#RPGaDAY – August 9, 2025 (INSPIRE)

 

#RPGaDAY – August 9, 2025 (INSPIRE)

Inspire– I pretty much homebrew everything.  I enjoy reading modules and other RPG game books and do sometimes take inspiration from them, but I have not played a prewritten adventure in a long time. For those of you who have been playing D&D for a while, I am talking about the original modules like Expedition to Barrier Peaks, White Plume Mountain, Against the Giants, The Isle of dread, The Secret of Bone Hill, and of course, the Tomb of Horrors. 

As a player, not a DM, the first time we played Tomb of Horrors, I impulsively jumped into the Green Devil’s open mouth, which as everyone knows now, is a sphere of annihilation which immediately disintegrated my character and all my cool magic items. Bummer and not very inspiring, which for the Tomb of Horrors I think was the point.  Although, I do still remember it 40+ years later, which says something.

 

(Sorry about the tangent) Anyway, I think most tables have house rules they use and most do not play 100% rules as written.  Or maybe that has just been my experience, since I mostly DM.  During one of my campaigns, one of our house rules we used was for a form of inspiration:

Game Mechanics: Critical Fumbles in Combat – On a roll of Nat 1, a critical fumble occurs which is always unsuccessful and is always, at best a miss and possibly something worse. On a Nat 1, a second D20 is rolled and on a 6 – 20 it is simply a miss.  On a roll of 1 – 5, it is a fumble and something else negative happens related to the combat. This applies to both the characters and any opponents.

If a martial character has multiple attacks and rolls a natural 1 on the first attack, on a 6 – 20 that 1 attack misses, but the remaining attacks can be made as normal.  However, on a roll of 1 – 5 fumble no further attacks can be made that round.

On the plus side, while rolling a Nat 1 is bad luck, to counter balance it, players only, not monsters or NPCs receive an Inspiration Dice, a D6 that can be added to any future roll made with a D20 during that game session only.  Any unused Inspiration Dice are lost at the end of that day’s game time.