Is This Anything?

Meet Dr. X. F. J. Widdershin, DMin, ThD, NWAR, MEM, MBA, J.D., LL.M., DVM, DC, DDS, BSYD, MD, PhD, DPT, EMD, EMT-P, RN, CRTT, DD, ASA, FSA, CAE, IAEE, PE, APSS, CMP, MS, (Ret.) (Vet.) (Esq.) And Notary Public!

The good doctor always seems to be right where he's needed, right when he's needed. The townsfolk will insist he's always been there, but the townsfolk across the county line say the same.

His tinctures work, his inventions function, even the snake-oil seems to have a potency to them. And that one thing the party has been needing to finish the collection? It's right there, for sale, right next to a bottle of rat poison and three loose trinkets from a board game.

And if the party needs to ask any follow-up questions? He's already packed up and gone. The townsfolk will swear they've never heard of him.

(And he'll also notarize anything. He has a stamp.)

---

Do your players need a lead on that relic? The Doctor has one. Do they need an antidote before sundown? He mixed a batch this morning, funny they should ask. Do they need a reason to go left instead of right? He's got something for sale that'll sort that right out. Whatever your party needs to keep the adventure moving, Dr. Widdershin has it, has done it, or knows someone who has, and he's fully credentialed in all three. He's already set up in the next town! He's been expecting them!

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #Homebrew #NPC #Salesman #SnakeOil

Is This Anything?

A D&D One-Shot that plays out like a Hallmark Christmas Movie.

In the town of Wickhollow, the wreaths go up a week before Solstice. The winter baking competition has been running since before anyone can remember. The mayor wears a sash. The candle in the window of the oldest house on the main road has been lit every Longest Night for several generations.

Someone in your party has been here before. They lived here, they loved here, they lost here. They left. They swore they'd never come back. But the town has welcomed them back with open arms.

Something is wrong this year. It's not a problem that can be solved by hitting it, but it is certainly the type of problem that will absolutely ruin the Longest Night celebrations if nobody does anything.

---

This is the idea of a one-shot that needs player and DM input to fully flesh it out.

What's wrong could be a family feud nobody will say aloud. It could be a recent loss that the town hasn't fully grieved yet. It could be a ritual nobody remembers how to perform. It could be the reason the hometown hero left in the first place, a wrong done to them that still sits unaddressed in the room.

One in the party is the "hometown hero" of sorts. They've returned to the town for the first time in years. Why they've returned could be a recent death in the family. It could be an old love to rekindle. It could be a letter with no return address that somehow found them anyway. It could just be that they were passing through; they swear they were only passing through.

The rest of the party are the quirky and lovable townsfolk. A chimneysweep, always covered in soot. A stablehand who can't escape the smell. An innkeeper who reserved the last room just for the "hero". The child who still believes all of it, completely, without irony.

The climax of the story is not driven by combat, but by a speech, a performance, a small act of community that the "hometown hero" could not have managed at session zero.

And it must start snowing right at the end. That is not a suggestion. The DM does not get a vote on this. It must start snowing.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #OneShot #LongestNight #WinterSolstice #Hallmark

Is This Anything?

The Butterfly Festival

Every year, over the course of a fortnight, the city fills with butterflies. Millions of them. They blanket every surface, drift through every street, settle on every shoulder. They come for a few days, and then leave, continuing their migration and dispersing.

People come from all over to see the beauty. The festival that grew around their arrival is now the largest on the continent, with vendors, ceremonies, competitions, and tourists.

This year, something is different.

The butterflies arrived as expected, but something is off. The butterflies are... docile? Their bright colors are... muted? They seem... skittish around people. And when the fortnight ends, they don't leave. They stay, packed together, restless and dim. More keep arriving. The migration has stalled.

Nobody knows why. The festival mood curdles into unease.

---

Why this is happening can depend on the story you're telling:

1. Something blocks the migration path. A threat, a disaster, or a darkness lies ahead on their route. The butterflies are witnesses to something the players haven't found yet.
2. Something in the city is drawing them. An artifact, a ritual, a birth, a death. The butterflies are responding to a magical attractor the players may be connected to.
3. They are carrying something. Spores, a curse, fey larvae, encoded information. Someone is using the migration as a delivery mechanism, and the delay is intentional.
4. They are dying. Their colors fade a little more each day. Their death will trigger something - ecological, magical, or divine - and the clock is already running out.
5. Not all of them are butterflies. Most are, but something is hiding in the swarm, waiting.

---

The cause is left open on purpose. Plug in whatever fits your current story, or let the players figure it out and surprise you.

#iTA #isThisAnything #dnd5e #DungeonsAndDragons #TTRPG #ttrpghooks #Worldbuilding #storyhook #butterflies #festival

Is This Anything?

Take Star Trek TOS and TNG episode plots, sand off enough of the sci-fi to pass as fantasy, and run them as D&D one-shots.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #StarTrek #OneShot

Meet Aldric.

He turned eighteen in the dark, which is how he would have
preferred to spend it -- quietly, without incident, without
anyone dying. He had gotten good at that. Staying small. Staying
away from the edges of things. He had watched his mother go
slowly and his father go suddenly and everyone else in between
go badly, and he had taken careful notes on all of it without
meaning to, and what the notes said was: it hurts, and it takes
a long time, and it means nothing about you except that it
happened.

The god did not introduce itself. It did not ask. It told him
what he was going to do and it did not wait for him to agree and
it did not offer him anything for the trouble and when it was
done speaking the room was just a room again and Aldric was
still in it, alone, the same as he had always been except now there was a direction.

He is not brave. He wants to be clear about that, in case
anyone is keeping track. He knows what swords do to bodies
because he has seen what smaller things do to bodies, and he is
not interested in finding out what the last part feels like from
the inside. But the god said go, and there is no one left to
stay for, and so he is going. Quietly. Terrified. One foot and
then the other, into whatever is waiting, which he is trying
very hard not to think about.

---

Aldric is a Paladin who did not ask to be one, built along the
lines of Oath of Glory less because he believes in it and more
because something does, and has decided he's the vessel. He
looks like someone who has been bracing for bad news long enough
that it has become his resting posture -- cautious eyes, careful
hands, the kind of stillness that reads as calm until you know
what it actually is. In combat he fights like a person who is
acutely aware that damage is real, which makes him precise and
not particularly reckless, and which makes his Divine Smites
feel less like power and more like desperation with good timing.
At the table he is the one asking whether this is actually
necessary, and then doing it anyway, every time.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #CharacterIntro #Homebrew
#Paladin #OathOfGlory #DivineMandate #CharacterBackstory
#Trauma #NewAdventurer

Meet Fat Man and Little Boy.

You'll meet them at a bad inn or a good road, depending on your
luck, and they will immediately be too much. Fat Man laughs
before the joke lands and Little Boy finishes it before Fat Man
can, and somewhere in the middle of all that noise you'll
decide they're harmless. Most people do.

Fat Man is broad and round and warm in the way of a hearth that
doesn't know it's burning too hot. He gestures when he talks,
which is always, and he has a laugh that arrives several seconds
before anything funny happens. Little Boy is long and narrow and
still, and watches everything with the patient attention of
someone who has learned that the world reveals itself if you
wait. They have been together long enough that their sentences
are a single thing split between two mouths.

They're carrying something. They don't know what it is -- not
really. They were paid to move it, told it was fragile, told not
to open it, and they haven't, because they are, despite
everything, professionals. It is fragile. It is also the reason
the next three sessions go the way they do. By the time you
understand what they had, you will have already decided you
liked them. That's the point. That was always the point.

---

Fat Man and Little Boy are comic NPCs built for early placement
and long shadow -- loud enough to dismiss, warm enough to trust,
and load-bearing in ways the party won't clock until it's loud.
Fat Man runs high Charisma and low Wisdom, all impulse and
infectious energy, a natural distraction. Little Boy is his
complement: high Perception, low everything the party might
think to check. Together they function as a delivery mechanism
for a plot device neither of them understands, and as a quiet
argument that the most dangerous things in a campaign are the
ones that make you smile first.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #CharacterIntro #NPC
#Homebrew #ComicRelief #PlotTwist #DungeonMaster #DMTools

Meet Zagrea Afxbis.

Six generations ago, a young Tiefling named Urxikas Afxbis was playing dice in a loud bar and caught another player cheating. He called it out. There was a scuffle. The scuffle became a brawl. The brawl became a full-room catastrophe -- everyone involved, furniture flying, chaos wall to wall.

Everyone except the Green Hag sitting alone in the far corner.

Urxikas got thrown across the room and landed near her. Scrambling up, he stepped on her pack. Something inside shattered. She screamed. The whole bar went quiet.

She walked up to him slowly. Got close. And in a voice barely above a whisper, she told him exactly what she thought of him and every red-blooded, tail-dragging devilspawn that would come after him. Then she blew a handful of sand in his eyes and walked out.

That was six Afxbisses ago. The curse has been passed down faithfully through every generation. Uncontrollable magic. Skin that changes color every time a spell fires -- bright green after poison, bright red after fire, eight colors counted so far, possibly more to come. The Afxbis line has learned, generation to generation, how to ride the magic, how to keep it from swallowing them whole. The skin, they never figured out.

Somehow, Zagrea is a happy guy. Charismatic, warm, a little prone to exaggeration when he's telling stories. He finds joy in most things. Most people like him immediately.

But spend enough time with him and you'll see it -- something behind the eyes. Something that doesn't quite rest. He keeps moving because standing still was never really an option. He wasn't welcome most places, growing up. So he kept walking, kept adventuring, and somewhere along the way started looking for something that resembles peace.

He hasn't found it yet. His powers are getting stronger by the day.

---

Zagrea Afxbis is a tall Tiefling Sorcerer with almost no muscle to speak of, wearing colorful striped overalls and a cape long enough to wrap himself in -- both striped vertically in white, red, vermillion, orange, amber, yellow, chartreuse, green, teal, blue, violet, purple, magenta, and black. He attacks from range and relies on his arcane knowledge when his spells don't cooperate. He can will his bare hands to strike like a club, dagger, or handaxe, and can summon a vibrant shield of light from his own arms when pressed. He is a lifelong adventurer, a walking folk legend, and arguably the most colorful person in the room -- sometimes literally.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #Homebrew #CharacterIntro #Sorcerer #Tiefling

Meet Phineas Draem, Proprietor of Phin's Finds.

He was never a warrior. Never an adventurer. Never a thief. He was a salesman.

Phin's Finds occupied a crooked alley in the kind of neighborhood that doesn't appear on city maps. Cramped, cluttered, lit poorly on purpose. The sort of shop where adventurers found oddities, nobles found things they couldn't buy anywhere reputable, and scholars found things they weren't supposed to touch. Phineas didn't steal or pillage. Everything in his stock passed through someone else's hands first. He simply had a gift for being the last person those hands sold to.

He built his business on charm, patience, and a network of whispers that stretched further than anyone knew. He out-negotiated rivals, cultivated desperate sellers, and kept careful track of who owed him what and who might need something quietly acquired. Over a lifetime of that work, card by card, he assembled his crowning piece -- a nearly complete Deck of Many Things. Not a replica. Not a partial draw. The real thing, almost whole.

Then one night it was gone. The stock too. Everything. Break-in, betrayal, curse -- he doesn't know. He may never know. What he knows is that he woke up with no money, no goods, no shop, and no status. Only the road.

He is not built for the road. He knows this. But desperation has a way of expanding a man's skill set, and it turns out that everything Phineas spent decades perfecting -- reading people, running networks, saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment, hiring the right middlemen, maintaining appearances under pressure -- translates surprisingly well to staying alive in places that would like to kill him. He ducks behind cover. He throws out distractions. He cuts through minds with words when steel would be slower. There is a hidden dagger, just in case. He has not had to use it yet. He intends to keep that record.

He is not chasing glory or gold. He is chasing stock. Artifacts, relics, cursed objects, forgotten magic. Anything with a story and a market. He wants his deck back. He wants his shop back. He wants to be, once again, the black market's most indispensable dealer -- and he is willing to go find the inventory himself.

---

Phineas Draem is a Rogue 3 / Bard 7 -- Mastermind and College of Eloquence -- and it shows. His silver tongue makes persuasion feel like a gift to the person being persuaded. His read of people borders on unsettling. He lies with the timing of a man who has rehearsed honesty so thoroughly he knows exactly when to abandon it. He has never seen real battle and does not intend to start now -- but he has survived everything the road has thrown at him so far on fast talk, misdirection, and the quiet confidence of a man who knows more about the situation than anyone else present. The dagger is a last resort. The words are the weapon.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #Homebrew #CharacterIntro #Rogue #Bard