William Brandes Stoddard posts
Posts: 167
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Updated Bastion Special Facilities, Part Two
I am so grateful for the positive responses to the last two posts in this series that I’m continuing without delay, before the deadline doom of the next few months eats my head again. Let’s see how many of these I can get through.Improving Bastions|Updated Special Facilities pt 1 | Updated Special Facilities pt 2WorkshopBastion FacilityPrerequisite: NoneSpace: Roomy or VastHirelings: 3Order: Maintain (Roomy 1d6, Vast 2d6), Craft, ResearchThe ...
Updated Bastion Special Facilities, Part One
I had fun revising the first few Bastion Special Facilities in my previous post, so today I’m doing a few more. I’m still not sure what I want to do with the Barrack, beyond adding an -s to the end as most English speakers would, so I’m starting with the Garden.Improving Bastions | Updated Special Facilities pt 1A quick note up-front: I am aware that some of the BP to GP conversion math is bad right now. I need to get the core ideas in plac...
Improving Bastions in D&D 2024
I’ve talked before about what a mess I think the 2024 DMG’s Bastion rules are. With all respect to the designers, I think there are good LEGOs in the pile, but this arrangement of them doesn’t serve the needs of the game or the story.The IssuesFirst, I’ll recapitulate the things I see as the issues, even if I don’t go deep on all of them in this post.· I think it’s fine for Bastion turns to happen whether the character is present or ...
A Fifteenth Year of Blogging
It’s another year of blogging done, even if the last few months have been very thin around here. Some of my big clients have had steady work for me, and Citadel has taken whatever was left over from that. We’ll see how that develops over the next year.Games I’m Running1. Aurikesh has just hit 13 years and 169 sessions, with 170 coming up this weekend. We’re still having a great time, and still haven’t made a rules system change to the 2...
Coven of the Written Word
For Halloween, Kainenchen put together an awesome good-witch costume. Not in, you know, the Oz sense, though she’s also just finished rereading The Wizard of Oz and picked up the next book. Anyway, this subclass hasn’t seen any review from the Worlds Beyond Number team, but it was commissioned by a higher authority (Kainenchen asked nicely). This class goes with the Worlds Beyond Number Witch class, available right now from the WBN Patreon st...
LARP Design: Castle Puzzle Box
This past weekend (19-21 September 2025), we ran the third three-day event for Citadel LARP, at Booker T State Park in Tennessee. Serella Savenko and I created another puzzle box, our most elaborate design so far by a very wide margin. We were initially building it to go into play at the July event, but that absolutely was not going to happen so we built the previous puzzle box to go in its place, and pushed this one off to September. Pipistrella...
Twenty Hirelings Awaiting Certain Doom
The use of hirelings isn’t nearly as common in D&D as it once was, but I think we should bring that back a bit. In addition to shoring up a party’s weakness and draining some cash out of their coffers, hirelings also provide someone who can die horribly to showcase a monster’s sick dance moves. Oh, and they make great backup characters for when a dragon eats the one guy in the party who can Raise Dead and you’re a week away from anyone el...
The Merciless Snare of Sorcery
What follows is a microgame that I wrote for Dancing Stickman's LAARG project on Bluesky (which is why the text refers to posting your playthrough on Bluesky). I don't work in the microgame space, um, ever, but I enjoyed writing this, and I hope you'll enjoy it too.In which magic is lost and might be regained, if your reach does not exceed your grasp.In The Merciless Snare of Sorcery, you play a witch who has lost control of a spell. ...
LARP Design: Second Puzzle Box
We ran a one-day event for Citadel LARP this past weekend (19 July), and we put our second puzzle box design into play this time. Serella Savenko helped me with every step of planning and building this one. I want to thank Elena Simon for providing the box itself, and Laurie Zolkosky for driving back to Atlanta to get the damn box because I… left it on my living room floor.ExteriorSorry about the portion of the image I’ve edited out with a pa...
UA 2025: The Psion Breakdown
Not even the Ranger has had as many UA releases thrown at it as the Psion (née Mystic). Searching through the dusty, moldering archives of this very website, I see that I last wrote a UA breakdown about psionics in 2020, but it was already in good company. I was genuinely surprised to see a new attempt, because I honestly thought the Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, Psi Knight Fighter, and Soulknife Rogue were WotC’s last word on the topic.Psion ClassI...
UA 2025: Horror Subclasses Breakdown
I haven’t written an UA breakdown in a hot minute—the last one was before the three core books of 2024-25 dropped!—but this drop sucked me back in. Part of this is to find out where the reading audience is these days. I’m sad to see that they’ve dropped bylines for UA articles; I liked knowing whose ideas I was reading.Also, the very short turnaround on this feedback window is a travesty. I’m sure they have reasons, but since the firs...
Citadel LARP Design: Puzzle Box
So I’m a huge fan of games like The Room and Boxes, and I really wanted to bring some of that experience to Citadel LARP. Let’s set aside for a second the fact that the boxes in those games aren’t constrained by the cruel realities of Euclidean space the way my work must be. It doesn’t help that I don’t know a damn thing about woodworking, but I decided not to let that stop me from pouring in the effort. I was going to build a puzzle bo...
Avenging Heart is available in Horizons!
Hey friends! I am excited to share with you today this sample of "Avenging Heart," an adventure I wrote for Wildmage Press's Horizons magazine. It's just a taste of the awesome stuff found in Issue 3, so get on over to Wildmage Press and read the whole thing.
Dungeon Design Lessons from Blue Prince
If you’re like Kainenchen and me, you’ve been utterly obsessed with Blue Prince for the last month or more. Now, a roguelike puzzle game isn’t necessarily for everyone, but the lessons the game has to offer are for everyone with even a passing interest in dungeon design. This list is not exhaustive. You can help Harbinger of Doom by expanding it.If you’re thinking about letting me know in the comments how you hate puzzles and think puzzle...
Dominoes and Dice Resolution Mechanic
Okay, I’ve gone away and had a long think about a core resolution mechanic for a Dust to Dust-based tabletop game. For aesthetic reasons, a core resolution mechanic for this game should involve dominoes, but what if it’s a combination dice-and-dominoes system? (The fact that both “dice-and-dominoes” and “Dust to Dust” involve initial letters very similar to another game we all know and many of us love is… well, it’s not a problem ...
Ruby Talon Deeps: Locations 4
It doesn’t seem possible that it has been almost two years since the last time I posted something about Ruby Talon Deeps, or that I first drew it almost three and a half years ago. Time is weird and I don’t think I like it. For some reason this feels possible to write only now, when earlier today I finished the first draft of another adventure.Map|Locations 1|Treasures|Locations 2|Locations 3 | Locations 4Eye of DesolationA landing on the Gre...
Twenty Magic Item Flaws
One of my professional projects and working on Citadel LARP have converged on exploring magic item flaws of varying severity. The space between a flaw and a curse is largely semantic, but if you’re compelled to keep using the item that doesn’t work quiteas advertised, that’s definitely a curse. In this post, I’m just trying to get the creative molasses flowing, because I’ve been so buried in other projects that this blog has been quiet...
Grathe-Dzerin, the Sanctuary in the Abyss
The location described below is an idea that I’ve been pondering for awhile now: a relatively safe settlement in the Abyss that PCs can use as a base of operations for adventures in tiers 3 and 4. One of the things about the Abyss is that it can be soawful and corrupting that it’s hard to have a fun adventure. (D&D isn’t greatat hostile environmental conditions of any kind.)The Town of Grathe-DzerinIn the Astral Sea and the Abyss, would it ...
Twenty Strange but Useful People to Meet in the Dungeon
If you need some weirdos for your PCs to meet while exploring the dungeon, if you need a change of pace between two fights or just think a minor social encounter sounds like the thing, this table is for you! (The three other tables linked below could also serve, depending on your situation. Never overlook the potential of a bounty hunter tracking down a PC at the worstpossible time, after all!If the dungeon complex was sealed off from the world f...
Improving Backgrounds in D&D 2024, Part Two
I liked the direction things were going in my last post, so today I’m continuing that with as many more Backgrounds as I can get through. Last time I covered Acolytes, Charlatans, and Criminals, so today I’m starting with Criminal (Spy).I always thought it was cool to have a few Backgrounds that were closely enough related that you could use the same entry for them, with maybe one or two changes. Criminal and Spy, Entertainer and Gladiator, K...
Improving Backgrounds in D&D 2024
I’ve got a number of issues with the way the 2024 rules change Backgrounds from their 2014 form. In this post I want to dig into those issues and see if we can improve upon them. If I stumble upon something worth having, this could become a DM’s Guild release, much like my Level Up Your Backgroundposts did.Some of my issues here are addressed in the 2024 DMG, that offers generic “just do whatever” rules for making Backgrounds… but gener...
LARP Design: Traversal Challenges
We’re in the run-up to the first full weekend event of Citadel LARP. The Citadel in the name is a dungeon for as much of that old-school dungeon-crawling feel as we can manage in a LARP, and one of the ways we do that is to lean into something that has been part of LARPing from the early days. A traversal challengeis an encounter (with or without combat) where the PCs need to cross through a hazardous area. In this post I’m going to talk abou...
A Fourteenth Year of Blogging
The actual anniversary of my blog was a few days ago, and I was just so buried in other tasks that I’m only now getting around to writing this. Every year I like to talk about what I’m playing, what I’m running, and otherwise what I’m enjoying.Games I’m Running1. Aurikesh is still going strong after 12 years and 156 sessions. The PCs completed a huge story milestone back in September, and then my schedule blew up and we’ve only played...
Titles and Honors to Award Your PCs
I’ve been a huge fan of Robin Pierson’s History of Byzantiumpodcast since… whenever I finished listening to Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome(I also talked about Byzantine history here), and the part where Robin explains court titles and the importance of honors to the power dynamics of Eastern Rome fascinated me.Pretty much every DMG ever printed has suggested awarding PCs lands, noble titles, and other honors instead of or in addition t...
LARP Design: Character Creation Goal-Setting
If you’re the kind of person who reads my LARP design posts, you probably already know about Citadel LARP(but I’ll link it just in case). This post isn’t solely about Citadel, though, as I’ve also started playing two other games recently, Alliance Atlantaand Resurgence LARP, and those games also factor into this post.One of the challenges players face when starting a new PC in a campaign boffer LARP is setting goals for themselves. I’m ...
Five New Fey Magic Items
It’s been an incredibly busy month, and next month won’t be easing up, so I’m sneaking in under the wire to get a second post up in September. On the plus side, I think it’s all work that is making me a better writer. Because it matters in one or two places, these are written to 5e.24.Diadem of the Silver KnightWondrous Item, Very RareWhile you wear this silver crown, it grants the following properties.The Honor of the Vanguard.You have A...
Ten NPC Adventuring Parties
I’ve done a few posts now that are collections of NPCs you can drop into your campaign. I usually do sets of twenty at a time, but since these are going to have more description for each item, and both Patreon and Wordpress do awful violence to tables, I’m doing ten adventuring parties at a time and we’ll see how long of a series this becomes.Each adventuring party gets a name (a good name is everything, because your PCs will use it a lot),...
Alternative Keen Mind and Observant Feats
Over in Tribality, I’ve posted some initial thoughtson the 2024 Player’s Handbook revised rules. If you haven’t already seen that article, here’s the short version: I like a lot of things, but dislike a substantial number of changes too. Today I’m talking in more detail about the Keen Mind and Observant feats – what they were, what they are, what they might yet be.Keen Mind (2014)You have a mind that can track time, direction, and det...
iOS Users
You'll probably be getting this message from a lot of your Patreon backers, but if you subscribed to my Patreon through the Apple Store, please consider switching to subscribing through desktop or an Android device. In November, the Apple Store will start soaking up 30% of anything you pay to Patreon creators through them.This Patreon isn't a major source of income for me, but it isfor a lot of projects you back. Apple shouldn't get 3...
NPC Stat Block: Zealot
In my Aurikesh campaign, my PCs are in rebellion against the prince of the domain they live in. I've given them the names and brief descriptions of a bunch of the Prince's inner circle of advisors and military commanders. As much as possible, I wanted these characters to feellike the opposite numbers of PCs and preserve the illusion that they work like PCs. That's not really how NPCs work in 5e design philosophy, so I had to construct...
