roleplaying – Page 3 – The Daily SPUF

D&D: Creative Uses for the ‘Shape Water’ Spell

April 19, 2022January 8, 2023 aabicus 0 Comments d&d, Druid, Dungeons & Dragons, roleplay, roleplaying, water

Shape water is my favorite spell in D&D, hands down. I have found so many different ways to use it, in part because of the many different ways it lets you manipulate water. You can move it, animate it, recolor it, or freeze it, and the effect lasts for 1 hour without needing concentration. Today I wanted to go over some of the more common situations I find myself busting out shape water for utility (or sometimes even combat) reasons. There are three main ways to get the water you’ll be manipulating for the spell. The easiest is the environment,… [Continue Reading]

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D&D: How I Learned to Start Shapeshifting and Love the Druid

April 17, 2022October 9, 2022 aabicus 0 Comments animals, d&d, Druid, Dungeons & Dragons, roleplay, roleplaying

I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons for a long time, but I avoided the druid class for most of that on principle. The problem was that I got a bad first impression from another player’s character; Hantan was a party member in my first-ever campaign, a two-year medley of weekly one-offs during my undergraduate years where I was a sword-swinging barbarian. Hantan’s player, while a wonderful guy, was depressingly uncreative when it came to roleplaying. He spent the entire campaign simply shapeshifting into whatever combat form was meta according to the online forums. At first it was wolves, then briefly lions,… [Continue Reading]

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D&D 5e: The Troubles With Monk

April 16, 2022March 17, 2023 aabicus 0 Comments criticism, d&d, Dungeons & Dragons, monk, roleplay, roleplaying

Hi all! While the Daily SPUF is a video gaming blog through and through, we do occasionally cover other types of games. This includes card games and board games and even tabletop RPGs. I’ve occasionally covered Call of Cthulhu, but I’ve actually been playing Dungeons & Dragons for over a decade, starting with 3rd edition in 2009. So I got the idea to write some articles giving advice for newer players. And then I started with a guide to my favorite class, druid. Well, that druid guide turned into three different articles…then eight…and now there are fifteen. So apparently I won’t… [Continue Reading]

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My 5 Favorite Weapons in Call Of Cthulhu

April 15, 2022July 11, 2023 aabicus 2 Comments advice, Call of Cthulhu, fire, grenades, lists, melee, roleplay, roleplaying, weapons

As a fan of historical firearms, my biggest complaint with the Call of Cthulhu system was its relatively-limited firearm roster. I understand why (it’s not a combat simulator, your characters should be avoiding firefights at all costs), but that doesn’t mean I want to give my investigator some generic pistol or rifle. Your character’s weapon-of-choice is a hugely defining characteristic, often tying into their personality, backstory, and team role. But there are only a handful of common options for every weapon type in the core rulebook, and they all differ only in damage, magazine size, range…mathy stuff like that. So… [Continue Reading]

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A Call of Cthulhu Tale: The Last Stand of Barnabas Nambly

January 16, 2022December 5, 2023 aabicus 0 Comments Call of Cthulhu, cthulhu, recap, roleplay, roleplaying, rpg, story

A while back I wrote an article recounting my first experience in Call of Cthulhu. Those campaigns were all set in the default 1920s setting, but there’s actually a second available time period: the 1890s Gaslight era. After having a blast with roaring San Francisco, my group chose to rewind the clock. This time we wanted to face our next eldritch threat in London on the turn of the 19th century. For me, the first curveball came when generating stats for my new character. The online generator gave me one of the weirdest builds any of us had ever seen.… [Continue Reading]

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Don’t Trust the Milkman – A Call of Cthulhu Saga

November 7, 2021July 16, 2023 aabicus 2 Comments Call of Cthulhu, cthulhu, milkman, recap, review, roleplay, roleplaying, rpg, story, tabletop simulator

This article’s a bit out of left-field, as it’s not about video games. Instead, today I wanted to discuss a tabletop RPG I’ve always wanted to try and recently got my wish. Except for a short one-off in my undergrad years, Call of Cthulhu has always somehow evaded my gaming tables. Like most social events, it would lay dormant and unable to find a group willing to get together to play. But thanks to the Covid-19 lockdown, my gaming group finally decided to give Call of Cthulhu a try via Tabletop Simulator. Since then, we’ve been hooked and played a… [Continue Reading]

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The Medical Necessity lore nobody asked for

March 15, 2020March 8, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments aabicus, Filler, history, medical necessity, roleplaying, soldiers

Remember Medical Necessity? It was a game development project where I had my first ill-fated experience as a project manager. In the end, we got canceled due to lack of progress during the first quarter of production. The only surviving product is the purchasable sprite sheet on itch.io. The design document and production wiki note that the default names for the player’s allied soldiers are Homer, Berenson, Collins, and Cunningham. And while digging through a lifetime of old boxes preparing for my move to Portland, I found the original action figures those names came from. Their plastic has gone gummy and… [Continue Reading]

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Writing VS Roleplaying

March 30, 2019March 28, 2019 Medic 0 Comments craziness, dnd, pathfinder, roleplaying, writing

Who’d have thought that there was an actual difference between writing and roleplaying? Well, a lot of people, really. Those who read the Daily SPUF regularly might know that I do a lot of writing. By “a lot”, I mean at least 500 words a day, often more, and have been doing so for the last 3 years. Lately, I’ve been doing 1000+ words a day simply because someone around here has to keep the Daily SPUF daily rather than weekly. In fact, this desperation to make sure that the Daily SPUF has an article published every single day means… [Continue Reading]

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The Lords of Brewer’s Grove – A Pathfinder Campaign

February 6, 2019April 8, 2022 Skully 0 Comments d&d, dice, dungeons and dragons, luck, rng, roleplay, roleplaying

Hi, there! I’m the temp writer and sibling of the almighty blog overlord; you can call me Skully. I’m currently running a 5th edition Pathfinder campaign with Medic, our brother and my boyfriend and I’m going to share a rough synopsis of our current predicament. First of all, let me introduce everyone. Medic is playing Rhyn’Go AmWoluff, a timid but spiritual Kitsune Druid with a wolf companion named Floof Greymayne. While she may be rather quiet and new to roleplaying, her character is quickly blooming. Our brother is the valiant Dwarf Barbarian who goes by the name SkullDave IronClaw; a… [Continue Reading]

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On Roleplaying, Part 2

October 18, 2016November 13, 2016 aabicus 2 Comments advice, roleplay, roleplaying, writing

Medic recently published an article discussing the pastime of play-by-post roleplaying games. I’ve also been participating in RPs for the better part of my online career (so much that I’m one of those users in the example screenshot on the Wikipedia page I just linked), and I highly recommend that any budding writers give it a try. It’s a very risk-free opportunity to develop some good habits for becoming a better writer, especially if you suffer from either writer’s block or beginner’s fear, and it strips writing down to just the fun parts. You can craft a single character, the… [Continue Reading]