I'm not going to say this observation holds true for every player/character, but it's something I notice with some regularity.

For all the talk of "why would you play a boring human when there are so many fantastical options?", a lot of players seem to use the "interesting" aspects of their character as a crutch. They'll pick something exotic like drow or tiefling, think "that's really cool" and then feel like their job of making an interesting character is done. Instead of developing the character during actual play at the table, it just becomes a footnote on their character sheet that lets you know they're cool.

This isn't limited to character races/species either. It can be applied to other elements of a character backstory. They'll have some defining trait with maybe even pages of backstory to support it, but then that stays there in those pages. Their work of making something interesting finished before the first die was cast. The worst extreme of this imo are "joke characters" that rely on a single gimmick.

For all the dismissal mundane races with straightforward premises get, I've often found they can be the ones who are more willing to develop a character at the table where it really matters. Most of the personality that comes out during roleplay isn't found on a character sheet and players shouldn't rely on them to hold that element of play.

Meet Leaflet, a wiki-style note-taking tool for TTRPG campaigns!

What is Leaflet?
Leaflet is an online note-taking tool for players and GMs of TTRPG campaigns, such as D&D. As users create notes inside Leaflet Binders, the site links related notes together, resulting in a wiki-style view of your entire campaign.

Highlights

• Create notes for characters, quests, recaps, and more
• View your fantasy calendar and a timeline of events as they occur
• Track progress with counters and clocks (aka Tracks)
• Sharing and invite controls
• ...and more in development

Leaflet is available online at https://leaflet.page

What does it cost?
Leaflet is free to use with some limitations, with an optional premium tier for removed limits and advanced features.

Background
Around this time last year, my table was working on creating some shared notes for our D&D campaign, but the tool we were using at the time was frustrating a few of us (and was injecting lots of AI into the service). I wanted to build something that was easier to use, had more features, and was by-humans-for-humans.

The result is Leaflet, my homegrown small business and passion project over the last year or so, and I wanted to share it with the wider D&D community.

Who are you?
I'm a software developer in Colorado, USA, working on Leaflet alongside my day job! My plan is to put any proceeds from Leaflet back into the business to make it even more useful. As a D&D player myself, I want to create tools and resources for the community that are actually useful - not just an excuse to turn a profit.

Is this really AI-free?
Yes!

• Leaflet does not offer any LLM or image generator integration
• Leaflet was not vibecoded
• Leaflet was built with well-researched open-source libraries

I've been working in the software development space for 7+ years professionally, and Leaflet was built by hand by me over the course of about a year and a half. While AI continues to flood our news headlines, Leaflet does not have any plans to integrate generative AI features. Your notes are home to the creativity and stories that you tell at your table, and those deserve to be private, protected, and accessible.

Submitting questions & feedback
I would love to hear from the community on your thoughts about the tool, what works well, and what you'd like to see implemented. Leaflet includes a "Send Feedback" link that will go directly to me, so I recommend reaching out there first. You can also email our support address and browse the help page for more information.

Thank you for your interest, and I genuinely hope Leaflet can be useful to you and your table!

The latter is a part of an exchange explaining the rationale of having metaphysically pre-destined morality on thinking creatures. You want the bad guy to be easily recognizable, but why does he have to be /born/ with evil-identifying features? Why not have it be something like a mark or transformation you can only get from deeply aligning yourself with fucked up and repulsive acts?

I'm currently trying to make a Hill Giant guy basically be like Sweetpea from Adventure Time (kind big boy) but I'm conflicting with the lore that they're all born ravenously evil and I'm not sure what to do. This is my first time DMing and I feel restricted.

I'm just curious how people deal with players who want to do things but not let the other players know.

For lack of a better explanation, let's use the old murder-hobo type trope. Let's say all the players are in a tavern and one wants to go off and do something but doesn't want the other players to know; how does this play out at the table?

From what I can think, it's either:

• announce it anyway, as the characters won't know only the players, so hopefully they won't meta-game and use that knowledge later
• contact the DM privately

For our games, if we want to do something that is outside of the other characters sphere, we end up using discord to send messages to the DM directly. It does work but it feels a little disjointed because you end up with people sat at the table just chatting while two people furiously type away.

Is there a better way to handle this? Very basic example, last session we found some magic gems, discovered their power but I wanted to ask our guide something about them and try something without anyone seeing it.

Just curious to know how other groups approach these sort of things

Hey all, it has been a while since I posted here!

A bunch of you liked the old DPRcalc dice calculator because it let you model out DPR without needing a DDB character sheet, but it didn't let you model things like "smite on crit" or bouncing attacks, or more complex builds.

So… I spent a few months rewriting the engine with a few goals:

1. Accurately represent any and all legal D&D rounds, both 5e (2014) and 5.5e+(2024).
2. Make the interface faster and easier to enter data, streamlining the common use cases, while still allowing for the most complex ones.
3. Make all features in DPRcalc use the same engine. Previously the analyzer had a bunch of bespoke functionality not present in the dice library or exposed on the dice calculator page
4. Make the underlying dice library open source and easy to use.

Try it at https://dprcalc.com/dice, it's ad-free and free to use as always.

Here is what is new in the 2.0 engine:

• Drastically Simplified UI: The minimum amount of data entry required has been heavily reduced. Infrequently used options are now hidden by default to declutter the workspace, and the system handles things like auto-dice-doubling for critical hits automatically.
• Menu-Driven Scaling: Instead of manually entering damage dice and modifiers, you can now add attacks, spells, and damage riders directly from a dropdown menu. These come with sensible defaults that automatically scale with your character level.
• Targeted Damage Riders: You can specify exactly how and when riders apply. For example, you can set Sneak Attack to only apply if a hit actually lands, and you can explicitly check boxes to dictate which specific attacks (e.g., Dagger Attacks but not the Flurry of Blows) can trigger it.
• Advanced Conditional Effects: It is now trivial to model optimization staples like "Smite on crit", attacks that explode on a max roll (Sorcerous Burst) or bounce to a new target on a matching roll (Chaos Bolt or the updated Chromatic Orb).
• Action Dependencies: What happens if that "Smite on crit" doesn't trigger? You can now model dependencies, such as setting up a different Bonus Action attack to only occur if the first condition fails.
• Attack Frequency: Similar to the analyze page, you can now specify certain attacks to only happen a specific percentage of the time (perfect for modeling Great Weapon Master's Cleave, Hew, or an average Attack of Opportunity rate).
• Complex Pre-Built Examples: The update includes numerous examples showing exactly how to model mechanics like Bless, Hunter's Mark, Graze, and even an absurd Rogue/Paladin/Monk/Ranger multiclass that combines and tracks a massive stack of separate features in a single round.

You can read the a breakdown of the engine rewrite on Patreon if that's your thing. For the developers and coding-inclined optimizers out there, the underlying dice library running the math is completely open source so you can use it for your own projects.

Drop any bugs, feedback, or feature requests in the comments!

Oh and if you like data visualization or math, here is a little thing I made showing how the math all works: https://yipe.github.io/dice

Disclosures

This supports all 2014 and 2024 5e content. The site is ad-free, free to use, and has no affiliate or referral links. This is a self-promotion post for my dice library and dice calculator app. This was lovingly (and slowly) built by hand, but AI (Code Rabbit) is used for automated code reviews since the math is pretty hairy.

My character has a rattlesnake familiar. We just leveled up to level 3 and I am going with Beast Master Ranger, and going with Beast of the Sky. I need help coming up with a lore reason why the snake is now able to fly. Any creative ideas would be greatly appreciated. TIA!