.

Defense Against Influence

Starting at 10th level, when someone is using a Persuasion or Diplomacy check against you, you can use a successful Wisdom saving throw (DC 14) to see past their words given your experience with Fae communication. You get advantage on saving throws against mind-affecting magic. 

Faewyld Tour

Starting at 14th level, you can send a creature to the Faewyld, where the unsettling shape of the world will terrorize them. Once per long rest, you can invoke this power against a creature, which must roll a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. A failure means spending up to 10 minutes in the Faewyld or until the Warlock recalls the creature, whichever comes first; a success means being stunned for 1d6 rounds. 

Magoth, King of the Underworld

Far below the other dimensions lies a primordial area that defies imagination. Mortals on Izar talk about lakes of lava and endless fires, pain that cannot be escaped, psychological torment that goes forever. But Magoth's realm is more akin to deprivation. All is black. There is a feeling of constriction, of paralysis, of not quite getting enough air on each breath. But no other sensation is experienced by any in this lowest dimension--even Magoth himself is subject to the constant agony of his realm, prodding him to continue inflicting pain on those he has claimed--all former champions who disappointed Magoth. None in Magoth's realm have power except for him, and his power is enough to be a patron, but inadequate for him to escape his own punishment. 

To strike a deal with Magoth, one must forsake all that they have in the world and will ever have, promising to always wreak pain and suffering on the living. Magoth has made allowances for champions who have a single-minded hate of one group of people, but his favorite champions are those who have a blind hatred of all people. Because Magoth is considered an obscure and occult interest, fewer people are aware of him than other Warlock patrons, but Magoth has counteracted this by communicating directly with cultists, who have been able to spread word of the lowest dimension and its ruler. 

Class Abilities:

Consumption of Life

Starting at 1st level, can leech life directly from an enemy; your character can regain up to your Charisma modifier + your Warlock level when you reduce a creature to 0 hit points. 

Magoth's Hatred

Starting at 6th level, you can focus Magoth's hatred--on any attack, skill check, or saving throw, you can roll with advantage thanks to your channeled rage. You must declare the advantaged roll before rolling. Works once per long rest. 

Demonic Resistance

Starting at 10th level, you become inured to the pain of Magoth. Every long rest, you may choose a new damage type; you are resistant to this damage type until your next long rest. Magical weapons and silver weapons ignore this resistance. 

Time In Hell

Starting at 14th level, you can send a creature to Magoth's realm when you strike it and deal at least half of the roll's possible damage. The creature spends what seems like years in the constrictive nothingness, then reappears where it was at the end of its next turn. The creature must perform a Wisdom saving throw (your Warlock spell save DC) or take 12d10 psychic damage. 

The Ancient

Relatively little is known of what space looks like beyond Izar, but somewhere out there beyond the reach of telescopes and imagination are ancient beings suited for life in the unnourishing void of nothingness. Those who have made contact have described a wide variety of beings, ranging from incorporeal glowing entities to massive, lumbering, shapeless things to imperceptible combinations of senses that overwhelm the onlooker. The entities lack names or traditional communication as known by humanoids, but when contacted, some have been willing to lend some of their unknowable power to those who strike them as interesting. 

To enter a pact with an Ancient, one must first learn how to contact one, a feat requiring a great deal of arcane study; then, one must contact Ancient after Ancient until one strikes the Ancient's fancy; then they must discuss the powers to be shared and the conditions of one's power. This can take years or even decades. One of the greatest challenges is in learning to communicate with the Ancient, a task that can require considerable trial and error before introductions can even be made. 

Class Abilities:

Language of the Stars

Starting at 1st level, you can communicate telepathically with any creature within 30 feet of you after the ordeal of learning to communicate with an eldritch being. This power works with any creature who can speak at least one language. 

Turn the Tides

Starting at 6th level, you can see through the world as it is. When you are attacked, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on their attack. If they miss, you can attack on your next turn with advantage. 

Celestial Armor

Starting at 10th level, you are immune to any means of reading your mind after being fortified by your patron. You are also immune to psychic damage, reflecting any psychic damage back to the creature attacking you. 

Eldritch Bond

Starting at 14th level, you gain the ability to charm one humanoid which is incapacitated as your patron does. Your patron takes partial control of that humanoid, keeping them charmed until remove curse is cast or the ability is used again. You can telepathically communicate with the charmed humanoid as long as you are on the same plane of existence. 

Zxete, the Force of Change

While scientists and philosophers struggle to define the causes and effects of changes in all variety of contexts, what invariably must be agreed to exist is the change itself. But while changes have effects, the change itself is not the effect. This force--the change itself--is a living, sentient energy which brings more changes with it. The Force of Change, called by some Zxete, has an everchanging personality which is at turns spiteful or benevolent, subdued or manic, refined or base, all in constantly shifting ways both gradual and sudden. The Force of Change favors those most touched by its effects, those who have known great upheaval or growth in life. 

To enter a pact with Zxete, one must endure or cause tremendous change. Once one has survived the great change and mastered it, Zxete becomes willing to grant an audience to the potential champion. Zxete is only interested in champions who will both have a claim to Its power and further Its agenda. That agenda is not revealed to the champion, who Zxete will reveal the full agenda only as it comes to be. Zxete communicates in a manner that is equivalent to telepathy, but which uses change itself to form words that can be understood by humanoids. 

Class Abilities:

Altered Perception

Starting at 1st level, you can see the world for the changing processes that it is. You gain +2 to all Perception checks and can roll one Perception check with advantage per long rest. 

Cascading Effects

Starting at 6th level, once per day, you can see the effects of changes; roll a Charisma check (DC 14) to ascertain the major consequences of any action, identical to casting the spell Augury, with the exception that the timeframe affected is one day rather than thirty minutes. 

Zxete's Force

Starting at 10th level, you can redirect energy that is focused on changing you. If a creature makes an attack against you, you can negate the damage and focus it instead on another creature within 100 feet. Reroll the damage, adding 2d6. 

Forced Change

Starting at 14th level, you can impose massive change on a humanoid once per long rest. The humanoid gets a Wisdom saving throw at the Warlock's spell save DC. A success means nothing happens. A failure means the target will experience a massive change determined by rolling a d6:

1 - Race changes at random

2 - Age changes at random

3 - Appearance changes at random

4 - Equipment changes at random

5 - Personality changes at random

6 - Two of the above change at random; roll twice, ignore doubles of the same option, if 6 is rolled again then add another roll

Existence

Everything that exists--every star and planet and moon and sun in the cosmos; every living thing that ever has been, is, or will be; every idea, feeling, or spiritual sensation; simply everything that could be and is, real or imagined--has a trace of natural energy in it. Individually, the natural energy of say, a blade of grass or a story once told by a halfling 6,000 years ago, is not much, though it is undeniable. But all of that natural energy is connected, and together, it forms the strongest force in all of existence--existence itself. Existence, as a powerful conscious form of life, tends towards the good and ordered in things, and only chooses champions who will meaningfully advance the wellbeing of the universe. Existence, a term only chosen because the entity resists a name, is more interested in action than knowledge, though it is partially formed of all information. 

To enter a pact with the entity of all existence, one must be learn to recognize the natural energy in oneself and in all things, forming relationships with those energies until the combined energy of existence trusts them. The champion-to-be must propose a meeting, which existence accepts or denies based on whether it believes the champion-to-be will advance good and order. Existence then speaks to the champion-to-be, relating some of the truth of the universe, revealing information and experiences valuable to achieving shared goals. Once the champion has recovered from the unveiling of universal truths, existence grants its champion powers and returns them to life with a new understanding of the universe. 

Class Abilities:

Universal Connection

Starting at 1st level, you contain the wisdom of the things around you; all Wisdom-based skills get a +1 bonus. 

The Ebb and Flow of Life

Starting at 6th level, your connection to the world around you means that you an share life force with them. By focusing for one round, you can draw life force from the world around you; roll 2d8 hit points to harmlessly absorb life from the universe. Can be used once per long rest. 

The Whole Universe

Starting at 10th level, you can target the foes of existence's agenda more effectively. Existence itself bends reality to grant you +2 AC against chaotic or evil enemies, and advantage on attack rolls against chaotic evil enemies. 

The Fabric of Reality

Starting at 14th level, you can guide the forces of existence yourself. Once per long rest, you may grant advantage to any roll (including other creatures' rolls) and impose disadvantage on any roll (including other creatures' rolls). 

Dyzyq

Witches on Izar have a variety of routes to honing their craft: one can study and master the arcane arts, others are born into powers they refine, and still others strike a bargain to become Warlocks. Those who take the Warlock route usually choose Dyzyq as their patron. Unlike other Warlock patrons, Dyzyq accepts all who come to her for power; the catch is that she only empowers those who agree with her ideals, which tend to be neutral good with an occasional flair for the chaotic. Dyzyq draws her power from nature, and she teaches her champions to draw their power from nature too--alchemy is highly popular among Warlocks of Dyzyq. Dyzyq also demands that her champions practice a craft--after all, it is witchcraft, and most Warlocks of Dyzyq practice one practical skill like weaving or carving as well as one magical skill like divination or enchantment. Legend says that Dyzyq is herself an ascended witch, or perhaps the first witch, but no one is sure.

To enter a pact with Dyzyq, one must learn of her through study or by chance. Contacting her requires what amounts to a prayer asking for her guidance, at which point Dyzyq speaks to the champion-to-be, helping to reveal things about them that they did not know. Dyzyq bestows her power slowly; while other patrons give their power in steps, Dyzyq requires that her champions seek out and learn new secrets of magic and craft with her help, which she tends to bestow graciously. A champion's relationship with Dyzyq is more akin to a religious one than a traditional pact.

Class Abilities:

Skilled in the Craft

Starting at 1st level, you become more skilled in the crafts of witchcraft. Of the skills Arcana, Nature, and Medicine, choose one to get a +2 bonus and another one to get a +1 bonus. 

Cloak Against Magic

Starting at 6th level, you gain protection from natural magic. You gain a +2 bonus on all rolls against magic directed at you (spell saves, rolls to take partial damage, etc.), and an Arcana check of DC 14 allows you to redirect the spell if the first roll is successful.

Expert Casting

Starting at 10th level, you become more in tune with the natural magic of Dyzyq. Once per long rest, you can roll any spell-related roll (spell attacks, spell damage, dice-determined effects) with advantage; an Arcana check of DC 15 allows you to roll with double advantage. 

Crafted Spell

Starting at 14th level, your grasp of witchcraft allows you to empower your magic. Once per day, with a skill check of DC 15, either Arcana, Nature, or Medicine, you can cast any spell at one power level higher as though it were cast with a higher spell slot. You can cast your highest level spell with this ability and receive an effect outside of your ability. You cannot choose spells from a level you have not reached. This heightened spell gets any spellcasting roll (spell attacks, spell damage, dice-determined effects) to automatically achieve maximum score. 

Why Trying Different Things Improves You as a GM and Player

When it comes to tabletop games, people tend to either be regular players or constant GMs. There certainly are exceptions, especially with groups whose GM slot rotates. I know that in my experience, I'm almost always the DM or GM--about 90% of the time. But I have gotten to be a player on important occasions, like my most recent character, Daisy, who I ended up writing four novels about. I've played seven tabletop roleplaying games as a player and GMed about five, and I've also created more tabletop games than I can count, including ones on this site like my time loop adventures or my movie adapted one-shots (but also a secret time travel project still being refined). I would say that my experience in tabletop games is pretty broad, and given this site's 245 articles as of this writing (not counting this one), I would say it's pretty deep too. So in all my gaming and developing and playing and creating, what has stuck out as the biggest lessons learned? For all that experience, what wisdom can I provide? In this guide, I'll seek to answer that. 

In order to dig in, I'm going to recount some experiences I've had with tabletop games. My introduction was D&D 3.5 in a neighbor's basement, her dad as DM. I learned the ropes and how to do more than slay monsters--and I set my sights on DMing myself. In college, I taught more than 50 people to play D&D 3.5 and ran 7 campaigns over the course of a year. Then I refined my interest to serious storytelling, picked a party, and ran the first campaign set in my homebrew setting. It was glorious and gave me a hunger for DMing in my own style, not for what I thought others would like (and it turned out, people liked what I did in my style!). A player in that first real campaign was a talented GM who allowed me to play in several new systems, and I learned a great deal from watching him GM. At the same time, I was running the first D&D actual play podcast, Listen Check, while finishing my time in college. Having to be able to DM while running the soundboard and keeping the talk going was a challenge that taught me a lot about pacing. And then it was time for DMing in my homebrew setting, six campaigns as of this writing over years of adding to my setting. And twice in that span of a decade, I got to play D&D with talented DMs, creating characters who have stuck with me for life. That's the history we're working with; so what did it teach me? 

First off, being a GM and a player are radically different experiences. Players are only participating for part of the time in most sessions, certainly while waiting turns in combat, while the GM is always participating. This could be learned from observation, but you don't really grasp it until you've done both. I once played a campaign with another player who would crochet for the entire session, only looking up from her stitching when her character came up, and a GM could never do that. Being tired, intoxicated, or distracted as a GM can bring a game to a halt in a very real way. What that means is that as a player, you have a responsibility to be ready on your turn without having to take 20 minutes to research abilities. As a GM, you need to make sure you're at your best and able to endure an hours-long session despite human limitations. 

But it's not just that. A GM is the authority at the table. That means being able to confidently answer most questions that will come up. That doesn't necessarily mean knowledge of rules, either--a combat campaign means being familiar with tactical rules, character class abilities, and monster abilities to keep the combat flowing; a hijinks campaign needs knowledge of how to improvise, what makes the players laugh, and interesting ideas about how to surprise the party; a roleplaying campaign requires knowledge of the world, the ability to play-act a bit, and a compelling story hook to start things off. Without that knowledge, a GM will struggle. But a player only needs to know the basics of their character and some simple rules about interacting with the world--other players and the GM can fill in the other information. For a player, gaming is about discovery: the ability to find something in the game that means something. So while a GM needs to prepare, a player needs to come into things fresh. 

One last key GM/player difference: there is a power differential. This is obvious, I know, but there's a layer that's less obvious. What is ultimately fun in tabletop games, I have argued, is having agency, the sense that you have some measure of control over your character and how they affect the world around them. Without agency, we're reading a book--it's a static story where the characters happen to be named by the players. With absolute agency, the players are unlikely to come up against dramatic tension, which would be boring. So what I'm driving it is this: the GM decides how much agency the players have. Finding the right balance for your story and your party is delicate, but I always advise stepping in only to respond for most of your GMing, letting the players have the agency to guide things to some meaningful degree. The player is responsible for using that agency to do something interesting, but the GM must allow them in the first place. 

And another obvious idea: different systems are good at different things. D&D does great with an epic high fantasy feeling. Exalted is fantasy as well, but more interstellar in nature. Call of Cthulhu has a great take on eldritch horror, and Geist does a similar thing with the concept of a tethered ghost. Don't Rest Your Head is a beautiful system capable of a lot, but which focuses on dreamlike powers and horror. I even played the Firefly TTRPG just to see what it was like--predictably, fun western in space stuff. Those are the aesthetics; the rules all vary, though all are simpler than D&D, and each makes the smart choice of building the powers in the game to match the aesthetics--low-powered player characters for horror, higher-powered for more epic stories. But what really hit me is that each game decides the kinds of stories you can tell in them. As a storyteller, that's exciting and frustrating at once. A lot of TTRPG fans are shocked when I tell them that I've played many games and still stick with D&D--I've learned to use D&D to tell any kind of story I want, to build the world to be whatever I want, and to improvise in a way that gives the players whatever I want, so why leave a world that has so much player character history? My honest advice is to find a game you like and make it bend to do what you want it to. It will work out better than trying to match a game you don't mix with. 

Let's get into more specific details. Let's say a player in a session uses a strategy you've never seen before. As a player, you're observing carefully, trying to decide how to implement the same strategy in your own way. As a GM, you're trying to figure out a way to make it so this new strategy doesn't foil your plans. This is one polarizing situation, but the rule applies generally. A good moment of roleplaying from one player--another player feels upstaged, the GM is overjoyed that there's a beautiful moment in the story. Something bad happens to a player's character--the character is frustrated and upset, but the GM is delighted to have a new story angle and knows that the inconvenience is temporary. These kinds of differing perspectives are common, and someone who's well-versed in both sides of the equation will be able to see both perspectives. This means that a savvy player will be able to take situations for what they are from a broader perspective, and a savvy GM will be able to anticipate the reactions of their players, which is almost always a benefit. 

GMs can pick up strategies from each other, too. I know that when I was playing Daisy, I had the amazing opportunity to watch my best friend, who's played Carric and Beor and Brokk in my world, DM a really incredible campaign. I obviously connected with my character in a big way--writing four novels about your character is not the norm--but I also got to really take in good DMing in a different style. Daisy's campaign involved a number of different tribes of elf, which got me thinking about tribes in my world, and it resulted in an eight-part series on important clans. That series is probably the most important worldbuilding I've ever done, and I wouldn't have had it without watching my DM. I also learned about how much space to give players to roleplay outside of the confines of the main story--I was allowed enough space to do some real character work, but I was also cautious not to ask too much. 

And that's perhaps the biggest change in any player-GM: courtesy. I've addressed previously how to run your game courteously, but the experience of both running and playing TTRPGs will teach courtesy in a whole different way. Before I had DMed, I saw and did some inconsiderate things toward my DM. I was fixated on a goal my DM wasn't interested in; he gave me what I wanted, but at the cost of his enthusiasm. When I started DMing a lot and looked back, I realized that my old DM had had an entire story prepared that he was excited to play with that I probably would have enjoyed. I don't make that mistake anymore. As a GM, I ask for player input on as much as I can, and I always listen to suggestions; as a player, I ask only for what I know is reasonable, and I try to help the GM by noticing when they are trying to do something and going in that direction. Something like this is courteous, but it goes beyond courtesy--it's about helping to make the game a better experience for everyone involved, and that's a good definition of a good player or GM. 

I will add that if you want to be able to make your own games, playing as many games as you can, even just reading their rules, is incredibly helpful. You cannot look carefully at the Player's Handbook and spin out a new game. You need to see what other people have done, if only to borrow good ideas. I know that when my experience was limited to D&D, I didn't think much about making my own games. But once I'd played one-shots and campaigns in other systems, I realized that anything was possible. From there, creating a from-scratch game just became an exercise in asking what the game should be like for the player--another instance of benefitting from being able to play and GM alike. 

As I reflect on all the hours spent playing TTRPGs, GMing TTRPGs, planning sessions, recording session notes here, writing advice and how-tos, creating games, worldbuilding, and writing about characters, I realize that all of it has been refined over time. When I focus my energies on TTRPGs, whatever the game, task, or role may be, I am thinking about other people. When I'm a player, I'm thinking about how to make the game fun for my party members and how to interact with the GM's world in a way that means something to them and to me. When I'm a GM, I'm thinking about how each individual player will respond to ideas, actions, people, and events so that I can give them an experience that's special and unique to them. At the end of the day, tabletop games are about people and what we share with them, and I think keeping that in mind always helps us to do our best as players, GMs, and game creators. When you play or GM, think about what you can do to enjoy yourself while also helping others to enjoy themselves--no getting caught up on "the story" or "my character arc" or railroading or any of the things that prevent everybody from having fun. Because at the end of the day, if we're not having fun, what's the point?