This is my favorite canon Drow art there is, it’s from ‘Menzoberranzan, city of intrigue’ and it depicts a mother showing her two daughters Narbondel as the city’s archmage lights it up for the day
Most Drow art shows nobles or soldiers being in some sort of conflict or about to ambush someone so it’s nice to see simpler moments like this one
I’m really glad this art exists. Fantasy cultures that are purely evil at best feel like lazy world-building to me, even when we don’t assume undertones of real-world racism.
TTRPG Mapmakers might find this interesting! I am working on a D&D campaign set during the tail end of the Greek mythological/Hellenic world, and after combing through all sorts of wikipedia maps and articles I made these maps for my setting! I spent hours in pixlr over the long weekend making these maps of the world! Next is the eastern sea/Troy/Anatolia map for the setting.
I spent so much time using historic references and went down several research spirals to give this setting a mythological-meet-historical foundation. Things obviously aren’t accurate to real life, but I think they’re neat for the narrative I want to tell.
[Had to delete the previous iteration of this post because I forgot to include a layer of the Greece map, my b! lol]
@probablybadrpgideas idk maybe someone else who’s better at marine geography and oceanic biomes and worldbuilding could make a better map but idk it was just a funny idea
Really enjoying a detail Brennan and Aabria put into the worldbuilding of Aramán. Namely that Taisha and the Lloy family, despite being druids, are also smiths.
The rules for vanilla D&D druids with their prohibition against wearing metal armor is a bit strange when you consider that, throughout much of history (at least in Europe), both iron and the art of smithing itself was believed to be Old magic. It’s the reason that horseshoes are considered lucky today and there are so many legends about supernatural creatures like fae being repelled by iron. It’s not just the metal itself, it’s that a person was able to take raw iron from the earth and shape it into something else.
There are old superstitions, particularly in Ireland, where a smith can curse someone if they turn the horn of their anvil eastward. There are even stories about communities gathering around a blacksmith’s anvil to prevent a family from being evicted by trying to collectively curse the landlord.
So that detail of Taisha not just being able to speak to animals and plants like a traditional D&D druid, but can also speak to metal aligns so well with old-world beliefs. Why would druids not like metal? What is more natural that something that comes from the very earth? Imagine how terrifyingly amazing smiths the Lloy family must be, if they can talk to the metal while they shape it. How they can do it without even needing fire. It’s no wonder they were the ones that made the weapon that killed their divine tyrant.
After all, what’s a more unnatural thing than a god?
That’s a really interesting worldbuilding choice. Maybe they were inspired by the Metal Master variant for D&D 3e/3.5? It was a druid class variant from Dragon Magazine #311 focused on shaping metal and resonating with the earth. In exchange they don’t gain the typical druid toolkit of wild shape, animal companions, etc.
I love your prose about how the shaping of iron is part of old magic, but a different facet of the whole compared with nature magic.
The downside to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition ending up being so hugely influential in the indie RPG sphere in spite of Hasbro’s best efforts to kill it is that we’ve now got a whole new species of fantasy heartbreaker where the problem isn’t a failure of imagination, but the fact that the author can’t do technical writing for shit.
Like, the type of adversarial play that D&D4E and its imitators are built around only functions because the rules are crafted with sufficient rigour that the GM rarely ever needs to interpret them, and is thus made free to step into the role of an opposing player and do their genuine best to kill the party off when hostilities break out. I’m trying to be kind about this, but if you can’t get through a single sentence of mechanical text without producing something which admits three equally plausible but mutually exclusive interpretations, this is possibly not the best genre to set your sights on for your very first published game.
Getting into DND lore (thank you Baldur’s Gate 3) and was really into the drama of the drow pantheon. I wanted to draw something showing the cosmic battle between Lolth and her daughter and had a fun time with this piece 😊.
this should be in a book. or a museum. or my house. amazing
Hi Friends! It’s Aboleth Eye, your favorite curator of ttrpg and fantasy inspiration that obsessively tags everything.
I am eager to engage with people on here and Bluesky again; so if you have burning questions about running/playing D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games (including worldbuilding or lore questions), ask here or on Bluesky!
I also am taking asks about my D&D Homebrew Classes and Races on my Aboleth Workshop blog, as well as the campaign story of my Ravenloft campaign Freaks & Facades! My schedule is going to be opening up a lot in the next coming weeks, so I want to get back into creating and engaging with you guys about stuff I am working on!
I have officially been running/writing D&D and other ttrpg campaigns for 13+ years now; I have seen and done a lot, and I want to share the wealth of my experiences. Check out my other D&D ask stuff here: Worldbuilding/D&D Lore, My Homebrew, and so much more in the tags.
Even if this only gets one or two asks, I really hope I brighten your day and inspire you to run your own settings and stories!
Tear into your opponents with blades, arrows, bombs and more from your own infernal body! Includes several combat styles for your bladelimb weapons, and a class variant just for Tieflings!
All homebrew is free to use and play in your own games! (Though a shoutout would be nice lol) – Love, @aboleth-eye
P.S. Have fun with this homebrew class! I made it in an coldbrew coffee writing frenzy. lol
Reblogging this since the Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc movie just came out! 😆
Eternal DM, Eldritch God of the Alphabet Mafia, Tabletop Storyteller!! ------
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