Dyson AirBlade masturbation machine

The party meets a salesman. During his pitch, he tells the party of the town he came from most recently, how the majority of the townsfolk seemed muted while the 10% who ran the town and its shops seemed very outgoing and loud, personality-wise. Says he's been to that town dozens of times over the last decade, but only in the past few visits has he seen this trend.

He describes one specific person, the mayor of the town. Says from what he's heard, the mayor-to-be came to town, was around for three days or so, and then the former mayor abruptly stepped down and gave the role to the new guy. The salesman describes the new mayor as a short guy, nearly albino, huge nose, wears a sash and a crown of laurel leaves, tends to stutter. (Describing the Little Caesars mascot).

If pressed, the salesman could also describe any number of other newcomers to the town, each holding some sort of power in government or in social status:

* The tavern is run by somebody matching the description of Wendy from Wendy's. (Dave's Ales is the local watering-hole. Cute little girl behind the bar, bright red hair, always in pigtails. Serves the best Beef Squares you'll ever eat.)
* The local busker is a take on chester cheetah, of cheetos. (A tabaxi on the street corner, dark sunglasses to hide his apparent blindness, stark-white goatee and matching thinning, patchy coat. Plays a bass flute for money.)
* The jailer/sheriff is a thin veil over McGruff the crime dog. (A tall, well-postured gnoll-person always seen wearing a light tan overcoat. He doesn't seem to investigate crime or put anybody behind bars, but he is often seen out in public warning people to be more aware of their surroundings.)

If the party chooses to go to the town to investigate, they'll see shops and townsfolk all slightly reminiscent of real-world mascots:
* The captain of the police force looks like Cap'n Crunch
* The town drunk is known to tricking people into asking for some punch to drink, and then hitting them.
* The sewers have been overrun with a singing, dancing mouse and his friends. (Chuck E Cheese)
* The fields to the north have been taken over by a Jolly Green Giant
* Mr Clean is a janitor

...and so on.

As the party investigates, they discover that some of the original townsfolk have been run off by the changes, and those that remain have been hoodwinked into believing it's always been this way; even though these newcomers came in slowly and kicked out legitimate business owners, put them out of business or scared them off, that they've been here the whole time; they've been psychologically conditioned to accept the mascot ruling class via a magic artifact or a summoning gone wrong. (I haven't decided the mechanism yet, but something is making the townspeople believe this is normal, and finding and breaking it is the core of the resolution.)

The players can fix the problem in one or a combination of ways:
* reclaim the institutions one by one (city hall, sheriff, water supply, etc)
* Deprogramming residents by finding the source and destroying/fixing it.
* finding the original deeds and voiding contracts and exposing fraud to restore original ownership of businesses and political offices.
* Outright buying back properties from the mascots.

Like many other "Is This Anything" posts, this isn't a completed story, but I'll probably come back to it to flesh it out a little bit at some point.

Thoughts?

#iTA #IsThisAnything #TTRPG #DnD #DnD5e #WorldBuilding
#TabletopRPG #DMing #HombrewDnD #GameMaster

Is This Anything?

A USB-C dongle that adds storage to your phone but also has a pass-through charging port so you don't lose your one port. Low profile, shaped to sit flush against the bottom of your phone like it belongs there.

#iTA #isThisAnything #tech #android #concept #everydaycarry #gadgets

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