"Child pure of heart and innocent of mind. You have caught my attentions, a Unicorn who wants nothing but to live and peace, and to see the joy and love of the innocent as yourself. For your purity of spirit, I shall grant a boon of this magic gun."
The secret is to not work from what you'd like to do, but to work backwards from what your players want to do.
Seriously, throw out all the prep you have that isn't landing, and just ask your players what kinds of things they want to do. Then, make stories inspired by the actions or accomplishments they want to undertake.
... This does require that your players have some idea of what they want to do, though. If you have checked out or uninvested players, there's essentially nothing you can do I'm afraid.
So now I will soapbox to the players reading this: Your job is to be invested in the game. If you don't put energy into being invested, you're not fulfilling your side of the arrangement at the table.
I had taken the artist's statement that the art is being reworked as evidence of the art being pulled, and at least future published books not containing them.
https://twitter.com/i_shkipin/status/1687829743268442112
I should have waited until the actual statement (linked below), as it's clear that the artist was making something of a lie of omission above, as I believe he purposefully wanted readers to believe that the art was changing in the books, not that he would redo the art to... essentially no promised effect. Maybe he was lying to himself with the hope that he could get another go at?
https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/1687969469170094083
I've updated the title of this post to reflect the info from the official WotC statement on the issue. I'm glad they won't be allowing AI "augmented" submissions from their artists going forward, but I would only be truly happy with a statement that they will be taking the massive inconvenience of making sure that the art is revised for future publications at a minimum (I think a recall would be asking a lot tbh).
I don't think you picked up that I playtested both, though.
The monks played okay, if rather awkward in my playtests of the rules. They should do more damage, but they were all suitably impactful in a fashion that this dance bard cannot replicate with the ribbon features it has been given.
The bard was just a bard with what is effectively a free melee attack cantrip that doesn't scale with their casting stat. They do not step on the monk's toes, because they were too busy casting shatter, fireball, and other uses of their magic action.
It's flavorful and fun, but the impact of the dance bard is not on their level 3 features. It's their level 6 features that give the class a tonne of impact.
A tale that is perpetually dark in tone becomes tiresome very quickly. It needs to feature the occasional ray of light for contrast and to create a sense of hope. Monsters and other terrors must be offset with creatures that are kind and lovable, giving the characters even more reasons to stand against the darkness. Here are a couple of ways to add glimmers of light to a tragic tale:
- In a land as dreary as Barovia, take the time to describe the occasional scene of beauty, such as a pretty flower growing atop a grave.
- Make sure that the heroes have contact with NPCs who are honest, friendly, and helpful, such as the Martikovs in Vallaki or the Krezkovs in Krezk.
-Curse of Strahd, Introduction. Marks of Horror. 2016.
I've seen Sealioning used quite a bit in a particular Lemmy instance that would self describe themselves as Pro-Russia & Pro-China, as a way of shutting down discourse between people who disagree with them. There are people who disagree with a particular narrative, and they're discounted immediately for wanting to know how someone would arrive at a pro-Russian & pro-China position.
Also they'll just "whatabout!" and change the subject whenever unassailable critiques of these regimes come up. As if its is only possible to hold outrage in a single direction at a time.
I'll have you know I'm capable of disliking EVERYONE mentioned in a given conversation.
Modern capitalism as we know it began forming in the Renaissance, particularly in colonial European powers who were getting to the Colonization of the rest of the world game earlier than their peers. This notably includes Portugal and the Netherlands, followed swiftly by most everyone else.
There were promissory notes that were carried by travelers prior to this, in the form of Crusaders traveling from Europe to Jerusalem, in the relatively brief period of time that it was conquered. But this did not interact with market economies as we'd know it, and is directly analogous to traveler cheques, meant to make you less of an appealing robbery target on the road.
No, these kinds of shenanigans were concocted rather recently, and are not reflective of baseline normal human behavior. It's mostly a system that was created by accident, with conventions that were forming being purposeful altered during creation by the people with money, for their own benefit.
You really should look at the homelessness crisis in more detail, because it cannot be on private citizens to shoulder that burden. There simply isn't enough for individuals, even if they all miraculously organized together in this effort, to fix the issue.
It's systemic, and we need top-down action. Housing people affordably is a scale issue, and larger institutions should be the ones to gather the equity and resources at a scale that individuals simply cannot, especially in the middle of a housing crisis.
For examples of public housing that works quite well, I'd suggest you read into Greek's post World War 2 Social Housing programs, and Singapore's state controlled housing programs.
Sure, but even then it doesn't make a lot of sense that all the different ways that Warlock patrons can present themselves, that they all are great about giving people raw damage potential as a cornerstone of their pact, regardless of how you flavor it.